Hats off to Warner Bros.: ‘The Outlaw Josey Wales’ is a 4K UHD stunner
- Craig Shapiro
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
4K ULTRA HD REVIEW / HDR SCREENSHOTS
Clint Eastwood stars on both sides of the camera in “The Outlaw Josey Wales,” one of his finest Westerns. He plays a Missouri farmer hell bent on vengeance when his wife and son are brutally murdered by Union Redlegs. A wanted man, he dispatches four Calvary soldiers, but not before asking, “Are you gonna pull those pistols or whistle Dixie?”
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“THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES”
4K Ultra HD, 1976, PG, violence, including sexual assault, brief nudity, language; Digital copy via Amazon Video (4K), Apple TV (4K), Fandango Home (4K), Movies Anywhere (4K), YouTube (4K)
Best extra: The new feature “The Cinematography of an Outlaw: Crafting Josey Wales”
“JOSEY WALES” occupies a top spot in Clint Eastwood’s filmography for any number of reasons:
* In only his fifth turn as a director — six counting the suicide scene in “Dirty Harry” — and second Western — “High Plains Drifter” was the first — he created a rousing, sweeping epic that stands beside those of John Ford, Anthony Mann and Sam Peckinpah.
* The camerawork by frequent collaborator Bruce Surtees (“Play Misty for Me,” “Sudden Impact” and “Pale Rider,” for starters) is simply stirring, as is the Oscar-nominated score by Jerry Fielding (“The Wild Bunch”).
* The supporting cast, many of them Eastwood regulars, is uniformly excellent, especially Chief Dan George (“Little Big Man”) as the Cherokee Elder Lone Watie and John Vernon (“Animal House”) as the Confederate Capt. Fletcher.
The No. 1 reason, though, is Eastwood himself. In many ways, Josey is true to type, but in other, radical new ways, he isn’t.
(1&2) Josey is struck down trying to save his family then breaks down as he buries them. (3&4) He takes up with a squad of Confederates but doesn’t join them when they lay down their guns in exchange for amnesty. (5) Sam Bottoms plays Jamie, who lights out with Josey when the men are mowed down with a Gatling gun. (6) Frank Schofield (left) is the duplicitous U.S. Lane and John Vernon is the Confederate Capt. Fletcher, who is double-crossed by Lee and Redlegs Capt. Terrill (Bill McKinney, right).
A Missouri farmer living a quiet life with his wife and son just after the Civil War, he picks up his guns when his family is butchered by a band of Union Redlegs led by Capt. Terrill (Bill McKinney, “First Blood”). Driven by vengeance, he takes up with “Bloody” Bill Anderson (John Russell, “Rio Bravo”) and heads to Kansas to find the killers.
Thing soon change. Tired of killing, Fletcher, in a deal with the duplicitous U.S. Sen. Lane (Frank Schofield, TV’s “Dark Shadows”), and all of the men except for Josey, surrender in exchange for amnesty. Instead, they are massacred with a Gatling gun. Josey rides in, commandeers the gun, turns the tables, then lights out with young Jamie (Sam Bottoms, “The Last Picture Show”), who is mortally wounded. Lane forces Fletcher to help Terrill hunt Josey down.
As Josey dodges Terrill, he first meets Lone Watie. George practically steals the movie, leavening it with a wry sense of humor — he tells Josey, “I didn’t surrender, but they took my horse and he did” — without losing his dignity. Their partnership is one for the ages.
Before long, they’re joined by Navajo survivor Little Moonlight (Geraldine Keams, TV’s “Reservation Dogs”), who Josey rescued from an abusive shopkeeper, settlers Grandma Sarah (Paula Trueman, “Dirty Dancing”) and her granddaughter Laura Lee (Sondra Locke, “The Gauntlet”), who Josey recused from Comancheros, and, among others, a mangy dog.
(1) A couple of bounty hunters think their ship has come in when they try to bring in Josey and the mortally wounded Jamie. (2) Chief Dan George is wonderful as the proud Cherokee Elder Lone Watie. He laments that he’s gotten too old to sneak up on people anymore. (3&4) Josey is soon the head of a growing surrogate family that includes Navajo survivor Little Moonlight (Geraldine Keams), a mangy dog and settlers Grandma Sarah (Paula Trueman) and her granddaughter Laura Lee (Sondra Locke). (5) Woodrow Parfrey plays the oily Carpetbagger.
Suddenly the head of a surrogate family, Josey leads them to the Texas ranch of Grandma Sarah’s late son. Surtees’ sweeping shot of the spread as they crest a hill holds all the promise of Josey’s life back in Missouri. In one of the movie’s most potent scenes, he makes peace with the Apache leader Ten Bears (Will Sampson, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”), but the homesteaders are threatened when Terrill shows up. The coward runs and is chased down by Josey. You can guess the rest.
As another review noted, Eastwood “delivers one of his most nuanced performances, balancing stoic reserve with vulnerability. His Wales speaks sparingly, yet his weariness and moral complexity resonate.”
It was here that he started deconstructing his own myth, setting the stage for his role as Bill Munny in the masterful “Unforgiven.”
VIDEO/AUDIO
Like the just-released “Dirty Harry,” “Josey Wales” (2:35.1 aspect ratio) was scanned from the 35mm original camera negative and graded in HDR10 and Dolby Vision (Digital). Likewise, the 4K UHD master is exceptional. Surtees’ panoramic shots are stunning in their clarity, while those in the shadows are crisp and clear. The saturated colors are vivid and natural, and the detail could not be more defined. You can almost feel the dust on Josey’s boots.
Everything was encoded onto 100 GB disc and the peak HDR10 brightness hits 2148 and averages 321. And the video bitrate consistently runs in the low 60 Megabits per second.
The new Dolby Atmos track opens up the soundstage, giving ample room to the blazing guns, thundering horses, downpours and Fielding’s score. Dialogue is clear and precise; same goes for every creak in the floorboards and crackle in the campfire. If the 2.0 mono DTS-HD Master Audio track is more to you liking, you won’t be disappointed.
(1-5) After singlehandedly saving Grandma Sarah, Laura Lee and Lone Watie from a band of Comancheros, Josey and the homesteaders head for the Texas farm of Grandma Sarah’s son.
EXTRAS
Warner Bros. again sticks to its “Dirty Harry” blueprint, dishing up two lightweight new features. The same cast of experts who talked about Surtees’ work on “Harry” weigh in on “The Cinematography of an Outlaw: Crafting Josey Wales.” “Josey,” they say, is where the Eastwood-Surtees collaboration crystallized, but their point, which the make ad nauseam, is that the shifts between darkness and light reflect the duality of Wales’ character. Of course, you can see that for yourself watching the movie, but there you go.
The other new feature, “An Outlaw and an Antihero,” is even less substantial. Josey is a hybrid character, they solemnly swear, and the film poses a question for viewers: What would you do in this situation? Deep, huh?
Among the archival extras is a commentary by critic/historian/Eastwood biographer Richard Schickel. It’s an uneven affair, but he does point out that the early scene when Eastwood breaks down after burying his wife and son indicated that this wasn’t business as usual. “Audiences had never witnessed him being brought so low and devastated.” Eastwood, he adds, was totally aware that he “was entering new country.”
Other extras include the short features “Clint Eastwood’s West,” “Eastwood in Action” and “Hell Hath No Fury - The Making of The Outlaw Josey Wales,” and the documentary “Clint Eastwood: A Cinematic Legacy - Reinventing Westerns.”
But truth to tell, even if Warner Bros. had skipped them all, “The Outlaw Josey Wales” would still be a keeper.
— Craig Shapiro
(1) In one of the movie’s most potent scenes, Josey makes peace with the Apache leader Ten Bears (Will Sampson). (2) Josey reflects on the promise of a new life in Texas.