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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Urban > Hispanic > Romance > Crime > Murder > Politics > Croatia > Drugs > Italy > Legal > Holocaust > Boulevard Nights (1979*)/The Escort (2023/IndiePix DVD)/High Crime 4K (1973/MVD/Blue Underground 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray w/Blu-ray + CD)/Marie: A True Story (1985/DeLaurentiis/*both Warner Archive Blu-ray

Boulevard Nights (1979*)/The Escort (2023/IndiePix DVD)/High Crime 4K (1973/MVD/Blue Underground 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray w/Blu-ray + CD)/Marie: A True Story (1985/DeLaurentiis/*both Warner Archive Blu-rays)/One Life (2023/Bleecker Street/Decal Blu-ray)



4K Ultra HD Picture: B+ Picture: B (DVD: C) Sound: B-/C+/B-/B-/B- Extras: C-/C-/B/C-/C Films: B-/C+/B-/C+/B-



PLEASE NOTE: The Boulevard Nights and Marie: A True Story Blu-rays are now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner Archive series and can be ordered from the link below.



The following crime dramas can be very dark and hard hitting, but you should know about each of them...



Michael Pressman's Boulevard Nights (1979) celebrates its 45th Anniversary and deserves to be rediscovered. As I said in my DVD review years ago, the film ''...is a sort of lost little gem produced by Tony Bill (My Bodyguard) about Hispanic American youth in East Los Angeles that features a very talented cast that sadly did not get seen more as this film was not the hit it deserved to be, but the characters and culture featured here is as realistic as it is prophetic (including Rap/Hip Hop forerunners) in a real slice of street life film that has aged very well is is likely a minor classic of such a cinematic discourse long before the recent increase (never enough) of great Hispanic talent on the big screen.


Raymond (Richard Yniguez) is an ex-gang member who has found love with a very pretty gal (Marta Dubois) and wants to move on to a better life, but he has is little brother Chuco (Danny De La Paz) who is angry and cannot stay out of trouble from the first scene in the film. The 102 minutes never falls flat, is something special and work going out of your way to see. Carmen Zapata (who passed away in 2014) and John Fiedler are among the most recognizable of the adult cast, John Bailey, A.S.C., is Director of Photography and Lalo Schifrin composed the music score.''


This rare film is the kind that we still only sadly see once in a while, showing that Hollywood has a very LONG way to go and not enough has improved in getting these stories told, of course in an obvious understatement. This one is worth going out of your way for.


An Original Theatrical Trailer is sadly (still) the only extra.



Lukas Nola's The Escort (2023) is an at least semi-political film from the late director (he died a year before this film was made) with a married man (Zivko Anocic) making a big mistake by sleeping with a prostitute who happens to show up where he is staying on a business trip. Not intending to tell his wife, things get worse when she turns up dead!


He asks two people at the hotel to help him with the situation and they do, but it turns out it will be with strings attached, et al. Well shot and acted, I get what the filmmaker is saying about his home country and he has his points, though the film has some predictability and sadly, the personal and political claims are as believable as they are realistic and all too familiar, especially lately.


Still, you hardly see any films out of this country (censorship?) and this still has enough solid moments to giver it a good look.


Extras include Trailers.



Enzo G. Castellari's High Crime 4K (1973) is a highlight of the extremely successful, often brutal and still wild cycle of Italian Crime films of the 1970s, this one with original Django himself, Franco Nero. This time, he plays a police commissioner whose discovery of a dead body linked to the red-hot, very profitable heroin business, which fires him up to amp up his efforts to bring them down at all costs. The result with be a bloodbath with many twists and turns that never stops once its starts.


This one has a supporting cast that includes Fernando Rey (The French Connection, Tristana, Chimes At Midnight,) James Whitmore (The Asphalt Jungle, Them!, The First Deadly Sin, the original Planet Of The Apes,) and Delia Boccardo (Tarkovsky's Nostalghia, Strogoff, Inspector Clouseau, Tentacles, Snow Job) are the name actors and faces who offer the usual unexpected support in the genre where (like spaghetti westerns) were getting name actors to fly over to be in them. Mickey Knox and Miranda Richardson also turn up uncredited, with the rest of the cast as solid. The result is that this is more involving and convincing, even when it gets really graphic and does not seem it is just being graphic to shock and impress.


This one runs a tight, non-stop 103 minutes and especially with such an impressive restoration, highly recommended if you can handle the violence and themes.


Extras are many, well done and (per the press release) include: Audio Commentary #1 with Co-Writer/Director Enzo G. Castellari

  • Audio Commentary #2 with Star Franco Nero and Filmmaker Mike Malloy

  • Audio Commentary #3 with Film Historians Troy Howarth, Nathaniel Thompson and Eugenio Ercolani

  • The Genoa Connection: Interviews with Director Enzo G. Castellari and Star Franco Nero

  • From Dust To Asphalt: Interview with Director Enzo G. Castellari

  • Hard Stunts For High Crimes: Interview with Actor/Stuntman Massimo Vanni

  • Framing Crime: Interview with Camera Operator Roberto Girometti

  • The Sound Of Onions: Interview with Composers Guido and Maurizio De Angelis

  • The Connection Connection: Featurette by EUROCRIME! Director Mike Malloy

  • Alternate Ending

  • Theatrical Trailer

  • Poster & Still Gallery

  • and the HIGH CRIME Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis (with EXCLUSIVE Bonus Track) on a high quality CD.



Roger Donaldson's Marie: A True Story (1985) is the film the internationally successful journeyman director did between his Anthony Hopkins/Mel Gibson The Bounty (1984, reviewed elsewhere on this site) and hit No Way Out (1987) which was just issued on 4K disc. Based on the real events of a woman (Sissy Spacek, with her patented southern accent always in tact) who escapes an abusive marriage, moves to Tennessee, eventually lands up getting a key job in state government involving the parole board and slowly uncovers a huge legal and political scandal.


At first, she just thinks some of the events are odd, but they soon turn into a pattern of payoffs, inequity, justice not served and she tries to do something about it. On top of threats, she then gets fired, lied about, her reputation trashed and this turns into a legal drama in addition to everything else.


Well the cast is good here with Jeff Daniels, Morgan Freeman, Keith Szarabajka and some other faces you may not be able to name, but recognize (Melissa Sue Anderson shows up in an uncredited turn!) and the cast melds well together. But the script keeps getting sidetracked with melodrama that feels like 1980s mall movie filler and then we have then-lawyer turning actor Fred Thompson playing... Fred Thompson!


Later a politician outright, he is Marie's lawyer (as he was in real life) and it is fair he tells his story personally by reliving it. His acting career included a hit TV show and more appearances in Donaldson's films that followed this one. However, it just makes the film that much more mixed up and while he comes across as a sort of hero here, that was not ultimately his political legacy before he passed away, so that ages the film is odd ways. Not very successful at the time for the other reasons, with was one of the films Dino DeLaurentiis made with MGM/UA as he was launching his own brief-lived movie studio. It is also one of the last MGM films chronologically (along with Michael Cimino's Year Of The Dragon, reviewed elsewhere on this site) that Warner landed up owning form the dawn of that studio from their turner entertainment acquisition before the MGM of today started owning their own films again. At least they were being ambitious then, as I wish studios would be all the time now.


If you are curious, you should still see this one once.


The only extra is an Original Theatrical Trailer.



James Hawes' One Life (2023) is an underrated biopic about Nicholas Winton, a stock broker and businessman from London who landed up going to then-Czechoslovakia during WWII and saving over 600 children from being killed by the German Nazis. Anthony Hopkins plays him in the modern day, still horrified by those he could not save despite what he incredibly achieved and Johnny Flynn (Stardust, Song One) plays him really well in the extended flashback/past parts of the story.


Why this film was not picked and and did not do better or get more critical recognition is a big head scratcher because it is one of the best films on the subject and best such films we have seen like it in a while despite parts sadly, necessarily, being things we've seen before and will keep needed to see again because of retro-denial and horrific current events still going on as we post this coverage.


Besides being well thought out, well paced and the WWII sequences being very period-correct and convincing, we have a great supporting cast including Lena Olin, Helena Bonham-Carter, Romana Garai, Marthe Keller, Jiri Simek, Alex Sharp and a great turn by Jonathan Pryce, in a brief reunion with Hopkins after their Popes movie, it is hard to stop watching once you start. Definitely catch this one if you like serious dramas for mature adults.


Extras include three Making Of featurettes: That's Life, Stories From The Heart and a general Behind The Scenes piece.



Now for playback performance. The 2160p HEVC/H.265, 1.85 X 1, Dolby Vision/HDR (10; Ultra HD Premium)-enhanced Ultra High Definition image on High Crime looks great, has fine color, has been restored in a way that will shot those used to tolerating flaws on so many Italian crime films from the 1970s and this is one of the best-looking films from that cycle. It is a real pleasure just to see it looking so good, nothing manipulated or tampered with either. The regular 1.85 X 1 1080p Blu-ray also looks good, but cannot match the 4K version. Both have DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 1.0 Mono lossless mixes in English and Italian that are equally good in this case, showing their age a bit as expected, but much of this was shot with the actors actually speaking English.


The rest of the Blu-rays also look as good with the 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image on Nights is a nice improvement over the older DVD version, though it looks like the same HD master. That is good news as the master is accurate enough. But would look even better with a new 4K scan. The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mix as good as the film is likely to ever sound and also is a nice improvement over the old, compressed, lossy DolbY Digital from the old DVD.


The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Marie also looks good, as shot with real, anamorphic J-D-C Scope lenses, adding to how good this can look. The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mix is also as good as this will ever sound with clean, clear dialogue, music and sound design, form a time when some films could still get away with being monophonic. That period was about to come to an end.


The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on One Life is very consistent and looks fine throughout, an HD shoot that is better than so many dramas we've seen in the last few years, with a convincing style on the scenes that take place decades ago. The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix is a little off with limits to its soundfield for whatever reason, but it is fine for a dialogue-driven film. Oddly, the older films on Blu-ray can compete sonically with it.


The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on the Escort DVD is softer than I would have liked, especially since this is well shot and edited with decent color, while the lossy Croatian Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo plays even better allowing this to be enjoyed more. The combination is passable, but I wish a Blu-ray were issued on this one.



To order the Boulevard Nights and/or Marie: A True Story Warner Archive Blu-rays, go to this link for them and many more great web-exclusive releases at:


https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/ED270804-095F-449B-9B69-6CEE46A0B2BF?ingress=0&visitId=6171710b-08c8-4829-803d-d8b922581c55&tag=blurayforum-20



- Nicholas Sheffo


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