The Quick And The Dead

The classic westerns have pretty much remained that, classics. Every now and then hollywood ventures into the past to bring us yet another tale of the wild west and its renowned high noon gunfights.

The Quick and the Dead is a movie about a town called Redemption and the little contest the hold called the "Quick Draw" competition. The rules are simple, if you're quick enough to out-draw your opponent then you live, if not, you die, hence the title "The Quick and the Dead".

Fielding a full house of actors like Gene Hackman as the town owner and tax collector Herod, Sharon Stone as the wandering drifter known as Lady, Russel Crowe as the gunslinger turned priest Cort, Lance Henrikson as the self proclaimed fastest draw in the west Ace, Gary Sinise in a cameo as the Marshall and Leonardo DiCaprio as Kid in his pre-Titanic days.

This disc is demo disc quality. In some scenes there is noticable grain on the print and in other scenes there is a mugginess to the picture but this could be attributed to either the filters used or the not too uncommon stocking effect over the lense. Either way, it is a great disc to look at.

Colors are vivid throughout, even though they are restricted to different saturations of brown and orange, but even so, on an equivalent laserdisc pressing where color bleed would have been evident, the image is pristine in its appearance.

There's not much more I can say about this disc apart from mention, once again, how Columbia Tristar has out-done itself yet again. As always, show detail is up to the normal standards.

Sound is the great enhancement for this disc. There is many a time that the sound chosen to portray a specific effect was probably the best that could have been chosen and it comes across great.

One scene in particular was the slow moving hand on the town clock as everyone waited for the shootout to occur. The hand would tick over slowly giving a full range of sound from bass down low to treble up high.

Your customary explosions were of explosive standards. I had to reach for the remote at times because the soundtrack just got too loud toward the end when things started cooking.

Dialogue was very clear, probably alot clearer than what I have become used to on other discs. It could have been the mix itself though. It lended itself to focus more on the center of the screen rather than ambient noise and discrete surround channel effects.

Your basic batch of theatrical trailer, scene selections and multiple languages is enough for this disc. I don't think it needed much more at all.

Quick and the Dead is an ok western. Personally, I wasn't too impressed with the movie. Something about Sharon Stone as a loner of this style doesn't suit her character.

Gene Hackman is his usual stone cold self and does a fine job of running the people into the ground with ease. His booming voice is used sparingly but with great impact.

Its worth watching but not one to sit on the repeat viewing shelf.