DVDpedia : GQ DVD Library : Genre : W

Summary: This 1976 adventure story set in World War II concerns a Nazi plot to kidnap Churchill from his retreat--or murder him if need be. The large, great cast and a director, John Sturges, who's been down this road of ensemble action before ("The Magnificent Seven", "The Great Escape") make this project exciting if not as memorable as Sturges's more famous works. The weak ending doesn't help. "-- Tom Keogh"

Summary: Stanley Kubrick's 1987, penultimate film seemed to a lot of people to be contrived and out of touch with the '80s vogue for such intensely realistic portrayals of the Vietnam War as "Platoon" and "The Deer Hunter". Certainly, Kubrick gave audiences plenty of reason to wonder why he made the film at all: essentially a two-part drama that begins on a Parris Island boot camp for rookie Marines and abruptly switches to Vietnam (actually shot on sound stages and locations near London), "Full Metal Jacket" comes across as a series of self-contained chapters in a story whose logical and thematic development is oblique at best. Then again, much the same was said about Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey", a masterwork both enthralled with and satiric about the future's role in the unfinished business of human evolution. In a way, "Full Metal Jacket" is the wholly grim counterpart of "2001". While the latter is a truly 1960s film, both wide-eyed and wary, about the intertwining of progress and isolation (ending in our redemption, finally, by death), "Full Metal Jacket" is a cynical, Reagan-era view of the 1960s' hunger for experience and consciousness that fulfilled itself in violence. Lee Ermey made film history as the Marine drill instructor whose ritualized debasement of men in the name of tribal uniformity creates its darkest angel in a murderous half-wit (Vincent D'Onofrio). Matthew Modine gives a smart and savvy performance as Private Joker, the clowning, military journalist who yearns to get away from the propaganda machine and know firsthand the horrific revelation of the front line. In "Full Metal Jacket", depravity and fulfillment go hand in hand, and it's no wonder Kubrick kept his steely distance from the material to make the point. "--Tom Keogh"

Summary: The Guns of Navarone:
Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn and David Niven are Allied saboteurs assigned an impossible mission: infiltrate an impregnable Nazi-held island and destroy the two enormous long-range field guns that prevent the rescue of 2,000 trapped Britissh soldiers. Blacklisted Carl Foreman (High Noon, The Bridge On The River Kwai) was determined to re-establish both his name and credibility after spending most of the '50s working in anonymity. To accomplish this, he decided to bring Alistar Maclean?s best-selling novel, The Guns Of Navarone, to the screen. Das Boot:
Inspired by the actual experiences of a WWII photojournalist. Wolfgang Petersen brings the life of a U-Boat crewman authentically alive with every moment of claustrophobic and explosive terror. Autumn, 1941: Forty-three young German sailors aboard U-96 enter the war against Britain seeking adventure, respect and heroism. For them, this voyage is for glory. For their captain, a seasoned war veteran at the young age of 30, it is a mission against enemy destroyers in a blood-red sea that can devour a ship and its crew without leaving a trace.

Summary: Clint Eastwood is Gunnery Sergeant Tom Highway, career Marine and combat veteran. He is a man whose life has been defined by war. Korea and Vietnam taught him how to survive. He won the Congressional Medal of Honor but found public apathy and military bureaucracy. He is a hard drinking loner but he's trying to reorganise his life and understand the woman he loves. He is a traditionalist who has to shape up his ragtag troops and he'll get the job done. His integrity is unwavering. His past is Heartbreak Ridge. He is ready for another battlefield and his finest hour. It will come.

Summary: The murder of a prostitute in Nazi occupied Warsaw draws Wehrmacht Major Grau into an investigation where the evidence points to one of three high ranking Generals. The trail leads Grau from Warsaw to Paris and straight into the 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, of which two of the Generals are deeply involved. Grau's case goes unfinished and it is not until 1965 when the true killer is brought to justice

Summary: Rancher Dan Evans heads into Bisbee to clear up issues concerning the sake of his land when he witnesses the closing events of a stagecoach robbery led by famed outlaw Ben Wade. Shortly thereafter, Wade is captured by the law in Bisbee and Evans finds himself one of the escorts who will take Wade to the 3:10 to Yuma train in Contention for the reward of $200. Evans's effort to take Wade to the station is in part an effort to save his land but also part of an inner battle to determine whether he can be more than just a naive rancher in the eyes of his impetuous and gunslinging son William Evans. The transport to Contention is hazardous and filled with ambushes by Indians, pursuits by Wade's vengeful gang and Wade's own conniving and surreptitious demeanor that makes the ride all the more intense.

Summary: High Plains Drifter:
The Stranger rides past the grave of former sheriff Jim Duncan into the 1870 Southwest frontier town of Lago. Owners of the Lago Mining Company, Dave Drake and Morgan Allen in a meeting, get the agreement of the townspeople to hire The Stranger to protect the community against the imminent return of three gunmen who had been sent to jail a year before on a trumped-up charge by the Drake / Allen Mining Company. The Stranger accepts the job on the condition that he has free reign in doing it. He plans a reception for the three men which will include an ambush in town and among other things, he orders the entire vllage to be painted a bright red and the name changed to 'Hell'. The film builds to a magnificent climax when the three prisoners arrive in town - with Clint Eastwood playing one of his most memorable roles. Joe Kidd:
Joe Kidd is a former bounty hunter and all-around tough-guy in the American Southwest during the Mexican-American War. When a band of Mexicans find their U. S. land claims denied and all relevant records destroyed in a courthouse fire, they turn to force of arms. Louis Chama is their charismatic leader, spouting revolutionary rhetoric and demanding land reform. A wealthy landowner with interests in the disputed area, Frank Harlan, decides to settle things his own way. He hires a band of killers and wants Joe Kidd to help them track Chama. Initially, Kidd wants to avoid any involvement, until Chama makes the mistake of stealing Kidd's horses and terrorizing his friends. Two Mules For Sister Sara:
Set in Mexico, a nun called Sara is rescued from three cowboys by Hogan, who is on his way to do some reconnaissance, for a future mission to capture a French fort. The French are chasing Sara, but not for the reasons she tells Hogan, so he decides to help her in return for information about the fort defences. Inevitably the two become good friends but Sara has a secret..

Summary: After starring in the now-legendary trilogy of spaghetti Westerns for Italian director Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood became a box-office star and imported the style of those classic shoot-'em-ups for this 1967 Western directed by Ted Post, with whom Eastwood had worked during their days on the television series "Rawhide". Eastwood plays an innocent rancher who is mistaken for a cattle rustler and sentenced to hang by an angry mob. When he is saved from the noose by a passing lawman, he embarks on a renegade campaign of vengeance against the men who attempted to lynch him. "Hang 'Em High" offers a number of memorable moments and stylistic flourishes, and features a superb supporting cast of Western veterans, including Ben Johnson, Ed Begley, Pat Hingle, Dennis Hopper, Bruce Dern, L.Q. Jones, and the "Skipper" himself, Alan Hale Jr. Made just three years before "Dirty Harry", the film marked a turning point for Eastwood, who would soon move into a prolific period of contemporary thrillers. The digital video disc offers standard and widescreen formats and a remastered soundtrack. "--Jeff Shannon"

Summary: Kirk Douglas is "The Indian Fighter" Johnny Hawks, who returns to the West after the end of the Civil War to lead a wagon train bound for Oregon. Along the way there is the threat of an Indian war stirred up by bad guys Wes Todd (Walter Matthau) and Chivington (Lon Chaney), a couple of whiskey traders who are after gold on Indian land. The Indians in question are led by Red Cloud (Eduard Franz), the Sioux chief who tried to keep the white man from taking over his people's land. Johnny is smitten with Onahti (Elsa Martinelli), the chief's daughter, who distracts him enough from his job to put the wagon train and the local military outpost at risk when Red Cloud's brother is killed.
This 1955 western was filmed on location in Oregon by director Andr� De Toth and the beautiful scenery along with composer Franz Waxman's evocative helps elevate "The Indian Fighter" to above average status. Given the time and genre, some of the scenes between Hawks and Onahti are quite risqu�. In the end this is more of a Western romance than a Western action film, and with its inherent sympathy towards both the Indians and the environment, De Toth has made an extremely atypical Western. Elisha Cook has a nice supporting role as Briggs, a character who learned photography from Matthew Brady during the Civil War and has come out West to capture the grandeur of the landscape, and there are several moments when De Toth's has the camera provide the sort of beautiful panoramic shots that Briggs would aspire to take. Not a great Western but there is a lot here that warrants fans of the genre taking a long look.
Trivia Note: Diana Douglas, the wife of Kirk and mother of Michael Douglas at that point in hsitory, plays settler Susan Rogers, who has her eye on Hawks but ends up with hardy Will Crabtree (Alan Hale, Jr.). I remember the actress from playing Professor Tyler on "The Paper Chase." This was the only film the two appeared in together and certain an interesting choice given they each have different love interests.

Summary: "Junior Bonner" is director Sam Peckinpah's lovely, elegiac look at the world of the rodeo--and his only film with nary a bullet wound. Steve McQueen, engagingly easygoing but determined, is the title character, a rodeo rider out to win a big bull-riding contest in his hometown. Even as he confronts his dwindling days on the circuit, he also must deal with his feuding parents, marvelously played by Robert Preston and Ida Lupino. Preston is particularly good as the randy old con artist; he and Lupino strike real sparks. Peckinpah's slow-motion camera is put to particularly good use filming the balletic violence of the rodeo, at once more terrifying and awe-inspiring than any gun battle. A lovely country-western valentine to a dying breed. "--Marshall Fine"

Summary: Australia released, PAL/Region 4 DVD:it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ),SPECIAL FEATURES: Interactive Menu,SYNOPSIS: Set in the immediate post-Civil War era, The McMasters stars Brock Peters as a black Union soldier who finds he must figuratively fight the war all over again. Returning to his southern hometown, Peters quickly learns that nothing has really changed: he is a "free"man in name only. Peters' ex-master Burl Ives magnanimously gives the former slave a plot of land, but only Native-American David Carradine and his tribesmen are willing to work for a black man. The "invasion" of Indians serves to stir up the racial divisiveness even farther, thanks to local rabble-rouser Jack Palance. The McMasters was originally released in two versions with two different endings, succinctly summing up the film's "no easy answers" stance.

Summary: A film that has James Coburn and Telly Savalas starring should be entertaining, at least that's what I thought when I bought this dvd. Unfortunately, a mediocre story line sinks this, and Savalas does not even appear until an hour into the film, and his performance is restrained at best. I'm wondering if he was doing Mario Bava's "Lisa and the Devil" which was around the same time, and this was just a quick job for him. He adds nothing to the film. Coburn is okay, but the decision to dub his voice with another actor is strange. The cinematography is excellent, and the dvd transfer is great as well, though the first five minutes of the film is very rough, with scratches and a washed out look. Otherwise it looks gorgeous, almost Criterion quality. The plot, borrowing liberally from the Dirty Dozen, involves Coburn "recruiting" men sentenced to death for various crimes. Their mission: to destroy a Confederate base that is the key to Southern control of the South West part of the Confederacy. The real purpose is personal, and Coburn wants Savalas dead. Nice idea, but there is no depth to the characters; Coburn's men are a motley lot, but after the initial escape attempt, are a bunch of red shirts being led to slaughter. For diehard spaghetti western completists only.

Summary: From back cover, "Jack Nicholson and Monte Hellman star in this timeless cult classic, written and produced by Nicolsen this western tells the tale of how an innocent man becomes an outlaw. Three cowboys are in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and are mistaken for a gang of robbers by a band of vigilantes. Two of the cowboys are killed and the last is forced to become an outlaw himself, if he is to stay alive."

Summary: Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman play retired, down-on-their-luck outlaws who pick up their guns one last time to collect a bounty offered by the vengeful prostitutes of the remote Wyoming town of Big Whiskey. Richard Harris is an ill-fated interloper, a colorful killer-for-hire called English Bob. And Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner Gene Hackman is the sly and brutal local sheriff whose brand of law enforcement ranges from unconventional to ruthless.
DVD Features:
Production Notes
Theatrical Trailer

Summary: Here's how director Sam Peckinpah described his motivation behind "The Wild Bunch" at the time of the film's 1969 release: "I was trying to tell a simple story about bad men in changing times. "The Wild Bunch" is simply what happens when killers go to Mexico. The strange thing is you feel a great sense of loss when these killers reach the end of the line." All of these statements are true, but they don't begin to cover the impact that Peckinpah's film had on the evolution of American movies. Now the film is most widely recognized as a milestone event in the escalation of screen violence, but that's a label of limited perspective. Of course, Peckinpah's bloody climactic gunfight became a masterfully directed, photographed, and edited ballet of graphic violence that transcended the conventional Western and moved into a slow-motion realm of pure cinematic intensity. But the film--surely one of the greatest Westerns ever made--is also a richly thematic tale of, as Peckinpah said, "bad men in changing times." The year is 1913 and the fading band of thieves known as the Wild Bunch (led by William Holden as Pike) decide to pull one last job before retirement. But an ambush foils their plans, and Peckinpah's film becomes an epic yet intimate tale of betrayed loyalties, tenacious rivalry, and the bunch's dogged determination to maintain their fading code of honor among thieves. The 144-minute director's cut enhances the theme of male bonding that recurs in many of Peckinpah's films, restoring deleted scenes to deepen the viewer's understanding of the friendship turned rivalry between Pike and his former friend Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan), who now leads a posse in pursuit of the bunch, a dimension that adds resonance to an already classic American film. "The Wild Bunch" is a masterpiece that should not be defined strictly in terms of its violence, but as a story of mythic proportion, brimming with rich characters and dialogue and the bittersweet irony of outlaw traditions on the wane. "--Jeff Shannon"

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Summary: Includes 4 great movies:
The Magnificent Seven
Merciless Calvera and his band of ruthless outlaws are terrorizing a poor Mexican village, and even the bravest lawmen can’t stop them. Desperate, the locals hire Chris Adams and six other gunfighters to defend them. With time running out before Calvera’s next raid, the heroic seven must prepare the villagers for battle and help them find the courage to take back their town…or die trying! Return Of The Magnificent Seven Guns Of The Magnificent Seven The Magnificent Seven Ride