The chronicles of James Gordon (Ben McKenzie) as he rises in the ranks of the Gotham City Police Department and develops a unique alliance with playboy philanthropist Bruce Wayne (David Mazouz), slowly becoming aware of Wayne's secret life as the masked vigilante Batman. All 22 episodes in one Blu-ray collection.
The first "epic" western of the talkie era, The Big Trail is motivated by a hero's search for the murderer of his father. Twenty-three-year-old John Wayne, hitherto limited to bit parts, was thrust into the difficult leading role, a young mountaineer put in charge of a huge California-bound wagon train. Over the next several months, Wayne and his fellow pioneers face every imaginable hazard and disaster, from blistering desert heat to blinding snowstorms, negotiating steep cliffs, treacherous rivers, uncharted forests and other such natural obstacles. Meanwhile, Wayne's tentative romance with heroine Ruth Cameron (Marguerite Churchill) is continually thwarted by a charming but duplicitous gambler (Ian Keith), and all-around villain Red Flack (Tyrone Power Sr.) and his henchman Lopez (Charlie Stevens) ceaselessly plot to double-cross the other wagon-trainers for their own financial gain. The Big Trail was a box-office disappointment, a fact which some have attributed its expensive production methods. Each scene was lensed twice, once in 35-millimeter and then in the 65-mm "Fox Grandeur" wide-screen process. And then, each dialogue scene was filmed in French and German, with totally different casts. Even if Big Trail has been a big hit, it would have lost money thanks to the time-consuming shooting and reshooting of virtually every scene. Whatever the case, it was John Wayne who suffered most from the film's failure; instantly demoted to "B"-westerns, it took him nearly a decade to rebuild his stardom. Long believed lost, The Big Trail was made available for exhibition again in the early 1970s -- and in the 1990s the original widescreen version was at last restored for public view.
With the exception of making Harley a bit too childlike, this was very well done. There were a couple good plot twists - once was which was extremely thoughful!
Michael Curtiz's The Comancheros will prove something of a disappointment on DVD, at least for those of us who owned or have seen the laserdisc of the movie. The latter, also produced by Fox, contained a very enjoyable and rewarding commentary track by movie co-star Stuart Whitman that is nowhere to be found on this digital disc. The movie itself is transferred well enough here, at least by the standards of the early 21st century, though there are limits to the resolution of both the source print and the transfer technology. One longs to see how a high-definition transfer, even bumped down to NTSC, would look on this movie; between the expansive outdoor locales and the fact that Curtiz filled just about every corner of the Cinemascope screen with something worth seeing, it will probably be mighty impressive. Until then, we have this more modest effort, proportioned in letterboxed format to fit the 'Scope image (2.35:1), fairly sharp and reasonably crisp, even if the reds bleed a bit and the finest printing on the opening titles blurs slightly. The bonus features include the original American trailer and one in Spanish as well; a brief Fox Movietone newsreel clip of singer Claude King and composer Tillman Franks, who wrote the song "The Comancheros" (which was never used in the movie) accepting an award; and trailers for two other John Wayne movies released by Fox. It's not much of a supplement compared to the laserdisc, but at least the two-layer menu accessing all of it -- which opens automatically on start-up -- is easy to use.
While providing a great take on Harley as a "tweener" character in the DC Universe, that took too long to set the stage and provided, in my opinion, a rushed ending.