Picture: 
Sound: Extras:
Movie: Picture: Sound: Extras:
Much of the movie involves running away -- breaking the biggest convention of all in the Western: the hero stands and fights.
1969 was a long time ago. Robert Redford, now an old man, was unknown. Director George Roy Hill had to battle mightily to have him co-star, as we are informed by one of the commentaries (assembled from old audio recordings of various people involved in making the movie). The other commentary is by the scriptwriter, William Goldman. He was a grumpy old man when he recorded the commentary (it was at least 2005, judging from internal references), and there are significant gaps, but his observations on the changing art of the movie are fascinating.
This rendition of it is generally excellent but with a few oddities. The video is MPEG2 encoded, but looks fine on those frames which are both present and clean. Most of the frames which are present are clean. Some are a little marred with dirt. One on which I happened (58:16) had an attractive pink thread curled over the middle. Having said that, I've just frozen on a nearby scene in which the western sun is so bright that there is immense depth of field, and the variegated fields and forests up to the horizon are delivered with glorious clarity, impeded only by a touch of atmospheric haze. Some of the dark scenes were rather grainy and failed to deliver the full depth of blacks.
What was irritating, though, was that from time to time a frame was dropped. This may be due (14:55) to meeting the censorship requirements of the time, but others (eg. 8:46, and a whole series at 58:16) seem entirely unnecessary. They just cause visual jumps which are irritating. I'm inclined to think that these are due to film repairs.
(Australian rating); Region B Locked
This is the video bitrate graph for this movie, generated by BDInfo 0.5.2:
One of the many great on-screen aspects of Paul Newman was his almost luminous eyes. Here, even in this grainy, sepia shot, they stand out so much more than the DVD:
Sticking with one more from the opening sepia segment, no, this Blu-ray doesn't have the sharpest picture ever to cross my desk. Nonetheless, it's far better than the DVD:
It's a bit hard to spot Robert Redford's trademark mole on his right cheek when you're watching the DVD:
Here we focus not on the characters (there isn't that much difference between them in this action shot), but on the background, and note the reduced blockiness of the Blu-ray:
Ah, the water. It ripples:
Yes, water really does look so much better on Blu-ray:
