The extras are okay: there's not much depth. They got Swayze, Lea Thomson, C. Thomas Howell, Charlie Sheen, John Milius, Dale Dye but the featurettes are thin. During the featurette on how the actors trained for the film, they showed stock footage of soldiers shooting and walking around the woods. Pathetic. They also showed too many clips from the film.
This is a weak special edition. I'm happy that it's anamorphic, though. That's enough for me to double-dip. It's worth picking up if you're a fan or first-time purchaser.
Can anyone talk about the featurette WWIII comes to town? Just wondering because the movie was filmed in the town I grew up in. Las Vegas, NM. It is a town of about 16 or 17,000 people about 130 miles north of Albuquerque. I remember I was about 8 years old when the movie was filmed. It was pretty cool to see the town transformed.
Swayze, even bought a ranch about 30 minutes outside of town. It was kinda cool to run into him into him in a small town like Vegas from time to time.
Anyway, any info someone could give me on this featurette would be appreciated.
I only ffed through that last night (will watch it all later) but it looked to be a 20 minute featurette on the town. Interviewing people who lived there and what they thought of it. If you know the town, I'm sure you will love it.
I watched the main doc last night. Some great information from the interviews, but it needed A LOT more. There was nothing on the actual release of the film, the protests, or even the Iraq war connection. Plus, in two places, actors talk about favorite scenes being cut, yet those scenes are not on the DVD.
This set could have used a commentary track by John Milius. I know some people ignore commentary tracks (because a number of them are rather dry), but I think comments by the director would have been interesting.
On my 37" widescreen Vizio, played through a regular Sony DVD player using a component cable, the transfer looked pretty good (for a film from the 80s). There were some scenes with noticeable grain and softness and others that looked very clean and sharp. Overall, the transfer was free of dust and scratches.
This movie was controversial when I was in junior high school. But all my buddies (and I) thought it was pretty cool.
I think the film (like a lot of cult faves in the last 30 years) has become a minor classic. The film is sorta cheesy, but it really holds up well as "good cheese" and stands the test of time.
It is very melodramatic (probably overly so). However, one can truly appreciate the "look" of the film. It is a very handsome production.
As corny 80s action movies go, this one still works 20-some-odd years later.
A commentary would have been nice because I get the sense that Milius would have had some interesting stories to share about the production and his overall vision for the film.