The Guns of Navarone - 4K Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

The Guns of Navarone



Movie:
4K Video:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:

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Movie
It’s long been since held that 1961’s The Guns of Navarone was the birthplace of the World War II spectacle movie trend. Sure, there had been movies before about WWII, but those were mostly attempting to be war epics, or somber anti-war films. The Guns of Navarone went full Hollywood on the subject matter, creating a fictional scenario where they could go full on war action movie without any semblance of grounding in reality. Critically it was called into question on it’s accuracy, but over the years the movie has regained its status as simply a fun WWII movie with Gregory Peck at the helm. Never perfect, but never designed to be, but instead held up as a classic action/adventure film for the masses.

During the heights of WWII the German forces have placed two highly experimental (and highly powerful) artillery guns at the mouth of a cave in the island of Navarone. Why is this so important you might ask? Well, the cave is basically bomb proof and it guards the entrance to the Naval passageway to the Greek Isle of Kreos out in the Aegean sea. Thus any attempts to get by the isle of Navarone has resulted in instant death for a ship, and anyone attempting to assault the base to get to the guns are simply destroyed as well.

The top brass decide that the only way to keep Turkey from entering the side of the war in favor of the Axis powers (they were eyeing both sides, reluctant to jump in until a clear winner was estimated) was to fund a small 6 man commando mission to go in, blow up the guns, and get out of there (if they could) so that they could stop the bottleneck that the Germans had effectively created on Navarone.

Simple right? Well, everyone involved knows it’s a suicide mission, especially Captain Keith Mallory (Gregory Peck) who is trying to atone for some mistakes he made earlier in the war, and is the only man to lead the mission due to being an expert rock climber. The rest of the crew is cookie cutter picked out for him, along with team leader Roy Franklin (Anthony Quayle), the powder monkey Corporal Miller (David Niven), a knife happy engineer named Butcher Brown (Stanley Baker), and a Greek officer who has a particular grudge against Captain Mallory known as Andrea Stavros (Anthony Quinn) and Greek spy Spyros (James Darren). The 6 men have one mission. Penetrate the impenetrable island of Navarone, get in, get out, and get it over with.

The Guns of Navarone doesn’t bother with historical accuracy. Instead it simply is built to entertain, and entertain it does. Guns is a solidly built action/adventure movie, building up the tension slowly as the men make their way to the isle, and end the film with a grand spectacle. Anthony Quinn and Gregory Peck’s relationship is probably the most fascinating of the story, as Quinn is going to kill Peck’s character at the end of the war and it adds a strange sort of admirable hate between the two. Something which is taken advantage of several times as Captain Mallory is put in harms way and rescued by Stavros enough times for the audience to wonder if Stavros will exact his revenge now or later. David Niven does what he does best as the posh humorous character, but everyone also plays their stereotypical commando role to a T.




Not Rated By the MPAA




4K Video: Video:

Back in 1992 Sony did a full on restoration of the film due to the fact that it’s source elements were in rough shape. Back then the DVD disc was considered fantastic, although not nearly as perfect as it could have been (I give it a solid 4/5 rating). The effort was incredible though, as the old master was not worth using for HD, and the source material was in such bad shape we were in fear of losing it forever. The original restoration of the film happened in 1992, but in 2011 it was tweaked and enhanced using modern techniques and greatly enhanced for the Blu-ray format (which ended up being a great looking disc too). Fast forward 10 years and that master is now applied to the 4K UHD disc, just with some minor audio tweaks and the use of HDR to bring the film into a modern era.

The film ends up being stunning. I honestly didn’t expect to see that much difference from the already very good Blu-ray. The film just sparkles in UltraHD thanks to the vast amount of detail stored from the 35mm film print, and the judicious use of HDR. Fine details on clothing and the ship itself stand out as incredible, although some of the set pieces and optical effects uses for special effects do stand out just a hair more than the Blu-ray. HDR makes the blacks just that much better, with deeper shadows and the bronzed looking facial tones seem a bit more natural. Colors are warmer and more vibrant, but the use of HDR hasn’t turned the film into something it’s not color wise. One thing that I will say is that The Guns of Navarone is a VERY grainy film, and no amount of restoration is going to make it any less. It’s beautiful, organic, but fans of modern digital films may be taken aback by the texture of the film, which doesn’t sport frozen grain and clumpy grain like I noticed in the older Blu-ray at times.








Audio:

Sony has been great with their audio options for fans. Not only do they give foreign language options in lossless DTS-HD MA, but they tweaked the audio mix for Atmos, but also left the 5.1 DTS-HD MA and original 4.0 Stereo track (also in lossless DTS-HD MA) for those fans who aren’t a fan of tweaking a 60 year old mix to fit a modern Atmos world. While I really do like the old 5.1 DTS-HD MA mix and the 4.0 stereo track the Atmos track sounds really great. The film is given a rocking bass heavy mix (that plane fly over at the 27:xx minute mark is jaw dropping) that is pure action to the core. The surrounds get a goodly amount of activity from the sounds of the waves or the rattling of rocks from the cliff. Overheads aren’t massively used, but there are some interesting discrete sound (such as rocks dropping from the before mentioned cliff) as well as the score adding some fullness to the mix. Vocals are generally great, but I did notice a few dips in volume during the ocean sequences. Nothing wild as it’s to be expected from audio mixes from that time period, but just enough for me to knock off half a star.






Extras:

• NEW DOLBY ATMOS TRACK + 5.1 audio + original theatrical 4-track stereo
• Playback available with and without Original Roadshow Intermission Card
• NEW Main Title Progression Reel
• Theatrical Trailer
• Audio Commentary by Director J. Lee Thompson
• Audio Commentary by Film Historian Stephen J. Rubin
• The Resistance Dossier of Navarone: Interactive Feature
• Forging The Guns of Navarone: Notes from the Set
• An Ironic Epic of Heroism
• Memories of Navarone
• Epic Restoration
• A Heroic Score
• Great Guns
• No Visitors
• Honeymoon on Rhodes
• Two Girls on the Town
• Narration-Free Prologue
• Message from Carl Foreman

Final Score:
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60 years later, Guns of Navarone is still a blast to watch. It’s classic action before we needed PG-13 and R ratings to make a war movie seem “authentic”, and the movie is still a classic to this day. I can sit and watch the entire 2.5+ hour movie without looking at the clock once, and they include not only the “regular” version of the movie here, but also a slightly different cut that has the original intermission title card inserted like it was in theaters. Sony has always done well with their encodes, and this one handily outclasses the old disc, and the audio mix is given a nice Atmos upgrade. But one thing that makes it truly special is that hey haven’t forgotten purists, giving us the old 5.1 DTS-HD MA track as well, AAAAND the original 4 channel stereo mix in lossless DTS-HD MA to boot. Toss in some brand new minor extras go compliment the stunning legacy extras from the Blu-ray, and you have must buy disc for sure.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn, David Niven, Anthony Quayle, Stanley Baker, James Darren
Directed by: J. Lee Thompson
Written by: Alistair MacLean (Novel), Carl Foreman (Screenplay)
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 HEVC
Audio: English: Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Core), English, French, German, Italian DTS-HD MA 5.1, English DTS-HD MA 4.0 Stereo, Spanish, DD 5.1, Hindi, Spanish DD 2.0
Subtitles: English, English SDH, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Korean, Mandarin (Simplified), Mandarin (Traditional), Norwegian, Polish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish
Studio: Sony
Rated: NR
Runtime: 161 minutes
Blu-Ray Release November 2nd, 2021

Recommendation: Great Buy

 

[Ralph Potts]

Greetings,

Nice review Mike. Thanks!

Regards,