Guns of Navarone: Steelbook Edition - 4K Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

The Guns of Navarone: Steelbook Edition



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


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Movie
As is the habit of Sony to do, they're updating all of their original 2017-2021 catalog titles that they churned out without Dolby Vision, and reintroducing them to the market with said Dolby Vision and some snazzy new steelbook packaging. Being that I reviewed this back in 2021 (HERE) my thoughts on the film are going to remain the same. Just with some updates to the technical specs.

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 (and now Dolby Vision in this steelbook re-release) to bring it up into the modern era.

Compared to my 2021 disc, the diffferences are very slight and very subtly better thanks to the application of Dolby Vision. Most people aren't going to notie any difference, but those of us with larger displays and good Dolby Vision capabilities, you'll notice that the really dim lighting is enhanced ever so slightly. The blacks are deep and inky, showcasing some tweaks here and there that make them look a little more "true black" than the HDR10 could do. OTherwise, this is the same fantastic looking disc as the 20211 release. Colors are warm and rich, with ruddy facial tones and a fantastic detail levels all around. The grain is nice and heavy, but still maintains a very organic filmic look without getting clumpy or digitally swarming. All in all, this is a great disc that looks ever so slightly superior to the previous 4K release.








Audio:

Beng that this is the exact same audio setup as the 2021 4K UHD disc, my thoughts on it will be identical to that review. 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.Being that this steelbook is basically the 2021 disc, just updated with modern Dolby Vision enhancements over the base HDR10 that came with the "old" disc (just with new steelbook packaging), fans of the movie will have to decided if they want to upgrade from their 2021 disc or not. Personally, it all comes down to if you want the steelbook packaging, and if the ever so slight enhancement of the Dolby Vision is worth it to you. But for fans who have NOT upgraded their old Blu-rays, then this is easily the best version to have.


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 7th, 2023

Recommendation: Great Buy

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. I never saw this one so will check it out.