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Released by: Lionsgate
Released on: August 14, 2012.
Director: Ted Kotcheff, John Flynn, James Mangold
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Peter Berg, Robert DeNiro, Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta
Year: 1982/1989/1997
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The Movies:
Just in time for the theatrical release of The Expendables 2, Lionsgate gathers up three Stallone catalogue titles and bundles them together in their new Stallone Collector's Set release. If you've already got the single disc versions of these titles, there's nothing new to see here but if you don't, this is a good way to get three very strong movies from Sly's filmography at a more than fair price.
First Blood:
Set amongst the beauty of the Pacific Northwestern United States, a transient named John Rambo searches out the surviving members of his former Vietnam unit, only to find that they are all dead. While Rambo may have earned a Medal of Honor in The 'Nam, he's now looked down upon by the local police (represented here by Brian Dennehy as Sheriff Teasle) who attempt to run him out of town but end up throwing him in jail. After suffering some abuse at the hands of the fuzz (which causes him to have a flashback), Rambo makes a daring escape and grabs a dirt bike to get the Hell out of town.
Sheriff Teasle and his men chase after him, and one of the cops tries to shoot Rambo down. Rambo responds in kind, and in defending himself inadvertently takes the officer's life. Teasle shoots Rambo once, but it isn't enough and he's off into the woods. Rambo's former commanding officer, Colonel Samuel Trautman (Richard Crenna), shows up on the scene to try and talk Teasle out of bringing Rambo back dead, but Teasle is out for blood and wants nothing more than Rambo's head. The National Guard are called in to help take him down, but will even their might prove to be enough to stop one of the country's finest trained killing machines?
Rambo - First Blood is a fine film. It's played perfectly straight and is a tense action thriller that makes great use of the forest and small town setting, allowing its central characters a great environment in which to chase each other around. Say what you will about the direction that Stallone's career has taken but he's great here in the title role and does a fine job as the tall, dark and silent misunderstood man who finds himself in a whole heap of trouble in spite of himself. Brian Dennehy is perfectly easy to hate as the Sheriff, which makes him a great choice for the part, and Richard Crenna brings a level headed coolness to Col. Trautman that balances out the protagonist and antagonist quite nicely.
While on top the film may seem like just another action movie, below the surface it does have a heart, playing Rambo as a rather sympathetic character who is paying the price for having the guts to serve his country in an unappreciated war. His flashbacks may make him mentally unstable in a sense, but it's because of his patriotism and his love of his country that he has them in the first place, and it's now that very same country chasing him through the forests of Washington State trying to kill him for something that he isn't wholly responsible for. It makes for an interesting paradox, and ranks this film up as a considerably more intelligent film than its two mindless, though very entertaining, sequels.
Lock Up:
Up next, we find up what happens when Stallone goes to the big house! Directed by John Flynn, Lock Up stars Stallone as Frank Leone, a mechanic who lost his temper one day and wound up in jail for an assault charge. His girlfriend, Melissa (Darlanne Fluegel), has been visiting him when she can and they're both relieved that he's only got a few short weeks until he's paid off his debt to society and will once again be a free man.
Things turn lousy for Frank when Captain Meissner (John Amos) and a few other guards show up in his cell one night, beat him up, and ship him off to Gateway Prison, a far worse facility lorded over by Warden Drumgoole (Donald Sutherland), a man who Leone had a run in with during his first prison sentence some years back. Since Frank managed to escape from the prison Drumgoole was in charge of those many years ago, Drumgoole has somehow managed to get him under his command so that he can torture him and do all manner of terrible things to him all in hopes of getting him to snap which, in theory, would lead to more jail time for him. If Drumgoole himself weren't bad enough, there's also the case of his two personal guards, Manly and Wiley (Jordan Lund and John Lilla), and a certain psychotic prisoner named Chink Weber (Sonny Landham). Thankfully Frank's got a few friends inside, Dallas (Tom Sizemore) and Eclipse (Frank McRae), who are happy to help the poor bastard out when and where they can.
Lock Up is a little on the long side at only a few minutes short of the two hour mark and it's a film that's riddled with one cliché after another but Flynn manages to make it work. It's not a classic of the prison movie genre but it offers up enough interesting characters and action to make for some good, if fairly mindless, entertainment. Stallone plays Leone in his typical manner, with a bit of attitude and a slight element of danger and unpredictability to him, while Sutherland gets the chance to go a little bit over the top as the man bad guy here. The completely underrated and entirely psychotic Sonny Landham steals every scene he's in and Tom Sizemore is solid here too.
The story doesn't do a very good job of explaining the relationship that already existed between Drumgoole and Leone before the main events in that take place here, so you're left to do a fair bit of guess work and make a few assumptions if you want to try and sort it all out. There are also a few fairly sizable plot holes here too, and the movie asks you pretty regularly to suspend your disbelief (it's not really a very plausible film) but if you're a Stallone fan you'll find enough action and suspense here to make it worth a watch, even if it's far from his best movie.
Cop Land:
The final film in the set was written and directed by Robert Mangle. Set in the town of Harrison, New Jersey just on the other side of the East River across from Manhattan, the storyline follows the partially deaf town Sheriff Freddy Heflin (Stallone), a somewhat slow man who takes care of the town which is home to an unusually high number of NYPD officers. Trying to do his job has landed Heflin into some tough spots with some of these fellow officers of the law, many of whom have insisted that he turn a blind eye to their misdeeds.
This boys club of sorts is lead by Lieutenant Ray Donlan (Harvey Keitel), who keeps a close watch on Heflin to make sure he doesn't get too far into their personal lives, but when Donlan's nephew, Murray Babitch (Michael Rapaport), kills two unarmed black teenage boys while on the job, things get complicated. A few of Babitch's fellow officers launch a plan to help him fake a suicide and go into hiding in Harrison, but an internal affairs officer named Moe Tilden (Robert De Niro) is suspicious that something is up and is insisting on Heflin's help to uncover the truth behind Babitch's disappearance.
First things first - Stallone's performance in Cop Land is one of the more interesting turns of his career. He's not the invulnerable super resourceful warrior we're used to seeing him play, in fact he's almost the complete opposite. It's interesting to see him stretch a bit here and he does a good job of it. In fact, the whole cast does a good job in this picture, from Keitel's shifty snake in the grass to De Niro's snooping IA officer. Mangle really couldn't have asked for a better group of actors to work with on this picture and he gets great work out of all of them.
The movie does do an interesting job of exploring Stallone's character's search for relevancy but ultimately winds up a bit on the predictable side. It starts off strong and features some good action and tension throughout but you won't have much trouble figuring out who is behind what and how it all ties in before the end credits hit the screen. You also get the feeling that Mangle's story could and should have given us stronger character development than it does, and some of the supporting players in particular get shortchanged here. Ultimately Cop Land is an okay movie that should have been a great one. There are moments where greatness does shine through but the inconsistencies in the storytelling wind up taking it down a few notches.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The three films in the set are all presented in AVC encoded 1080p high definition widescreen (First Blood at 2.35.1 and the other two at 1.85.1) and generally the transfers are pretty good. They do show their age in spots, First Blood more so than the other two films, and so don't quite have the clarity of pop that more modern action films might have on Blu-ray, but they certainly offer significantly increased detail and color reproduction when compared to their standard definition counterparts. The first film looks fairly bright in the daytime scenes that take place outdoors and becomes increasingly dark as the film's tone shifts. The transfers replicate this well, from the scenes that take place in the woods to the shots that were done inside the cave. Detail is generally quite strong and skin tones lifelike and fairly natural. Print damage is surprisingly faint, and grain is never overabundant.
Lionsgate provides English language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio tracks across the board and again, the movies fare well here. Surround usage is handled nicely with some interesting directional effects noticeable throughout while the levels remain properly balanced from start to finish ensuring that, aside from some occasional mumbling on the part of the leading man, dialogue is always easy to understand. Bass response is strong, the scores sound good for each of the three movies and all in all the audio shapes up nicely here. Optional subtitles for all three films are presented in English and Spanish with Lock Up also getting a French subtitle option. Lock Up also gets a French language DTS-HD 2.0 mix and a Spanish language Dolby Digital Mono option.
There are no new extras here but everything from the single disc releases is carried over. The first film is treated to a full-length audio commentary with Sylvester Stallone. He talks at length about his involvement with the film from day one, as well as certain nuances that he tried to bring to his character (he didn't want Rambo to be an intimidating man and tried to play him as such). While there is the odd instance of dead air from time to time, Sly keeps things pretty interesting, touching on how it was to work with a few of his costars as well as his relationship with the film's director. There's also a second commentary track included here with author David Morrell who wrote the novel that the film was based on. Morrell has a lot to say about the picture, including where some of his ideas and inspiration came from, how the movie differs from the book, what he appreciates about the film and how he feels about Stallone's performance. It's quite a good track, one well worth listening to.
In addition to the commentaries, the first disc also features the oft talked about but rarely seen 'alternate suicide ending' that was shot for the film but never used. I won't go into details on this for fear of spoiling it for those who haven't seen it, but it is certainly an interesting contrast to the ending that was used in the final theatrical release of the film, and is much closer in tone to the ending of the original novel on which the movie is based. There are two other deleted scenes on this disc as well, one of which is a quick little outtake from the alternate ending, and the other one is a flashback that Rambo has to his time in Vietnam where he has a one night stand with a local prostitute.
A featurette entitled Drawing First Blood (22:33) is an interesting retrospective look at the making of the picture and its influence that discusses some ideas that were used and some that were not, including some alternate casting choices. The commentary covers a fair bit of the same ground but this is good stuff never the less. Rounding out the extras on the first disc are some trailers, menus, and an interactive trivia track.
The main extra on Cop Land is an audio commentary featuring Writer/Director James Mangold, Producer Cathy Konrad and actors Sylvester Stallone and Robert Patrick. Mangold spends a lot of time talking about the script for the film, how he tried to recreate a sort of classic western in a big city location for modern times, while Stallone and Patrick discuss their working relationship with the cast and crew and discuss their characters. This isn't always as consistently engaging as you might want it to be but it's a pretty solid track.
From there, check out the fourteen minute feature, Cop Land: The Making of An Urban Western which further elaborates on the whole 'reinventing the western' thing that Mangold discusses in the commentary. There's also some welcome insight into why the characters are written and acted the way that they are in the film that is quite interesting. Rounding out the extras are two deleted scenes with an optional commentary from Mangold, Stallone and Konrad, a storyboard gallery, trailers for other Lionsgate properties, animated menus and chapter stops.
Lock Up gets the least amount of love in the extras department, all we really get here are a few short featurettes, the first of which is a seven minute Making Of Lock Up piece that feels more like a promotional piece than anything else. It does feature some very basic cast and crew interviews but spends more time detailing what the story of the movie is about than anything else. Aside from that, we get a three minute Sylvester Stallone Profile, basically a quick bio of the film's leading man, an eight minute Behind The Scenes Of Lock Up featurette that shows off some footage shot on the set, and a few basic interviews with cast members Sylvester Stallone, Donald Sutherland, Sonny Landham (Hell yeah!), John Amos, and Darlanne Fluegel - none of which are very deep. A trailer for the feature, menus and chapter selection round out the disc.
The Final Word:
If you don't already have these as individual releases and are a fan of Stallone and/or eighties action movies, you'll definitely want to give this set some serious consideration. If offers up three very entertaining movies in great shape and with some solid extras and if it doesn't bring anything new to the table in that regard, you can't argue with the price.
