Dirty Harry Collection - Dirty Harry / Magnum Force / The Enforcer / Sudden Impact / The Dead Pool (Blu-ray disc, Boxed set)

Reviews

"Classic 70s action" by AndHoe6399 - 3 October 2022

Great Bluray set and revisit into the 1970s

"THE DIRTY HARRY COLLECTION (1971-1988)" by Deon J. - 18 June 2020

Excellent collection of the Dirty Harry movies. Picture quality is very good. Aspect Ratio for the first four movies (Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact) is 2.40:1 . Aspect Ratio for The Dead Pool is 1.85:1. All five movies come with a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio track. Wide variety of subtitles also available. The special features on the Blu-ray collection is more in depth about Clint Eastwood/Harry Callahan.

"Your Questions Answered" by Meepo2000 - 19 August 2021

Reading the other user reviews, I will attempt to address these issues here. 1. Disc labels are in Spanish. Yes, they are labeled in Spanish, but if you open your eyes and look at the white trim around the art work, you will see in English the title and the year of release. If this is an issue for you, then I don’t know what to tell you. 2. The Case. The box set comes in a thin cardboard box with two standard Blu Ray cases inside. I was a little disappointed as I was under the impression that the first title “Dirty Harry” comes in its own 2 disc case, disc 1 the movie and disc 2 special features. This is not the case. The first case holds 3 discs only, they are: Dirty Harry - 1971, Magnum Force - 1973 and The Enforcer - 1976. The second case holds: Sudden Impact - 1983 and The Dead Pool – 1988. All the discs do have special features though. 3. Video Quality - Viewed on 720p LED projector on 2.5meter wide screen. Reading other reviews and looking at screen capture comparisons between the DVD versions and the Blu Rays, I was skeptical. Realistically you cannot expect a movie that was shot (at the time of writing) 50 years ago to look pristine. The long and the short of it is this: Yes, it is an upgrade from the DVD’s, especially when you see it in motion, not so much on screen captures. What I did notice though, is there are A LOT of scenes that were simply filmed out of focus, no amount of restoration or digital trickery can fix that. It would had been nice if Warner Brothers made the same effort as Universal did with Jaws in restoring these films. Specs, scratches and dust show on the prints. I cannot find information on the transfer at all so I doubt that they even bothered to do a wet scan or even a new scan for the Blu Ray release from the original material. I suspect it is the same transfer they released on DVD back in the day, obviously due to the amount of space available on a Blu Ray, it’s just less compressed. On one side I do understand why these films did not get a full restoration as it is an extremely time consuming and expensive exorcise. Does the amount of people who would be interested in these movies justify the expense? Probably not. But it’s not all bad. The colours look great and natural, I was very happy when I saw the neon red paint they used for blood has been adjusted so it looks a lot more realistic! I think colour wise this is the best these films have ever looked and even in the extremely dark scenes I couldn’t detect any crushing of blacks. There are scenes where I saw details that I haven’t before, such as the first murder in Mangum Force where the killer shoots the guys in the car, there’s a scene showing one of the victims and you can see the gunshot in the back of his skull and bits of hair and brains sticking against the window. If you want to know if it justifies upgrading from DVD to this cheap set, I would say yes it does, just don’t expect Blade Runner or Jaws quality here. 4. Audio - Viewed on Sony 6.2 surround system I was concerned about the audio quality as they were recorded in mono in the 70s and usually mixing something like this to 5.1 is going to be a disaster. I was extremely pleased and surprised, the mixes are great and doesn’t distract you at all and comes across as very natural. Some sounds come across as a little tinny at times but again, what do you expect from movies of this vintage? If you expect a 70s experience, that’s what you get. I can’t complain about the audio, I really feel they did a very good job on the mixes which could have been a complete mess. 5. Region I haven’t seen anyone complain about these discs being region locked. I am in Region B but also have my player unlocked, so even if it was, I wouldn’t know. The packaging doesn’t say anything about this set being region locked. In summary, if you are looking to upgrade from your old DVD’s or want to purchase it as a gift for someone, at this price I would say it’s definitely worth it.