Customer Reviews

Harry Tracy: The Last of the Wild Bunch

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The movie Harry Tracy is one of my favorite Westerns. How unfortunate it is then that the transfer to DVD is so poor!

The picture is blurry and the sound is muffled and somewhat garbled. The quality is so bad that even though I'm a fan of the film, I returned the DVD to the seller.

HARRY TRACY (originally titled HARRY TRACY, DESPERADO) is a 1982 film starring Bruce Dern as the title character and folk-singer Gordon Lightfoot as U.S. Marshal Morrie Nathan, the lawman who, the movie tells us, spent years tracking the desperado down before finally catching up with him in the Pacific Northwest.

HARRY TRACY came pretty late to the game of translating real-life Wild West criminals to celluloid heroes. That doesn't stop it from borrowing heavily from its predecessors, though. The movie opens with a long-john clad Harry Tracy scurrying through the deep snowdrifts of the small town of Aspen, Colorado, making his escape while the pursuing posse is seen in extreme long shot, a la McCabe & Mrs. Miller. When he's captured shortly after a photographer takes his picture along with the newly met but destined to be love of his life, Catherine Tuttle (Helen Shaver.) The Catherine Tuttle character is a whole-cloth creation, although she bears a strong resemblance to Butch and Sundance's Etta Place. The intrusive news photographer, along with the insert shots of dime novels glorifying the deeds of Harry Tracy that will briefly appear later on, are there to tell us this is an end-of-the-west western. This story takes place at the turn of the twentieth century (they did get that right) and Harry Tracy is portrayed as an anachronism, a throwback to days of righteous honor among gallant thieves.

Tracy learns Catherine's name and the fact that she lives in Portland (`That's in Oregon,' sister Judy Tuttle helpfully specifies.) Marshal Lightfoot then hauls Tracy to jail, where Lightfoot benignly torments him long enough for the Tuttles to stumble upon him, still in long-johns, roped to post in the back yard. Mama Tuttle is the widow of a federal judge and she blows enough smoke to make the marshal think twice about freezing his prisoner to death. Unfortunately for the law if you don't freeze them they slip away, and Tracy escapes to his old hole in the wall hideout, only to learn that the old gang is gone and the cabin has been taken over by a star struck painter, David Merrill (Michael Gwynne.)

The real Merrill was a common thug who rode with Tracy for a while until Tracy grew tired of him and shot him in the back. This movie twists it around a bit, making Merrill the treacherous one, and making of Harry Tracy a Robin Hood in chaps and slouch hat. Someone who mourns the loss of his merry men and the encroachment of corrupt civilization by observing that `tin horn politicians and government bootlickers are all that's left.' Another coat of whitewash is applied when Tracy and Merrill heist their first railroad. It's a slapstick scene, accompanied by rinky-tinky background music that ends with fluttering banknotes and frustrated pursuers. In Butch & Sundance it endeared us to the charming co-stars. Here it just highlights the crooks' incompetence.

There are some things to like about HARRY TRACY. The British Columbia locations are very well realized, and the turn-of-the-century town and country is minutely detailed. Dern is a good actor, but he's a bit miscast as a romantic lead. Debonair charm isn't his strength, and his acceptance by the country folk as a crusader against the pernicious railroad and bank interests just doesn't wash. This movie is, mercifully, Gordon Lightfoot's first and only appearance in a dramatic role. A tepid recommendation for this one.

The original title of this Canadian film when released in the USA was "The Ballad of Harry Tracy." I bought this DVD for the movie's theme song, sung by Gordon Lightfoot (it was never made available any other way). Unfortunately, not much was done to restore this film prior to its release on DVD, and it shows. The sound quality is dismal. Too bad, because the song was one of the best Gordon Lightfoot ever did despite the fact it wasn't his own.

The story roughly follows the last days (at the turn of the 20th Century) of the famous outlaw Harry Tracy but departs from the truth in many ways as filmakers often do. The real Harry wasn't quite the saint he was made out to be in this film, and there was no love story at all in real life.

Still, it is good fiction as filmed, similar in content to "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," and Bruce Dern makes the best of what was given him. It was also fun to see Lightfoot's debut as an actor in this film -- not such a great actor perhaps but an interesting role just the same. The original film I would have given a higher rating, but as released on DVD, because of the quality problems which are very noticeable, only 3 stars.

In 1985 a few of us were at a friends house in Helena Montana. We were to watch a movie and Harry Tracy was pulled out. I thought it interesting from the start with the Harry Tracy charactier running in waist deep snow through a western town of days gone by. Were we talking a lot through this movie and I did miss some of it but got the overall story. I am also a very huge fan of Gordon Lightfoot and really liked his appearance in the movie. I really liked the song he sang in the movie as well.

I have heard Lightfoots's spoken voice a couple of times on his albums and of course in this movie. It is amazing that his low wimpy voice produces some of the greatest vocals I have ever heard with some of the best written and esential songs I have ever heard.

One other thing I like about the movie is the appreciation I have now for Bruce Dern as an actor. He had always played unlikeable punks in western films that you love to hate. I really quite liked him in this.

I did look over info about Harry Tracy (real name Harry Severns) and the movie of course romanticizes the character. That is OK as that is how we look at western movies anyway in America. It is our folklore.

I ordered this from a seller selling the DVD used. I hope I dont get the dreaded bad transfer as some complain about. I did transfer it myself from a good quality VHS I got my hands on but hope what I ordered turns out better.

Nice photography in the film, really like turn of the century Portland Oregon.

When I received this DVD, the first thing I noticed was the rough texture of the artwork on the disk; this is often a tip-off that a thermal transfer printer was used for the artwork, as opposed to the normal silkscreen or other printing methods used in commercial disks. But the disk itself looked like a commercial pressing, not a recordable disk, so I thought it would be alright.

But the quality of the video and audio is just as if somebody had an old video tape and copied it to DVD without any kind of restoration or remastering. The audio is very hissy and quite distorted, and the volume level shifts around suddenly from time to time. The picture quality is blurry, although watchable; just like a poor VHS tape.

I don't understand how a video publisher can release such a poor quality disk. If they had legitimate access to the film or a negative, the picture at least should have been much better. I can only guess that the DVD producers got the rights to sell a DVD but did not want to do the work necessary for what customers would expect from a DVD. The funny thing is, I had a VHS tape of this that looked better than the DVD, and certainly had better sound, but I foolishly threw it away when I saw that there was a DVD release of the movie and ordered it. I should have read the other reviews first.

( No product link)---This movie was good---not as good as the original "The Wild Bunch", but I liked it---good story plot, photographed very well, etc.---I do not remember Harry Tracy in the original "Bunch", but thats OK--I still liked Bruce Dern's role in what was supposedly a true story---good 4 star flick---