A Bullet For Sandoval appears in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. Though the packaging states the movie was “remastered and restored in 4K from the original uncut negative”, the Blu-ray came with an inconsistent image.
Though not a bad image, as Bullet looked more than watchable. Still, it felt mushier than I would anticipate.
Sharpness became one of the erratic elements. While parts of the movie displayed very good delineation and most seemed at least reasonably concise, more than a few shots felt oddly soft,
Despite some grain, I suspected a bit of noise reduction here, and that might cause the mushiness I occasionally witnessed. Faces could feel a bit plastic at times, too.
No issues with jagged edges or moiré effects occurred, and I saw no edge haloes. A smattering of print flaws – blotches, gate hairs, lines – popped up but the vast majority of the film remained clean.
Colors leaned toward a dull aqua and a flat amber, though some more vibrant tones sporadically materialized. Perhaps these matched the original photography, but they seemed less full than I’d anticipate and could seem somewhat pale.
At least blacks seemed fairly deep and dense, while low-light shots brought pretty positive clarity. Again, the image didn’t flop, but it seemed up and down.
Don’t expect much from the movie’s iffy LPCM monaural soundtrack. Even for its era, this became a problematic mix.
Like the Spaghetti Westerns that inspired it, Bullet used looped dialogue. The lines consistently felt canned and artificial.
In addition, speech often sounded reedy and metallic. At no point did dialogue come across as anything even vaguely natural, and the lines occasional seemed pretty terrible.
Because the English stems for some shots became lost, those behind this restoration needed to re-record dialogue for a few scenes. While I appreciate this effort, the substitutes didn’t blend well – indeed, the “new” actors stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb.
Effects and music also seemed problematic. At times they showed acceptable range and clarity, but they usually felt a bit distorted and without real impact. I went into the soundtrack with low expectations and the audio lived down to them.
As we head to extras, we locate an audio commentary from filmmaker Alex Cox. He provides a running, screen-specific look at cast and crew, locations and production elements, genre domains and related films, and his thoughts on the movie.
Cox's presence here seems a bit perplexing, as one would expect a "regular" film historian to discuss Bullet. However, I thought Cox might bring the perspective of a veteran filmmaker to the commentary and give us useful thoughts in that domain.
Unfortunately, this doesn't often come to the fore. Instead, Cox largely attempts to fill the historian role, which he doesn't perform especially well.
Oh, Cox does give us some notes about the film as well as its link to others like John Ford's 3 Godfathers.
Unfortunately, Cox just doesn't deliver a lot of real insight, and he also goes MIA a bit too often. I wouldn't call this a bad commentary, but it seems spotty.
Note that Cox recorded his track for the shorter US release of Bullet but he went back to add info about the longer version seen here. These elements reflect on the work done to restore the film to its original European length.
In addition to the film’s US trailer, we get its Original Spanish Open. It runs two minutes, 28 seconds and shows the same intro as in the cut we see but simply with Spanish text.
A tale of revenge, A Bullet for Sandoval becomes an oddly inert affair. A few scenes kick to life, but too much of the movie remains dull and sluggish. The Blu-ray comes with mediocre picture, problematic audio and a spotty commentary. This becomes a meh release for an inconsistent movie.
