DVD details for
The Wild Bunch (1969) More at IMDbPro »

DVD-Review by Peter W. Simeon :
I'm very dissapointed by the picture quality of this release. As the movie was restored 1995, Warner could have done a really good transfer, but they used the same master tape which was made for the 1995 laserdisc release.
The cinematography of this movie requires a high resolution picture. The DVD is not anamorphic and the resolution is further reduced by another 10% because Warner did windowbox the transfer. In addition the picture is quite grainy and some compression artifacts disturb the viewer. Because of the relatively low resolution, a lot of aliasing is also present. All these imperfections make the MPEG encoding very difficult and so the 6 MBit/s data rate doesn't help much.
The remixed 5.1 channel sound is ok, but not up to today's standards. Most disturbing is the somewhat limited frequency range of all the voices, which makes the dialogue sometimes a bit hard to understand. The music sounds fine and ocasionally there are some surround effects.

Four westerns about the end on the frontier by Sam Peckinpah. The Wild Bunch: Two-Disc Special Edition, a romantic spin on the myth of “honor among thieves” as an apocalyptic epic, stars William Holden leading a ruthless gang (made up of Ernest Borgnine, Edmond O’Brien, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson and Jaime Sanchez) and Robert Ryan as his former partner sent to hunt him and his gang down with his own bunch of scraggly, squabbling mercenaries. Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid: Two-Disc Special Edition (1973), the story of one-time friends turned foes starring James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson, features the original theatrical release, a preview version, and a new cut, guided by Peckinpah’s notes. Also features Ride The High Country (1962), Peckinpah’s first masterpiece, and the elegiac The Ballad Of Cable Hogue (1970).