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(More customer reviews)The Five-Star Collection is Fox Studios' top-of-the-line releases. Movies like French Connection have already made the list, and now Fox debuts the greatest anti-war movie of all time, M*A*S*H. The basis for the long-running TV series (which also debuted recently on DVD), M*A*S*H introduces us to the antics of Hawkeye Pierce (Donald Sutherland), Trapper John (Elliot Gould), Hot Lips (Sally Kellerman), and Radar (Gary Burghoff).
Altman's black comic masterpiece doesn't have a solid plot so much as a series of skits and sketches about life during the war. From golfing 5 miles from the front to suspension of marital promises to trying to figure out why people are dying all around, M*A*S*H handles the gruesomeness of stupidity of war in the only way possible - if you're not laughing, then you're going to be crying, so it's probably better to laugh.
And what a way to bring this classic to DVD - the movie has never looked so good. For being 30 years old, it looks great after Fox's extensive restoration and is presented in its original theatrical ratio of 2.35:1 with an anamorphic transfer. There's some grain here and there, but the colors are exceptionally vibrant, with great contrast on the blacks and whites especially. The sound mix is a decent DD 2.0, which is fine considering that the movie is mostly dialogue, but the lack of a more dynamic soundtrack was noticeable during the football game and any time there was music. There are enough extras to make up for it, though, including Altman's commentary track, three featurettes including A&E's "The Story of M*A*S*H" and a 30-year cast reunion that's both touching and funny.
The lack of the DD 5.1 soundtrack doesn't sully the otherwise pristine quality of the rest of this 2-disc set. It's a must have - get it now. Now, trooper! Now!
Click Here to see more reviews about: M*A*S*H (1973)
It's set during the Korean War, in a mobile army surgical hospital. But no one seeing "M*A*S*H" in 1970 confused the film for anything but a caustic comment on the Vietnam War; this is one of the counterculture movies that exploded into the mainstream at the end of the '60s. Director Robert Altman had labored for years in television and sporadic feature work when this smash-hit comedy made his name (and allowed him to create an astonishing string of offbeat pictures, culminating in the masterpiece "Nashville"). Altman's style of cruel humor, overlapping dialogue, and densely textured visuals brought the material to life in an all-new kind of war movie (or, more precisely, antiwar movie). Audiences had never seen anything like it: vaudeville routines played against spurting blood, fueled with open ridicule of authority. The cast is led by Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland, as the outrageous surgeons Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John McIntyre, with Robert Duvall as the uptight Major Burns and Sally Kellerman in an Oscar-nominated role as nurse "Hot Lips" Houlihan. The film's huge success spawned the long-running TV series, a considerably softer take on the material; of the film's cast, only Gary Burghoff repeated his role on the small screen, as the slightly clairvoyant Radar O'Reilly. "--Robert Horton"
