Subtitles: English SDH, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish
Release Date: 29.4.2025
The Film
Clint Eastwood's career as a director kicked off with psychological thrillers, action romps, and a decent, if forgettable Western called High Plains Drifter. Each of them remains inherently watchable, though they feel like practice pieces. The kind of movies a great director needs to get out of their system before really hitting their stride. Once done, Eastwood let rip with a string of immaculate pictures for arguably four decades in a row.
The first of them, The Outlaw Josey Wales, is one of the best Westerns Eastwood has made. It's in stark contrast to Unforgiven, another masterpiece, but makes for a surprisingly good companion piece. Where Unforgiven is all about the lingering aftermath and cost of violence, The Outlaw Josey Wales is a long, grueling depiction about the agony that drives men to horrific retaliation.
Eastwood plays a Missouri farmer during the first American Civil War. One day, his wife and child are brutally slain by pro-Union paramilitaries. The war should be over, yet for Josey it begins on that day. In silence, he turns into an outlaw in the blink of an eye, and sets off on a long quest to bring the killers to justice.
Right off the bat, some things in Josey Wales feel iffy. First off, it's based on a book by horrendous racist jackass Forrest Carter, and neither Eastwood nor screenwriters Phil Kaufman and Sonia Chernus do anything to change the heavily conservative pro-South sewage that permeates the text. In fact, according to Kaufman, Eastwood explicitly refused to tone down the ugly source material, and eventually fired Kaufman from the production.
Which makes the overall experience a conflicting and contradictory one. At heart, Eastwood leans heavily on the anti-war messaging, and depicts Josey Wales and everyone he meets with the same condemning attitude. It is only those who reject violence outright that appear humane, yet they're the ones that suffer most, as well.
In later years, Eastwood has grown even further in right leaning tendencies, so Josey Wales makes for an interesting time capsule to a time he could even entertain the notion of more progressive viewpoints. Which is probably why it and Unforgiven remain such compelling films. They're stand out in a sea of vigilante lionizing as condemnations of such putrid fantasies.
In Josey Wales, the epic journey turns more lurid and violent as it goes on, and there's a sense the world itself has turned upside down by the end. Eastwood's direction is efficient, yet never simplistic, and the finale is grand in its operatic tragedy.
It's just a shame it also has to carry such an ugly legacy as well.
Video
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1
Like Dirty Harry and Pale Rider, The Outlaw Josey Wales arrives on 4K with a superlative 4K restoration that looks as if it was filmed yesterday.
Highlights and blacks are stunning, shadows look deep, and there's incredible detail in every shot without so much as any artificial sharpening. It has that warm, ever-so-soft glow of old celluloid, and it looks just great.
I hope Warner Bros. keeps up this level of quality, as their lineup for 2025 has been nothing short of extraordinary. You can see my raves about the video quality for both Pale Rider and Dirty Harry below. The same praises apply here.
Joonatan Itkonen
Joonatan Itkonen
Audio
As with Dirty Harry and Pale Rider, The Outlaw Josey Wales comes with two tracks: Dolby Atmos and the original Mono presentation split into two channels.
The Dolby Atmos mix is unsurprisingly great, though, once again, it's not the original track. Here, some of the gun shots are heightened, there's new details in nature sounds, like bushes, wind, and so on, to fill the rear channels. There's also some really great work done to the soundtrack, and it's remarkable how well they've mixed it to work by modern standards.
But I'm a purist, and I remember how the film sounded when I first saw it, and that's the way I enjoy it best. The 2.0 mix of the original Mono track is clean and wonderfully punchy. It's entirely front-heavy, so don't go expecting something hugely immersive, but it's exactly the experience one remembers from cinemas ages ago.
The important thing here is that we have a choice which sound mix we want to hear. It's incredibly important that Warner Bros. offers us both, and doesn't skimp out on the option. This is how restorations and preservation needs to work, and Warner Bros. has delivered the gold standard once again.
Extras
The extras on The Outlaw Josey Wales are fine, but they're clearly lacking in parts because of the issues surrounding Eastwood, Kaufman, and Sondra Locke.
Originally, Josey Wales was Kaufman's directorial project. He had overseen the pre-production and development, and had started filming as the rift between him and Eastwood grew unbearable.
One day, Kaufman insisted on finding a beer can for a prop, and while he was away, Eastwood ordered the scene to be shot his way, only to drive away before Kaufman returned. After that, Eastwood mustered his considerable power to fire Kaufman.
During production, Eastwood also began an affair with Locke, which itself is a sad story that does not paint the star in a flattering light.
Naturally, none of that is mentioned in the extras. Instead, Eastwood's court hagiographer, Richard Schickel, provides a rudimentary commentary that's not worth the time, and the featurettes are short and mostly about the legacy of the picture rather than making it. The retrospective interviews are fine, but some cast members are notably absent.
The Outlaw and An Antihero featurette is easily the most compelling one, as it delves into the contradiction that is Josey Wales. Sadly, at just 8 minutes in length, it's far too short to offer any real insight into the matter.
Hell Hath No Fury, at 30 minutes, is the longest extra available, and it's a reasonably comprehensive legacy feature from the Blu-Ray almost 15 years back. It offers a glimpse into the production, but refrains from anything too salacious. Like most behind the scenes features, it skips the problems and focuses only on how good the final product turned out. As a time capsule, it's essential viewing, just don't go expecting too much from it.
Finally, Reinventing Westerns is another clipped episode from the larger Clint Eastwood legacy series, which is a back patting marathon for Eastwood and his career. At almost 18 minutes, it's way too long for what it is, and just feels like putting a hat on a hat at this point.
Overall
Josey Wales is a difficult picture to love, even though Eastwood's grand directing and fantastic leading performance carry it into the annals of Western classics.
On a technical level, this 4K release is superlative, and features the high standard that Warner Bros. has now established for their home video releases. At a time when people worry for the future of physical media, it's wonderful to see a studio really put in the effort and release classic cinema without any compromises on this level.
This is an essential purchase, no questions asked.
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