The Movie: Patton - the classic war movie, in constant rotation on cable TV, winner of 8 Academy Awards, was also a film that I had never seen until now. And I guess I can say that I liked it. I had actually received it from Netflix some time ago, but at near 3 hours in length, I'd been putting off watching it until I could find the time. Most days I just forgot about it until it was too late to start watching it.

It's based on the real life General George Patton - an man who was an extremely passionate and talented warrior, but with absolutely no mind or stomach for politics -- a flaw which would come up to bite him in the ass, over and over again. It is, in many ways, an extremely long character study. The man certainly had his eccentricities -- he believed he was reincarnated and had been warriors in his previous lives, fighting in ancient and historical battles.

Compared to a war movie of today's standards, there are very few gory battle scenes in this film. Maybe it's because it's mostly concerned with things at the highest levels of command and the overall strategies and politics of war rather than the lives and stories of individual soldiers, but it is a compelling story nonetheless, as the film is really about the constant battle between the two sides of Patton, and not so much about the war.

The DVD: I'm not quite sure what to make of this DVD. The movie was originally shot in a 70mm roadshow format, but the 2.35:1 aspect ratio of the DVD would suggest that it was made from one of the 35mm reduction prints used for the mass release of the film, cropping some of the original 2.20:1 aspect ratio image away.

The film shows some age, with some subtle variations in color through out the frame, and in film grain, but the print itself seemed very clean, with no extraneous dust or scratches and whatnot. The image is bright, with the slightly less-than-saturated color (by today's standards) you'd expect from a film of this age.

The audio has been remixed into a 5.1 mix, but it still shows the limited dynamic range of the original. I guess you can't really add detail that was never there to begin with. The surround effects are subtle and do not call attention to themselves... anything else and I don't think it would really fit in with the fabric of the old-ness of the film.

Extras are on the slim side, but when you've got a nearly 3 hour long movie on one disc, putting too many extras on would mean sacrificing video quality, and generally, I'd rather have the video quality! You do get a trailer, and an "audio essay" on the life of the real George S. Patton which runs as an alternate audio stream to the movie. You also get some trailers for a couple of other classic war movies. Hooray for marketing.

On the whole, it's a fairly bare bones disc, with an acceptable version of the film itself which is definitely worth seeing.