Three Clint Eastwood classics receive excellent 4K adaptions

By Jim Bray
April 29, 2025

Warner Brothers has reached into its vaults and picked a trio of Clint Eastwood's most famous and honoured films to give the 4K disc treatment, and it really is a "treat"-ment worthy of note.

The films are Dirty Harry, Pale Rider and the Outlaw Josie Wales, one cop film and two westerns. Each of the films has received an exquisite transfer to 4K, including remastered sound that is worth the price of admission on its own.

Not only that, but the extras on each disc are also quite something; if you're an Eastwood fan, a movie buff, or a student of cinema, you'll probably find the stuff extremely interesting. Oh, some of it is repeated from feature to feature and disc to disc, but most of it isn't and it's well worth your time.

Dirty Harry, which was released in 1971, was a bit of a change of pace for Eastwood, who was known better as a guy who occupied westerns, from Rawhide on TV to the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's "spaghetti westerns".

Here, Eastwood plays Harry Callahan, a San Francisco cop whose idea of justice puts him at odds with the System. So, he does things pretty much his own way – much to the chagrin of not only the System, but of those he busts and the cops with whom he serves.

This particular mission sees him going after a shadowy serial killer who calls himself Scorpio, a sniper who during the course of the movie kills multiple victims and who is holding the city hostage by threatening to continue his killing spree unless he's paid a healthy ransom.

Harry's going to get Scorpio, and to hell with the bureaucrats and the rules.

Besides Eastwood, the film stars Andy Robinson, Harry Guardino, Reni Santoni and John Vernon.

Dirty Harry is an important movie for Clint Eastwood's career, and it still works today. In fact, in this politically correct age, it works even better than it did originally. Eastwood didn't direct it, even though he was easing himself into the director's chair at the time. Rather, it was directed by one of his filmic mentors, Don Siegel who, besides making the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, directed Eastwood in several films over the years.

This is the only one of the three movies featured here that I'd seen before, and that was when it was in theatres originally as well as when I reviewed the original DVD many, many years ago. And I didn't really think that much of it.

I figured this would be my least favourite of the three films discussed here, but as it turned out it was the one I liked the best! Not that Pale Rider and Josey Wales are crap. Far from it. Both are very good films in which Eastwood gets to bring his laconic style back to the world of westerns.

Pale Rider, released in 1985, sees Eastwood as another man with no name – at least we never learn it – but this time he's a preacher who appears at just the right time to help a small mining camp survive when a large, evil capitalist mining company is trying to put them out of business. This film, according to the studio, was the highest grossing western of the 1980's.

Alongside Eastwood star Michael Moriarty, Carrie Snodgrass, Christopher Penn, Richard Dysart, Sydney Penney and Richard Kiel.

Eastwood produced and directed the film and while it's my least favourite of this trio, it's still well worth seeing and, thanks to this spectacular presentation and its supplements, owning. And if you like nice locations, the Idaho mountains that served as Pale Rider's "soundstage" are simply gorgeous.

The Outlaw Josie Wales, also directed by Eastwood, is an interesting flick. Eastwood, who obviously plays the title character, is a Missouri farmer in the immediately post-Civil war era where the South was on its heels and the North – at least according to this movie (I'm no historian) – is busy exploiting that. Viciously.

So, at the film's opening we see Wales at work on his farm when a band of Union soldiers – red legs, in this case – attack his home, burn it to the ground, and murder his family.

This, naturally, makes him a tad angry and sets off Wales' journey from angry man seeking vengeance to a man with a new family – kind of – and a new and hopeful life. A lot happens along the way, of course, including (as with the other movies here) a lot of expended ordnance and dead opponents.

It's an interesting morality tale and I liked it a lot. Eastwood's character is a reluctant hero, but a man of character and morality – despite all the deaths he unleashes – fighting back against a corrupt system (kind of like in Dirty Harry, or today's Alberta).

In the extras, one of the talking heads (a filmmaker but, being old, I don't remember which one) says the film reminds him of a Frank Capra movie, kind of a western and "Eastwoodized" It's a Wonderful Life. I'm not sure I'm willing to go that far, but at least it tells you that there's more to The Outlaw Josie Wales than just death and mayhem.

The 1976 film's cast includes Chief Dan George, Sondra Locke, Bill McKinney and John Vernon. Warner Brother says the film was deemed in 1996 to be "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

After seeing the Outlaw Josey Wales, I think I see the genesis of Eastwood's 1992 western masterpiece Unforgiven – a peaceful man forced by circumstances (in Wales, the loss of his family and in Unforgiven his desperation to succeed at something so he can feed his family, as well as to bring justice to men who cut up a woman) to take up arms and fight for what he sees as right.

All three films have received spectacular 4K transfers and look very cinematic. Black levels are deep, colours are rich and lovely (wait'll you see the blood!) and the detail is superb. Not only that, but they've also been remixed into surround sound and they've done a spectacular job.

Don't believe me? Switch between the remastered soundtrack and the original one that's included as well. The difference is spectacular and reminds me of the fine job Warners did on the 4K 2001: a Space Odyssey.

And as mentioned, the extras alone are worth the price of admission, if you're into such things. Two of the films have a running commentary by movie critic Richard Schickel, and all have a variety of new and "vintage" documentaries that range from cast/crew comments to features on the cinematography, retrospectives of Eastwood's career, his effect on filmmaking, his body of work, etc. etc.

I'm really glad I had a chance to see these films. I was never really an Eastwood fan, except for my respect for him as a man, and didn't see most of his movies until recent years. But since then, I've really grown to respect the man as a filmmaker. Every movie of his that I've seen since has been at the very least well worth seeing and some – like Unforgiven, Gran Torino and American Sniper are nothing short of superb.

And with these three new 4K releases, we get a trio of great examples of Eastwood at his best on both sides of the camera.