There Is No Competition for Catch-22

Is Mike Nichols' Catch-22 my #1 favorite war film of all time?  It absolutely might be; there's a lot to consider.  Other runners-up that spring to mind include War & Peace, Sword of Honour, The Battle of Algiers, An Ungentlemanly Act, Duck Soup, Henry V, Love and Death, The Killing Fields, Shame, Child's Play 3 (just kidding!)... Yeah, no, seriously, it probably comes down to The Killing Fields or this, depending on my mood.  At any rate, it's pretty damn peak and to this day under-appreciated.  The biggest criticism held against it seems to be that it drops a ton of great material from the book, which I admit I've never read.  But just taken as a film on its own terms?  Fuckin' wow, man.

For starters, the cast is insane.  Alan Arkin is perfectly cast as Yossarian.  And the supporting line-up is mind-blowing: Charles Grodin, Bob Newhart, Martin Balsam, Anthony Perkins, Bob Balaban, Jon Voight who you see in be terrible in movies like Anaconda and forget what he was capable of here, Richard Benjamin, Art Garfunkel, Austin Pendleton, Jack Gilford, Buck Henry who also wrote lines Joseph Heller said he wish he'd thought of, Martin Fell, Michael Sheen and Orson bloody Welles.  Every single once of them is the irreplacably perfect embodiment of their roles.  Well, except Martin Sheen; you could replace him.  But he's still very good.

The production values are literally insane; Nichols literally built and ran an fully operational, World War II era airport, then ran Rome filming with giant tanks in the streets.  In his commentary, Nichols admits it was over the top and unnecessary, but like War & Peace, the spectacle is undeniably impressive.  But it's not really as impressive as his ability to successfully merge truly great, unrestrained comedy with genuine dramatic weight that makes as powerful a statement as a great war movie should.  I could maybe do without the Tex Avery-style scene of the pilots leering at the captain's girlfriend (after all, we've already seen they're all having multiple affairs with ridiculously gorgeous women), but that's like the flaw in a royal diamond.

Paramount took its time, first releasing Catch-22 on DVD in 2006, and... that's been it until now.  It completely skipped the blu-ray stage and went straight to UHD, although there is also a BD included in Shout Factory's new combopack.

1) 2006 Paramount DVD; 2) 2025 Shout Factory BD;
3) 2025 Shout Factory UHD.

Paramount's anamorphic widescreen DVD is framed mostly correct, at 2.32:1, but Shout Factory's new 4k scan of the original 35mm camera negative fine tunes it to 2.39:1, revealing a little more picture along all four sides.  The most obvious difference is just the boost in resolution, bringing the fuzzy SD image firmly into focus.  And the colors... are interesting.  I mean, this movie is mostly brown by design; but the DVD has a murky, overshadowed look.  On the other hand, some scenes look pretty funky on Shout's new blu.  By that I mean, they appear at times over-saturated, partly washed almost, and it makes thin shadows appear edge enhanced (although I don't believe they were, strictly speaking).  See the shot of Arkin and his girlfriend above, or Benjamin below, for some mild examples.  A lot of it's fine, and better than the DVD; but something like 15-20% of the movie looks a bit dodgy.  Thankfully, this is not the case on the UHD, which looks great and far superior to the previous version throughout.  I wonder if the film was just timed once for the Dolby Vision HDR and then slapped onto both discs, or maybe someone just made a weird judgment call somewhere in the process, but it seems off.  So luckily - I must reiterate - this criticism only applies to the unnecessary 1080p half of the combopack that most of us probably won't ever be watching anyway, not the UHD.

In terms of audio, the DVD contained the original mono in Dolby 2.0 and a 5.1 remix (why?), plus a French mono dub and optional English subtitles.  Shout preserves both mixes, boosts them up to DTS-HD, and also has English subs.

For special features, Paramount basically provided one key thing: an excellent audio commentary by Nichols and moderated by Steven Soderbergh (who worked on the 2006 remaster).  It's a very frank and detailed commentary, with Nichols unafraid to talk about where he thinks he went wrong or his reasons for his artistic decisions.  It's one of those commentaries that feels like an important piece of film history now that he's passed.  So it's a relief that Shout Factory hung onto it.  Besides that, Paramount just had the trailer, which Shout kept as well, and a small stills gallery that Shout didn't bother with.

Then Shout added one more thing, a second audio commentary by film critic Drew McWeeny.  And look, a lot of the supposed "expert" commentaries these labels have been giving us lately have been putting me off them.  So I'm happy to report, this one is actually quite good.  He's read the novel and has a lot of information to share.  He covers a bit of the same ground, and interestingly contradicts a minor point or two that Nichols makes in his own commentary; but both commentaries are welcome additions.  It's too bad this film doesn't have any on-camera interviews, or the proper documentary retrospective it deserves, but the commentaries are strong.

So this is such an easy recommendation, being so long-awaited a release of an underrated classic, which has essentially no competition.  That it turned out even better than expected in just an extra pleasant surprise.