It's always tough to review boxed sets that collect several unrelated films. If the review is lucky, they're all really good or really bad... but in the case of the Steve McQueen Collection, it's half and half. The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape belong in the DVD collection of anyone who loves a good adventure tale, but The Thomas Crown Affair and Junior Bonner are bland at best and boring at worst. Let's take a look at each of the films here in more detail.

The Magnificent Seven (1960)

The Magnificent Seven: it's ironic that this iconic Western film is a remake of the Japanese The Seven Samurai, but in any case it captures the look, feel, and tone of the Wild West. It's a star-studded film, with the seven gunmen of the title including Steve McQueen, Yul Brynner, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, and James Coburn. It's also a really fun film.

A substantial amount of the running time is concerned with establishing the premise – a small Mexican village harassed by a group of bandits decides to hire gunmen to fight back – and gathering the cast of characters together. It's time well spent; the effect of slowly accumulating one, two, three, and more additions to the group keeps the story moving onward in an interesting manner without the need for pointless action sequences. In fact The Magnificent Seven is more a character piece than an action film; there are several important shoot-outs, but the focus of the story is on the "Seven" themselves and how they relate to the task they've taken on. It's interesting to note how even the action sequences are so much less gory than their modern equivalent. When a man is shot, he falls to the ground with a bloodstain on his shirt, and the story moves on; in a modern version, we'd doubtless see spurting blood or other gratuitous gore, and I don't think it would add anything worthwhile. The comparative restraint of The Magnificent Seven most likely has more to do with the limitations of special effects in 1960, but in any case the end result works very well.

The film isn't perfect, as it has a few sections that drag; with the film handling the "adventure" material so well, it's not as much fun when it drops into romance or contemplative conversation mode. But regardless of some slower points, all in all The Magnificent Seven is a rousing adventure... complemented nicely by a fantastic musical score that seems to fit the film like a glove.

The Great Escape (1963)

Now here's an adventure movie to stand with the best of them. The Great Escape is certainly the best film out of this set, with all the elements to make a gripping and exciting story. The ensemble cast reunites several of the actors from The Magnificent Seven: Steve McQueen, obviously, but also Charles Bronson and James Coburn. Added to these stars, we get Richard Attenborough, James Garner, and Donald Pleasence. Combine this solid cast with a great story, and The Great Escape lives up to its name.

There's plenty of dramatic tension here, as the main characters, prisoners of war in a German prison camp, devise and put into action a clever and daring escape attempt. It's an adventure that involves action, to be sure, but the mainstay of its appeal lies in how it's really about a test of wits and nerve: the Allied prisoners versus the German guards. The excitement comes not from non-stop action, but from clever plotting put into an interesting story; modern action-adventure films would do well to consider how The Great Escape works so nicely.

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

I'd seen the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, with Pierce Brosnan in the title role, and really enjoyed it. Considering that I'd heard how the original was so much better than the remake, I was understandably looking forward to seeing the Steve McQueen version. To my surprise, though, I didn't care for it at all.

The problems with The Thomas Crown Affair are twofold. To begin with, there's the plot and pacing. The first twenty minutes or so are very nicely done, jumping right into a cleverly executed bank robbery and using interesting visual tricks to present it to the viewer. Great! But then the film stalls... and never starts up again. We get to know Thomas Crown more (leading to the second problem, which I'll get to in a minute); we meet the insurance investigator Vicki Anderson (Faye Dunaway) and see how she gets close and personal to Crown to find evidence that he did it; and we sit around and see Dunaway and McQueen in interminable "relationship" scenes together until the end. The plot doesn't advance. We don't learn a single thing about Crown's ingenious heist that we didn't already know from the beginning scene. We don't really care much about Crown and Anderson, as Crown comes across as a total cold fish, either from McQueen's indifference or from bad directorial choices. (The absolutely interminable love scene in the middle of the film doesn't help matters any.) And the end just gives us a tiny little attempt at a "twist" and drops the viewer cold. Contrast this to the 1999 remake. I'm normally not an enthusiast of films being remade just for the sake of modernizing them, but in this case I can see the train of thought. Here's a very clever idea essentially wasted in a very dull film. Let's make it live up to its potential! The remake gives us a much more clever heist plot, taking some of the ideas from the 1968 original and exploiting them more fully, and makes the plot continue developing over the full course of the film, with an entertaining twist (or two) at the end.

The second problem is the character of Thomas Crown himself. He's not supposed to be a hero or even a respectable character, but the film takes him to the other extreme and makes him completly unlikeable. Here's a rich fellow whose primary characteristic seems to be that he's bored and jaded, which is hardly a great start. Then consider that his crime is robbing a bank, something that seems particularly pointless since he's already rich, and that he doesn't seem to mind people getting hurt in the process. Perhaps McQueen's star power made the character more appealing in its original run, but I found the character repulsive and unlikeable. In contrast, Brosnan manages to make the playboy-turned-thief into a charming rogue in the remake, and changing the theft to be art rather than money makes the motivation clearer.

The one thing that makes the film watchable at all is the way it's presented visually. Multiple split screens are used extensively throughout the film, sometimes in a weirdly kaleidoscopic way. It undoubtedly pushes the viewer away from engaging with the story, but since the characters are unlikable and the story is practically nonexistent anyway, that's hardly a loss. While the appeal may be hard to see on a small television screen, on a large widescreen set the technique is reasonably effective.

Junior Bonner (1972)

The latest of the four films presented in this set, this 1972 film provides a vehicle for a rather tired-looking Steve McQueen. It seems clear that this is mainly a "filler" movie for the set, as doesn't even have the visual style of The Thomas Crown Affair, let alone the storytelling verve of The Great Escape or The Magnificent Seven. Here McQueen plays the title character, a getting-worn-out rodeo star who returns home to see his rather dysfunctional family. There's not much of a plot here, just a series of sequences with McQueen not really doing a whole lot. It's not a really terrible film, at least not if you adore McQueen or are fascinated by the world of rodeo, or both, but it doesn't really do a whole lot, and by the end my main reaction was that I really didn't care one way or another about anybody in the film.

The DVD

The Steve McQueen Collection includes The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven: Special Edition, Junior Bonner, and The Thomas Crown Affair, packaged in a glossy paperboard slipcase. Each of the films is also available separately, and they appear here as individual DVDs in the same plastic keepcases as in their stand-alone releases.

Video

The Magnificent Seven appears in its original 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio, and is anamorphically enhanced. Perhaps because it received a "Special Edition" treatment, this is by far the best-looking film in the bunch. You can tell that it's an older film, but the wear and tear is relatively minor and doesn't get in the way of enjoying the film. Some print flaws appear, but not too many; for the most part, the image is clean and clear. Close-up shots in particular look crisp and nicely detailed. The only really noticeable quality issue is that we get much worse image quality in any shot that's used as a fade-out. However, the appearance of heavy grain in the fade-in/fade-outs is an artifact of the filmmaking process of the time, and not a fault of the transfer. The color palette is naturally tilted toward browns and grays; the colors appear to be captured well in the transfer, and always look natural.

The Great Escape, on the other hand, is a major disappointment. Although the back of the case says that it is anamorphic, in fact the transfer is not anamorphic, though it does appear in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio. The image quality is quite poor, looking very grainy and noisy, with heavy edge enhancement visible in many scenes, and with speckles in the print as well. There's also a slight brownish tint to the image overall. This film really clamors for a decent restoration job; it certainly looks worn here. Considering that the film has received a special-edition treatment (and an anamorphic transfer) in another release, it's a shame that this set includes the earlier release.

The Thomas Crown Affair appears in an anamorphic widescreen transfer, at its original widescreen 2.35:1 aspect ratio. The image quality is reasonably good. There are some print flaws and speckles, and edge enhancement is apparent at times, but colors are handled acceptably and the level of noise and grain is kept reasonably low.

Junior Bonner is presented in a non-anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen transfer. It doesn't look particularly good, as it has a worn, rather faded "1970s" look, with a slight brownish tint and a generally faded appearance. Edge enhancement is also rather heavy here, and the image overall is grainy.

Audio

The soundtrack for The Magnificent Seven does it job well. The dialogue and sound effects for the Dolby 5.1 soundtrack are generally clean and crisp-sounding. (A mono version is also included.) I did notice a slight harshness in scenes that involve shouting, but it's an infrequent occurrence. The great musical score, one of the highlights of the film, is presented very well and is always nicely balanced with the rest of the track.

The Great Escape's mono soundtrack gets the job done reasonably well. It's clean and clear, with no audio flaws as far as I could tell.

The Thomas Crown Affair sounds adequate, but that's about it. It's presented in a mono track. The overall sound is rather flat and muffled-sounding; I had to increase the volume to hear the dialogue properly, but that left the other elements of the track a bit too loud.

Junior Bonner has a 2.0 stereo mix that's rather unappealing. It's rather tinny-sounding at times, and in general has a flat and rather muffled quality to it.

Extras

The Magnificent Seven has the best special features here. We get a documentary featurette called "Guns for Hire: The Making of The Magnificent Seven," which runs about 50 minutes and offers an interesting look at the film overall. It was made for television in 2000, and includes quite a few interviews with the cast and crew (most done at the time of the documentary, but some taken from archival footage). It covers everything from the overall idea to scripting, casting, and so on, and will be of interest to most viewers. We also get an audio commentary track for the film with James Coburn, Eli Wallach, producer Walter Mirisch, and assistant director Robert Relyea. Rounding out things is a stills gallery and two different trailers for the film.

The Great Escape has a mildly interesting 24-minute featurette called "Return to The Great Escape." It's mainly promotional in style, but it does have a few interesting interview segments.

The Thomas Crown Affair has a commentary from director Norman Jewison.

Junior Bonner also has a commentary, clearly aimed at those viewers who really "clicked" with the film. We get three authors who have written about director Sam Peckinpah (Paul Seydor, Garner Simmons, and David Weddle), with a moderator as well (Nick Redman).

Final thoughts

It's tough to give an overall view of this set, since it has two outstanding films (The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape) and two films that are, at best, bland (The Thomas Crown Affair and Junior Bonner). On top of that, it's complicated by the fact that one of the outstanding films (The Great Escape) has a decidedly lackluster transfer. (Fortunately, The Great Escape is also available in a stand-alone special edition release with an anamorphic transfer, but unfortunately, that's not the release that MGM decided to include in this set.) If you are a complete Steve McQueen fan and definitely like all four of these films, it may make sense to pick them up as a boxed set, but otherwise I'd just suggest buying the ones you want separately, since they're all available individually as well. I'll go ahead and give this collection a "recommended" rating to encourage you to seek out The Magnificent Seven (a great movie with an excellent transfer) and The Great Escape (a great movie that receives a lousy transfer here, but is available separately in a remastered special edition). Recommended.