Veteran minor league catcher Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) has been optioned to the Durham Bulls. He’s been sent to this purgatory of an assignment to train the team’s new potential star pitcher Ebby Calvin ‘Nuke’ LaLoosh (Tim Robbins), a man with a million dollar arm but a ten cent head. He also comes into contact with the sexy Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon), a baseball aficionado who picks one player per season to train in the ways of love. 

CRITIQUE

Ron Shelton’s 1988 Oscar-nominated classic (Best Original Screenplay) Bull Durham is a picture that just gets better and better with age. Sexy, smart and incredibly funny, the three stars have arguably never been better onscreen than they are here, the trio sharing an agreeably electric chemistry that sizzles and smolders so ferociously you can feel the heat emanating from your television screen. Movies just don’t get better than this, and even at a ripe 22-years of age it’s hard to imagine another baseball flick riding a similar storyline ever rising to this picture’s rapturous heights.

I think people sometimes forget just how plum awesome Costner once was at one time in his career. From his unforgettable breakthrough supporting turn in Lawrence Kasdan’s Silverado to his solid everyman stalwartness as Elliott Ness in Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables, there was always something about the actor that was inherently intoxicating. But it was his performance here that made the actor a superstar, and whether he was trading dopey one-liners with Robbins or swapping smoking double entendres with Sarandon his Crash Davis could do absolutely no wrong.

Speaking of Sarandon, am I the only one out there that feels like she should have won her Oscar for this (she somehow wasn’t even nominated) instead of for 1995’s Dead Man Walking? Don’t get me wrong, she’s fantastic in that as well (which, kind of ironically, was directed by Robbins, who for an awfully long time post Bull Durham just happened to also be her boyfriend), I just feel like there is more depth, more nuance and one heck of a lot more kick to Annie Savoy then there ever was Sister Helen Prejean. She’s the engine that keeps Shelton’s rocking and rolling baseball diamond of a picture roaring, and as good as both her costars are without Sarandon I seriously doubt we debating whether or not this is the greatest baseball flick of all time or not.

And that really is a debate worth having. If the shortlist is made up of films as diverse as The Bad News Bears (the original, not the inferior Richard Linklater remake), Bang the Drum Slowly (both versions), Bingo Long and the Traveling All-Stars, Damn Yankees, Eight Men Out, Fear Strikes Out, Costner’s Field of Dreams, A League of Their Own, The Natural, Pride of the Yankees and The Rookie it’s hard for me not to put this one right at the very top. Shelton has a feel for the game that is absolutely undeniable and one that when mixed together with his juicy dialogue, easygoing and confident direction and the picture’s remarkable performances (which extends to the colorful supporting cast) puts Bull Durham amongst the Hall of Fame greats. It’s grand slam entertainment, and if saying such a clichéd pun gets me ejected and sent to the clubhouse that’s perfectly all right by me because at least in there I’ll be able to watch this superb motion picture without any on-the-field distractions.

THE VIDEO

Bull Durham is presented on a single-layered BD-25 in MPEG-2 video with a 1.85:1/1080p widescreen transfer. Um, yeah. I’m not quite sure what to say. There’s a DVD included here of the special edition (a flipper disc, no less) released back in 2002. While the Blu-ray is an improvement over it, it’s not as much of one as you’d expect. In fact, I bet if you played both discs side-by-side on identical systems more than a few people would have trouble choosing which one is which. I think that says just about all that needs to be said about this new hi-def presentation of this classic motion picture.

THE AUDIO

Available audio includes English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, English Dolby Surround and French and Spanish Mono tracks with optional English SDH, Korean, Cantonese and Spanish subtitles. Like other recent Fox/MGM releases such as Escape from New York and Kalifornia, the audio portion of the Blu-ray is pretty darn great. It’s a nicely balanced mix that is a huge improvement over earlier releases and, if the video transfer could have been just wee bit better, made have made this release worthy of the $20 price tag.

THE EXTRAS

As already mentioned, Bull Durham comes with a DVD flipper disc from 2002 containing all of that release's special features.

The Blu-ray itself comes with the film’s Theatrical Trailer as well as trailers for Rocky, Hoosiers and the Pierce Brosnan remake of The Thomas Crown Affair.

Otherwise, that’s it. There’s nothing else. Nothing at all...

This saddens me. I’d make a frowny face if it weren’t so undignified.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Bull Durham is my favorite baseball movie of all-time. It contains what I think are Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon’s best performances. As great as all that is, if you already own this film on DVD I can’t recommend paying $20 to upgrade to this shockingly sub-par (from a visual standpoint, at the very least) Blu-ray.