Why So Blu?

Marshals Season One (Blu-ray Review)

Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes) and Tate Dutton (Brecken Merrill) spend the beginning of Marshals barely knowing what to say to each other. Monica Dutton (Kelsey Asbille) has been dead for about a year, taken by cancer linked to the contamination around Broken Rock, and life at East Camp has mostly come to a stop. Kayce has no real plan beyond looking after Tate and getting through the next day. Pete “Cal” Calvin (Logan Marshall-Green), an old friend from his SEAL years, gives him somewhere else to put all that anger by bringing him into a bombing investigation.

 

Season ★★★☆☆

Soon Kayce is working with Cal’s Marshals team, which also includes Belle Skinner (Arielle Kebbel), Andrea Cruz (Ash Santos), and Miles Kittle (Tatanka Means). The job fits him, as he can track, fight, read dangerous people, and move through that part of Montana better than anyone.

Things change from week to week. Kayce chases escaped prisoners, armed extremists, kidnappers, drug traffickers, bombers, and a motorcycle gang while the fight over Broken Rock and the proposed mine continues in the background. 

There are a lot of solid episodes, with “Lost Girls” and “On Thin Ice” being two of the standouts. “On Thin Ice” also works due to Kayce and Cal unable to shoot their way out of the problem; they have to talk and deal with things they have avoided for years.

Some cases throughout Marshals wrap up too easily, and serious mistakes have a habit of fading away by the following week. Tate’s story often feels stuck off to the side as well.

Logan Marshall-Green brings movement and nervous energy to Cal. His cancer, his problems with his daughter, and his unfinished business with Kayce give the season something personal to hold onto. Arielle Kebbel, Ash Santos, and Tatanka Means are all solid, but the writing waits too long to get into Belle’s debt, Andrea’s uncertainty about staying in Montana, and Miles’s anger over fentanyl deaths at Broken Rock. 

Marshals is watchable, sometimes very good, and never short on scenery or gunfire. It is also a much more ordinary show than Yellowstone. The rough edges have been filed down for network television, and with it, some of the personality.

Video ★★★★☆

Encoding: MPEG-4 AVC

Resolution: 1080p

Aspect Ratio: 2.00:1

Clarity/Detail: There’s plenty to see in faces, hats, jackets, weapons, horse tack, dirty vehicles, and the scraped-up buildings around East Camp.

Depth: In the larger exterior shots, there’s nice depth from grass and rock as well as through distant slopes without the image collapsing into one flat plane.

Black Levels: Darkness has enough weight without wiping out everything inside it, with folds in black clothing, objects along walls, and faces at the edge of the light still able to be made out.

Color Reproduction: Brown soil, worn wood, dark green trees, pale winter skies, and faded work clothes account for most of the color scheme. Reds and blues are noticeable when emergency lights, fire, blood, or brighter clothing enter the frame.

Flesh Tones: Skin color remains believable through sun, overcast weather, fluorescent rooms, and firelight.

Noise/Artifacts: Nothing calls attention to itself.

Audio ★★★★☆

Audio Format(s): English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit); French Dolby Digital 5.1; German Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1; Italian Dolby Digital 5.1

Subtitles: English SDH, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish

Dynamics: Gunfire, collisions, blasts, and violent weather open the track up without turning everything into the same wall of noise.

Height: N/A

Low Frequency Extension: Thunder, engines, wrecks, explosions, and weapons gain slight body.

Surround Sound Presentation: Wind, rainfall, animals, approaching vehicles, distant shots, and bullets hitting or passing nearby are intentionally placed throughout the room.

Dialogue Reproduction: Speech stays in the center channel and does not get buried when the rest of the mix becomes busy.

Extras ☆☆☆☆☆

There are no features offered.

Summary ★★★☆☆

Paramount gives the episodes a strong 1080p presentation and a 5.1 soundtrack that handles the quiet stretches and the louder operations without trouble. Then the set falls flat at the finish line by including no extras at all. Viewers unsure about the series itself should probably watch it first.