Hawaii Five-O - The Complete Third Season
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Actor: Jack Lord, James MacArthur, Kam Fong, William Smith, ZuluBrand: Paramount
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; Spanish (Subtitled); Portuguese (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Box set, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 1215 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-01-22
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Paramount
Product features:
- Condition: New
- Format: DVD
- Box set; Color; DVD; Full Screen; NTSC
DVD Reviews of Hawaii Five-O - The Complete Third Season
DVD Review: Seasons one and the two were the warm up, now it kicks into high gear
Summary: 5 Stars
Hawaii Five-O is one of my five favorite TV dramas of all time, the others being Star Trek the original series(is there any other?), Hill Street Blues, the original Law & Order and Homicide: Life on the Street. Five-O has always been sadly underrated; TV Guide didn't rank it in its top 50 shows of all time(a list that included Friends and The Oprah Winfrey Show, but neglected to include Star Trek or Homicide...either I have no taste or, well...), and some reviewers at other sources describe it as a standard '70's police drama. Five-O was anything but standard, in fact it had its own individual style, a combination of a slambang opening credits sequence(which begins with the visual motif of a threatening tidal wave and is set to the most exciting theme music ever), of gritty performances, outstanding music that was no small factor in setting the mood of the show, exemplary pacing, atmosphere(especially the bona fide Hawaiian scenery, alternating between lush vistas and seedy urban backdrops) and rock solid writing, which included some very ingenious and even bizarre storylines that ran the gamut from pulse-pounding international espionage to moving human drama. Five-O was a very quirky show, featuring a diverse cast of recurring character actors who represented all facets of Hawaiian life, and frequently investing as much time and emotion in the travails of the guest characters as on McGarrett and company. A fine example of this is the episode The Grandstand Play, in which the presentation of Five-O's investigation into the murder of a socialite at a ballpark is continually interrupted in order to focus on the life of the young man who witnessed the crime, a mentally challenged teen and son of a famous ballplayer, thus creating a special kind of empathy with this fully realized character. Another frequent charge against the show, that McGarrett and his detectives were mere automatons, is totally baseless. Jack Lord, in particular, was expert at portraying all kinds of emotion, incredulity, indignation, disgust, anger, contempt, compassion, abject despair, although he was rarely overwrought, usually a strain in his voice or a pained twitch in his features was enough(watch the ending of Trouble in Mind) and in effect he functioned as the show's conscience, its moral barometer. McGarrett was a good cop who made no apologies for this, part idealist, part cynic, concerned about the environment, with a love for the islands and their people, a man who allowed the cases to get to him, but not to the point where they affected how he did his job. Viewers today might find that cheesy, but I think it's refreshing, and there is a huge difference between the straightlaced but very human McGarrett and the by the numbers to the point of being downright stiff Joe Friday. Finally, some people who compare Five-O to modern cop shows decry the lack of elaborate plotting, the "twists" if you will, but Five-O has twists, it just doesn't inundate the viewer with them the way contemporary shows do(my beloved Law & Order included), which makes for a more direct, perhaps more realistic, often more satisfying watching experience.
The first two seasons of Hawaii Five-O are excellent and well worth owning, but this is the year where it really comes together. The show is more consistently great this season, with more classic episodes than the previous years and fewer weak ones. My personal favorites include the gut-wrenching Trouble in Mind and To Kill Or Be Killed, the haunting Force of Waves and Paniolo, and the ingenious caper episodes Over Fifty? Steal and Ten Thousand Diamonds and a Heart. This season also includes a couple of great two-part episodes, F.O.B. Honolulu in which foreign agents, including the ubiquitous Wo Fat, bargain for plates that would allow them to create counterfeit twenty dollar bills, and the already mentioned The Grandstand Play, one of Five-O's most unique human dramas. I'm not wild about the episodes The Last Eden, Beautiful Screamer or Dear Enemy, but a mere three episodes out of twenty-four that I would classify as mediocre add up to odds I'll take any day of the week.
It's true that the extras are skimpy on these sets, but I'm not much of an extras person, I'm happy just having the episodes, especially when they're remastered to this degree. The picture quality is sharp, fantastic, the scenery is lovelier than ever...for the best evidence of this, check out the episode Paniolo, much of which takes place in the green mountains of Maui. Breathtaking!
People new to the series might consider starting with this season since it represents Five-O at its best, then going backwards and watching the first two, but really, all of the seasons so far are worth seeing, as are the next several. They can't release these things fast enough for me.
Description of Hawaii Five-O - The Complete Third Season
Filmed entirely on location in Hawaii, the show followed Jack Lord as he played Steve McGarrett, head of an elite state police unit investigating "organized crime, murder, assassination attempts, foreign agents, felonies of every type." James MacArthur played his second-in-command Danny ("Danno") Williams, with local actors Kam Fong, Zulu, Al Harrington, and Herman Wedemeyer, among others, playing members of the Five-O team. Guest stars included Helen Hayes, Ricardo Montalban, Leslie Nielsen, Herbert Lom, Hume Cronyn among others. McGarrett's nemesis is the evil Wo Fat ? "a Red Chinese agent in charge of the entire Pacific Asiatic theatre.The sky is blue, the sea is a brilliant turquoise, the surf is up, the scenery is lush and gorgeous, and Steve McGarrett's hair is as stiff as the breeze blowing in off the Pacific. In other words, all is right with the world as Hawaii Five-O: The Third Season arrives in a six-disc, 24-episode (including a pair of two-parters) box set. McGarrett, of course, is the main man in the islands' crack, four-man police unit; played by Jack Lord, he's the guy memorably described by the New York Times as "beyond cool but still so square he could have been Lawrence Welk?s cop brother-in-law." Not much has changed in his universe as the series moves into a new decade (these episodes aired in 1970 and '71). McGarrett is still the humorless embodiment of moral rectitude; imperious, often sarcastic (especially when dealing with the fools from other law enforcement agencies who dare challenge his authority), he's one of those guys whose moral superiority is unquestioned, especially by him. Steadfast cohorts Danno (James McArthur), Kono (Zulu), and Chin Ho (Kam Fong) are still on hand, as is the usual assortment of bad guys, most of them risibly stereotypical--including arch-nemesis Wo Fat (Khigh Dhiegh), a kind of cut-rate Bond villain who speaks elaborately formal English as he plots to help Red China overthrow all that is good and righteous in the free world. And as in the first two seasons, Hawaii Five-O's style is notable primarily for the lack of it, especially in the stiff acting (with the exception of a few guest stars--notably Hume Cronyn, who's terrific in the season's most amusing and clever episode, "Over 50? Steal"), lukewarm action sequences, and appalling hair (if bad cuts and silly sideburns were a crime, the streets would be empty and the prisons full). But then, that is precisely the show's charm.
Also as in past seasons, the Five-O crew takes on crimes both common (murder, robbery, extortion, kidnapping) and not so much; in "Reunion," some World War II vets are convinced they've come across the Japanese officer who tortured them during the war, while "The Last Eden" features with eco-terrorism and "And Time to Die" deals with China's nuclear secrets. In the end, regardless of the problem, it's McGarrett and company's dogged police work that solves it. Meanwhile, the music remains the series' hippest element by far; while Nancy Wilson might not be a particularly convincing junkie in "Trouble in Mind," her renditions of the title song, "Stormy Monday," and other tunes are absolutely first-rate. Bonus features are again limited to brief, previous-week promos for each episode. --Sam Graham
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