The Crimson Rivers (2000)
Les Rivières pourpres
Crime, Mystery, Thriller • 1h 46m
Director: Mathieu Kassovitz
Cast: Jean Reno, Vincent Cassel, Nadia Farès, Dominique Sanda, Karim Belkhadra, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Didier Flamand, Philippe Nahon, François Levantal, Laurent Lafitte, Francine Bergé, Robert Gendreu, Christophe Bernard, Nicky Naudé, Vincent Tulli, Tonio Descanvelle, Olivier Rousset, Françoise Loreau, Nicolas Koretzky, Dominique Bettenfeld, Laurent Avare
Best English-friendly & video release · updated 10 months ago
Curzon 4K Blu-ray is superior to Gaumont 4K Blu-ray
UHD tiers
French import review
Overview
Two French policemen, one investigating a grisly murder at a remote mountain college, the other working on the desecration of a young girl's grave by skinheads, are brought together by the clues from their respective cases. Soon after they start working together, more murders are committed, and the pair begin to discover just what dark secrets are behind the killings.
Director: Mathieu Kassovitz
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
> Criterion > StudioCanal
Director: Béla Tarr
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Curzon 4K Blu-ray scheduled for October 2026 release
Supposed to have better translation than Criterion.
Director: Michael Haneke
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
2025 Curzon UK Blu-ray or 2013 TF1 FR Blu-ray (caps)
Curzon has a slightly better encode and preserves all the noise of the digital source, but ends up obscuring actual detail in some shots. Both are quite good, only caveat being that the TF1 disc is slightly cropped and has a black bar on top.
2008 Artificial Eye UK and 2025 Umbrella AU discs have incorrect pitch. TF1 FR disc is missing 7 minutes of audio in the left channel. See spectrograms.
Director: Walter Salles
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab) · slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
Original matrixed Dolby Stereo: Curzon 4K Blu-ray
Surround mix: Vision Film Polish PAL DVD (2000)
The surround mix is fully discrete, not a mere decode or upmix of the Dolby Stereo LCRS track. This mix has never appeared on any other releases.
Director: Jean Vigo
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
Director: Jean Vigo
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Director: Jean Vigo
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Directors: Jean Vigo & Boris Kaufman
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
More Crime on Blu-ray
Director: Joel Coen
Director's Cut: Disappointing UK StudioCanal/US Criterion 4K Blu-ray
Theatrical Cut: LaserDisc or 2001 UK Universal DVD
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?p=21782879#post21782879 - comparison. StudioCanal is a massive improvement to the Criterion but still flawed in some areas (chroma noise)
Director: Iain Softley
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
Both 88 Films and Germany Capelight are superior to the Shout! Factory in HDR10 but their FEL layer may even things out. Objectively, the Capelight looks best as they avoided the chroma blocking that’s visible in 88’s disc but they in turn included an Atmos mix. I have the Shout! Factory, love how it looks and the 4K transfer is spectacular. https://slow.pics/c/vPmFQSAH
Shout! Factory has the exclusive The Beauty of the Baud and the You Can't Stop Us All featurettes.
Director: John Woo
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
review: Disk Kino
Both have better encoding than Disk Kino, some shots are better on Shout! Factory, others on Arrow
Shout Factory still has the best video while Arrow did a questionable regrade. Arrow definitely has less grain in most shots, has a worse encode and is cm v2.9 compared to Shout’s cm v4.0.
Shout! Factory/Arrow 4K Blu-ray has the original mono
TV series
4K restoration from Original Camera Negative for all episodes
Director: Lloyd Bacon
4K restoration from Original Camera Negative
Director: Ralph Bakshi
Director: Roman Polanski
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