The crime classic gets a snazzy new upgrade
A crackling crime film from 1952, Kansas City Confidential was a fairly gritty and unique tale. Its opening setup and heist take place in its namesake Kansas City, as iconically demonstrated by an establishing shot of the famous Union Station, but the bulk of its action is an analysis of the aftermath which takes place after the crooks meet back up in Tijuana, a complex web of hidden identities and moral conflicts.
While not necessarily as appreciated as it deserves, the massive influence of Kansas City Confidential, especially its unique setup involving criminals working together who don’t know each other’s identities and go by color-codenames, is far-reaching, and we can see the rippling echoes of it in films like The Thomas Crown Affair, The Dark Knight, and Reservoir Dogs.
Screen Comparisons
Due to its public domain material, Kansas City Confidential has a long history of home video releases. The film had its first Blu-ray release in 2010 from Film Chest (under their “HD Cinema Classics” brand). It was a cleaner and generally better image than the long history of bad PD DVD releases, but lacked some of the grit and detail of the official MGM DVD, which arguably remained the best version the film despite its standard definition resolution. This comparison article compares the 2010 release to the new 2025 disc, officially known as the Archive Collection Limited Edition release.
Note: A better restoration was released by The Film Detective in 2016. I don’t have that edition onhand in order to make comparisons, but as Film Masters is the successor company to The Film Detective and the new edition doesn’t advertise itself as a new restoration, though secondary sources have called it one. It’s unclear to me if this is the same restoration as the 2016 disc or a new one (or a third option, the same restoration but slightly retooled).
The “slider” images below allow for a quick comparison of the stills from both discs by color, cleanliness, framing, but are downscaled and not representative of the full 1080p resolution. These are only illustrative of differences, and not definitive, especially in terms of resolution and clarity.
For a truer direct comparison, it’s recommended to download the image files and view them at full size on a large monitor with 1080p or higher resolution. You can download all images at full resolution via the zipfiles below:
Observations:
This is a case where the newer release trumps the older one in every meaningful way. It’s a terrific presentation of a beautifully shot film, and likely to be the best we get unless MGM produces or licenses an official Blu-ray or 4K release from their original elements.
- The newer restoration is clearly more detailed throughout, here are some of the observable factors of that:
- Discernable grain and detail, whereas the older release was smoothed to oblivion.
- Finer detail areas like facial textures and fabrics appear much clearer.
- Tonally, there’s less crush in darker areas, lending more observable details that aren’t lost to the blackness
- Some color banding was observable in the older release, which now grades out naturally.
- The newer release has some mild flecks and irregularities which weren’t observable in the prior release – I personally prefer to have some of this grit in older films but even if you don’t, it should be a welcome tradeoff to the overzealous smoothing.
- The older can had a slightly cooler tone throughout, with a hint of blue or purple.
- This is a weird one, but the old release was actually slightly off-center; in other words, the right side black bar was wider than the left side.
Besides a terrific transfer, the Film Masters Archive Collection Limited Edition release also features a commentary by Jason A. Ney and a 10-page (12 with covers) booklet with a wonderful essay by Don Stradley celebrating the great Jack Elam, one of the film’s stars and one of the all-time great Hollywood faces. Like all of Film Masters Limited Edition series, it features a nice slipcover and is a factory pressed (not burned/MOD) disc.
A/V Out
