As final films go, The Osterman Weekend isn't the CV fullstop that Sam Peckinpah would have wanted. A schlocky adaptation of Robert Ludlum's conspiracy thriller, it tries to distract from a bumpy plot about the hunt for a double agent with various sideswipes at TV culture and its cast of stars (Rutger Hauer, John Hurt, Burt Lancaster, Dennis Hopper).

Still, it's not without flashes of brutal genius, a Straw Dogs-echoing domestic siege and a precisely choreographed gun-versus-bow'n'arrow shootout serving to remind us of what The Wild Bunch director was once capable of. Play it, Sam... Just don't play it again and again.

DVD Extras:

Osterman isn't a major Peckinpah movie, but this double-discer treats it like one. A trio of Bloody Sam biographers put aside their clear ambivalence about the film to deliver a deeply informative audio commentary, while a blurry copy of a test-screening print offers a look at the director's original cut. Talking point? A female masturbation scene that had Peckinpah and the producers at each other's throats.There's also a highly detailed Making Of documentary which mixes the usual behind-the-scenes anecdotes with a truly affecting elegy for Peckinpah himself. It's a portrait of a hugely talented filmmaker, albeit one who was both fuelled and ultimately destroyed by a life lived to excess.