Every 70s Movie: eli wallach

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Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Romance of a Horsethief (1971)

One lesson every professional critic learns early is to compartmentalize personal reactions, because the way a critic responds to art should be just one component of a review. Just as important is consideration of intentions. Part of the critic’s job is to imagine how the people most sympathetic to the type of art in question might respond. Case in point: Romance of a Horsethief. I didn’t dig the movie, but I recognize how other people might. A multinational production set in early 20th-century Poland, the movie has a little bit of everything, because some scenes are adventurous, some are comedic, some are dramatic, and some, as the title promises, are romantic. The acting and production values are respectable, and there’s an appealing humanism to the way the film treats its characters. Yet the story is so diffuse that I couldn’t engage with the film on any meaningful level.

The title character is Zanvill (Oliver Tobias), who steals horses alongside the older Kifke (Eli Wallach). They live in a small Jewish village. One day, regional military official Captain Stoloff (Yul Brynner) orders the seizure of all the village’s horses for military use. Doing so triggers intrigue and reprisals. Meanwhile, unrelated strife results from parents in the village trying to manage their kids’ love lives. Then wealthy Naomi (Jane Birkin) returns from travels abroad with ideas about rebelling against authority. Once all the storylines converge, Naomi’s dalliance with Zanvill escalates the conflict between villagers and Captain Stoloff’s troops into a mini-revolution.

Tracking all the comings and goings of the plot is exhausting, and it’s no surprise Romance of a Horsethief was adapted from a novel. The book was penned by Joseph Opatoshu, whose son, the fine actor David Opatoshu, wrote the script for this movie and plays a supporting role. It’s tempting to conjecture that he felt obligated to use everything his father created. Be that as it may, only some of what happens in Romance of a Horsethief is interesting, and it’s hard to tell whether the appeal stems entirely from the presence of charismatic actors. Not a single participant in this movie delivers exemplary work, though many—Brynner, Opatoshu, Wallach, costar Lainie Kazan—elevate individual scenes. That all of the Birkin-Tobias scenes fall flat says a lot, seeing as how they’re the movie’s least interesting performers. Viewers interested in the experiences of European Jews may find Romance of a Horsethief illuminating from a historical perspective, but viewers craving standard-issue period romance will be disappointed. While not a bad movie by any measure, Romance of a Horsethief is thoroughly underwhelming.

Romance of a Horsethief: FUNKY

Sunday, June 12, 2016

A Cold Night’s Death (1973)

Like so many of the creepy supernatural thrillers that were made for television in the ’70s, A Cold Night’s Death is roughly equivalent to an extended Twilight Zone episode in that it’s all about the elaborate setup for a freaky twist ending. Two inherent problems: 1) If the audience guesses the twist prematurely, it’s slow going from that point forward, and 2) There’s nowhere for the story to go once the business of setting up the premise has been completed. Sure enough, A Cold Night’s Death lags quite badly in the middle, even though it’s only 74 minutes long. Happily, the combination of an intelligent script, dense visual atmospherics, solid acting, and a weird electronic score compensate for the enervated narrative. Nothing in this picture is jump-out-of-your-skin scary, but A Cold Night’s Death is enjoyably eerie from start to finish. Frank (Eli Wallach) and Robert (Robert Culp) are researchers tasked with operating a laboratory installation that’s positioned atop a mountain. The brutal elevation? 14,000 feet. They’re rushed to the location ahead of schedule by helicopter, because ground-level administrators lose contact with the lab’s previous occupant. Upon arrival, Frank and Robert discover that their predecessor froze to death, leaving windows open so the various primates in laboratory cages nearly died from exposure, as well. Therefore, in addition to performing normal research, the scientists must solve the mystery of why their predecessor died.

A Cold Night’s Death takes the slow-but-steady approach to suspense. The film’s palette is carefully controlled, mostly blues and grays to complement the massive show drifts outside the laboratory, and lots of scenes take place at night, with just one character awake and prowling through empty halls while trying to identify the sources of peculiar sounds. Culp and Wallach personify extremes effectively—Culp plays a deeply curious man open to the possibilities of the unexplained, whereas Wallach sketches a fellow who is rational to a fault. This, of course, leads to tension as the situation worsens, but it’s to the filmmakers’ credit that they don’t follow the obvious path of putting these two characters at each other’s throats on a regular basis. Instead, the scientists duel intellectually until circumstances force a confrontation. Through it all, the bleeps and chirps and twangs of Gil Melle’s otherworldly electronic score jangle the viewer’s nerves appropriately. And if the twist ending is so far-fetched as to be a little bit goofy, well, that’s an occupational hazard for storytellers operating in the realm that Rod Serling charted.

A Cold Night’s Death: FUNKY

Monday, May 11, 2015

Firepower (1979)

A bad movie that occasionally manages to hold the viewer’s attention through a combination of familiar faces and spectacle, Firepower tells a convoluted story about mercenaries trying to kidnap a reclusive billionaire whom the U.S. government hopes to prosecute for criminal acts. Helmed by British action specialist Michael Winner, best known for Death Wish (1974), the picture showcases a truly odd collection of actors: James Coburn, Sophia Loren, and O.J. Simpson are the big names, while the supporting cast includes Billy Barty, Anthony Franciosa, Vincent Gardenia, Victor Mature, Jake LaMotta (!), and Eli Wallach.

The plot is as overstuffed as the cast. In the opening sequence, Adele (Sophia Loren) watches in horror as her husband, a pharmaceutical researcher, dies in a lab explosion. Convinced her husband was murdered by operatives of a mysterious industrialist named Karl Stegner, who owns a drug company that’s under government investigation, Adele provides incriminating evidence to federal agent Frank Hull (Gardenia). Frank wants to arrest Stegner, but Stegner lives on a remote estate in the Caribbean, protected by anti-extradition laws. And that’s when things get really confusing.

Frank seeks help from mobster Sal Hyman (Wallach), who offers to kidnap Stegner in exchange for a blanket pardon. Sal then calls in a favor from retired assassin Jerry Fanon (Coburn), who agrees to do the Stegner job for $1 million. Yet Jerry’s got a secret of his own. Jerry enlists his twin brother, Eddie, to . . . seriously, it’s not even worth explaining. Firepower is bewildering from a narrative perspective, but one gets the sense Winner realized he was building a giant heap of nothing, because he cuts the movie at an absurdly fast pace, rushing from chose scenes to double-crosses to explosions to gunfights to nighttime invasions. At any given moment, lots of colorful stuff is happening, even if it’s virtually impossible to know who’s doing what to whom, or why.

Coburn somehow manages to emerge unscathed, his coolness seeing him through the movie’s muddiest sections, though others don’t fare as well. Loren seems perplexed by her constantly changing characterization, so she spends most of her time posing for Winner’s myriad ogling shots of her cleavage. Simpson delivers his usual perfunctory work, while stone-cold pros ranging from Gardenia to Wallach try to ensure that individual scenes make as much sense as possible. For all his shortcomings on this project as a storyteller, Winner compensates somewhat by shooting violence well, so it’s possible to absorb the most vivacious scenes of Firepower as straight shots of adrenalized nonsense.

Firepower: FUNKY

Saturday, March 14, 2015

Crazy Joe (1974)

Highly watchable but also underdeveloped and unoriginal, Crazy Joe is one of myriad ultraviolent gangster films released in the wake of The Godfather (1971). Starring the powerful actor Peter Boyle as real-life New York City mobster Joey Gallo, the picture was produced by trash titan Dino De Laurentiis, and it boasts not only an eclectic cast of familiar ’70s faces but also a fast-moving storyline filled with betrayals, murders, robbery, and even a spectacular suicide. Furthermore, thanks to the lively script by Lewis John Carlino, the picture has flashes of intellectualism and style. The picture doesn’t go anywhere surprising, but there’s some vivid scenery along the way.

Viewers first meet Joe (Boyle) leading his gang of thugs through an afternoon of hanging out and an evening of committing a brazen hit in the middle of a crowded restaurant. Together, these two sequences effectively situate Joe as a character for whom death is as normal as grabbing a quick bite. Upon reporting the hit to his boss, Falco (Luther Adler), Joe is incensed to discover he won’t earn a bonus. Joe’s older brother, Richie (Rip Torn), intervenes before the argument escalates, but the seeds of a war have been planted. Thus, over the course of many years, Joe splits from Falco and later has an even bloodier battle with Falco’s successor, Vittorio (Eli Wallach). Joe’s ambition, as well as his appetite for danger, cause friction with Richie and with Joe’s wife, Anne (Paula Prentiss), even as Joe expands his operation by hiring African-American thugs controlled by Willy (Fred Williamson), whom Joe meets during a prison stint.

Excepting the material with Prentiss’ character, which is so anemic that it should have been jettisoned entirely, most of what happens in Crazy Joe is entertaining and lurid. Joe grandstands in front of powerful men. Joe leads his crew on daring criminal adventures. Joe studies philosophy in prison, thereby arriving at high-minded justifications (“The criminal is really just another existentialist expression”). Joe reveals hidden layers of civic-mindedness and decency by saving kids from a burning building. Boyle sinks his teeth into all of this material, portraying Joe as a being of pure id, relying on bravery and instinct even though restraint and strategy would ensure a longer life.

Yet Boyle’s performance is strangely one-dimensional, as if he can’t figure out how to decelerate for intimate scenes, and that gives the picture a certain degree of monotony. That’s why it helps to have such capable actors as Torn, Wallach, and Williamson bolstering the storytelling. Additionally, it’s fun to spot players including Charles Cioffi, Michael V. Gazzo, Hervé Villechaize, and Henry Winkler in secondary roles. As for the technical execution of the piece, which was handled by an international crew under the helm of director Carlo Lizzani, Crazy Joe is competently shot and effectively paced, allowing the focus to remain on the lively acting and the turbulent storyline.

Crazy Joe: FUNKY

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Girlfriends (1978)

Director Claudia Weill made enough of a critical splash with Girlfriends, her award-winning debut fictional feature, that she seemed poised to become one of the few successful female directors in Hollywood. Yet after her second feature, the studio comedy It’s My Turn (1980), failed to generate excitement, Weill retreated into directing for television. Revisiting Girlfriends, it’s easy to see why she found a home in TV, since Weill is best at capturing the miniscule details of human interaction. Yet it’s also fair to suggest that had Weill come along a few years earlier, she might have thrived during the heyday of the New Hollywood. In any event, Girlfriends is appealing but slight, a character study about a young woman trying to find herself personally and professionally.

Other filmmakers of the same era, notably Paul Mazursky, explored identical subject matter in pictures that were funnier and slicker than Girlfriends. However, Weill’s movie has a unique sort of intimacy, partially because it was shot on grungy 16mm film stock. Starring the decidedly unglamorous Melanie Mayron, the movie has the aesthetic of a modern indie flick, with humdrum locations and self-involved characters and an unresolved climax. In other words, it’s like life, whereas similar films from studios—even Mazursky’s fine efforts—tended to wrap the experiences of women in neat, I-am-woman-hear-me-roar bows.

Written by Vicki Polon, Girlfriends concerns Susan Weinblatt, a meek photographer who makes her living shooting bar mitzvahs and weddings for Rabbi Gold (Eli Wallach). After moving through unsatisfying trysts with men, as well as thorny relationships with two very different gal pals—conformist Annie (Anita Skinner) and hippie Ceil (Amy Wright)—Susan grows a spine and starts demanding respect in the bedroom and the workplace. The small beauty of Weill’s movie is that it doesn’t reduce people to stereotypes. For instance, Susan’s boyfriend throughout most of the story, Eric (Christopher Guest), exhibits macho control issues while also manifesting sensitivity and understanding. Similarly, the married Rabbi Gold seems like a lech when he makes a pass at the much-younger Susan, but then a scene featuring his domineering wife reveals that he’s simply emasculated and lonely. One of the movie’s themes, therefore, relates to Susan learning how to provide her own compass for navigating a complex world, since no one else can offer sufficient guidance.

Although the film is unfocused—despite the title, friendship is only one of many threads holding the story together—Weill and her collaborators compensate for the meandering narrative with scenes that ring true emotionally. The picture also benefits from amiable performances, with Mayron the obvious standout and Wallach lending brand-name credibility. Future comedy star Guest gives a solid dramatic turn (with hints of his signature deadpan humor), while Bob Balaban, subsequently to become a member of Guest’s quasi-repertory company, appears in a secondary role. Among the less familiar names, Skinner and Wright both deliver believable work.

Girlfriends: FUNKY

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Zig Zag (1970)

This twisty thriller kicks off with a terrific premise before faltering due to sloppy execution. George Kennedy stars as Paul Cameron, a claims investigator at an insurance company who learns he’s got only a few months to live. Desperate to provide for his wife and daughter, Paul digs through his company’s records and discovers that a $250,000 reward is still outstanding for the capture of an unknown criminal who kidnapped and murdered a millionaire. (Paul’s company paid a substantial death benefit to the victim’s family.) Using his wife’s maiden name as an alias, Paul sends a letter to the millionaire’s company claiming that he, Paul Cameron, was the murderer. Paul’s complex scheme is to get himself indicted and jailed for the crime so his wife, her identity hidden behind a web of bank accounts and P.O. boxes, can claim the reward. As this description indicates, the plot of Zig Zag ties itself in knots, stacking implausible developments until the storyline is impossibly muddled. Furthermore, the filmmakers present the story in a jagged style that justifies the title, jumping back and forth between the “present” (which begins with Paul’s arrest) and the “past” (which depicts his methodical planning).

That said, a number of interesting things happen, like the casual revelation that Paul used to be a jazz drummer and therefore has connections in the hepcat underworld of drug dealers and musicians. Additionally, the relationship between Paul and his exasperated lawyer (Eli Wallach) is entertaining. On a stylistic level, director Richard A. Colla, a TV veteran who directed a handful of middling features, executes Zig Zag with visual panache, building many scenes around trick shots that open by peering deep into some partially obstructed background, then pull back to reveal previously hidden details. In fact, the gimmicky camerawork makes some sequences feel more interesting than they actually are, though the sleight of hand loses efficacy once the shortcomings of the script become impossible to ignore. Kennedy barrels through scenes with watchable intensity, employing vigor in place of nuance, while Anne Jackson (costar Wallach’s real-life spouse) delivers credible anguish as Paul’s worried wife, and Blacula star William Marshall lends his sonorous voice to key role as a nightclub owner who helps Paul out of a jam. These appealing performers and Colla’s kicky visuals make Zig Zag a pleasant distraction—until the confusing mess of a finale, that is. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Zig Zag: FUNKY

Friday, January 27, 2012

Cinderella Liberty (1973)

In Cinderella Liberty, James Caan works his sensitive side by playing John Baggs Jr., a sailor who gets stuck in the Pacific Northwest when the Navy misplaces his records. Stranded on dry land and eager for a good time, John hits a raunchy bar and wins the favors of a hooker named Maggie Paul (Marsha Mason) in a pool game. Returning to her place for a tryst, John is startled to meet her preteen son, a streetwise mixed-race kid named Doug (Kirk Calloway). As John’s unwanted shore leave extends from days to weeks, he finds himself drawn back to Maggie and her child, realizing he’s more interested in setting down roots than he thought.

Adapted by Darryl Ponicsan from his own novel, Cinderella Liberty tells the bittersweet story of an unlikely love affair, and though there’s no getting around the hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold cliché at the center of the story, Ponicsan and director Mark Rydell ensure that sentimentality is almost completely excluded from the story. The lead character is depicted as an interesting contradiction, because on the one hand he’s a moralist who detests foul language, but on the other hand he’s comfortable brawling and carousing. Meanwhile, Maggie is a woman so accustomed to disappointment that she’s accepted her demeaning lot. They inspire each other to want more from life, so when tragedy strikes their fragile surrogate family, we discover how much each is willing to fight for what they’ve built together.

At 117 minutes, Cinderella Liberty is a bit windy for a straightforward romantic drama, and the colorful subplot about Baggs’ love/hate relationship with a former supervisor (Eli Wallach) feels unnecessary until a surprising payoff at the end of the picture. However, Rydell’s sensitive direction, lush photography by ’70s-cinema god Vilmos Zsigmond, and richly textured performances make the picture compelling and substantial. As for the leading players, Caan finds an interesting groove, portraying an introspective man occasionally drawn out of his shell by heated emotions, and Mason is bawdy and sad and vulnerable, delivering such expressive work that Cinderella Liberty earned her the first of her four Oscar nominations as Best Actress.

The picture also provides a worthwhile complement to The Last Detail, another 1973 movie about sailors getting into trouble on the mainland—because The Last Detail was, not coincidentally, adapted from an earlier novel by Cinderella Liberty scribe Ponicsan.

Cinderella Liberty: GROOVY

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

The People Next Door (1970)

   Similar in content to innumerable TV movies about suburban parents wrestling with their teenage kids’ drug use, The People Next Door is elevated by world-class cinematography and a smart script that shines an ironic spotlight on “acceptable” substance abuse by grown-ups. Part of the reason the piece goes down so smoothly is that it actually was a TV movie in an earlier incarnation; writer J.P. Miller and director David Greene made The People Next Door as a small-screen drama in 1968 before delivering the big-screen version two years later.
          The story explores the lives of Arthur Mason (Eli Wallach) and his wife Gerrie (Julie Harris), an all-American couple raising high-school student Maxie (Deborah Winters) and her older brother, recent high-school graduate Artie (Stephen McHattie). Artie is a longhaired rock musician involved with the counterculture, so he drives his father crazy. Meanwhile, Maxie can do no wrong in her parents’ eyes—until the night she wigs out on acid. Once Maxie sobers up, she reveals that she’s not only using drugs but also sleeping around.
          What’s more, she hates her parents for being phonies: Arthur is an adulterer, while Gerrie ignores reality by pretending everything is copacetic. The Masons try to coax Maxie back to their idea of a normal life, but an overdose renders her catatonic, forcing the Masons to institutionalize their “sweet little girl.” Miller’s unsubtle theme about troubles visiting even the best families is leavened by a secondary focus on Arthur’s drinking and Gerrie’s smoking, so the thought-provoking idea that everybody wants some form of escape from life comes through loud and clear.
          The acting in The People Next Door is effective if not particularly revelatory. Wallach does a fine job illustrating a man who is paradoxically strong-willed and terrified of confrontation. Harris is vulnerable essaying someone who has hid so long beneath a plastic shell that she barely knows herself anymore. And Winters, reprising her performance from the TV version, plays against her girl-next-door prettiness by unleashing a volatile mix of narcissism and rebelliousness. However, Hal Holbrook nearly steals the show as the Masons’ neighbor; his final scene is chilling for its mixture of anger and anguish. (Cloris Leachman is interesting but underused as the wife of Holbrook’s character.)
          The People Next Door is strongest when it dramatizes the way drugs exacerbate familial tension, and the movie wobbles when it tries to address larger issues like student protests. Overall, however, the movie offers a rational examination of subject matter that is more often depicted hysterically. In terms of tethering the storyline to a recognizable version of reality, the movie’s greatest virtue is the cinematography by Gordon Willis (The Godfather). Not only does Willis cloak scenes in his signature deep shadows, he finds sly ways of easing actors into dramatic compositions that poignantly accentuate the emotional distance between characters.

The People Next Door: GROOVY

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Movie Movie (1978)

A gently satirical tribute to the corny double-features of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Movie Movie begins with a short introduction from George Burns, continues into a boxing picture called Dynamite Hands, shifts gears for a fake trailer, and concludes with a showbiz-themed musical called Baxter’s Beauties of 1933. Replicating the way contract players were rotated through interchangeable roles during the studio era, many actors appear in both features (and the fake trailer), with George C. Scott playing all the lead roles. As written by comedy pros Larry Gelbart and Sheldon Keller, Movie Movie cleverly spoofs every contrivance common to movies that were cranked out a weekly basis, from plots predicated on absurd coincidences to completely implausible happy endings.

Many of the subtler jokes, like the gimmick of having the same actor (Art Carney) open both features by giving a dour medical prognosis that triggers the plot, may be lost on viewers who aren’t steeped in old-school Hollywood cinema. However, the very funny dialogue, which riffs on the way studio hacks used to jumble clichés and metaphors into a stew of verbal nonsense, is terrific even without knowing the context. One example: “It’s funny, isn’t it, how many times your guts can get slapped in the face.” Or: “With the woman you love at your side to stand behind your back, a man can move mountains with his bare heart.” One gets the impression Gelbart and Keller spent their youths groaning through lines like these every Saturday at the local movie palace, only to hurry back for more the next week; whereas some cinematic satires falter because contempt for the subject matter makes the comedy seem mean-spirited, Movie Movie shines because its humor stems from nostalgic affection. So, with venerable director Stanley Donen playing to his strong suit of smoothly choreographed light comedy, Movie Movie becomes first-rate escapist silliness.

Of the two features, Dynamite Hands is marginally better because the focus is on delivering verbal gags and spoofing clichéd storytelling. However, Baxter’s Beauties of 1933 has song-and-dance numbers that Donen stages with his signature effervescence. Appearing in both features, Carney, Red Buttons, Trish Van Devere, and Eli Wallach have a blast sending up the mannered acting of studio-era hams. Scott manages to be sweetly affecting in his dual roles, as a gruff boxing trainer in the first picture and as a Broadway impresario in the second. Kathleen Beller, Harry Hamlin, and real-life Broadway hoofer Ann Reinking are featured in Dynamite Hands, while Rebecca York costars with Bostwick in Baxter’s Beauties. They all get into the spirit of the thing, investing their performances with golly-gee-whiz enthusiasm. Also working in Movie Movie’s favor is zippy pacing—two features, a trailer, an introduction, and credits get crammed into 105 fast-moving minutes.

Movie Movie: GROOVY

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Circle of Iron (1978)

A strange blend of martial arts and philosophy that can’t be discounted because of its craftsmanship and sincerity, and yet can’t be taken seriously because much of the picture is patently ridiculous, Circle of Iron has an interesting backstory. The legendary Bruce Lee conceived the movie in the late ’60s, and he originally intended to co-star in the flick with his friend James Coburn. When the project got mired in development, Lee and Coburn moved on to other movies, and then Lee died. David Carradine, who by that point was a martial-arts icon thanks to starring in the TV series Kung Fu (1972-1975), took over Lee’s role in the project. More specifically, he took over Lee’s roles (plural), since Lee was originally slated to play the four parts that Carradine performs in the final film. It would be pleasant to report that all of this fuss was worthwhile, and that Circle of Iron is a great movie full of deep thoughts, but the film is instead a mixed bag.

On the most superficial level, it’s a very silly adventure story set in a fantasy world that exists outside of time. Cord (Jeff Cooper) is a martial artist who wants to fight his way to the temple of Zetan (Christopher Lee), a wizard who possesses something called “The Book of All Knowledge.” During his travels, Cord meets and learns life lessons from a string of eccentric characters, many played by Carradine. The dialogue is pretentious (lots of Zen-lite aphorisms), the fights are exciting-ish, and the production design is goofy, so, as an action picture, Circle of Iron is weak. As an exploration of Lee’s philosophical beliefs, however, it’s interesting, even though the final screenplay is probably quite different from what Lee envisioned. (Lee, Coburn, and Stirling Silliphant wrote the story, Silliphant wrote the original script, and Stanley Mann wrote the final draft.)

Many scenes in the picture are fanciful and provocative, like the vignette of Cord meeting the “Man-in-Oil” (Eli Wallach), a sad creature who has spent ten years sitting in a vat of oil in order to dissolve the lower half of his body and free himself from animal urges. Carradine is effective in his largest role as “The Blind Man,” a flute-carrying enigma who roams the land helping lost souls who don’t even know they’re lost. Unfortunately, Cooper is a non-entity whose campy costume, robotic performance, and surfer-dude looks add a distractingly comical element to the picture. Oddly, the picture explains nearly all of its mysteries with explanatory monologues during the climax; some viewers will find this clarification helpful and others will find it patronizing.

Handsomely photographed by Ronnie Taylor and imaginatively edited by Ernest Waller (presumably under the supervision of director Richard Moore), Circle of Iron is far too well-made to dismiss as a standard B-movie, but when the story gets mired in segments like the fight scene during which Carradine is dressed as “Monkeyman,” it’s hard to see beyond the absurd visuals.

Circle of Iron: FUNKY

Thursday, October 6, 2011

The Domino Principle (1977)

By the late ’70s, the cinematic marketplace was clogged with so many like-minded conspiracy thrillers that filmmakers had to struggle to contrive credible new conspiracies—and in some cases they didn’t even bother with credibility at all. The latter circumstance is true of The Domino Principle, which was inexplicably directed by venerable Hollywood filmmaker Stanley Kramer, a man best known for hand-wringing dramas about Big Issues like injustice and racism. This profoundly stupid movie follows Vietnam vet Roy Tucker (Gene Hackman), a prison inmate offered clemency by mysterious but high-powered conspirators in exchange for committing an assassination.

Right away, the film raises bizarre questions it never answers. Why bother recruiting a convict instead of simply hiring a criminal who’s walking free? Why go through all the trouble of bribing and manipulating prison personnel to engineer Tucker’s “escape”? Why go through an extended negotiation with Tucker about his desired terms, when the simpler thing to do is simply threaten his beloved wife (Candice Bergen) in order to pressure Tucker? Why send Tucker to an expensive hideaway in Mexico after the assassination is over, instead of just cutting him loose or gunning him down? And why does the supposedly savvy Tucker think all this will end well?

Instead of raising intriguing questions about why the bad guys are scheming, the film stacks idiotic plot contrivances upon each other until the viewer’s brain is numbed. It’s even unclear what sort of reaction The Domino Principle is supposed to generate. Tucker is a callous son of a bitch, so it’s not as if we’re supposed to care that he’s in trouble. The stakes of the assassination are never made clear, so it’s not as if we’re supposed to worry about the world order getting overthrown. Worst of all, the movie is so confusing, talky, and tedious that it’s not as if viewers can simply cast logic aside and groove on the thrills.

Hackman seems peevish throughout the entire movie, as if he’s upbraiding himself for agreeing to yet another pointless paycheck gig; Bergen is upstaged by the horrific perm she wears throughout the picture; and villains Richard Widmark and Eli Wallach sneer happily even though they probably can’t make any damn sense of the inane dialogue they’re spouting. (Plus, the less said about the pointless supporting character portrayed by an out-of-place Mickey Rooney, the better.) By the time the movie sputters to an overheated conclusion that’s as nonsensical as it is merciless, The Domino Principle has bludgeoned viewers so badly that only one mystery remains: Were the conspirators behind this cinematic atrocity ever brought to justice?

The Domino Principle: LAME

Thursday, July 14, 2011

The Deep (1977)

Few ’70s blockbusters had the far-reaching impact of Jaws (1975), which spawned not only countless substandard imitators but also a boom period for nearly everyone involved in the original picture. Both phenomena manifested in The Deep, a glossy thriller about oceanic peril based on a novel by the author of Jaws, Peter Benchley. With the additional exception of actor Robert Shaw’s participation, however, the similarities pretty much end there. Whereas Jaws is a robust adventure film with underwater horror, The Deep is a comparatively limp crime picture with underwater boredom. The movie has many noteworthy elements, all of which cheerfully pander to the public’s appetite for lurid sensation, but it’s also a 123-minute slog filled with meandering scenes that go on seemingly forever.

The story begins when two young Americans who are vacationing in Bermuda discover a shipwreck during a scuba dive in the waters off the island. An artifact they recover catches the attention of a crusty deep-sea salvage expert (Robert Shaw) and a vicious drug dealer (Louis Gossett Jr.), because it turns out the shipwreck is filled with vials containing enough morphine to produce a huge amount of heroin. Accordingly, most of the picture comprises repeated dives to gather booty from the wreck, plus on-shore confrontations like the bit in which the Americans drive scooters while being chased by a truckload of bad guys. The thrills in The Deep are shameless, right down to the tepid running gag about a gigantic killer eel who lurks somewhere inside the shipwreck, and in fact the movie’s best-known element is its tackiest: Voluptuous costar Jacqueline Bisset’s long dive at the beginning of the movie certified her sex-symbol status because she spends the whole sequence in a nearly transparent white T-shirt.

For good or ill, that sequence is indicative of The Deep’s ample lowbrow appeal. In the same vein, leading man Nick Nolte was at the apex of his handsomeness and youthful intensity, so he’s enjoyable even when he’s chewing the scenery. Shaw, basically delivering a toned-down version of his Jaws performance, is thoroughly entertaining even though he’s saddled with trite material. Gossett is effective as a crook hiding a killer’s heart behind a winning smile, and Eli Wallach adds campy flavor as the old sea dog who helps the heroes on their dives. The Deep falls apart toward the end, resorting to all sorts of tacky fake-outs to ensure a highly improbable happy ending, and fans expecting sea-critter action on the order of Jaws will be disappointed. Still, with its whatever-works mishmash of brazen titillation and luxurious underwater photography, The Deep is enjoyably shallow.

The Deep: FUNKY