Wooden acting and inept helming undermine this blatant, low-budget rip-off of the classic Steve McQueen police thriller "Bullitt" with 1965 International middleweight Karate champion Tonny Tulleners, who defeated "Walker, Texas Ranger" star Chuck Norris, in the lead role as a tough-as-nails government agent on the trail of an international terrorist. Everybody goes through the motions in this convention white-knuckled epic.
Writer & director William Riead, a former CBS-TV White House news reporter and Hollywood documentary filmmaker who produced over 15 "Making of" movie shorts for Columbia Pictures, directed this derivative actioneer with distinction about an elite Defense Intelligence Agent. Picturesque takes place in Spain, Hawaii, and the U.S and the hero's sporty Porsche add little to the half-baked histrionics in this 98-minute Crown International release.
Several seasoned Hollywood veterans such as Don Murray of "Advise & Consent," perennial western character actor John Anderson, "Time Tunnel" co-star Robert Colbert, and "Wilderness Family" star Robert Logan, flesh out a cast of unknown thespians. Interestingly, the real-life Billy Hayes whose exploits provided the basis for Alan Parker's controversial "The Midnight Express," is cast as a paid assassin.
Although Riead distinguished himself as a newsman, he sorely lacked the talent to be an auteur of any merit. He cannot stage an action scene, even with the services of a legendary stunt coordinator like the late Dar Robinson, and he makes top-flight actors like Murray appear as if they were appearing for the first time on camera. Only Robert Logan manages to acquit himself as the hero's right-hand man without looking like a neophyte. Indeed, Riead is no Peter Yates and nothing about "Scorpion" generates a modicum of either suspense or excitement. Incredibly, the fight scenes with karate expert Tonny Tulleners look half-hearted. This may explain why Tulleners never starred in another picture.
Top D.I.A. Steve Woods (Tonny Tulleners) with the code name 'Scorpion' is called on to thwart terrorists that have hijacked a flight. Woods masquerades as an ordinary policeman who the terrorists allow to board the jetliner to assure the authorities that nobody has been harmed. No sooner has Woods gotten onto the aircraft than he surprises the antagonists with his karate expertise, renders three guys harmless, and puts a bullet through a female hijacker at the end of the aisle who is armed with a submachine. The story hits the newspapers the next day and Steve is surprised himself when his identity is revealed in the story.
Consequently, our redoubtable hero finds himself reassigned to provide protection for one of the terrorists on the plane, Faued (TV actor Adam Ageli), that has agreed to betray his cause and turn informant for a headline grabbing attorney, Gifford Leese (Don Murray), who cuts a deal with him. Woods, his childhood pal Phil Keller (Allen Williams of "The Onion Field"), and Gordon Thomas (Robert Logan) take round-the-clock shifts guarding the informant. Repeatedly, Phil warns Faued to stay away from the windows. Without warning, Faued pulls the curtains back and two assassins burst into the room, mow down Phil in a blaze of machine gun fire, and then riddle Faued. Faued takes several shots in the stomach, but the bulletproof vest that he has on saves his life.
Initially, Leese wants Steve off the case, but Steve resolves to find Phil's killer and ignores Leese. At the hospital, the two assassins show up again and Steve tangles with them and captures one while blond Wolfgang Stoltz (Billy Hayes) escapes. Sadly, after this failed assassin attempt, Faued dies. Steve conceals Faued's death in hopes that he can lure the remaining hit-man to take another chance on rubbing the turn-coat terrorist out. Predictably, Leese is infuriated and pleads with Steve's superiors to take him off the case.
Steve discovers to Leese's chagrin that the Faued that Leese had set up in the safe-house was impostor. The real Faued (John Lazar of "Deathstalker 2") is on his way to take a cruise when Steve and Gordon confront him. Faued flees, commandeers a launch, and Steve appropriates a helicopter and a minor chase ensues.
"Scorpion" (* out of ****) steals virtually everything from "Bullitt" except for the careening car chase on San Francisco hilltops. The scene where Steve pursues an African-American assassin into the underground garage parking lot even has the scene where a laundry bag plunges from a chute and freaks out our hero. Steve spends most of his time when he isn't on the case on his boat at a marina and his fellow agents have to buzz him to get past the gate. This is similar to Steve McQueen's two-story townhouse where he has to throw a lever half-way down the staircase to unlock his door for his partner to visit him. Mind you, the low-budget probably prohibited Riead from staging a car chase.
Karate champion Tonny Tulleners resembles a young Kevin Costner with his football jacket and his mustache. Tulleners is clearly no actor and Riead doesn't really give the guy the chance to emote in this formulaic fodder. The opening scene in Spain serves as our introduction to Steve Woods. Again, Riead orchestrates the action with no finesse and the hero lacks charisma. Skip this abysmal nonsense unless you want to see how closely Riead sticks to basic premise of "Bullitt."
CINEMATIC REVELATIONS allows me the luxury of writing, editing and archiving my film and television reviews. Some reviews appeared initially in "The Commercial Dispatch" and "The Planet Weekly" and then later in the comment archives at the Internet Movie Database. IMDB.COM, however, imposes a limit on both the number of words and the number of times that an author may revise their comments. I hope that anybody who peruses these expanded reviews will find them useful.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
FILM REVIEW OF ''SAMSON & THE SEVEN MIRACLES OF THE WORLD" (1961-ITALIAN)
Call him Samson.
Call him Goliath.
Can him Maciste.
Whatever you call him, former 1950s Tarzan star Gordon Scott calls himself Samson in this lavishly produced but low-budget sword and sandal epic set in China during the 13th century. Peplum movies about strong men didn't last as long as their producers would have liked. As many as 300 of these muscle man melodramas appeared between 1959 and 1963. The genre can be broken down into those muscle man movies that occurred in the world around the Mediterranean Sea and those that transpired in foreign countries far off the beaten path, like "Samson and the Seven Miracles of the World."
Our beefy protagonist sets out to destroy murderous Mongol warriors who want to rule China by killing its virgin princess (Yoko Tani of "Koroshi") and sacrificing its prince to a tiger. Samson behaves like the Lone Ranger here roaming the world to right wrongs. Not surprisingly, Scott has been dubbed by somebody else, which is a real shame, because Scott ranks as one of the few big-screen beefcakes who possessed acting talent.
Anyway, Samson wanders in to save the day in customary style. All the guy wears is shoes and an elaborate red diaper. Mind you, the fight between Samson and a tiger appears apocryphal, but things improve. There's a complex chariot scene where our mighty hero saves the lives of several Chinamen buried up to their necks and awaiting certain death when the aforementioned chariot tries to run them down and cut their heads off. In fact, Scott does one of his own stunts as he clings for dear life to the tongue of the chariot as it careens around the open ground of an arena. The best thing about the screenplay penned by Oreste ("The Witch's Curse"—another 'fish out of water' strongman saga) Biancoli, based on a story that Duccio ("A Fistful of Dollars") Tessari and he wrote, is that it doesn't bog down in machinations.
Clocking in at a really lean, mean 79 minutes, "Samson" doesn't linger. The best scene in what amounts to a generic rebellion plot occurs near the end when an apparently dead Samson precipitates an earthquake. Indeed, Samson's last act is truly his best act. After the villains capture an apparently dead Samson, they bury him in a claustrophobic vault in the bowels of a mountain of solid rock. They even go to extent of having a midget creep into the crawlspace of a tomb and shackle Samson in snugly, but when the strongman awakens to a priest's summons, nothing can keep him down.
Thoroughly average in script and action, "Samson and the Seven Miracles of the World" is marginally entertaining. Scott makes a more than serviceable muscle-bound hero. An amusing scene takes place in a restaurant that Samson pretty much demolishes when he goes toe-to-toe with the many villains. Afterward, he discards a support beam as if it were a toothpick, then apologizes to the owner for all the destruction that he has wrought before leaving. People who love dubbed Italian muscle man spectacle will enjoy this run-of-the-mill muscle man movie. Clearly, the Samson as he is so-called here has little in common with the Biblical Samson, because Gordon Scott wears his hair far too short.
The version that I watched came from Alpha Video and they appear to have semi-letter-boxed their grainy print, so that its 2.35.1 ratio is squeezed down to 1.85.1, but a little letter-boxing beats none at all. "Lady Frankenstein" lenser Riccardo Pallottini gives this mediocre adventure a sprawling, larger-than-life look.
Call him Goliath.
Can him Maciste.
Whatever you call him, former 1950s Tarzan star Gordon Scott calls himself Samson in this lavishly produced but low-budget sword and sandal epic set in China during the 13th century. Peplum movies about strong men didn't last as long as their producers would have liked. As many as 300 of these muscle man melodramas appeared between 1959 and 1963. The genre can be broken down into those muscle man movies that occurred in the world around the Mediterranean Sea and those that transpired in foreign countries far off the beaten path, like "Samson and the Seven Miracles of the World."
Our beefy protagonist sets out to destroy murderous Mongol warriors who want to rule China by killing its virgin princess (Yoko Tani of "Koroshi") and sacrificing its prince to a tiger. Samson behaves like the Lone Ranger here roaming the world to right wrongs. Not surprisingly, Scott has been dubbed by somebody else, which is a real shame, because Scott ranks as one of the few big-screen beefcakes who possessed acting talent.
Anyway, Samson wanders in to save the day in customary style. All the guy wears is shoes and an elaborate red diaper. Mind you, the fight between Samson and a tiger appears apocryphal, but things improve. There's a complex chariot scene where our mighty hero saves the lives of several Chinamen buried up to their necks and awaiting certain death when the aforementioned chariot tries to run them down and cut their heads off. In fact, Scott does one of his own stunts as he clings for dear life to the tongue of the chariot as it careens around the open ground of an arena. The best thing about the screenplay penned by Oreste ("The Witch's Curse"—another 'fish out of water' strongman saga) Biancoli, based on a story that Duccio ("A Fistful of Dollars") Tessari and he wrote, is that it doesn't bog down in machinations.
Clocking in at a really lean, mean 79 minutes, "Samson" doesn't linger. The best scene in what amounts to a generic rebellion plot occurs near the end when an apparently dead Samson precipitates an earthquake. Indeed, Samson's last act is truly his best act. After the villains capture an apparently dead Samson, they bury him in a claustrophobic vault in the bowels of a mountain of solid rock. They even go to extent of having a midget creep into the crawlspace of a tomb and shackle Samson in snugly, but when the strongman awakens to a priest's summons, nothing can keep him down.
Thoroughly average in script and action, "Samson and the Seven Miracles of the World" is marginally entertaining. Scott makes a more than serviceable muscle-bound hero. An amusing scene takes place in a restaurant that Samson pretty much demolishes when he goes toe-to-toe with the many villains. Afterward, he discards a support beam as if it were a toothpick, then apologizes to the owner for all the destruction that he has wrought before leaving. People who love dubbed Italian muscle man spectacle will enjoy this run-of-the-mill muscle man movie. Clearly, the Samson as he is so-called here has little in common with the Biblical Samson, because Gordon Scott wears his hair far too short.
The version that I watched came from Alpha Video and they appear to have semi-letter-boxed their grainy print, so that its 2.35.1 ratio is squeezed down to 1.85.1, but a little letter-boxing beats none at all. "Lady Frankenstein" lenser Riccardo Pallottini gives this mediocre adventure a sprawling, larger-than-life look.
FILM REVIEW OF ''KINGDOM OF HEAVEN'' (2005)
The grisly spectacle of blood splattered medieval era warfare in "Gladiator" director Ridley Scott's swashbuckler "Kingdom of Heaven" (** out of ****) overshadows the less-than-compelling 12th century chronicle about an obscure French blacksmith who attains fame as the guardian of Jerusalem. Set during the second crusade to the Holy Land where European Christian knights have clashed with Muslims for occupation of the famous city, this lavishly-produced but tedious combat epic lacks a virile, charismatic hero, because leading man Orlando Bloom of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy projects little in the way of authority. Not only does elegant but inexpressive Bloom appear wholly miscast, but also he gives such a low-key performance that you cannot work up much enthusiasm for him when he plunges into battle. Meanwhile, newcomer Ghassan Moassoud doesn't qualify as a villain in the conventional sense of the word. As the Muslim leader of the opposing forces, he behaves more like a static figure head, giving us little to get angry about toward him. Therein lays the ambivalence of the "Kingdom of Heaven." The hero isn't heroic enough, and the villain isn't hateful enough.
Far and away better than either Oliver Stone's disastrous "Alexander" or Antoine Fuqua's "King Arthur," "Kingdom of Heaven" isn't nearly as enthralling as Wolfgang Petersen's "Troy." British director Ridley Scott and freshman scenarist William Monahan (also British) seem to have bitten off more than they can chew in this elaborate, serious-minded, but ironic commentary about the Middle Ages and the hypocrisy that the Church wallowed in with their crusades to occupy Jerusalem. Parallels between what occurred in the so-called Holy Lands back in the 1100s and the current unrest in Iraqi are inevitable. Interestingly, Scott and Monahan display more sympathy for the Islamic world than for the Europeans, perhaps in a gesture of political correctness to atone for the sins of Europeans and the Catholic Church. Indeed, like last year's East meets West horse opera "Hidalgo," "Kingdom of Heaven" clearly espouses revisionist sentiments. Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Ladin might enjoy this impartial depiction of his countrymen. Imagine what might have happened in a Middle-Eastern Alamo, and you've got a fair idea what to expect from the "Kingdom of Heaven." In fact, "Kingdom of Heaven" reminded me of those westerns from the 1930s and the 1950s where a few good white man struggled to save the noble American savage from the depredations of scalp-hungry Caucasians.
The sprawling saga opens in France in the year 1184 after a battle weary knight, Sir Godfrey (Liam Neeson of "Batman Begins"), has left his knights back in Jerusalem and set out to find the son that he never knew. Godfrey's illegitimate son turns out to be a humble Gallic blacksmith, Balian (Orlando Bloom of "Black Hawk Down"), in mourning over the death of his wife. Balian's spouse committed suicide after their first-born died. When Godfrey rides into Balian's village, the gravediggers are preparing to bury Balian's wife. A shady priest (Michael Sheen of "Underworld") steals the crucifix from Balian's dead wife and takes Godfrey to meet the blacksmith. Not only does Godfrey seek Balian's forgiveness for impregnating and abandoning his mother, but also he asks Balian to accompany him back to the Holy Land. Initially, Balian refuses. Later, when our hero discovers that the priest stole his dead wife's amulet, an enraged Balian slays him with a sword still glowing from the furnace. With the local authorities hot on his trail, Balian rides after Godfrey and joins him. Principally, Balian goes to Jerusalem, because Godfrey has assured him that he can obtain remission for his wife's suicide as well as his own murderous deeds.
Had Scott elicited the performance from Bloom that he got from Russell Crowe in "Gladiator," "Kingdom of Heaven" might have been more entertaining. Indeed, every shot of Bloom casts him in a heroic mould, but the young actor delivers a performance that consists more of posture than passion. Several other flaws afflict this film. First, "Heaven" moves at a leaden pace. The first act deals with our hero's initial encounter with the father he never knew. Liam Neeson blows everybody off the screen during his small part at the outset, while a scar-faced Jeremy Irons as the Marshal of Jerusalem towers over everybody else in the second half. Second, "Kingdom of Heaven" has too many characters clutter up the screen, and the story is hard to follow. Unless you're a medieval scholar, you going to have difficulty keeping track with what is going on. When Scott choreographs combat scenes, he can do no wrong. He provides us with enough geography so you don't get disoriented in all the fighting, unlike similar scenes in Oliver Stone's shoddy "Alexander." Clearly revisionist in sentiment, William Monahan's show-both-sides screenplay makes the Muslims more heroic than they have ever been, while it shows the Christians knights are racist, warmongering fanatics out for the spoils of war rather than the salvation of Godly deeds.
Ridley Scott stages several explosive battles with such virtuosity that you may forget about the reasons for the crusade. While the battle scenes are nothing short of excellent, the climactic Moslem attack on Jerusalem suffers by comparison with a similarly staged fray from "The Two Towers" with its monumental onslaught against the cliff fortress at Helm's Deep.
Several good actors languish in supporting roles, such as Brenda Gleeson of "Lake Placid" as an unrepentant scoundrel whose shaggy mane has turned blood red from all the helpless Muslims that he has slaughtered with extreme prejudice. You won't be able to recognize William Norton of "The Score" as a character called the King Baldwin IV who rules Jerusalem. Called the Leper King, Norton wears an ornate mask and stands between the rabid Europeans and the peaceful Muslims.
Clocking in at 145 minutes (reportedly with a longer version due out on DVD at 220 minutes), the "Kingdom of Heaven" is far, far from heavenly.
Far and away better than either Oliver Stone's disastrous "Alexander" or Antoine Fuqua's "King Arthur," "Kingdom of Heaven" isn't nearly as enthralling as Wolfgang Petersen's "Troy." British director Ridley Scott and freshman scenarist William Monahan (also British) seem to have bitten off more than they can chew in this elaborate, serious-minded, but ironic commentary about the Middle Ages and the hypocrisy that the Church wallowed in with their crusades to occupy Jerusalem. Parallels between what occurred in the so-called Holy Lands back in the 1100s and the current unrest in Iraqi are inevitable. Interestingly, Scott and Monahan display more sympathy for the Islamic world than for the Europeans, perhaps in a gesture of political correctness to atone for the sins of Europeans and the Catholic Church. Indeed, like last year's East meets West horse opera "Hidalgo," "Kingdom of Heaven" clearly espouses revisionist sentiments. Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Ladin might enjoy this impartial depiction of his countrymen. Imagine what might have happened in a Middle-Eastern Alamo, and you've got a fair idea what to expect from the "Kingdom of Heaven." In fact, "Kingdom of Heaven" reminded me of those westerns from the 1930s and the 1950s where a few good white man struggled to save the noble American savage from the depredations of scalp-hungry Caucasians.
The sprawling saga opens in France in the year 1184 after a battle weary knight, Sir Godfrey (Liam Neeson of "Batman Begins"), has left his knights back in Jerusalem and set out to find the son that he never knew. Godfrey's illegitimate son turns out to be a humble Gallic blacksmith, Balian (Orlando Bloom of "Black Hawk Down"), in mourning over the death of his wife. Balian's spouse committed suicide after their first-born died. When Godfrey rides into Balian's village, the gravediggers are preparing to bury Balian's wife. A shady priest (Michael Sheen of "Underworld") steals the crucifix from Balian's dead wife and takes Godfrey to meet the blacksmith. Not only does Godfrey seek Balian's forgiveness for impregnating and abandoning his mother, but also he asks Balian to accompany him back to the Holy Land. Initially, Balian refuses. Later, when our hero discovers that the priest stole his dead wife's amulet, an enraged Balian slays him with a sword still glowing from the furnace. With the local authorities hot on his trail, Balian rides after Godfrey and joins him. Principally, Balian goes to Jerusalem, because Godfrey has assured him that he can obtain remission for his wife's suicide as well as his own murderous deeds.
Had Scott elicited the performance from Bloom that he got from Russell Crowe in "Gladiator," "Kingdom of Heaven" might have been more entertaining. Indeed, every shot of Bloom casts him in a heroic mould, but the young actor delivers a performance that consists more of posture than passion. Several other flaws afflict this film. First, "Heaven" moves at a leaden pace. The first act deals with our hero's initial encounter with the father he never knew. Liam Neeson blows everybody off the screen during his small part at the outset, while a scar-faced Jeremy Irons as the Marshal of Jerusalem towers over everybody else in the second half. Second, "Kingdom of Heaven" has too many characters clutter up the screen, and the story is hard to follow. Unless you're a medieval scholar, you going to have difficulty keeping track with what is going on. When Scott choreographs combat scenes, he can do no wrong. He provides us with enough geography so you don't get disoriented in all the fighting, unlike similar scenes in Oliver Stone's shoddy "Alexander." Clearly revisionist in sentiment, William Monahan's show-both-sides screenplay makes the Muslims more heroic than they have ever been, while it shows the Christians knights are racist, warmongering fanatics out for the spoils of war rather than the salvation of Godly deeds.
Ridley Scott stages several explosive battles with such virtuosity that you may forget about the reasons for the crusade. While the battle scenes are nothing short of excellent, the climactic Moslem attack on Jerusalem suffers by comparison with a similarly staged fray from "The Two Towers" with its monumental onslaught against the cliff fortress at Helm's Deep.
Several good actors languish in supporting roles, such as Brenda Gleeson of "Lake Placid" as an unrepentant scoundrel whose shaggy mane has turned blood red from all the helpless Muslims that he has slaughtered with extreme prejudice. You won't be able to recognize William Norton of "The Score" as a character called the King Baldwin IV who rules Jerusalem. Called the Leper King, Norton wears an ornate mask and stands between the rabid Europeans and the peaceful Muslims.
Clocking in at 145 minutes (reportedly with a longer version due out on DVD at 220 minutes), the "Kingdom of Heaven" is far, far from heavenly.
FILM REVIEW OF ''JOHNNY WAS'' (2006)
Just because Vinnie Jones appears in a movie is no reason to watch it. If you've seen the former British soccer star in "The Condemned," "Played," and "Number One Girl," you know that his cinematic track record isn't consistent. Yes, he's made good movies, such as "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels," "Swordfish," and "Snatch," but too many of his films are best for rainy days when you have nothing else to eyeball. It is like they want Vinnie Jones for his compelling presence, but the films lack the dramatic firepower of Vinnie Jones' persona. Happily, while it isn't top-drawer, "Johnny Was" (**1/2 out of ****) is an above-average opus with a polished look, and persuasive performances. It's worth watching at least once, especially if you are a Vinnie Jones fan.
Freshman helmer Mark Hammond manages to keep things moving at a fast pace in this Irish-produced, crime thriller about a group of oddball thugs that circumstances bring together in a London flat. Hammond's fellow Irishman Brendan Foley penned this slightly better-than-average yarn about a former Irish-Republican Army bomber Johnny Doyle (Vinnie Jones) trying to lay low for the last five years despite his unusual, obstreperous neighbors. Unfortunately, Doyle has chosen the worse safe place to conceal himself. He lives beneath a noisy, pirate radio station run by a Rastafarian disc jockey named Ras (former boxer Lennox Lewis) and above a well-dressed but ruthless Jamaican drug dealer Julius (Eriq La Salle of NBC's "E.R.") with a beautiful junkie girlfriend Rita (Samantha Mumba of "The Time Machine" remake) who was briefly once a nurse. During his illegal broadcasts, Ras condemns the bondage that narcotics holds his people in, while he puffs on his marihuana. Meanwhile, Doyle suffers from nightmares about his last terrorist bombing. The memory of his unsuccessful effort to save the life of an innocent female painter haunts him and drives him into hiding.
Were these complications not enough, our quasi-hero of sorts finds himself up to his neck in problems when his sadistic mentor Flynn (Patrick Bergin of "Sleeping with the Enemy") and Flynn's latest protégé Michael (Laurence Kinlan of "Ned Kelly") show up on his doorstep after having escaped from Brixton Prison with the cops searching everywhere for him. Flynn is an old-school IRA terrorist who considers innocent bystanders suffering from his bombings as little more than "collateral damage." During the escape, Michael injured his ankle so he spends a lot of time in bed in pain with nurse Rita attending to him. Of course, the jealous Jamaican is none too pleased with this relationship, but Johnny has enough nerve and muscle to keep the lethal drug dealer in line.
Just when things appear to be spiraling down for the worse, Flynn makes a deal with Julius to eliminate the latter's competition by blowing them up and then becoming Julius' fifty-fifty partner. Flynn needs money and guns so that he can leave London. Julius buys into Flynn's offer because Flynn plans to knock off the first of Julius' competitors for free. Meanwhile, Julius forces Johnny—because of his experience working for an apothecary—to cut his drugs. Flynn winds up cutting the drugs and he displays his particular brand of cruelty in the amounts that he cuts.
Eventually, everything is settled in a blaze of gunfire and explosions with what appears to be the entire equivalent of the London Swat teams surrounding hero and villain at a trail station. Just to keep you on your toes, the ending comes with a little surprise of its own. Mind you, there are some other surprises in "Johnny Was," and we even learn during a final fist-smashing fight between Flynn and Doyle what the significance of the title "Johnny Was" means.
Foley's screenplay suffers at times from clichés and stereotypes. For example, Johnny amounts to another one of those tortured heroes who wants to walk the straight and narrow, but he finds himself in unable to because of his old friends and unruly neighbors. Eventually, Johnny gets his wish, but outcome seems reminiscent of those gangsters that changed their stripes at the end of a 1930s movie. Johnny comes off as a fairly sympathetic hero. However, there is nothing sympathetic about either Patrick Bergin's Flynn or Eriq La Salle's vicious drug dealer. Bergin and La Salle deliver excellent, hard case performances, especially La Salle who plays a character that is 180 degrees different than his doctor in "E.R."
"Johnny Was" qualifies as strictly minor league stuff, done with some assurance by Hammond, especially the gunfights, and featuring all-around solid performances by a convincing cast. You won't feel bad about watching this Vinnie Jones movie.
Freshman helmer Mark Hammond manages to keep things moving at a fast pace in this Irish-produced, crime thriller about a group of oddball thugs that circumstances bring together in a London flat. Hammond's fellow Irishman Brendan Foley penned this slightly better-than-average yarn about a former Irish-Republican Army bomber Johnny Doyle (Vinnie Jones) trying to lay low for the last five years despite his unusual, obstreperous neighbors. Unfortunately, Doyle has chosen the worse safe place to conceal himself. He lives beneath a noisy, pirate radio station run by a Rastafarian disc jockey named Ras (former boxer Lennox Lewis) and above a well-dressed but ruthless Jamaican drug dealer Julius (Eriq La Salle of NBC's "E.R.") with a beautiful junkie girlfriend Rita (Samantha Mumba of "The Time Machine" remake) who was briefly once a nurse. During his illegal broadcasts, Ras condemns the bondage that narcotics holds his people in, while he puffs on his marihuana. Meanwhile, Doyle suffers from nightmares about his last terrorist bombing. The memory of his unsuccessful effort to save the life of an innocent female painter haunts him and drives him into hiding.
Were these complications not enough, our quasi-hero of sorts finds himself up to his neck in problems when his sadistic mentor Flynn (Patrick Bergin of "Sleeping with the Enemy") and Flynn's latest protégé Michael (Laurence Kinlan of "Ned Kelly") show up on his doorstep after having escaped from Brixton Prison with the cops searching everywhere for him. Flynn is an old-school IRA terrorist who considers innocent bystanders suffering from his bombings as little more than "collateral damage." During the escape, Michael injured his ankle so he spends a lot of time in bed in pain with nurse Rita attending to him. Of course, the jealous Jamaican is none too pleased with this relationship, but Johnny has enough nerve and muscle to keep the lethal drug dealer in line.
Just when things appear to be spiraling down for the worse, Flynn makes a deal with Julius to eliminate the latter's competition by blowing them up and then becoming Julius' fifty-fifty partner. Flynn needs money and guns so that he can leave London. Julius buys into Flynn's offer because Flynn plans to knock off the first of Julius' competitors for free. Meanwhile, Julius forces Johnny—because of his experience working for an apothecary—to cut his drugs. Flynn winds up cutting the drugs and he displays his particular brand of cruelty in the amounts that he cuts.
Eventually, everything is settled in a blaze of gunfire and explosions with what appears to be the entire equivalent of the London Swat teams surrounding hero and villain at a trail station. Just to keep you on your toes, the ending comes with a little surprise of its own. Mind you, there are some other surprises in "Johnny Was," and we even learn during a final fist-smashing fight between Flynn and Doyle what the significance of the title "Johnny Was" means.
Foley's screenplay suffers at times from clichés and stereotypes. For example, Johnny amounts to another one of those tortured heroes who wants to walk the straight and narrow, but he finds himself in unable to because of his old friends and unruly neighbors. Eventually, Johnny gets his wish, but outcome seems reminiscent of those gangsters that changed their stripes at the end of a 1930s movie. Johnny comes off as a fairly sympathetic hero. However, there is nothing sympathetic about either Patrick Bergin's Flynn or Eriq La Salle's vicious drug dealer. Bergin and La Salle deliver excellent, hard case performances, especially La Salle who plays a character that is 180 degrees different than his doctor in "E.R."
"Johnny Was" qualifies as strictly minor league stuff, done with some assurance by Hammond, especially the gunfights, and featuring all-around solid performances by a convincing cast. You won't feel bad about watching this Vinnie Jones movie.
FILM REVIEW OF ''K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER" (2002)
You have to wonder what Harrison Ford had on his mind when he decided to produce and star in the new Cold War submarine saga "K-19: The Widowmaker." Clearly, this catastrophic but conventional expose about a true-life incident in 1961, suppressed by the Kremlin until 1989, boasts everything anybody could hope for in a gripping disaster epic. During their historic maiden voyage on the first Soviet nuclear sub, the skipper and crew struggle desperately to repair the cooling system in its reactor after it repeatedly breaks down. Happily, the Soviet skipper and crew of K-19 solved this crisis before a cataclysmic thermonuclear blast could have vaporized them and triggered World War III. Not since Lewis Milestone's "The North Star" (1943) or Jacques Tourneur's "Days of Glory" (1944) has Hollywood celebrated the Communist exploits of the Soviet Union in such a heightened heroic fashion. The zombies of Joseph McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, and anyone who championed the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s would rise from the dead and lynch the treasonous liberal revisionists who financed this better Red than dead yarn. Indeed, while this competently crafted, historically accurate, white-knuckled, undersea thriller won't win any Oscars, the filmmakers reveal a facet of the Cold War that few knew.
Cross the Gene Hackman & Denzel Washington submarine nail-biter "Crimson Tide" (1995) with the Jack Lemmon & Jane Fonda nuclear meltdown melodrama "The China Syndrome" (1979), and you have a pretty good idea what to expect from Christopher Kyle's testosterone-fueled screenplay. "K-19" opens as the Soviets commission their first atomic sub, so they can show the Kennedy administration that they can launch nuclear missiles at sea, too. Before the Russians take K-19 to sea, several construction workers die during freak accidents. Worse, the Kremlin replaces the commander, Capt. Mikhail Polenin (Liam Neeson of "Star Wars: Episode One"), with legendary Capt. Alexei Vostrikov (Harrison Ford of "Air Force One"), and this last minute change of command enrages an already superstitious crew. Meanwhile, Vostrikov ignores bad omens galore, like the champagne bottle bouncing off the hull rather than shattering at the christening, and sets out to chart history. Not long after they dive beneath the waves, Vostrikov learns K-19 is far from being ship-shape. Nevertheless, like the Hackman skipper in "Crimson Tide," Vostrikov runs his crew ragged with drills to sharpen their response time to emergencies. Suddenly, the worse thing that can happen occurs--the nuclear reactor overheats. Valiantly, the crew manages to cool the reactor. Not long afterward, however, the reactor blows another gasket, and the submariners stage a mutiny as a U.S. Navy destroyer lurks on the horizon.
Director Kathryn Bigelow, whose credits include "Near Dark" (1987) and "Strange Days" (1995), adroitly piles one suspenseful situation atop another. Sixty-year old Harrison Ford makes a convincing but sympathetic Russian naval officer who refuses to scuttle the flagship of the Soviet fleet. Miraculously, despite its noble depiction of our former adversaries, "K -19: The Widowmaker" (*** out of ****) manages to keep you on the edge of your seat for most of its lengthy 138 minutes.
Cross the Gene Hackman & Denzel Washington submarine nail-biter "Crimson Tide" (1995) with the Jack Lemmon & Jane Fonda nuclear meltdown melodrama "The China Syndrome" (1979), and you have a pretty good idea what to expect from Christopher Kyle's testosterone-fueled screenplay. "K-19" opens as the Soviets commission their first atomic sub, so they can show the Kennedy administration that they can launch nuclear missiles at sea, too. Before the Russians take K-19 to sea, several construction workers die during freak accidents. Worse, the Kremlin replaces the commander, Capt. Mikhail Polenin (Liam Neeson of "Star Wars: Episode One"), with legendary Capt. Alexei Vostrikov (Harrison Ford of "Air Force One"), and this last minute change of command enrages an already superstitious crew. Meanwhile, Vostrikov ignores bad omens galore, like the champagne bottle bouncing off the hull rather than shattering at the christening, and sets out to chart history. Not long after they dive beneath the waves, Vostrikov learns K-19 is far from being ship-shape. Nevertheless, like the Hackman skipper in "Crimson Tide," Vostrikov runs his crew ragged with drills to sharpen their response time to emergencies. Suddenly, the worse thing that can happen occurs--the nuclear reactor overheats. Valiantly, the crew manages to cool the reactor. Not long afterward, however, the reactor blows another gasket, and the submariners stage a mutiny as a U.S. Navy destroyer lurks on the horizon.
Director Kathryn Bigelow, whose credits include "Near Dark" (1987) and "Strange Days" (1995), adroitly piles one suspenseful situation atop another. Sixty-year old Harrison Ford makes a convincing but sympathetic Russian naval officer who refuses to scuttle the flagship of the Soviet fleet. Miraculously, despite its noble depiction of our former adversaries, "K -19: The Widowmaker" (*** out of ****) manages to keep you on the edge of your seat for most of its lengthy 138 minutes.
FILM REVIEW OF ''JAWS OF SATAN'' (1981)
The best thing about "Jaws of Satan" aka "King Cobra" are the snakes.
This bottom of the barrel horror movie grafts together the plot from
"Jaws" and "The Exorcist." Satan slithers into a rural Alabama town
where a race dog track is going to open and starts killing the
residents. Seems that the hooded cobra has eyes for Fritz Weaver's
doubting Catholic priest. Gretchen Corbett plays a m.d. who wants to
get to the bottom of the mystery. Veteran character actor Norman Lloyd
has a brief role as an older priest. This movie flopped big-time, and
like somebody else said here, the director Bob Claver made this his
only theatrical film. Not bad enough to be funny, just bad enough to be
bad. When I was a TV news reporter working in Columbus, Mississippi, I
got to interview Weaver and a couple of the crew while they were making
this dogie across the line in Eutaw, Alabama. As a matter of fact,
Eutaw had had a dog racing track. Most of the film was shot on
location, too, and that antebellum house is the real deal. What I most
remember about reporting on this movie was the snakes. They used real
snakes and they didn't put Plexiglas between the actors and the snakes,
because the snake wrangler somehow convinced them not to worry. Anyway,
a real stinker. Again, like somebody else said, the rattlesnake in the
bathtub was a letdown scene. All the shots of the snakes still look
great, especially the king cobra's close-up. Talk about a snake-bit
movie.
This bottom of the barrel horror movie grafts together the plot from
"Jaws" and "The Exorcist." Satan slithers into a rural Alabama town
where a race dog track is going to open and starts killing the
residents. Seems that the hooded cobra has eyes for Fritz Weaver's
doubting Catholic priest. Gretchen Corbett plays a m.d. who wants to
get to the bottom of the mystery. Veteran character actor Norman Lloyd
has a brief role as an older priest. This movie flopped big-time, and
like somebody else said here, the director Bob Claver made this his
only theatrical film. Not bad enough to be funny, just bad enough to be
bad. When I was a TV news reporter working in Columbus, Mississippi, I
got to interview Weaver and a couple of the crew while they were making
this dogie across the line in Eutaw, Alabama. As a matter of fact,
Eutaw had had a dog racing track. Most of the film was shot on
location, too, and that antebellum house is the real deal. What I most
remember about reporting on this movie was the snakes. They used real
snakes and they didn't put Plexiglas between the actors and the snakes,
because the snake wrangler somehow convinced them not to worry. Anyway,
a real stinker. Again, like somebody else said, the rattlesnake in the
bathtub was a letdown scene. All the shots of the snakes still look
great, especially the king cobra's close-up. Talk about a snake-bit
movie.
FILM REVIEW OF ''KING KONG'' (2005)
You would think after making the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy—surely the most gargantuan undertaking in Hollywood history—that Oscar-winning director Peter Jackson could be relied upon to produce a superior remake of the legendary, 101-minute classic adventure movie "King Kong" (1933) than director John Guillerman's 135 minute, modern-day "King Kong" (1976) remake. Sadly, what should have happened does not! "King Kong" (no stars out of ****) the third time around amounts to the biggest pile of monkey shines since the hilariously outrageous Kong parody "The Mighty Gorga" (1969) with Anthony Eisley. Although Universal Studios will undoubtedly recoup their bucks from this blatantly bad banana peel of a movie, they will have to keep their public relations people scurrying like baboons 24/7 to ensure that this time-consuming 3-hour & 7-minute, $300 million slip-up turns a profit. Indeed, Jackson retains the Depression-Era setting of the original, but he wastes at least 90 minutes on stuff that could have been cut without harming the dramatic impact. Worse, the remake does not fix lapses in credibility that the original "King Kong" got away with because audiences in the 1930s were not as savvy as today's moviegoers. Transporting King Kong from Skull Island back to New York was the chief problem that the movie ignored. In the modern-day "King Kong," the oil company locked the giant ape up inside a supertanker and shipped him back to New York. Essentially, the story remains the same: a band of adventurers take a tramp steamer to an uncharted island. They discover primitive islanders who sacrifice virgins to a humongous 25 foot ape. When the islanders catch a glimpse of the nubile white maiden among the while men, they kidnap her, offer her as a sacrifice to King Kong, and our heroes plunge into the interior to rescue her.
Basically, Peter Jackson's "King Kong" collapses under the weight of too many characters, too much plot, and second-rate special effects. Not only do the actors clearly appear green-screened into scenes featuring stampeding dinosaurs and elaborate miniature sets (the integration of live actors with artificial footage is far from seamless), but also the special effects background shots resemble those cheap, paint-by-the-numbers, watercolor kits. While Guillerman's "King Kong" (that starred Jeff Bridges and launched Jessica Lange to stardom) took a critical drubbing, it stands head and shoulders above Jackson's ape-solutely awful rehash. Even the campy Japanese movies: "King Kong Vs. Godzilla" (1963) and "King Kong Escapes" (1967) are more entertaining. Surprisingly, despite several scenes of intense violence, the Motion Picture Association of America gave the new "King Kong" a family friendly PG-13 rating. Mind you, adolescent boys have always loved dinosaurs duking it out. Nevertheless, one scene teems with antennae-twitching, creepy-crawlers that would send anybody off on a super bug-spray shopping spree. The most reviling scene in this mind-numbing marathon of mediocrity occurs when enormous earthworms attack a sailor. These long slimy, egg-roll brown mutants sprout large bubble-gum pink heads wreathed with razor-sharp white fangs. In a graphic long shot, one icky earthworm attaches itself to the head of a man and sucks him up inside its mouth. Nothing like this happened in either the original "King Kong" or the 1976 modern-day remake and its 1986 sequel "King Kong Lives."
Jackson and co-scenarists Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy violate the first rule of remakes: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. First, they convert action hero Jack Driscoll (Oscar-winner Adrien Brody of "The Pianist") into a Federal Theater playwright. Second, they add a surplus of new unnecessary characters. One pointless subplot involves an adult African-American ship's lieutenant and a young white sailor. The new "Kong" also adds matinée-idol movie star Bruce Baxter (Kyle Chandler of "Mulholland Falls") and turns the Skull Island natives into scary "Lord of the Rings" type cannibals. These bloodthirsty primitives are especially disgusting with their mutilated faces and milky-white eyes. Third, Skull Island itself looks like something from a surreal comic book with giant rocks shaped like gorilla heads while thousands of skeletons litter the landscape like something out of the 1984 movie "The Killing Fields" that depicted the carnage in Cambodia under Pol Pot's murderous regime. Jackson shoots all this in a semi-documentary style to sicken us. The phony-looking mammoth wall that separates the village from the island interior here looks like a poor poultry-wire model. "Ring" horror movie beauty Naomi Watts takes over the role of Ann Darrow created by Fay Wray in the original. Watts has a different kind of relationship with Kong. She cannot figure out whether she fears Kong or pities him. In two scenes, she performs vaudeville routines, juggling rocks and turning cartwheels, to amuse the big ape. Not even the fabulous Empire State Building finale can salvage this overripe remake. Despite its primitive movie-making effects, the original "King Kong" proved a magical experience for bewitched Depression-Era audiences that had never seen anything like it. The long-winded, unwieldy, new remake focuses more on mayhem than magic. The dinosaurs pale by comparison with those in the "Jurassic Park" trilogy. Altogether, you'll have more fun watching the black & white 1933 original or the Technicolor 1976 remake than Jackson's bloated, over-hyped hokum.
This comment refers to the theatrical release.
Basically, Peter Jackson's "King Kong" collapses under the weight of too many characters, too much plot, and second-rate special effects. Not only do the actors clearly appear green-screened into scenes featuring stampeding dinosaurs and elaborate miniature sets (the integration of live actors with artificial footage is far from seamless), but also the special effects background shots resemble those cheap, paint-by-the-numbers, watercolor kits. While Guillerman's "King Kong" (that starred Jeff Bridges and launched Jessica Lange to stardom) took a critical drubbing, it stands head and shoulders above Jackson's ape-solutely awful rehash. Even the campy Japanese movies: "King Kong Vs. Godzilla" (1963) and "King Kong Escapes" (1967) are more entertaining. Surprisingly, despite several scenes of intense violence, the Motion Picture Association of America gave the new "King Kong" a family friendly PG-13 rating. Mind you, adolescent boys have always loved dinosaurs duking it out. Nevertheless, one scene teems with antennae-twitching, creepy-crawlers that would send anybody off on a super bug-spray shopping spree. The most reviling scene in this mind-numbing marathon of mediocrity occurs when enormous earthworms attack a sailor. These long slimy, egg-roll brown mutants sprout large bubble-gum pink heads wreathed with razor-sharp white fangs. In a graphic long shot, one icky earthworm attaches itself to the head of a man and sucks him up inside its mouth. Nothing like this happened in either the original "King Kong" or the 1976 modern-day remake and its 1986 sequel "King Kong Lives."
Jackson and co-scenarists Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy violate the first rule of remakes: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. First, they convert action hero Jack Driscoll (Oscar-winner Adrien Brody of "The Pianist") into a Federal Theater playwright. Second, they add a surplus of new unnecessary characters. One pointless subplot involves an adult African-American ship's lieutenant and a young white sailor. The new "Kong" also adds matinée-idol movie star Bruce Baxter (Kyle Chandler of "Mulholland Falls") and turns the Skull Island natives into scary "Lord of the Rings" type cannibals. These bloodthirsty primitives are especially disgusting with their mutilated faces and milky-white eyes. Third, Skull Island itself looks like something from a surreal comic book with giant rocks shaped like gorilla heads while thousands of skeletons litter the landscape like something out of the 1984 movie "The Killing Fields" that depicted the carnage in Cambodia under Pol Pot's murderous regime. Jackson shoots all this in a semi-documentary style to sicken us. The phony-looking mammoth wall that separates the village from the island interior here looks like a poor poultry-wire model. "Ring" horror movie beauty Naomi Watts takes over the role of Ann Darrow created by Fay Wray in the original. Watts has a different kind of relationship with Kong. She cannot figure out whether she fears Kong or pities him. In two scenes, she performs vaudeville routines, juggling rocks and turning cartwheels, to amuse the big ape. Not even the fabulous Empire State Building finale can salvage this overripe remake. Despite its primitive movie-making effects, the original "King Kong" proved a magical experience for bewitched Depression-Era audiences that had never seen anything like it. The long-winded, unwieldy, new remake focuses more on mayhem than magic. The dinosaurs pale by comparison with those in the "Jurassic Park" trilogy. Altogether, you'll have more fun watching the black & white 1933 original or the Technicolor 1976 remake than Jackson's bloated, over-hyped hokum.
This comment refers to the theatrical release.
FILM REVIEW OF ''LAST OF THE BAD MEN" (1957)
This half-baked horse opera about a gang of murderous villains that spring wanted men from hoosegows and then use them as front men when they commit crimes short-changes a clever premise and a solid cast of western veterans. The first fellow that they liberate from a frontier lock-up turns out to be a Chandler Detective Agency operative posing as a notorious outlaw. Such is their obsession with maintaining secrecy about their identities that these dastards display no qualms about killing either the jailers or anybody for that matter who may later recognize them. When this well-organized gang of thieves and killers stage their robberies, they wear bandannas over their faces, but they force their front men to appear barefaced, so the bounty on their heads escalates with each offense. When the bounty reaches an arbitrary dollar figure, the treacherous villains gun him down and collect the reward. Not only does the Chicago-based Chandler Detective Agency want to avenge the murder of one of their own agents, but they also plan to learn the identity of the criminal mastermind who keeps his identity a closely guarded secret from most of his accomplices.
Squared-jawed George Montgomery of "The Riders of the Purple Sage" is appropriately clean-shaven and virile as intrepid hero Dan Barton who risks life and limb to infiltrate and smash the gang as well as smoke out the criminal genius behind their wickedness. When Allied Artists released "Last of the Bad Men" in 1957, many urban crime thrillers of the late 1940s and the 1950s had relied on the gimmick of a voice-over narrator to enhance the authenticity of the action by supplying audiences with many facts that the filmmakers had previously depicted on screen. The elaborately detailed and wholly superfluous narrator in "Last of the Bad Men" sounds like a sports commentator. Virtually everything that he comments about is self-explanatory. Essentially, "Last of the Bad Men" has a "Dragnet" quality with its overabundance of facts. Unfortunately, while the narrator may bolster the so-called realism, he becomes extremely annoying at the same time. "MST3K" could have had a field day with this standard-issue oater.
Scenarists David T. Chantler and David B. Ullman penned the formulaic screenplay and it gets off to a decent enough start, but the plot unravels in the third act after the gang has broken out yet another jailbird, Kramer (Michael Ansara), a genuine owl-hoot unlike either Barton or his unfortunate predecessor. Chantler and Ullman were writing partners who specialized in television, but they collaborated on "Face of a Fugitive" (1959) a Frank MacMurray western. Principally, things go awry when the suspicious desperados try to flush out our hero after they have captured another Chandler Detective Agency operative, Roberts (Keith Larsen of "War Paint"), who had been keeping tabs on our cool-headed protagonist while the villains are holed up between jobs on a ranch behaving as if they were law-abiding cowboys. Once the wily outlaw gang takes Barton as their quasi-prisoner, they keep him on a short leash. He isn't allowed to retain his revolver after a crime. Meaning, he cannot go anywhere without arousing their suspicions. Barton tries to contact a fellow Chandler Detective one evening and is nearly caught. Meanwhile, he sets about cultivating a friendship with another gang member who the others have come to regard as their weakest link. James Best of "The Dukes of Hazzard" stands out as a hapless cowboy-gone-bad by poor economic conditions that prompted him to turn to rustling cattle. Why the bad guys recruited him as a member of their elite gang is never sufficiently explained, just another of the flaws in the Chantler & Ullman screenplay. Meanwhile, director Paul Landres tries to generate suspense as the price on Barton's head rises while the gang frees yet another felon from jail. Indeed, as Barton's fate hangs in the balance, the Chandler Detective Agency grows even more alarmed. Nevertheless, we know there isn't chance Barton will bite the dust. Eventually, the bad guys discover Roberts is a Chandler Detective, and they offer Barton a chance to prove that he isn't a detective himself if he will gun down Roberts in cold blood. Suffice to say Barton wiggles out of this corner far too easily. A variety of veteran western character actors flesh out of the cast, among them Douglas Kennedy, John Doucette, Robert Foulk, Willis Bouchey, and Michael Ansara, later of TV's "The Westerners." Decked out in a pink dance-hall dress, Meg Randall is the only female in sight, and she is strictly a supporting cast member.Squared-jawed George Montgomery of "The Riders of the Purple Sage" is appropriately clean-shaven and virile as intrepid hero Dan Barton who risks life and limb to infiltrate and smash the gang as well as smoke out the criminal genius behind their wickedness. When Allied Artists released "Last of the Bad Men" in 1957, many urban crime thrillers of the late 1940s and the 1950s had relied on the gimmick of a voice-over narrator to enhance the authenticity of the action by supplying audiences with many facts that the filmmakers had previously depicted on screen. The elaborately detailed and wholly superfluous narrator in "Last of the Bad Men" sounds like a sports commentator. Virtually everything that he comments about is self-explanatory. Essentially, "Last of the Bad Men" has a "Dragnet" quality with its overabundance of facts. Unfortunately, while the narrator may bolster the so-called realism, he becomes extremely annoying at the same time. "MST3K" could have had a field day with this standard-issue oater.
Scenarists David T. Chantler and David B. Ullman penned the formulaic screenplay and it gets off to a decent enough start, but the plot unravels in the third act after the gang has broken out yet another jailbird, Kramer (Michael Ansara), a genuine owl-hoot unlike either Barton or his unfortunate predecessor. Chantler and Ullman were writing partners who specialized in television, but they collaborated on "Face of a Fugitive" (1959) a Frank MacMurray western. Principally, things go awry when the suspicious desperados try to flush out our hero after they have captured another Chandler Detective Agency operative, Roberts (Keith Larsen of "War Paint"), who had been keeping tabs on our cool-headed protagonist while the villains are holed up between jobs on a ranch behaving as if they were law-abiding cowboys. Once the wily outlaw gang takes Barton as their quasi-prisoner, they keep him on a short leash. He isn't allowed to retain his revolver after a crime. Meaning, he cannot go anywhere without arousing their suspicions. Barton tries to contact a fellow Chandler Detective one evening and is nearly caught. Meanwhile, he sets about cultivating a friendship with another gang member who the others have come to regard as their weakest link. James Best of "The Dukes of Hazzard" stands out as a hapless cowboy-gone-bad by poor economic conditions that prompted him to turn to rustling cattle. Why the bad guys recruited him as a member of their elite gang is never sufficiently explained, just another of the flaws in the Chantler & Ullman screenplay. Meanwhile, director Paul Landres tries to generate suspense as the price on Barton's head rises while the gang frees yet another felon from jail. Indeed, as Barton's fate hangs in the balance, the Chandler Detective Agency grows even more alarmed. Nevertheless, we know there isn't chance Barton will bite the dust. Eventually, the bad guys discover Roberts is a Chandler Detective, and they offer Barton a chance to prove that he isn't a detective himself if he will gun down Roberts in cold blood. Suffice to say Barton wiggles out of this corner far too easily. A variety of veteran western character actors flesh out of the cast, among them Douglas Kennedy, John Doucette, Robert Foulk, Willis Bouchey, and Michael Ansara, later of TV's "The Westerners." Decked out in a pink dance-hall dress, Meg Randall is the only female in sight, and she is strictly a supporting cast member.
Veteran TV director Paul Landres keeps the action moving along swiftly enough (it's only 79 minutes) with the inevitable western town shoot-out at the end that reveals the identity of the chief villain. If the earlier scene where Barton got out of a tough spot weren't mediocre, the ending where the bad guy gets revealed is unintentionally awful. Anybody in their right mind would have cleared out of town long before he got caught in a lie by his fellow townspeople. At least, Chantler and Ullman plant a minor red herring, but savvy moviegoers will spot the dead giveaway moment long before the chief villain receives his comeuppance. "Last of the Bad Men" is at best fair as westerns go, but inferior as a mystery. Ellsworth Fredericks' Deluxe Color, widescreen Cinemascope photography makes this drab dustraiser look better than it really should have. Fredericks' credits include the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and "Seven Days in May."
Squared-jawed George Montgomery of "The Riders of the Purple Sage" is appropriately clean-shaven and virile as intrepid hero Dan Barton who risks life and limb to infiltrate and smash the gang as well as smoke out the criminal genius behind their wickedness. When Allied Artists released "Last of the Bad Men" in 1957, many urban crime thrillers of the late 1940s and the 1950s had relied on the gimmick of a voice-over narrator to enhance the authenticity of the action by supplying audiences with many facts that the filmmakers had previously depicted on screen. The elaborately detailed and wholly superfluous narrator in "Last of the Bad Men" sounds like a sports commentator. Virtually everything that he comments about is self-explanatory. Essentially, "Last of the Bad Men" has a "Dragnet" quality with its overabundance of facts. Unfortunately, while the narrator may bolster the so-called realism, he becomes extremely annoying at the same time. "MST3K" could have had a field day with this standard-issue oater.
Scenarists David T. Chantler and David B. Ullman penned the formulaic screenplay and it gets off to a decent enough start, but the plot unravels in the third act after the gang has broken out yet another jailbird, Kramer (Michael Ansara), a genuine owl-hoot unlike either Barton or his unfortunate predecessor. Chantler and Ullman were writing partners who specialized in television, but they collaborated on "Face of a Fugitive" (1959) a Frank MacMurray western. Principally, things go awry when the suspicious desperados try to flush out our hero after they have captured another Chandler Detective Agency operative, Roberts (Keith Larsen of "War Paint"), who had been keeping tabs on our cool-headed protagonist while the villains are holed up between jobs on a ranch behaving as if they were law-abiding cowboys. Once the wily outlaw gang takes Barton as their quasi-prisoner, they keep him on a short leash. He isn't allowed to retain his revolver after a crime. Meaning, he cannot go anywhere without arousing their suspicions. Barton tries to contact a fellow Chandler Detective one evening and is nearly caught. Meanwhile, he sets about cultivating a friendship with another gang member who the others have come to regard as their weakest link. James Best of "The Dukes of Hazzard" stands out as a hapless cowboy-gone-bad by poor economic conditions that prompted him to turn to rustling cattle. Why the bad guys recruited him as a member of their elite gang is never sufficiently explained, just another of the flaws in the Chantler & Ullman screenplay. Meanwhile, director Paul Landres tries to generate suspense as the price on Barton's head rises while the gang frees yet another felon from jail. Indeed, as Barton's fate hangs in the balance, the Chandler Detective Agency grows even more alarmed. Nevertheless, we know there isn't chance Barton will bite the dust. Eventually, the bad guys discover Roberts is a Chandler Detective, and they offer Barton a chance to prove that he isn't a detective himself if he will gun down Roberts in cold blood. Suffice to say Barton wiggles out of this corner far too easily. A variety of veteran western character actors flesh out of the cast, among them Douglas Kennedy, John Doucette, Robert Foulk, Willis Bouchey, and Michael Ansara, later of TV's "The Westerners." Decked out in a pink dance-hall dress, Meg Randall is the only female in sight, and she is strictly a supporting cast member.Squared-jawed George Montgomery of "The Riders of the Purple Sage" is appropriately clean-shaven and virile as intrepid hero Dan Barton who risks life and limb to infiltrate and smash the gang as well as smoke out the criminal genius behind their wickedness. When Allied Artists released "Last of the Bad Men" in 1957, many urban crime thrillers of the late 1940s and the 1950s had relied on the gimmick of a voice-over narrator to enhance the authenticity of the action by supplying audiences with many facts that the filmmakers had previously depicted on screen. The elaborately detailed and wholly superfluous narrator in "Last of the Bad Men" sounds like a sports commentator. Virtually everything that he comments about is self-explanatory. Essentially, "Last of the Bad Men" has a "Dragnet" quality with its overabundance of facts. Unfortunately, while the narrator may bolster the so-called realism, he becomes extremely annoying at the same time. "MST3K" could have had a field day with this standard-issue oater.
Scenarists David T. Chantler and David B. Ullman penned the formulaic screenplay and it gets off to a decent enough start, but the plot unravels in the third act after the gang has broken out yet another jailbird, Kramer (Michael Ansara), a genuine owl-hoot unlike either Barton or his unfortunate predecessor. Chantler and Ullman were writing partners who specialized in television, but they collaborated on "Face of a Fugitive" (1959) a Frank MacMurray western. Principally, things go awry when the suspicious desperados try to flush out our hero after they have captured another Chandler Detective Agency operative, Roberts (Keith Larsen of "War Paint"), who had been keeping tabs on our cool-headed protagonist while the villains are holed up between jobs on a ranch behaving as if they were law-abiding cowboys. Once the wily outlaw gang takes Barton as their quasi-prisoner, they keep him on a short leash. He isn't allowed to retain his revolver after a crime. Meaning, he cannot go anywhere without arousing their suspicions. Barton tries to contact a fellow Chandler Detective one evening and is nearly caught. Meanwhile, he sets about cultivating a friendship with another gang member who the others have come to regard as their weakest link. James Best of "The Dukes of Hazzard" stands out as a hapless cowboy-gone-bad by poor economic conditions that prompted him to turn to rustling cattle. Why the bad guys recruited him as a member of their elite gang is never sufficiently explained, just another of the flaws in the Chantler & Ullman screenplay. Meanwhile, director Paul Landres tries to generate suspense as the price on Barton's head rises while the gang frees yet another felon from jail. Indeed, as Barton's fate hangs in the balance, the Chandler Detective Agency grows even more alarmed. Nevertheless, we know there isn't chance Barton will bite the dust. Eventually, the bad guys discover Roberts is a Chandler Detective, and they offer Barton a chance to prove that he isn't a detective himself if he will gun down Roberts in cold blood. Suffice to say Barton wiggles out of this corner far too easily. A variety of veteran western character actors flesh out of the cast, among them Douglas Kennedy, John Doucette, Robert Foulk, Willis Bouchey, and Michael Ansara, later of TV's "The Westerners." Decked out in a pink dance-hall dress, Meg Randall is the only female in sight, and she is strictly a supporting cast member.
Veteran TV director Paul Landres keeps the action moving along swiftly enough (it's only 79 minutes) with the inevitable western town shoot-out at the end that reveals the identity of the chief villain. If the earlier scene where Barton got out of a tough spot weren't mediocre, the ending where the bad guy gets revealed is unintentionally awful. Anybody in their right mind would have cleared out of town long before he got caught in a lie by his fellow townspeople. At least, Chantler and Ullman plant a minor red herring, but savvy moviegoers will spot the dead giveaway moment long before the chief villain receives his comeuppance. "Last of the Bad Men" is at best fair as westerns go, but inferior as a mystery. Ellsworth Fredericks' Deluxe Color, widescreen Cinemascope photography makes this drab dustraiser look better than it really should have. Fredericks' credits include the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and "Seven Days in May."
FILM REVIEW OF ''LAST OF THE COMANCHES'' (1953)
Director Andre De Toth's cavalry versus the Indians western "Last of the Comanches" (*** out of ****) with Broderick Crawford and Lloyd Bridges qualifies as a first-rate remake of the classic World War II propaganda war film "Sahara" (1943) that starred Humphrey Bogart and Lloyd Bridges. Calling "Last of the Comanches" a carbon copy of "Sahara" stretches the resemblance between the films almost to the breaking point. There is nobody in "Comanches" that looks like the Italian soldier and the German soldier that ride on the tank with Bogart and company. Further, "Comanches" is more realistic in terms of what happens. Everybody in this western could have been there, but there is some question that an American tank and its crew played the role that they did in what was essentially a British theatre of operation. For example, Columbia—the same studio that produced "Comanches"—never explained how the crew of the U.S. Army tank 'Lulu Belle' landed in North Africa six months before the U.S. actually landed in Morocco. In fact, scenarist Kenneth Gamet of "The Stranger Wore A Gun" goes to great lengths to ensure the accuracy of the date—1876—in the opening credit narration where tough Sgt. Crawford compares their holding exploits against the Indians with Custer's Last Stand that occurred in 1876. The other major difference is that no African-Americans appear in "Comanches" while there was one in "Sahara." However, "Comanches" sticks to the same basic plot—a survival saga set in inhospitable surroundings with a numerically superior enemy force waiting to massacre the good guys.
"Last of the Comanches" opens with Sergeant Matt Trainor (Broderick Crawford of "Born Yesterday") and five other cavalry troopers who survive a massive Comanche attack led by the infamous Chief Black Cloud (John War Eagle of "They Rode West") on the isolated frontier town of Dry Buttes. No sooner has the action unfolded than our heroes find themselves in peril. There is a really nice looking matte painting of Dry Buttes in ruins after the savages stampeded a horse herd through the town, incinerated everything in sight, and left most everybody for dead. Low on water, Sgt. Turner rallies his soldiers—among them "Sea Hunt's" Lloyd Bridges and "Adam-12's" Martin Milner--by reminding them that they are still soldiers and the maintenance of military discipline is the only thing that will ensure their survival. They set out on a 100 mile journey to the closest settlement, Fort Macklin, through craggy terrain thriving with redskins and low on water.
Along the way, they encounter a stagecoach—nicknamed 'Buttercup'—with a lone female, Julie Lanning (Barbara Hale of TV's "Perry Mason"), whiskey drummer Henry Ruppert (Chubby Johnson of "Gunfire at Indian Gap"), former cavalry scout Satterlee the Prophet (Milton Parsons of "That Hagen Girl") and stagecoach driver O'Rattigan (George Matthews of "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral") and catch a ride on it. Later, they discover a suspicious white man in the desert Denver Kinnaird (Hugh Sanders of "The Last Command") for no apparent reason. Eventually, they discover that Kinnaird has been running guns to the redskins and Sgt. Trainor has Jim Starbuck (Lloyd Bridges) keep his eye on him. Starbuck doesn't have much use for Kinnaird because he cheated a fellow trooper out of money during a gambling hand. The last passenger that our heroes come across is a young Kiowa Indian boy, Little Knife (Johnny Stewart of "Boots Malone"), with whom they initially want nothing to do, but in a fit of conscience they let him join their ranks because Black Cloud is his enemy, too. Our heroes prospect for wells unsuccessfully until Little Knife appears, and he takes them 30 miles out of their way to a mission with a well. Black Cloud attacks them, but his superior numbers are no match for the lack of water. Trainor offers Black Cloud a deal, a cup of water for every repeating rifle, but the Indians refuse. Meanwhile, Turners sends Little Knife off to deliver a help message. Non-surprisingly, Little Knife gets through in the nick of time and our heroes are saving, but not before several of them bite the dust.
"Play Dirty" director De Toth does an outstanding job with "Last of the Comanches." Everybody emerges as a tangible character, not like the poorly drawn characters in De Toth's "The Stranger Wore A Gun." Broderick Crawford is at his commanding best, and it's interesting to see Martin Milner at this early stage in his Hollywood career. De Toth pulls off some cool looking visuals, such as Crawford and Bridges conferring with each other in silhouette during the last moments of sunlight. The camera-work when the cavalry excavate the well at the mission looks great, too. We are shown it from the perspective of the well as the troopers break through it. The multiple explosions that Crawford sets off when the Indians attack looks truly spectacular! Barbara Hale holds her own among the all male cast with expert marksmanship. Clocking in a 85 trim minutes, "Last of the Comanches" doesn't waste a moment on needless material. It's a cliché that the cavalry ride to their rescue at the end, but our heroes are pretty close to the end at that point. Surprisingly, for a 1950s western, "Last of the Comanches" piles up a rather high body count, something that most westerns held to a minimum.
"Last of the Comanches" opens with Sergeant Matt Trainor (Broderick Crawford of "Born Yesterday") and five other cavalry troopers who survive a massive Comanche attack led by the infamous Chief Black Cloud (John War Eagle of "They Rode West") on the isolated frontier town of Dry Buttes. No sooner has the action unfolded than our heroes find themselves in peril. There is a really nice looking matte painting of Dry Buttes in ruins after the savages stampeded a horse herd through the town, incinerated everything in sight, and left most everybody for dead. Low on water, Sgt. Turner rallies his soldiers—among them "Sea Hunt's" Lloyd Bridges and "Adam-12's" Martin Milner--by reminding them that they are still soldiers and the maintenance of military discipline is the only thing that will ensure their survival. They set out on a 100 mile journey to the closest settlement, Fort Macklin, through craggy terrain thriving with redskins and low on water.
Along the way, they encounter a stagecoach—nicknamed 'Buttercup'—with a lone female, Julie Lanning (Barbara Hale of TV's "Perry Mason"), whiskey drummer Henry Ruppert (Chubby Johnson of "Gunfire at Indian Gap"), former cavalry scout Satterlee the Prophet (Milton Parsons of "That Hagen Girl") and stagecoach driver O'Rattigan (George Matthews of "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral") and catch a ride on it. Later, they discover a suspicious white man in the desert Denver Kinnaird (Hugh Sanders of "The Last Command") for no apparent reason. Eventually, they discover that Kinnaird has been running guns to the redskins and Sgt. Trainor has Jim Starbuck (Lloyd Bridges) keep his eye on him. Starbuck doesn't have much use for Kinnaird because he cheated a fellow trooper out of money during a gambling hand. The last passenger that our heroes come across is a young Kiowa Indian boy, Little Knife (Johnny Stewart of "Boots Malone"), with whom they initially want nothing to do, but in a fit of conscience they let him join their ranks because Black Cloud is his enemy, too. Our heroes prospect for wells unsuccessfully until Little Knife appears, and he takes them 30 miles out of their way to a mission with a well. Black Cloud attacks them, but his superior numbers are no match for the lack of water. Trainor offers Black Cloud a deal, a cup of water for every repeating rifle, but the Indians refuse. Meanwhile, Turners sends Little Knife off to deliver a help message. Non-surprisingly, Little Knife gets through in the nick of time and our heroes are saving, but not before several of them bite the dust.
"Play Dirty" director De Toth does an outstanding job with "Last of the Comanches." Everybody emerges as a tangible character, not like the poorly drawn characters in De Toth's "The Stranger Wore A Gun." Broderick Crawford is at his commanding best, and it's interesting to see Martin Milner at this early stage in his Hollywood career. De Toth pulls off some cool looking visuals, such as Crawford and Bridges conferring with each other in silhouette during the last moments of sunlight. The camera-work when the cavalry excavate the well at the mission looks great, too. We are shown it from the perspective of the well as the troopers break through it. The multiple explosions that Crawford sets off when the Indians attack looks truly spectacular! Barbara Hale holds her own among the all male cast with expert marksmanship. Clocking in a 85 trim minutes, "Last of the Comanches" doesn't waste a moment on needless material. It's a cliché that the cavalry ride to their rescue at the end, but our heroes are pretty close to the end at that point. Surprisingly, for a 1950s western, "Last of the Comanches" piles up a rather high body count, something that most westerns held to a minimum.
FILM REVIEW OF ''THE LAW AND JAKE WADE" (1958)
The John Sturges western "The Law and Jake Wade" (*** out of ****) is a solidly made, entertaining 1950's era oater that stands out as one of the earliest 'take-me-to-the-buried-treasure' plots. Indeed, Robert Taylor is rather wooden as Jake Wade, but after all, Taylor is the hero and Wade is a lawman who represents the status quo. Richard Widmark said in an interview that he thought the movie was bad but he enjoyed the character of villainous Clint Hollister. The cast is uniformly excellent,especially De Forest Kelly with his Southern drawl and Henry Silva as the crazed kid Rennie. Aside from one obvious studio bound scene around a night camp fire, this western was filmed in the rugged outdoors at Lone Pine, California, and in Death Valley.
"The Law and Jake Wade" opens traditionally with a lone horseman riding through scenic terrain until he enters a clapboard western town and reins up in front of a marshal's office. Quietly, Jake Wade (Robert Taylor of "Quo Vadis") dismounts and walks into the office and thrusts the muzzle of a shotgun into the lawman's back. Clint Hollister (Richard Widmark of "Kiss of Death") is lounging in the calaboose when he spots Jake with a shotgun in the marshal's back. "Well, who'd have thought," he marvels as his old friend forces the lawman to unlock the cell. Hollister complains about the terrible food that he has been served and slugs the lawman, knocking him out cold. As he is buckling on his gun belt, two deputies walk in unexpectedly, and he cuts loose on them with lead. Jake Wade, who has been trying to get them both out of town with the least amount of commotion, knocks the gun out of Clint's hand. They ride out with the townspeople firing shots at them. As it turns out, Jake and Clint once rode together as partners in crime. Their lawless days came to an end when Jake thought that he had gunned down an innocent child during a daylight robbery. Jake took the loot from the robbery and never looked back. Indeed, he rode away and buried the money and then created a new life for himself. Now, he serves as a lawman himself with a prospective bride-to-be, Peggy (Patricia Owens of "Seven Women from Hell"), awaiting marriage. Jake rides with Clint for a ways then decides to split up. Clint is happy to see Jake but he feels betrayed by Jake's stashing the loot and leaving the gang. Jake explains to Clint that he saved his old outlaw buddy from a date with the noose because Clint had rescued him from being hanged in the old days. Clint wants to shoot it out now with Jake, but Jake refuses to give him a gun.
When Jake returns to town, he spots a suspicious cowboy, Rennie (Henry Silva of "Sergeants Three"), loitering on front street. Later, Jake dresses up in his best suit and rents a buggy to visit Peggy. They quarrel because Jake wants her to move with him away somewhere else. Peggy doesn't want to leave and storms away from a dinner table. Jake rides back to town and an inquisitive Rennie visits him at the jail. Something about Rennie spooks Jake, and he slugs the kid without warning. Before he realizes it, another old friend Ortero (Robert Middleton of "Cattle King") pulls a derringer on him. It seems that Jake's deputy had locked up Ortero for sleeping off a drunk in the gutter, but he forget to frisk him. The rest of Clint's gang arrive, including Wexler (De Forest Kelly of "Star Trek"). Wexler isn't too happy with Jake either for pulling out on them and taking the money. Jake explains that he took the money, buried it, and refused to look back. Clint wants Jake to take them to where he buried the loot. Initially, Jake says no until Clint takes Peggy hostage, and Jake has to lead them to the loot.
"Bad Day at Black Rock" director John Sturges doesn't waste a moment in this character-driven epic. Everybody has that tough leathery look and these are no-nonsense characters. No sooner have they left for the badlands where the loot is buried than they learn that the Indians are on the warpath, adding to their woes. Jake tries to escape at one point, but Clint is just too sly for him. Eventually, when they reach the ramshackle ghost town where Jake buried the money, we learn he stashed it in the local cemetery, anticipating a similar burial of stolen gold in Sergio Leone's "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly."
Three-time Oscar winning lenser Robert Surtees of "PT-109" and "Thirty Seconds over Tokyo" photographed this western in widescreen and it looks terrific! Some of the long shots will just blow your mind, but then anybody who watches Sturges' westerns will know that the director loved to shoot really long, long shots. Ferris Webster, another Sturges' favorite, edited "The Law and Jake Wade." The screenplay by William Bowers of "Support Your Local Sheriff" provides some flavorful dialogue. Widmark excels as the villain. The last shoot-out seems to prematurely end, still "The Law and Jake Wade" ranks as one of those memorable, widescreen western from the 195os. Okay, "The Law and Jake Wade" isn't the greatest western ever made, but it is competently-down, suspenseful and a wonderful way to burn 86 minutes.
An excellent book to peruse if you are interested in John Sturges, his life, and his films is Glen Lovell's top-notch biography on Sturges entitled "Escape Artist: The Life and Films of John Sturges." Mr. Lovell spent 10 years writing and researching this seminal text about Sturges.
"The Law and Jake Wade" opens traditionally with a lone horseman riding through scenic terrain until he enters a clapboard western town and reins up in front of a marshal's office. Quietly, Jake Wade (Robert Taylor of "Quo Vadis") dismounts and walks into the office and thrusts the muzzle of a shotgun into the lawman's back. Clint Hollister (Richard Widmark of "Kiss of Death") is lounging in the calaboose when he spots Jake with a shotgun in the marshal's back. "Well, who'd have thought," he marvels as his old friend forces the lawman to unlock the cell. Hollister complains about the terrible food that he has been served and slugs the lawman, knocking him out cold. As he is buckling on his gun belt, two deputies walk in unexpectedly, and he cuts loose on them with lead. Jake Wade, who has been trying to get them both out of town with the least amount of commotion, knocks the gun out of Clint's hand. They ride out with the townspeople firing shots at them. As it turns out, Jake and Clint once rode together as partners in crime. Their lawless days came to an end when Jake thought that he had gunned down an innocent child during a daylight robbery. Jake took the loot from the robbery and never looked back. Indeed, he rode away and buried the money and then created a new life for himself. Now, he serves as a lawman himself with a prospective bride-to-be, Peggy (Patricia Owens of "Seven Women from Hell"), awaiting marriage. Jake rides with Clint for a ways then decides to split up. Clint is happy to see Jake but he feels betrayed by Jake's stashing the loot and leaving the gang. Jake explains to Clint that he saved his old outlaw buddy from a date with the noose because Clint had rescued him from being hanged in the old days. Clint wants to shoot it out now with Jake, but Jake refuses to give him a gun.
When Jake returns to town, he spots a suspicious cowboy, Rennie (Henry Silva of "Sergeants Three"), loitering on front street. Later, Jake dresses up in his best suit and rents a buggy to visit Peggy. They quarrel because Jake wants her to move with him away somewhere else. Peggy doesn't want to leave and storms away from a dinner table. Jake rides back to town and an inquisitive Rennie visits him at the jail. Something about Rennie spooks Jake, and he slugs the kid without warning. Before he realizes it, another old friend Ortero (Robert Middleton of "Cattle King") pulls a derringer on him. It seems that Jake's deputy had locked up Ortero for sleeping off a drunk in the gutter, but he forget to frisk him. The rest of Clint's gang arrive, including Wexler (De Forest Kelly of "Star Trek"). Wexler isn't too happy with Jake either for pulling out on them and taking the money. Jake explains that he took the money, buried it, and refused to look back. Clint wants Jake to take them to where he buried the loot. Initially, Jake says no until Clint takes Peggy hostage, and Jake has to lead them to the loot.
"Bad Day at Black Rock" director John Sturges doesn't waste a moment in this character-driven epic. Everybody has that tough leathery look and these are no-nonsense characters. No sooner have they left for the badlands where the loot is buried than they learn that the Indians are on the warpath, adding to their woes. Jake tries to escape at one point, but Clint is just too sly for him. Eventually, when they reach the ramshackle ghost town where Jake buried the money, we learn he stashed it in the local cemetery, anticipating a similar burial of stolen gold in Sergio Leone's "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly."
Three-time Oscar winning lenser Robert Surtees of "PT-109" and "Thirty Seconds over Tokyo" photographed this western in widescreen and it looks terrific! Some of the long shots will just blow your mind, but then anybody who watches Sturges' westerns will know that the director loved to shoot really long, long shots. Ferris Webster, another Sturges' favorite, edited "The Law and Jake Wade." The screenplay by William Bowers of "Support Your Local Sheriff" provides some flavorful dialogue. Widmark excels as the villain. The last shoot-out seems to prematurely end, still "The Law and Jake Wade" ranks as one of those memorable, widescreen western from the 195os. Okay, "The Law and Jake Wade" isn't the greatest western ever made, but it is competently-down, suspenseful and a wonderful way to burn 86 minutes.
An excellent book to peruse if you are interested in John Sturges, his life, and his films is Glen Lovell's top-notch biography on Sturges entitled "Escape Artist: The Life and Films of John Sturges." Mr. Lovell spent 10 years writing and researching this seminal text about Sturges.
FILM REVIEW OF ''THE LAST OUTPOST'' (1951)
Ronald Reagan and Bruce Bennett play brother versus brother in "The Last Outpost" (**1/2 out of ****), an entertaining but old-fashioned Civil War western set on the historic Santa Fe Trail. Reagan has charisma to spare as Vance Britten, a Confederate cavalry captain dispatched from Virginia by General Robert E. Lee to raise hell in the heart of Union territory, and raise hell he does with style and wit. Opposite him in Union blue is his brother Colonel Jeb Britten (Bruce Bennett of "The New Adventures of Tarzan") who wears an occupational stiff-upper lip and displays less sympathy since he represents law and order.
Happily, director Louis R. Foster keeps the tone of "The Last Outpost" as light-hearted as possible for most of this western's nimble 89-minute running time. Veteran western character actor Noah Beery, Jr., who wears his trademark Stetson more like a construction foreman than a cowboy, flanks Reagan as a good ole boy CSA sergeant, while Bill Williams rides at our hero's other side. Matters come to a boil when an unscrupulous white Indian agent Sam McQuade (John Ridgely of "The Big Sleep") demands that Washington intervene in the conflict and arm the Indians, so that the Native Americans can help the strapped Union troops weed out the Confederate raiders. Actually, all that McQuade wants is an excuse to agitate the redskins, so that he can sell them more guns and liquor. McQuade gets hoisted on his own petard when hostile Indians kill him and burn his supply wagon. The Indians didn't appreciate the inferior firearms and the rotgut whiskey that McQuade pedaled to them. Caught up in the middle of this fracas is McQuade's beautiful, red-haired wife Julie (Ronda Fleming of "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral") who has few friends and is unhappy out west. Before he dies as the price for his own perfidy, McQuade tries to play a trick on Julie by inviting Jeb over for supper. Years earlier Julie had made plans to marry a Britten, but not Jeb. Instead, Vance abandoned her, and she hasn't sufficiently recovered from his bad manners. Meanwhile, Vance intercepts the Union officer sent from Washington with orders to negotiate with the Indians, takes his uniform, and visits the Indian camp to sue for peace. He learns about the death of McQuade and others at the hands of Geronimo (John War Eagle of "They Rode West") and two braves. He also learns to his chagrin that these warriors are rotting in a white man's jail. The Indian chieftains are neither pleased with Geronimo's precipitate actions nor do they approve of the white man's reprisal against Geronimo. Vance decides to maintain his masquerade as the Union officer. Not only does he plan to free Geronimo and his braves before the territory explodes into Indian warfare, but also he plans to relieve the Federals of a payload of gold coins. Things do not go as Vance plans, because he finds himself face-to-face with Julie, his former sweetheart who he abandoned without so much as goodbye. Julie still smolders with rage at this slight, and she warns Vance that she won't tolerate either his presence or his disguise for more than 24 hours. Predictably, when Vance cannot spring Geronimo and company from the town's hoosegow, the Indians go on the rampage and try to burn the town down. Things are looking mighty bad in the last ten minutes for the out-numbered Union troops and the beleaguered settlers when Reagan rides to the rescue with his Confederate cavalry.
Ironically, this Paramount Pictures release reunites Reagan, Bennett, and Ridgely who were once worked on the Warner Brothers backlot in the studio's heyday. What "The Last Outpost" lacks in stature, this solid little but unsurprising sagebrusher makes up for with its swift, sure pace and its exciting battle scenes.
Happily, director Louis R. Foster keeps the tone of "The Last Outpost" as light-hearted as possible for most of this western's nimble 89-minute running time. Veteran western character actor Noah Beery, Jr., who wears his trademark Stetson more like a construction foreman than a cowboy, flanks Reagan as a good ole boy CSA sergeant, while Bill Williams rides at our hero's other side. Matters come to a boil when an unscrupulous white Indian agent Sam McQuade (John Ridgely of "The Big Sleep") demands that Washington intervene in the conflict and arm the Indians, so that the Native Americans can help the strapped Union troops weed out the Confederate raiders. Actually, all that McQuade wants is an excuse to agitate the redskins, so that he can sell them more guns and liquor. McQuade gets hoisted on his own petard when hostile Indians kill him and burn his supply wagon. The Indians didn't appreciate the inferior firearms and the rotgut whiskey that McQuade pedaled to them. Caught up in the middle of this fracas is McQuade's beautiful, red-haired wife Julie (Ronda Fleming of "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral") who has few friends and is unhappy out west. Before he dies as the price for his own perfidy, McQuade tries to play a trick on Julie by inviting Jeb over for supper. Years earlier Julie had made plans to marry a Britten, but not Jeb. Instead, Vance abandoned her, and she hasn't sufficiently recovered from his bad manners. Meanwhile, Vance intercepts the Union officer sent from Washington with orders to negotiate with the Indians, takes his uniform, and visits the Indian camp to sue for peace. He learns about the death of McQuade and others at the hands of Geronimo (John War Eagle of "They Rode West") and two braves. He also learns to his chagrin that these warriors are rotting in a white man's jail. The Indian chieftains are neither pleased with Geronimo's precipitate actions nor do they approve of the white man's reprisal against Geronimo. Vance decides to maintain his masquerade as the Union officer. Not only does he plan to free Geronimo and his braves before the territory explodes into Indian warfare, but also he plans to relieve the Federals of a payload of gold coins. Things do not go as Vance plans, because he finds himself face-to-face with Julie, his former sweetheart who he abandoned without so much as goodbye. Julie still smolders with rage at this slight, and she warns Vance that she won't tolerate either his presence or his disguise for more than 24 hours. Predictably, when Vance cannot spring Geronimo and company from the town's hoosegow, the Indians go on the rampage and try to burn the town down. Things are looking mighty bad in the last ten minutes for the out-numbered Union troops and the beleaguered settlers when Reagan rides to the rescue with his Confederate cavalry.
Ironically, this Paramount Pictures release reunites Reagan, Bennett, and Ridgely who were once worked on the Warner Brothers backlot in the studio's heyday. What "The Last Outpost" lacks in stature, this solid little but unsurprising sagebrusher makes up for with its swift, sure pace and its exciting battle scenes.
FILM REVIEW OF ''THE LONGEST YARD'' (2005)
The Adam Sandler remake of the classic, bone-crunching, Burt Reynolds' football comedy "The Longest Yard" (***1/2 out of ****) captures the rowdy Three Stooges spirit of its 1974 predecessor in virtually every respect, except that director Peter Segal doesn't stage the gridiron exploits with the virtuosity the late Robert Aldrich did, with Reynolds calling plays opposite veteran Green Bay Packers linebacker Ray Nitschke and former Pittsburgh Steelers great Mike Henry. Nevertheless, this crowd-pleasing, slam-bang rendition of "The Longest Yard" ranks as the best Adam Sandler farce since "The Waterboy." Freshman scenarist Shelton Turner succeeds where most scribes fail in that his inspired update of writer Tracy Keenan Wynn's original screenplay sticks with the previous game plan, smooths out the rough spots in some instances, but deviates only when necessary to conjure up fresher gags. Long-time Sandler fans will spot some of these alterations, especially when Sandler's comic pal Rob Schneider's shows up to perform his 'you can do it' shtick from the sidelines, and Cloris Leachman's hilarious football prison secretary upstages anything Bernadette Peters did in the first time out. The casting here is bullseye perfect, smack down to the smallest detail, specifically perennial villain David Patrick Kelly as the jealous pyromanical inmate who torches one of the team players. Quiet, unassuming "Babe" star James Cromwell turns in a top-notch performance as the sleazy warden that the late great Eddie Albert (he stole the show as the warden in the original) would stand up and cheer from the grave. Although the new "Longest Yard" doesn't surpass the first "Longest Yard," you'd need a chain marker and a committee of officials to tell the difference.
Like the original "Longest Yard," the Sandler version opens in the bedroom with a drunken Paul Crewe (Adam Sandler of "50 First Dates") appropriating his girlfriend's sports car for a joy ride and winds up receiving a three year sentence in the can at Allenville Federal Penitentiary in Texas. Warden Hazen (James Cromwell of " ") pulls strings to get Crewe into his correctional facility, because Hazen dreams of running for governor and believes his prison guard football team will put him into the political end zone. Hazen approaches Crewe and asks him for his help in straightening up his team that hasn't clinched a championship in several years. Initially, Crewe refuses to give Hazen the benefit of his experience because prison guard Captain Knauer (William Fichtner of "Armageddon") has beaten him repeatedly with his baton and warned him to refuse the warden. After a week in solitary sweating it out in a shack with no amenities, Crewe capitulates and suggests that Hazen schedule a tune-up game between the guards and the convicts. Unlike the original where the guards were just guards, in the remake the prison warden has recruited his guards from college players who missed out. A several familiar faces flesh out these plug-ugly prison guards, notably former Seattle Seahawks linebacker Brian Bosworth, two-time, NFL Pro Bowler Bill Romanowski, and wrestling legend Steve 'Cold Stone' Austin. At first, Crewe appears at a complete loss until he meets Caretaker (Chris Rock of "Head of the State") who clues him into who is who behind bars. Initial attempts to recruit team member falter because pro-football banned Crewe from playing because of his alleged point-fixing schemes. Nevertheless, Crewe comes up with players who make the guys in the Burt Reynolds version look like pygmies.
Director Peter Segal, who has helmed two previous Adam Sandler comedies: "Anger Management" and "50 First Dates," never lets the action lag and manages to convey important exposition (story ideas) in a more streamlined fashion. Clearly, he must have seen the first "Yard," because his use of split-screen is patterned after what Aldrich did in the original. Wisely, funnyman Adam Sandler doesn't try to one-up Burt Reynolds whose real-life college football career helped his physical performance enormously in the original. There is no scene where the hero tosses a pass through a tire swinging at the end of a rope. No where near as cool and charismatic as Burt was in 1974, Sandler sticks to the game plan that he knows best: wiseacre humor. Sandler's scenes with the glorious Cloris Leachman will be hard to top for any comedian who takes on this project. The repartee between Sandler and a short, conch-eared San Diego traffic cop is fantastic. Everything up to the big showdown on the gridiron is either perfectly rehashed by director Segal, writer Turner, and a strong cast or taken to the next level. Notably good is the way that Segal introduces each player as they join the team for practice. Particularly funny is the inclusion of a Hispanic Hercules whose accent isn't thick enough to require subtitles but the subtitles add to the hilarity of the moment. The only two things that this "Yard" fumbles are the tension crackling plays, the sports car from the first movie, and the infamous F-word line that surprisingly has been toned-down and rewritten for this PG-13 movie. While PG-13 movies lack the profanity levels of their R-rated counterparts, the Motion Picture Association of America allows on F-word for every PG-13. However, the gag in the original had the cast using the F-Word in the same sentence three times. All quibbles aside, Adam Sandler and company score a touchdown with "The Longest Yard," not only as first-rate entertainment but also as homage to the Robert Aldrich original.
Like the original "Longest Yard," the Sandler version opens in the bedroom with a drunken Paul Crewe (Adam Sandler of "50 First Dates") appropriating his girlfriend's sports car for a joy ride and winds up receiving a three year sentence in the can at Allenville Federal Penitentiary in Texas. Warden Hazen (James Cromwell of " ") pulls strings to get Crewe into his correctional facility, because Hazen dreams of running for governor and believes his prison guard football team will put him into the political end zone. Hazen approaches Crewe and asks him for his help in straightening up his team that hasn't clinched a championship in several years. Initially, Crewe refuses to give Hazen the benefit of his experience because prison guard Captain Knauer (William Fichtner of "Armageddon") has beaten him repeatedly with his baton and warned him to refuse the warden. After a week in solitary sweating it out in a shack with no amenities, Crewe capitulates and suggests that Hazen schedule a tune-up game between the guards and the convicts. Unlike the original where the guards were just guards, in the remake the prison warden has recruited his guards from college players who missed out. A several familiar faces flesh out these plug-ugly prison guards, notably former Seattle Seahawks linebacker Brian Bosworth, two-time, NFL Pro Bowler Bill Romanowski, and wrestling legend Steve 'Cold Stone' Austin. At first, Crewe appears at a complete loss until he meets Caretaker (Chris Rock of "Head of the State") who clues him into who is who behind bars. Initial attempts to recruit team member falter because pro-football banned Crewe from playing because of his alleged point-fixing schemes. Nevertheless, Crewe comes up with players who make the guys in the Burt Reynolds version look like pygmies.
Director Peter Segal, who has helmed two previous Adam Sandler comedies: "Anger Management" and "50 First Dates," never lets the action lag and manages to convey important exposition (story ideas) in a more streamlined fashion. Clearly, he must have seen the first "Yard," because his use of split-screen is patterned after what Aldrich did in the original. Wisely, funnyman Adam Sandler doesn't try to one-up Burt Reynolds whose real-life college football career helped his physical performance enormously in the original. There is no scene where the hero tosses a pass through a tire swinging at the end of a rope. No where near as cool and charismatic as Burt was in 1974, Sandler sticks to the game plan that he knows best: wiseacre humor. Sandler's scenes with the glorious Cloris Leachman will be hard to top for any comedian who takes on this project. The repartee between Sandler and a short, conch-eared San Diego traffic cop is fantastic. Everything up to the big showdown on the gridiron is either perfectly rehashed by director Segal, writer Turner, and a strong cast or taken to the next level. Notably good is the way that Segal introduces each player as they join the team for practice. Particularly funny is the inclusion of a Hispanic Hercules whose accent isn't thick enough to require subtitles but the subtitles add to the hilarity of the moment. The only two things that this "Yard" fumbles are the tension crackling plays, the sports car from the first movie, and the infamous F-word line that surprisingly has been toned-down and rewritten for this PG-13 movie. While PG-13 movies lack the profanity levels of their R-rated counterparts, the Motion Picture Association of America allows on F-word for every PG-13. However, the gag in the original had the cast using the F-Word in the same sentence three times. All quibbles aside, Adam Sandler and company score a touchdown with "The Longest Yard," not only as first-rate entertainment but also as homage to the Robert Aldrich original.
FILM REVIEW OF ''ROCKY BALBOA'' (2006)
Everything that made the best "Rocky" movies ("Rocky," "Rocky III," and "Rocky IV") blissfully entertaining appears conspicuously absent in Sylvester Stallone's new movie "Rocky Balboa" (** out of ****), reputedly the last hurrah for "Rocky." Chiefly, "Rocky Balboa" lacks spontaneity and surprises. Indeed, actor/athletic Sylvester Stallone looks—for a man in his sixties—like he could go the distance in the ring, but writer/director Sylvester Stallone virtually recycles the original without anything that made it Academy Awarding material. In "Rocky," Stallone created a charming Brando-esquire misfit, surrounded by other larger-than-life misfits, who slugged his way to the top of the American dream. Each sequel eroded the title character's charisma, and you knew that "Rocky" could never go down for the count. Worse, Stallone's trademark aphoristic dialogue yields few quotable lines.
Another element woefully amiss is a solid villain. A third of what made "Rocky," "Rocky III," and "Rocky IV" engaging on a visceral level were the opponents. Carl Weathers established the baseline for Rocky's rivals in the first two "Rocky" movies, while a pugnacious Mr. T raised the bar in "Rocky III" and Goliath-like Dolph Lundgren took it one punch further in "Rocky IV." Not surprisingly, "Rocky Balboa" should take the bad taste of "Rocky V" out of the mouth of "Rocky" fans. "Rocky V" featured the least intimidating contender of the series. Unfortunately, as much as "Rocky Balboa" surpasses "Rocky V," Rocky's latest adversary is bland to his boxers. Mason Dixon emerges as more vulnerable than vicious. You won't care if Rocky beats him to a pulp, gets beaten to a pulp himself, or they fight to a draw in "Rocky Balboa." This painfully predictable punching bag of clichés never generates the blood, sweat, and cheers of the original.
Anybody who remembers the forgettable "Rocky V" knows that the doctors warned Rocky that if he ever climbed back into the ring that he could possibly die from one blow to the brain. In "Rocky Balboa," Rocky's physical ailments never impair his potential. Aside from a brief bout with the Pennsylvania boxing commission, Rocky obtains a license to box again. During the first hour of the action, our world-weary hero revisits his past on a sight-seeing trip to his old stomping grounds where he grew up and met his wife Adrian. Adrian has followed in the footsteps of more memorable "Rocky" characters, such as Apollo Creed and actor Burgess Meredith's Mickey Goldmill. We learn in "Rocky Balboa" that Adrian died from cancer back in the 1990s, and Rocky supports himself with a Philadelphia restaurant named after her. He recounts his pugilistic exploits for the entertainment of his customers. Meanwhile, in the ring, the latest heavyweight boxing champ Mason "the Line" Dixon (ex-light heavyweight champ Antonio Tarver) finds himself tangled up in the ropes of his own troubles. After 30 knock-out fights, the undefeated Dixon cannot find anybody to go toe-to-toe with who can match his merciless barrage of blows. Worse, just about everybody in the fight game hates him. Sure, Dixon sounds like a terrific adversary, but Stallone gives Tarver nothing to do or say that makes his character remotely dangerous. He never attains the flamboyance of the egotistical Apollo Creed in the first three "Rocky" epics. He doesn't present a challenge like the sadistic Clubber Lang in "Rocky III." Physically, he is no match for towering Ivan Drago in "Rocky IV." Instead, Mason Dixie emerges more as misunderstood than merciless.
During his tour of his old neighborhood, Rocky runs into a local girl from his past. Marie (as played by the original "Marie" Geraldine Hughes) told him to bug off in the original when he offered her advice about her friends. Marie and Rocky get friendly this time around and the ex-champ shows an interest in her fatherless son. Unfortunately, the romance between Marie and Rocky ignites no sparks because the chemistry between them is wrong. At the same time, Rocky's own son Rocky, Jr. (Milo Ventimiglia who plays Peter Petrelli on the NBC/SCI-FI Channel TV show "Heroes") has his own selfish issues. Rocky overshadows him. At one point, Rocky confides in his boorish brother-in-law Paulie (Burt Young of "The Killer Elite") that he still has his own unresolved issues. Paulie thinks Rocky has lost his mind when he proposes to put the gloves back on for one more bout. The inevitable fight between Rocky and Mason Dixon occurs as a result of an ESPN computer generated boxing match that prompts Mason's managers to approach Rocky about a match. Mason Dixie derides it as a publicity stunt, but Rocky sees it as a place in the sun. "Rocky Balboa" boasts too much soul and not enough heart. Cue "Rocky" composer Bill Conti to bring on the music from the original as Rocky jogs around Philadelphia in his sweats training.
Sylvester Stallone looks more muscle-bound than ever, but he does not have the underdog charisma of the best "Rocky" movies. Clearly, Stallone has gone into the ring one time too often. The Rocky character has never looked so out of place and his actions do little to endear him. Stallone's worst mistake in "Rocky Balboa" was sacrificing Adrian from his screenplay than his obnoxious, cigar-chomping brother-in-law Paulie. The first hour of the new "Rocky" drags and the last forty minutes doesn't make up for it. Stallone stages the boxing match without flair. Amazingly, the hand-held photography doesn't add energy to the fight. Despite some moments that remain too far and few between, "Rocky Balboa" has no clout to flout.
Another element woefully amiss is a solid villain. A third of what made "Rocky," "Rocky III," and "Rocky IV" engaging on a visceral level were the opponents. Carl Weathers established the baseline for Rocky's rivals in the first two "Rocky" movies, while a pugnacious Mr. T raised the bar in "Rocky III" and Goliath-like Dolph Lundgren took it one punch further in "Rocky IV." Not surprisingly, "Rocky Balboa" should take the bad taste of "Rocky V" out of the mouth of "Rocky" fans. "Rocky V" featured the least intimidating contender of the series. Unfortunately, as much as "Rocky Balboa" surpasses "Rocky V," Rocky's latest adversary is bland to his boxers. Mason Dixon emerges as more vulnerable than vicious. You won't care if Rocky beats him to a pulp, gets beaten to a pulp himself, or they fight to a draw in "Rocky Balboa." This painfully predictable punching bag of clichés never generates the blood, sweat, and cheers of the original.
Anybody who remembers the forgettable "Rocky V" knows that the doctors warned Rocky that if he ever climbed back into the ring that he could possibly die from one blow to the brain. In "Rocky Balboa," Rocky's physical ailments never impair his potential. Aside from a brief bout with the Pennsylvania boxing commission, Rocky obtains a license to box again. During the first hour of the action, our world-weary hero revisits his past on a sight-seeing trip to his old stomping grounds where he grew up and met his wife Adrian. Adrian has followed in the footsteps of more memorable "Rocky" characters, such as Apollo Creed and actor Burgess Meredith's Mickey Goldmill. We learn in "Rocky Balboa" that Adrian died from cancer back in the 1990s, and Rocky supports himself with a Philadelphia restaurant named after her. He recounts his pugilistic exploits for the entertainment of his customers. Meanwhile, in the ring, the latest heavyweight boxing champ Mason "the Line" Dixon (ex-light heavyweight champ Antonio Tarver) finds himself tangled up in the ropes of his own troubles. After 30 knock-out fights, the undefeated Dixon cannot find anybody to go toe-to-toe with who can match his merciless barrage of blows. Worse, just about everybody in the fight game hates him. Sure, Dixon sounds like a terrific adversary, but Stallone gives Tarver nothing to do or say that makes his character remotely dangerous. He never attains the flamboyance of the egotistical Apollo Creed in the first three "Rocky" epics. He doesn't present a challenge like the sadistic Clubber Lang in "Rocky III." Physically, he is no match for towering Ivan Drago in "Rocky IV." Instead, Mason Dixie emerges more as misunderstood than merciless.
During his tour of his old neighborhood, Rocky runs into a local girl from his past. Marie (as played by the original "Marie" Geraldine Hughes) told him to bug off in the original when he offered her advice about her friends. Marie and Rocky get friendly this time around and the ex-champ shows an interest in her fatherless son. Unfortunately, the romance between Marie and Rocky ignites no sparks because the chemistry between them is wrong. At the same time, Rocky's own son Rocky, Jr. (Milo Ventimiglia who plays Peter Petrelli on the NBC/SCI-FI Channel TV show "Heroes") has his own selfish issues. Rocky overshadows him. At one point, Rocky confides in his boorish brother-in-law Paulie (Burt Young of "The Killer Elite") that he still has his own unresolved issues. Paulie thinks Rocky has lost his mind when he proposes to put the gloves back on for one more bout. The inevitable fight between Rocky and Mason Dixon occurs as a result of an ESPN computer generated boxing match that prompts Mason's managers to approach Rocky about a match. Mason Dixie derides it as a publicity stunt, but Rocky sees it as a place in the sun. "Rocky Balboa" boasts too much soul and not enough heart. Cue "Rocky" composer Bill Conti to bring on the music from the original as Rocky jogs around Philadelphia in his sweats training.
Sylvester Stallone looks more muscle-bound than ever, but he does not have the underdog charisma of the best "Rocky" movies. Clearly, Stallone has gone into the ring one time too often. The Rocky character has never looked so out of place and his actions do little to endear him. Stallone's worst mistake in "Rocky Balboa" was sacrificing Adrian from his screenplay than his obnoxious, cigar-chomping brother-in-law Paulie. The first hour of the new "Rocky" drags and the last forty minutes doesn't make up for it. Stallone stages the boxing match without flair. Amazingly, the hand-held photography doesn't add energy to the fight. Despite some moments that remain too far and few between, "Rocky Balboa" has no clout to flout.
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