FILM REVIEW OF ''THE GENERAL'' (1927)

Ironically, Buster Keaton’s all-time favorite film comedy “The General” (1927) flopped at the box office during its initial release. Critics and audiences alike panned this superlative American Civil War saga. Most of the critics didn’t think it was “funny” or that Keaton was “funny.” Forty years later critics hailed Keaton’s film as a masterpiece, and it ranks among the top ten on virtually every critical short list of silents. Unlike his closest rival the English comic Charles Chaplin, who ingratiated himself with audiences as the homeless little “Tramp,” Keaton remained aloof, never cracked a smile and earned the nickname “The Great Stone Face.” Not surprisingly, Keaton’s trademark is that he consciously strives not to appear “funny” and therein lays the humor in his work. In other words, he doesn’t draw attention to his buffoonery. Keaton is the kind of comic who wouldn’t laugh at his own joke.

The fun of watching any Keaton film is the deadpan acrobat’s titanic struggle to gain mastery over some form of machinery and adapt to the people around him. For example, in “Steamboat Bill, Jr,” Buster must win the girl, reconcile with both his father and her father, and master operating a steamboat in the midst of a cyclone. This theme recurs in his best films, including include “Our Hospitality” (1923), “The Navigator” (1924), “Sherlock Jr.” (1924), “Steamboat Bill Jr.,” (1928), and “The Cameraman “(1928), More than any of these Keaton topped himself with “The General.” He must operate the trains by himself when the intrigue starts and he continues to operate the trains with minimal help.

Introverted railroad engineer Johnnie Gray (Buster Keaton) has two loves: a locomotive named ‘The General” and Annabelle Lee (Marion Mac), his girlfriend. While visiting Annabelle, he learns that the Confederacy has fired on Fort Sumter. Annabelle’s father and brother storm off to the recruiting station to perform their patriotic duty and sign up. Johnnie takes a short-cut to beat them there and be first one in line. Complications arise when Confederate officials refuse to enlist him. They judge Johnnie more valuable to the South as train engineer rather than a soldier. Repeatedly, Johnnie tries to enlist, and they finally give him the boot. “If you lose this war, don't blame me,” Johnnie complains as he walks away. Annabelle’s father and brother spot him leaving and urge Johnnie to join them. Johnnie remembers what happened to him in the enlistment office and walks off massaging his sore rump from where he has been kicked. Johnnie is too ashamed to tell Annabelle the truth. Annabelle’s father and brother both sign up and go off to fight the war. Meanwhile, she refuses to talk to Johnnie until he is in uniform.

A year later, at a Union encampment north of Chattanooga, General Thatcher (Jim Farley) meets with his chief spy, Captain Anderson. Anderson (Glen Cavender) assures Thatcher he knows every foot of the Southern railroad between Marietta and Chattanooga, and he cannot fail on his mission with ten hand-picked men. They travel dressed as civilians. During dinner at Big Shanty, Georgia, they strike and hijack Johnnie’s train. Worst, Annabelle is caught in the baggage car and Anderson’s men take her hostage. Johnnie pursues them on foot, by hand-car, and later by bicycle, but he cannot catch them. He stumbles into another station and commandeers the locomotive called the ‘Texas’ and pursues Anderson with what he thinks is a train load of Confederate troops. He learns too late the troop train wasn’t coupled to the locomotive. At one point, Johnnie hooks a flatcar with a mortar and tries to blast the Union spies ahead of him on ‘The General.’ Johnnie almost blows himself up. Anderson and his men don’t stop because they believe Johnnie has them outnumbered.

Eventually, Anderson realizes Johnnie is alone and Johnnie has to abandon the Texas. He gets lost in the woods during a thunderstorm and turns up like a drenched rat at a house where the Union Army is about to convene to discuss their plans. Johnnie sneaks into the house and raids dinner table. He avoids narrowly being caught by climbing underneath the table and eavesdrops on the Union plan to attack the Confederates. At the same time, he spots Annabelle who is being escorted into the house by two troops. After the Union officers conclude their meeting, Johnnie knocks out a guard, steals his uniform, finds Annabelle and they try to sneak through Union lines. Johnnie decides to steal his locomotive—the General—back and Anderson and his men pursue him in the ‘Texas.’ Johnnie manages to stay ahead of them long enough to burn the Rock River Bridge. When a Union train crosses the bridge, the structure buckles and train and trestle crash into the river. Johnnie discovers the Union officer he knocked unconscious in the cab of the General is General Thatcher. The Southern General awards Johnnie a commission as a lieutenant. Annabelle is as overjoyed as Johnnie until they have to pause in their kissing for him to salute an entire army of privates marching past him.

Keaton’s timing is impeccable throughout “The General.” The scene where Johnnie loads the mortar on the flat car and the muzzle dips so that it is aimed at Johnnie while the fuse burns is hilarious. Miraculously, Johnnie’s locomotive cruises off onto another set of tracks, while the mortar trundles along the original set and the cannon ball narrowly misses the Union spies on their train. Later, Anderson’s men follow a switchback that takes them onto a towering trestle where they halt their locomotive temporarily and bombard Johnnie with railroad ties as his engine runs under the trestle.

Keaton drew “The General” from a true-life Civil War incident where Union spies stole the eponymous locomotive. William A. Pittenger wrote about it in a book entitled “Daring and Suffering: A History of the Great Railway Adventure.” Tom Dardis quoted Keaton in his biography “Keaton: The Man Who Wouldn’t Lie Down” as bragging, “No pains were spared to make the film as authentic as they possibly could.” Keaton converted a tragedy into a comedy for the Confederacy. Keaton explained his reason for this decision: “You can always make villains out of the Northerners, but you cannot make a villain out of the South.” Moreover, the stone-faced comic tried to use the authentic locomotive “The General” that had been housed in a Chattanooga railroad station. Originally, he had sought to shoot on the actual terrain, but he hated the scenery and wound up reenacting history in Oregon with 500 Oregon State Guardsmen impersonating Union and Confederate troops. Reportedly, the money shot of the collapsing bridge cost Keaton and company $42-thousand dollars.

The important thing for contemporary audiences to gleam from “The General” is that it was made with no digital computer enhanced effects. Virtually everything in “The General” is genuine. Keaton drove the train and they actually destroyed the bridge that the train sets on during the big battle. There were no models or mock-ups made for this film.

Keaton’s “The General” dwarfs the widescreen 1956 Walt Disney produced release “The Great Locomotive Chase” with Fess Parker and Jeffrey Hunter and depicts the events from the Northern perspective. Indeed, “The General” is one of my all-time favorite movies. The Library of Congress preserved “The General” in 1989 in the National Film Registry as a film that qualified as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

FILM REVIEW OF ''RIO LOBO'' (1970)

According to Todd McCarthy, in his 756-page biography “Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood,” the legendary producer & director repeatedly admitted that he didn’t care for his final film “Rio Lobo.” Editor John Woodcock remembers Hawks advising him to whittle down scenes that didn’t live up to the director’s high expectations. Reportedly, Hawks enjoyed the American Civil War prologue, but his feud with lead actress Jennifer O’Neil and her appallingly callow performance as the heroine marred later scenes, such that Hawks eventually wrote her out of the finale altogether and gave Sherry Lansing the privilege of killing the vile villain. McCarthy’s opinion of “Rio Lobo” (**1/2 OUT OF ****) mirrors that of Hawks, too. He contends the entire film resembles a made-for-television feature with perfunctory dialogue and “shoddy” visuals and everything appeared “tired and unengaged, with the repetition of previous situations and conceits played out to diminishing returns.” Indeed, “Rio Lobo” isn’t the greatest western. Nevertheless, with its comic byplay between the principals, Jerry Goldsmith’s evocative music, and his scenes of violence, Hawks’ last collaboration with John Wayne manages to be a lot of fun. Moreover, “Rio Lobo” neither dawdles nor wears out its welcome. As bad as Jennifer O’Neil’s performance is, the cast seems to work together quite jovially and the dialogue—nothing memorable—flows with a rhythm. Hawks ribs John Wayne’s character for his increased girth and age and the girls ridicule Jorge Rivero’s romantic Frenchman without mercy. Let’s not forget Jack Elam as the cantankerous Mr. Phillips who chews the scenery with vigor as much as he loves to shred anybody and everybody with his double-barreled ‘splatter’ shotgun.

“Rio Lobo” opens with an entertaining and inventive prologue about a Civil War gold robbery. Four Union troopers load a strong box into a yellow caboose at the Plainsburg railway depot. Colonel Cord McNally (John Wayne)awaits the train at Rocky Ford. He remains in close telegraph communication with Plainsburg and orders Lieutenant Ned Forsythe (Peter Jason of "They Live") to proceed with caution and remain inside the caboose until he bangs on the door. Meanwhile, Confederate soldiers have been monitoring the telegraph and prepare to rob the train. Specifically, they grease the railroad tracks that the Union train transporting a shipment of gold is traveling on and then hurl a hornet’s nest into the caboose where the troops stand guard over the strongbox. Between the hornets and the Confederate gunfire, the Union soldiers are either shot or bail out. After they smoke the hornets out of the caboose, Captain Pierre Cordona and his men uncouple the caboose from the rest of the engine and the wood car. Just to make sure that the locomotive cannot follow them, the Southerners blow of the engine’s steam. Talk about a slick piece of work. The rebels ride the caboose and flat car down the mountain and halt the runaway vehicle with heavy ropes stretched across the tracks, the same way the Navy used to suspend a net across their carrier decks to stop careening jets. As soon as they discover that the telegraph lines are down, McNally and his men ride breathlessly to the scene of the robbery, and McNally finds one of most dependable officers, Lieutenant Forsythe lying in a field with his neck broken. Forsythe's last words to McNally are "catch them will you." McNally and his men split up as they trail the rebels into the woods. The rebels single out McNally and take him prisoner, among the Confederates are Capt. Pierre Cordona aka Frenchy (Jorge Rivero of “Soldier Blue”) and Sgt. Tuscarora Phillips (Robert Mitchum’s son Christopher of “Big Jake”), who are both pretty handy with this six-shooters. Eventually, McNally outfoxes them and leads them into Union territory. He offers to release them if they divulge the identity of the traitor who has been giving them insider information about the gold shipments. Cordona and Phillips refuse and serve their time out in a prison camp.

After the war ends, McNally visits Cordona and Tuscarora as they are being discharged and buys them some drinks. The colonel still wants to know who sold him out because he refuses to tolerate treason. When Tuscarora asks him why he doesn’t bear a grudge against them, McNally reminds them that what they did constituted an act of war. Selling information is on the other hand treason and McNally wants to get the soldier in his command who sold his country out. McNally gives them some money to supplement the two dollars that Union authorities have given them so that they are head west. Cordona and Tuscarora agree to alert McNally when they have any useful information. The time between the prison scene and the subsequent scene in the Texas town of Blackthorne is compressed and McNally shows up in civilian garb in response to a summons from Cordona. No sooner does McNally show up than trouble breaks out because a bunch of deputies from Rio Lobo, operating out of their jurisdiction try to arrest a willowy girl, Shasta (Jennifer O’Neil of “Class of ’42) for questioning in connection with a snake oil medicine show she was running. Blackthorne Sheriff Pat Cronin (veteran character actor Bill Williams of “Son of Paleface”) tries to intervene, but the Rio Lobo thugs get the drop on him. One of the villains is none other than journalist George Plimpton in a cameo. Shasta pulls a derringer out of her purse under the table where she sits and fires through it, wounding Deputy Whitey Carter(Robert Donner of “High Plains Drifter”) while McNally disarms the gunman with a rifle (Plimpton) who stands behind him. Cordona appears half-dressed at the top of the stair in the saloon/hotel and helps gun down the opposition.

Cordona explains that the man that they think sold them the information about McNally’s gold trains is a wealthy rancher in Rio Lobo named Ketchum. Veteran heavy Victor French of “Charro!” is the slimy villain who is forcing everybody to sell their land at rock bottom prices. Ketchum has the notoriously corrupt sheriff, Blue Tom Hendricks (Mike Henry of the “Smokey and the Bandit” movies) on his payroll. Hendricks’ chief deputy is played by future “Dallas” patriarch Jim Davis. Shasta guides Cordona and McNally to Rio Lobo, and they arrive under cover of darkness. The next day McNally watches as couple of Blue Tom’s deputies give Tuscarora a beating, charge him with stealing his own horses, and lock him up. McNally, Shasta, and Cordona visit Tuscarora’s father’s ranch where Blue Tom's gunmen have besieged old man Phillips. Our heroes and heroine shoot their way into Phillips’ ranch and convince him to accompany them to Ketchum’s ranch. McNally catches up with Ketchum who he knows better as Sergeant Ike Gorman. He roughs up the former noncommissioned officer. Our heroes kidnap Ketchum after busting heads and shoot their way into Blue Tom’s jail to free Tuscarora. Meanwhile, Cordona heads off to fetch the U.S. Calvary, but the villains capture him and engineer an exchange, Cordona for Ketchum.

Leigh Brackett, who co-wrote both “Rio Bravo” and “El Dorado,” contributed to Burton Wohl’s original script, and the result is a retread of many earlier scenes that have been altered to fit the new movie. Instead of the heroes slinging dynamite as they did against the villains in “Rio Bravo,” the villains get to sling dynamite at the heroes. Nevertheless, the pace is fast, the shoot-outs are vigorous enough, and the dialogue bristling with enough humor to make the all-too liesurely “Rio Lobo” a pleasure to watch. Nevertheless, "Rio Lobo" emerges as the least entry in this western trilogy. John Wayne is the only star left over from "Rio Bravo" and "El Dorado." "Rio Bravo" and "El Dorado" boasted famous co-stars. More importantly, "Rio Lobo" lacks a strong heroine like Angie Dickinson in "Rio Bravo." As a result, "Rio Lobo" seems almost lightweight and awkwardly comic by comparison. Future movie studio chief Sherry Lansing has a bit part as Amelita, a Mexican girl that Blue Tom disfigures. “Rio Lobo” has a solid plot and makes good use of foreshadowing. Of course, the real star is Howard Hawks' distinctive dialogue. Bob Steele and Don “Red” Barry have cameos.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE LAST CONFEDERATE" (2005)

History veracity doesn’t necessarily translate into cinematic virtuosity. The well-intentioned people that fought tooth and nail to produce the 2005 Civil War romance “The Last Confederate: The Story of Robert Adams” (* out of ****) a.k.a. “Strike the Tent,” are direct descendants of the protagonist. Co-director, producer, scenarist, and leading man Julian Adams, who plays his real-life great-great grandfather Robert Adams, deserves recognition for this reverential independent film production that depicts one Southerner’s view of the War Between the States. Indeed, Adams has won several Indie film awards for this effort. Nevertheless, “The Last Confederate” qualifies as a tedious re-enactment with leaden performances by all except Mickey Rooney in a bit part as a bedridden Pennsylvania uncle. However, I must add that “The Last Confederate” is worth watching, even though I found it lacking. I had to opportunity to speak with Julian Adams, the man who wore all the hats on the production, and he shared his experiences in making the film. Although I didn’t like this movie, I have a great deal of admiration for the trials and tribulations that Adams endured to get it produced and distributed. Anybody who reads this critique has the right to disagree with my appraisal of the film. Mr. Adams took issue with my appraisal. Feedback isn’t something that I often receive. Had Adams been a Hollywood mogul, I’d have laughed in this face, but he isn’t a mogul. He knows that his film isn’t perfect, but it isn’t perfect because he didn’t have a budget.

As the descendant of a Mississippi Civil War soldier, I enjoy movies told from the Confederate perspective, but “The Last Confederate” conjures up little suspense and excitement, and the dialogue is hopelessly contrived. Sadly, the actors and actresses could have been reading their lines right off cue cards for all the heart that they put into their performances. Once again, this is an independent production and good talent doesn’t come without some considerable expense. Let’s just say that they performed their parts as the late Spencer Tracy observed. They got their lines out and they didn’t bump into the furniture. As the hero, Adams doesn’t generate a great deal of charisma, but then he did have his hands full with producing this epic, right down to sinking his own money into the handguns and the muskets.

Technically, everything looks accurate enough, but dramatically, this period piece never generates momentum, even during the explosive battle scenes. Adams manages to stage one good gunfight in a shack toward the end. Indeed, most of the epic scale battle sequences are simply re-enactors fighting battles with cameras set up on the periphery of the action. (I know this because I shot video of the battle of Shiloh and there were only certain places that cameras were allowed to be set up.) These scenes with hundreds of dutiful re-enactors parading around and discharging their black powder arms contribute solid production value, but they don’t bolster the drama. Adams renders no judgments against either side, North or South, and the political content is conspicuously absent, but “The Last Confederate” was made to pontificate about values. Adams told me that he was simply relating the facts of history. In any case, on his tight budget, adopting an attitude would have been more than his low budget could have accommodated. The romance between Adams and a Pennsylvania woman, Eveline McCord (co-scenarist Gwendolyn Edwards of “The Broken Hearts Club”), who came to South Carolina to teach school before hostilities, lacks any vibrancy. Again, it’s really a shame, but this stuff really happened.

Directors A. Blaine Miller and Julian Adams relate their yarn in flashback. Our hero, Captain Robert Adams, rushes to the aid of a wounded Confederate soldier and looks up to find a Union soldier taking a bead on him with his revolver. The remaining 90 or so minutes that ensues is devoted to events before and after the war, and there is a hint that perhaps the protagonist didn’t survive this trial by bloodshed. Miller and Adams never make the protagonists seem sympathetic until the middle of the action when Adams and two of his friends engineer an escape from a Federal prison and a grudge-totting Yankee officer chases them. The filmmakers lacked the budget to develop the kind of tension that would make you fear for the lives of the characters. For the record, Adams survived the war, and Eveline and he raised four children and ran a school. What makes Robert Adams is important and essential as a Confederate patriot is never explained. Julian Adams doesn’t provide enough insight into his character to differentiate him from countless other characters. He strikes a gallant figure, but we never get under his skin.

Alas, the fortunes of low budget filmmaking prevented Adams from addressing this problem. The romance between the hero and the heroine is sterile. Some histrionics wouldn't have hurt this otherwise flat-lined drama. Shawn Lewallan’s color photography makes the grade, but there isn’t much subtlety in his lighting. If you suffer through the end credits, the producers reveal that they invoked dramatic license to make their history more palatable. Ostensibly, “The Last Confederate” boasts ambitious intentions, but delivers only a modicum of dramatic impact. Comparisons with the multi-million dollar “Cold Mountain” are inevitable. Initially, when I reviewed this film (which I bought with my own bucks, I described it rather disparagingly as “Dull Mountain.” I still think it is pretty dull, but I will be a man enough critic to applaud Mr. Adams for making this film. He invested his heart and soul in “The Last Confederate.” While I didn’t care for this movie, I appreciate it a lot more after having a conversation with Mr. Adams. Just because I didn’t like it—for purely artistic reasons—doesn’t mean that you will dislike. Ultimately, Julian Adams is a better producer than he is a director.