FILM REVIEW OF "TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARA" (1970)

"Invasion of the Body Snatchers" director Don Siegel and blacklisted Hollywood scenarist Albert Maltz appropriated an unproduced Budd Boetticher script and turned it into a lively little western shoot'em up called "Two Mules for Sister Sara." Earlier, Eastwood and Siegel had collaborated as star and director on "Coogan's Bluff," and this Universal Studios film release, set against the French Revolution in Mexico, marked their second collaboration.  Later, the two would make the iconic "Dirty Harry" and conclude their work together on the Paramount Pictures' release of "Escape from Alcatraz." "Two Mules for Sister Sara" (*** out of ****) isn't their best outing together, but it has several wonderful scenes.  Wearing a stylist leather hat, Clint appears as tough and unshaven as he did in his Sergio Leone Spaghetti oaters. Now, however, he plays a swift-shooting, soldier-of-fortune named Hogan. This blood-splattered but amusing western comedy/drama teams Eastwood's gimlet-eyed adventurer up with an impious Catholic nun, Sister Sara (Shirley MacLaine of "Sweet Charity"), in Mexico during the late 1860s when the Mexicans were ridding themselves of the yoke of French oppression. In the original Boetticher script, the setting was the Mexican Revolution rather than the French Revolution, Boetticher's nun character was entirely different. Incidentally, sources say Boetticher hated the "Two Mules." Indeed, "Two Mules" contains a surprise ending, and the constant bickering between Hogan and Sara makes for many hilarious moments. Eastwood and MacLaine are charismatic throughout. The film is visually splendid to gaze at thanks to Oscar nominee Gabriel Figueroa's gorgeous cinematography. Consider the way he skewers his set-ups sometimes for a cool effect. The encounter with the Indians boasts some interesting camera angles, especially when Clint topples from the saddle.

"Two Mules for Sister Sara" unfolds with Hogan (Clint Eastwood of "Hang'em High") is riding one horse and leading another loaded with supplies though the dangerous Mexican wilderness. The leisurely title sequence features a variety of critters starting with a hoot owl, followed by a fish gliding through a stream, a cougar poised and panting on a rock ledge, a snake slithering across the sand, and concludes with Hogan's horse crushing a tarantula under its shod horn. Our protagonist is minding his own business when he stumbles accidentally onto three drunken guys and a naked woman in the middle of nowhere. The gunmen offer to share the lady, but then treacherously try to kill our hero over her. Hogan guns two of them down with relative ease, while the third seizes the woman and uses her as a shield. Hogan ignites a stick of TNT and slings it at them. The third man fires at Hogan and flees in desperation to avoid getting blown to bites. Hogan drops him with three shots in the back. He descends the slope, snuffs out the burning fuse on the stick of dynamite, and suggests that the naked lady put on her clothes unless she wants to be sunburnt to hell and gone.  Afterward, Hogan discovers the naked lady is in reality a Catholic nun! He helps her bury them and then blows his cool when he sees Sara sprinkling his canteen on their graves. He snatches his canteen and suggests that she bless them without water since they are in the middle of an arid region. Things turn even weirder when a column of French cavalry show up and Sara goes berserk. She cannot let the French capture her, she explains rapidly to Hogan, because she is working in league with the revolutionaries. Hogan unearths the dead killers and sends them off at a gallop on the backs of their ponies for the French to pursue. Hogan and Sara slip away.

Hogan has come to Mexico to help destroy a French prison on Bastille Day, and he winds up escorting Sara to the prison town. Before he reaches the prison, Hogan gets really drunk after the Yaquis shoot an arrow into his shoulder. Sister Sara uses the reflection off her cross to drive the superstitious Indians away. The scene where she has to remove the arrow from Hogan's shoulder is pretty gritty stuff. Hogan gets himself lickered up to tolerate the pain while Sara digs around the shaft of the arrow and carves a groove in it so he can put gunpowder on it, fire it up, and push it out the back of his shoulder. This scene can be rough on the squeamish. Anyway, since he is tanked enough up to withstand the pain of the arrow removal, Hogan has a difficult time with a train that he is supposed to destroy. He cannot climb the trestle to lash sticks of TNT to the pylons so he convinces Sara--who has a fear of heights--to climb up it and attach the explosives. It is ironic that a nun would hate to ascend and this plays into the big revelation at fade-out. Here comes the train and Hogan misses every shot until Sara hauls off and decks him. He recovers and nails one stick of dynamite and the entire structure collapses under the train.

The big finale finds Hogan and Sara along with some revolutionaries staging an attack on a French fortress. Siegel turns this scene into a massive combat sequence with Hogan demonstrating that he is an excellent shot with either hand. There are a couple of bloody shots in this battle sequence.  A guy gets a machete in the head is an example.  As usual, Clint is a cool as a cucumber. The big surprise--which I won't reveal--concerns the way that Hogan's relationship with Sara concludes. "Two Mules for Sister Sara" is part shoot'em western and part romance and together a very amusing adventure opus.

FILM REVIEW OF "TRANSIT" (2012)

“Seconds Apart” director Antonio Negret generates some genuine adrenaline-driven thrills, chills, and spills in his second feature length release. The rural crime thriller “Transit” (**1/2 OUT OF ****) qualifies as a tense road picture about four murderous thieves who tangle with an innocent family in backwater Louisiana over a fortune in stolen loot. The only shortcoming of this above-average but formulaic melodrama is its lackluster ending that deprives the protagonist of any reward for his heroic deeds. Fortunately, the cast is convincing, particularly Jim Caviezel as the devastated dad and James Frain as the desperate dastard. Of course, the authorities are clueless about what is happening between the heroes and the villains. Ironically, the law only complicates the situation and imperil our hero and his family. Frain looks particularly degenerate as the sleazy gang leader, while Harold Perrineau works up a lather as a trigger-happy henchman. “According to Greta” scenarist Michael Gilvary has cross-stitched the plots from the Dana Andrews’ epic “Hot Rods to Hell” (1967) and the Audrey Hepburn nail-biter “Wait Until Dark.” In ‘Hot Rods to Hell,” rebellious teens terrorized a family on a deserted stretch of highway. In “Wait Until Dark,” a deadly drug dealer stashed his narcotics in the blind heroine’s luggage for a transoceanic flight and the villains invaded her New York City apartment afterward to retrieve it. “Transit” received an R-rating for violence and terror, profane language and brief teen drug use in marijuana.

“Transit” opens with an armored car robbery. Indeed, it is an inside job, but the traitor doesn’t get a share of the loot. Instead, he takes a bullet. Afterward, the quartet of armored car robbers needs to figure out a way to get past a police roadblock without getting caught. They replace the camping gear strapped down atop of the Sidwell family SUV with their ill-gotten gains. Initially, the family has no clue about the villains have done. Marek (James Frain of “Titus”), Arielle (Diora Baird of “Wedding Crashers”), Losada (Harold Perrineau of “The Matrix Revolutions”), and Evers (Ryan Donowho of “Broken Flowers”) have fooled themselves into believing that they can retrieve their loot from the unsuspecting family before they realize that they’re  being used as a mule. Predictably, nothing goes as planned for either side, and those are the best dramatic moments. The conflict emerges from the situation. Our hero Nate (Jim Caviezel of “Outlander”) has just been paroled from prison. He served 18 months in a Federal Prison for real estate fraud. Now, poor Nate is struggling to get his wife Robyn (Elisabeth Röhm of “Abduction”) and his two sons together for a vacation when they run afoul of the bad guys. Some of the action will take you by surprise. Neither Negret nor Gilvary make it easy for either the heroes or their adversaries to achieve their respective objectives. No sooner do the villains have the loot than they lose it. Not long after the hero appropriates the millions, he loses it in the swamp. Could a suspicious looking fellow riding around the swamp in a boat have anything to do with the missing loot? If this weren’t enough, the hero’s wife mistakenly believes that Nate is involved with the villains.

The black 1972 Chevrolet Chevelle that the villains drive assumes a character of its own, and the long shots of it hauling down the highway look as cool as the spinning tire shots. Negret handles the chase sequences with aplomb. The car crash involving the Deputy Sheriff's Crown Victoria is pretty awesome. While nothing about this cat and mouse thriller is remotely original, the action is swiftly paced, and the acting is sturdy. Jim Caviezel turns in a good performance as the harried head of the family. No, he doesn’t get escape from this close encounter without sacrificing some flesh. Most of the action was lensed on location around Praireville, Louisiana. Clocking in at 88 minutes, “Transit” doesn’t wear out its welcome.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE GRAND DUEL" (Italian-1972)

Prolific Spaghetti western scenarist Ernesto Gastaldi penned the script for this Lee Van Cleef continental oater "The Grand Duel," directed with considerable competence by Giancarlo Santi. Although he didn't helm any Spaghetti westerns aside from "Grand Duel" on his own, Santi served as Sergio Leone's assistant director on "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" (1966) and his masterpiece "Once Upon A Time in the West" (1968) as well as Giulio Petroni's assistant director on "Death Rides A Horse"(1967). In short, not only did Santi know how to stage gunfights, but he also knew about the conventions of the Spaghetti western bullet ballet. Originally, Santi was hired to direct "Duck You Sucker," but Rod Steiger's complaints prompted Leone to replace Santi. "The Grand Duel" ranks high up in the lower 25 Spaghetti westerns out of the best 100. Three things make it memorable.  First, this above-average shoot'em up benefits largely from Lee Van Cleef's iconic gimlet-eyed presence. Second, the mystery gradually unraveled --presented in surrealistic flashbacks--generates suspense and tension. Third, Sergio Bardotti & Luis Enriquez Bacalov’s unforgettable orchestral score that signals the tonal changes in the narrative.

Roughly speaking, the motives of the characters in "The Grand Duel" reverse the relationship between the old gunslinger (Henry Fonda) and youthful gunfighter (Terence Hill) in Tonino Valerii's "My Name Is Nobody." Meanwhile, Van Cleef's entrance in "The Grand Duel" imitates his striking introduction in Leone's "For A Few Dollars More." In these Italian horse operas, Van Cleef is presented initially as a commercial passenger. In "The Grand Duel," he rides in a stagecoach, while he rides in a train with his head bowed beneath a black hat in "For A Few Dollars More." In the latter film, Van Cleef concealed his face behind a huge Bible when he asked the conductor about the train making an unscheduled stop. The conductor warns him they aren't going to stop where Van Cleef's frock-coated, black hat clad character wants. Nevertheless, Van Cleef tugs the emergency cord, halting the train, and disembarks to fetch his horse from the freight car.

As "The Grand Duel" opens, lawmen fire warning shots at the stagecoach that Sheriff Clayton (Lee Van Cleef) is riding in and refuse to let Big Horse (Jess Han of "Escape from Death Row") enter Gila Bend. They explain that escaped killer Philipp Wermeer (one-time-only actor Peter O'Brien, aka Alberto Dentice) has holed up with a girl in town after breaking out of jail in Jefferson. The authorities have posted a $3-thousand bounty on Vermeer's head. Nevertheless, Clayton disembarks and strolls without any apparent concern past two lawmen and several bounty hunters to quench his thirst in Gila Bend. This introductory scene unfolds at a leisurely pace as it covers points, such as where the bounty hunters are hidden and Clayton's imperturbability in the face of death. Clayton indicates the positions of all the bounty hunters to Vermeer. Later, after our wrongly convicted hero eludes the bounty hunters during a furious horse chase. The villains kill his horse, but he flags down a stagecoach. The entire scene resembles the scene from John Ford's "Stagecoach" when Ringo (John Wayne) who was afoot clambered inside the vehicle.

The omniscient Lee Van Cleef hero dominates the action. The hooked-nosed, veteran Hollywood heavy delivers a stern but seasoned performance as the worldly-wise elder. Van Cleef smokes his signature curved pipe. Actually, when we meet Clayton, he is no longer the sheriff of Jefferson. He protested Philip Vermeer's conviction, and the authorities stripped him of his badge. Earlier, he had taken the Patriarch to court three times. Eventually, as the best man with a gun in the entire state, Clayton ushers in justice above the law. Anyway, one of the Patriarch's sons Eli Saxon (bald headed Marc Mazza of "Moonraker") accused Philipp Vermeer of killing the Patriarch, (Horst Frank in a dual role wearing whiskers), a wealthy, unscrupulous power-broker abhorred by half of the state. Vermeer suspects that the Patriarch had his father shot in the back because he learned about the silver on Vermeer's land. Meanwhile, Eli demands to know the identity of the man who killed his father. Clayton reminds Eli that the Patriarch was gunned down from behind and that Vermeer stood in front of them at the railway depot. Clearly, Vermeer couldn't have killed the Patriarch.
 

The vicious and degenerate "Grand Duel" villains qualify as challenging adversaries. David (Horst Frank of "Johnny Hamlet") rules the Saxon clan, while Eli serves as Saxon City's marshal, and Adam Saxon (Klaus Grunberg of "Fire, Ice, and Dynamite") runs the saloon. Grunberg plays Adam as a depraved homosexual who wears a vanilla-white suit, fedora, and constantly caresses a long scarf looped around his neck. The first time that we see Adam, he guns down an old man that his henchmen have thrown out of the saloon. Later, Adam massacres a wagon train with a machine gun and Brother David orders him to leave no eyewitnesses. David's words: "In a violent country, he who seizes today, controls tomorrow," epitomizes his treachery.

"The Grand Duel" plays out in three settings: first in Gila Bend; second at the isolated Silver Bells stagecoach station, and third in Saxon City where a showdown occurs in the stock pens in traditional western style. The final showdown scene is very atmospheric with Lee Van Cleef and his adversaries opening huge gates to each of the stock pens before they finally settle down to the shootout.  Santi never lets the action malinger. He does a good job with the first large-scale gunfight at the stagecoach station. The bounty vermin not only blow-up the stagecoach, but also shoot each other to increase their shares after Vermeer surrenders. The Saxon City shootout when Vermin pole vaults to safety is neat. The black & white night sequence that he stages during the Patriarch's killing has surrealistic quality. Meantime, hardcore Lee Van Cleef fans won't want to miss "The Grand Duel" for its several shootouts as well as the twists and turns in Gastaldi’s screenplay. Get the letterboxed Wild East DVD; it surpasses the full-frame, public domain DVD or the foreign, semi-letterboxed version.

FILM REVIEW OF "MCQ" (1974)

Initially, prominent Hollywood action director John Sturges and leading man John Wayne had planned to make "The Sons of Katie Elder." Wayne's declining health, however, prevented them from collaborating on that superb western that Henry Hathaway eventually helmed. Instead, Sturges and Wayne got together to make the urban police thriller "McQ," and "McQ" (***1/2 out of ****) ranks as one of the best of the modern-day police thrillers in the tradition of both "Bullitt" and "Dirty Harry." The Lawrence Roman screenplay, inspired by Roman's previous epic "Slaughter on 10th Avenue," is top-notch stuff with a genuine mystery attached to an otherwise highly serviceable thriller about a rogue cop. Veteran detective Lon McQ (John Wayne) has a vendetta to settle with the chief villain, Manuel Santiago, and McQ believes that Santiago put out a contract on his partner Stan Boyle. Yes, this formulaic plot is as creaky as "The Maltese Falcon," but Sturges and Wayne always pay off in spades.

This atmospheric actioneer is worth watching for several reasons. First, cinematographer Harry Straddling, Jr. lensed a really cool, careening auto chase across scenic Seattle. Second, everybody has memorable lines of dialogue. Third, Elmer Bernstein delivers another thumping orchestral score. Fourth, Hal Needham staged the first ever tumbling cinematic car stunt on the beach at the end. Fifth, John Wayne gets to wield the rapid-firing MAC-10 submachine gun in its motion picture debut. "Lon, it's not licensed," the firearms guy reminds him. "Jack," McQ replies, "neither am I." Remember Dirty Harry had his .44 magnum, so Wayne winds up with a variation on his old "Stagecoach" repeater. Sixth, Eddie Albert, despite one sudden haircut goof in an interrogation scene, stands out as McQ's fire-eating superior Ed Kosterman who blames everything on 'radicals.' Kosterman keeps his eyes glued on McQ from start to finish. Eventually, Kosterman assigns a cop, J.C. (Jim Watkins of "Cool Breeze") to shadow McQ because McQ has a history of police brutality. McQ is a "Die Hard" type cop. He does what he needs to so he can get what it wants. It's not often that you see John Wayne play a character who intentioned lies. Western television star Clu Gulager is on hand, too, in a first-class cast that includes "McCloud's" girlfriend Diana Muldaur, perennial tough guy villain Al Lettieri, Colleen Dewhurst, Julie Adams, and portly David Huddleston.

The complex plot opens with McQ's long-time partner Stan Boyle (William Bryant of "The Guns of Will Sonnet") putting three bullets each into two uniformed cops during the early morning breakfast hours. What McQ doesn't know is that Boyle is the one did the killing. Boyle doesn't give either man a chance to return fire. Later, at a rendezvous outside of a coffee shop, Boyle hands his murder weapon, a 9MM automatic pistol with a silencer, over to the mystery man who lets him have it with a shotgun blast in the back. The mystery arises over who did the killings. Captain Kostermann (Eddie Albert of "Roman Holiday") insists that radicals are behind these murders. Predictably, McQ believes that his arch nemesis Santiago (Al Letierri of "The Godfather")is to blame. As it turns out, Kostermann and McQ are both wrong!

Meantime, McQ wants Kostermann to assign him to Stan's case. "Personal involvement clouds clear judgement," say Kostermann and refuses to put in on the case. Kostermann reminds McQ about an incident in the past. "Lon, I know you. I'm not gonna stand for you making up your own rules. You're not going to pull that Mickey Peters thing again!" McQ is adamant. "Peters was a hood and everybody knew it!" Kostermann reminds him what happened to Peters. "Yeah, and you weren't satisfied with throwing him up on the roof! You had to go up there and throw him back down! Six months in the hospital! Four lawyers screaming about his civil rights!" McQ replies without flinching: "Well, it kept him off the streets, didn't it?" 

 Nevertheless, this doesn't keep McQ from making a complete ass of himself as he stakes out Santiago's premises. A tip from a black pimp, Rosey (Roger E. Mosley of "Leadbelly"), provides him with information about a team of gunmen that Santiago has imported. McQ also learns about two million dollars in cocaine and heroin that is scheduled for incineration at an undisclosed location. He follows it to a local hospital, has a mild run-in with a security guard, and then catches Santiago's men after they have stolen the drugs and are wheeling it out the door in a laundry cart. Just as McQ catches onto them, they blast away at him and scramble out of the parking lot in a laundry truck. McQ pursues in his sporty car and takes several short cuts across Seattle to catch up to the truck. Ironically, the minute that he catches up with the laundry truck, another laundry truck that is identical to the one McQ is following cruises into traffic. Now, McQ has two laundry trucks in front of him. One truck careens out of traffic and McQ tags it. He cuts the truck off and pulls it over. As it turns out, McQ stopped the wrong truck!!!

Nothing is a picnic for our hero. Later, he is trying to pull out of an alley and two 18-wheel tractor-trailer rigs box him in and slam repeatedly into his Green Hornet until it is a shambles and he is squished up in it. The villains, it seems, have been trying to separate McQ from his car since the outset when a car thief tried to swipe his car at the marina. No sooner has McQ left the Seattle P.D. than he persuades a local private eye, Pinky (David Huddleston of "Bad Company"), to help him get a P.I. license so he can take advantage of Pinky's cover. "I see it, do-it-yourself gumshoe," Pinky observes.

John Sturges, who helmed "The Magnificent Seven," "The Great Escape," and "The Satan Bug" maintains the suspense and tension throughout this 111 minute thriller and sets up one primary red herring in the Roman screenplay that pays off in the finale. Mind you, "McQ" is no "Dirty Harry." It doesn't address the legal complications of our flawed justice system, and the chief villain is a corporate type drug smuggler with a large company that he can hide behind as well as an expensive attorney who doesn't miss a trick.


Sure, John Wayne looks a mite long in the tooth to be playing such an athletic role, but he carries himself well enough and he has a genuine character to play. Incidentally, Wayne had a chance to play "Dirty Harry," but he turned it down. He doesn't have a bank robbery scene like Clint did in "Dirty Harry," but he has a scene where he nails a fleeing hit-man named Patty Samuels dead in his tracks on a Seattle dock with a well-nigh impossible shot. "That was the greatest shot," raves a dock hand, "that I ever saw." Interestingly, this scene resembles a scene from Sturges' "The Magnificent Seven" where Brett (James Coburn) fired at a man on horse just as the rider reached the skyline. Brett blew the horseman out of the saddle. Chico rhapsodizes about the shot, but Brett explains that he was aiming for the horse but not the rider!

"McQ" is an above-average thriller that every John Wayne fan must see!

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.