FILM REVIEW OF ''FIRESTORM" (1998)

You cannot see the trees for the testosterone in director Dean Semler’s synthetic outdoors action saga “Firestorm” (** out of ****) starring sportscaster Howie Long as a stalwart smoke jumper who parachutes into raging Wyoming forest fires to rescue little gals and grown-up gals from getting cremated. Any sparks that Howie ignited as an actor in John Woo’s “Broken Arrow” sputter in “Firestorm” with Long’s pulp diction performance. Chris Soth’s one-dimensional script doesn’t help Howie much as escaped convicts and flaming infernos challenge his physical prowess. There is nothing compelling about Howie’s character and his charisma cannot compensate for this monolithic hero. Leanly plotted as a sapling but predictable as a plunging redwood, “Firestorm” kindles minimal excitement with its prefabricated plot and Howie’s Styrofoam heroics. Of course, juvenile-minded audiences who don’t demand much from their cinematic exercises may find this half-toasted tale tolerable.

What modicum of merit the movie musters lies in its premise. Ultraviolent villain Randy Earl Shaye (William Forsythe of “Once Upon A Time in America”) cons his shyster lawyer (Terry Kelly of “Christina”) into committing wildfire arson. Shaye wants out of the Wyoming State Penitentiary to get his $20-million. It seems that the prison dispatches short-time convicts to help extinguish forest fires. Shaye plans to use the forest fire as a cover for his escape. Stabbing a friendly prisoner on the fire detail, Shaye disguises himself as the dead man, and then sneaks out of the joint. Soth asks us to believe that a man could escape from prison based largely on a tattoo worn behind the ear.

As villains go, Shaye shows early promise as a worthy adversary, until the filmmakers contrive obvious flaws in his character that assure his mortality. Veteran heavy William Forsythe supplies appropriate plug-ugly menace as Randy Earl Shaye. When we initially see Shaye, he resembles Sean Connery from the “The Rock,” with a beard and blond messianic coiffure. The filmmakers emphasize Shaye’s villainy by showing not only the character of Shaye but also Forsythe’s sneering face together in the same shot with the man that he kills. Driving the point home, director Dean Semler wants audiences to realize that Shaye is clearly an unrepentant sadist. Sadly, the events of the plot turn more on Shaye’s sadism than on his criminal ingenuity. Shaye’s comeuppance is horribly graphic but richly deserved for his murderous demeanor.

“Firestorm” follows clench-jawed Jesse Graves (ex-Raiders football star Howie Long) as he thwarts Shaye’s escape. The Spartan Chris Soth screenplay tosses in a woman to liven things up. “Titanic” supporting player Suzy Amis appears here as Jennifer, an ornithologist who finds herself trapped by the wildfire blaze. Fleeing from the fire, she runs smack into Randy Earl and his armed and stupid henchmen masquerading as Canadian firefighters. You must have stupid henchmen in “Firestorm” so that they can brag about their means of escape. When Jennifer finally gets away, Shaye cannot afford to let her live because she knows his plans.

Meanwhile, when Jesse learns about the forest fire, he skydives into it singlehandedly. He stumbles into Shaye, Jennifer and Shaye’s other henchmen. In other words, “Firestorm” constantly moves ahead in terms of storytelling, but with little efficiency, plausibility, or imagination. When Shaye tries his bogus Canadian firefighters story out, Jesse is neither impressed nor convinced. Matching fists and wits with Shaye’s motley crew, our brawny firefighter hero sneaks off with Jennifer and they evade Randy Earl until a climactic fight on a lake about to be engulfed in a withering blaze.

“Firestorm” derives its title from the phenomenon which occurs when two fires collide and suck all of the oxygen out of the air, creating one of Mother Nature’s nasty nuclear-style blasts which destroys everything in it. Soth’s script contains those suitable elements that any decent he-man actioneer should boast. The effect, however, is less than incendiary. The problem with Soth along with uncredited scenarist Graham Yost of “Speed” and “Hard Target” is that their characters are a poorly developed bundle of stick figures with neither depth nor complexity. Randy Earl Shaye is supposed to be a homicidal genius who goes so far as to impersonate a prisoner (brutally killing the convict by stabbing him in the neck), but doesn’t know squat about forest fires. Jennifer claims to be the offspring of a third generation Marine. Boasting that she can field strip automatic weapons like an AK-47, she fails to notice that the auto-pistol that she swiped from a sex offender isn’t loaded.

“Firestorm” does other things wrong, too. A neat gimmick--ping-pong balls that explode to start fires—is lamely utilized. The first time that they use it as a trick during a ping-pong game, and the second time, Howie uses it to start a backfire to divert oxygen from the first fire. But the ping-pong balls disappear afterward, never to be used again. There is a running joke about axes that the filmmakers bungle, too. At one point in the plot, Jesse and Jennifer lay a trap for Shaye and his sex-predator henchmen that goes afoul because it is so ineptly planned with half-baked results!

The biggest problem with “Firestorm” is its star Howie Long. Howie desperately needs acting lessons. He wears a big, silly, corn-fed smile throughout the action and delivers his lines as if he were giving a pregame interview. Physically, Long is right for the role, but he doesn’t make you believe that he is a smoke jumper, much less a character.

The only surprises in “Firestorm” are provided by rugged Scott Glenn as battle-weary smoke jumper Wynt Perkins who is crippled while rescuing a dog from a burning house. Revealing more about his role and character would cut down on what little energy “Firestorm” contrives. Sentimentality drips off the script at points, especially at the end when Jennifer learns that she has been incubating two bird eggs during this maelstrom of action.

The essence of “Firestorm” is tough guys proving how masculine that they are in a hot spot. Hurling axes, slinging chainsaws, jumping out of “perfectly good planes,” leaping cliffs with motorcycles, and slugging it out with each other should keep the juvenile-minded happy. “Firestorm” is the kind of movie where the bad guy is so evil that he spends his time murdering his own men. Even though Jennifer gets taken hostage, the bad guys find themselves too preoccupied to rape her. Sexual content is pretty mild. The best scene has Jennifer setting her signal fires faster than Howie can torch his own fires so that they can be spotted on radar from the fire tower. Oddly enough, the writers neglect to add any kiss-kiss to the bang-bang in the plot. There is no love interest so they must have been appealing to beer drinkers and juveniles. “Firestorm” might have been more fun if Jennifer and Jesse had gotten a little hot and bothered around all those blazes.

“Dances with Wolves” Oscar-winning photographer Dean Semler makes his less than inflammatory directorial debut with “Firestorm.” When he takes his cameras up for aerial shots of British Columbia, you find your breath catching in your throat. Sadly, Semler doesn’t breath the same magic into the thin, adolescent storyline. The special effects of the firestorm aren’t that imaginative. You feel like you’re trapped by expensive looking computer graphics instead of a real wildfire.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE JACKAL'' (1997)

Watching horrible movies like “The Jackal” (*1/2 out of ****) is enough to make you howl in derision. This Bruce Willis & Richard Gere assassination saga ranks as a pallid remake of director Fred Zinnemann’s classic 1973 thriller “The Day of the Jackal.” Typically, Hollywood remakes are inferior when compared with the original, and “The Jackal” indisputably proves the point beyond a shadow of a doubt. Sluggishly paced, abysmally written, and hilariously performed, “The Jackal” has managed nevertheless to sucker large audiences into cinemas, based undoubtedly on its stellar cast, rather than its narrative.

“The Jackal” draws its inspiration from scenarist Kenneth Ross’s “Day of the Jackal” script. No screen reference appears in the opening film credits for novelist Frederick Forsyth who penned the international bestseller about a lone assassin gunning for French president Charles de Gaulle. Whereas the original “Jackal” took place in the 1960s, the “Jackal” remake unfolds in a contemporary setting. What made the original “Jackal” a tense, spellbinding, but imaginative actioneers was how the filmmakers got around their obvious dead end ending. Everybody knew that De Gaulle was never shot down by an assassin, so Zinnemann and his write Kenneth Ross had to dream up a plausible resolution. They did. “Memphis Belle” director Michael Caton-Jones and scenarist Chuck Pfarrer, however, come up with nothing to match the original’s clever conclusion.

That’s not to say that “The Jackal” isn’t an elegant looking epic with some interesting high-tech firearms. The moviemakers have spared no expense in rehashing the original. The story globe trots from the new Moscow to Helsinki, then London, England, and finally the United States. The problem is that director Caton-Jones and scenarist Pfarrer have eliminated the best parts of Ross’ original script and replaced them with their own brain-dead plotting. When the characters in “The Jackal” aren’t acting like imbeciles, the people who made the film are.

FBI Deputy Director Carter Preston (Sidney Poitier) storms into a Moscow disco on the heels of Russian Intelligence officer Major Valentina Koslova (Diane Venora of “Wolfen”) and her policemen to bust arrogant Russian mafioso Ghazzi Murad (Ravil Isyanov of “GoldenEye”). When he cannot bribe Koslova, Ghazzi whips out a knife. During the ensuing struggle, Koslova shoots Ghazzi at close range and kills him. Terek Murad (David Hayman of “Walker”) is furious when he learns about Ghazzi’s death. Terek is so upset that he buries an axe in the head of the mafia soldier who brought him the bad news.

The vindictive Terek hires a lethal assassin known only as “The Jackal.” Demanding bloody retribution, Terek pays the Jackal the sum of $70-million dollars, half in advance and the other half on completion of the killing. Specifically, Terek demands the head of the FBI killed in spectacular fashion. The Jackal orders Terek to hole up somewhere outside of Russia until he has iced the FBI chief. Meanwhile, Russia authorities abduct one of Terek’s bodyguards.

Under gruesome torture the bodyguard yields the word ‘jackal.’ Koslova informs an incredulous Preston that the KGB once used the Jackal’s services. Moreover, they learn that somebody is alive who can positively identify the Jackal. The catch is that the FBI doesn’t know where they can lay their hands on Isabella (Mathilda May of “Lifeforce”). The best that they can come up with is her old flame, IRA terrorist Declan Mulqueen (Richard Gere of “Internal Affairs”), who is pulling a 50-year stretch in a Massachusetts lock-up on a weapons charge.

Reluctant initially to reveal the whereabouts of his ex-girlfriend, Mulqueen decides to help the FBI. Not only does he tell Preston that he has seen the Jackal, but also that he can recognize the Jackal’s methods. Caton-Jones and Pfarrer cross-cut between the authorities tracking down the Jackal and the Jackal’s painstaking efforts to elude capture and devise a failsafe scenario so he can get away without a trace. As the tight-lipped, amoral, icy-hearted eponymous character, Bruce Willis turns in a Dr. Jackal and Mr. Hide performance. Willis’ hitman travels incognito with several identities and passports to get him through customs anywhere he goes. Talk about dressing up. Half of “The Jackal” is wasted as we try to spot Bruno in his next outlandish disguise. Willis has more fun dressing up than shooting people. None of Willis’ disguises are as ingenious or playful as the ones Val Kilmer wore in “The Saint.” Now, you “Die Hard” fans are going to be disappointed with “The Jackal.” One of Bruno’s disguises is playing a homosexual, and we get to see Bruno kiss another homosexual. No, you don’t see their lips smack! Willis and the filmmakers photograph the kissing scene tastefully so that you cannot actually see Bruce’s lips on the other fellow’s mouth.

Although Willis makes a tolerable villain, he is supposed to be the deadliest hitman in the world. Truth of the matter is that the guy cannot hit the side of a barn with his pistol. In an early shoot-out with Valentina, the Jackal misses practically every shot! Later, in a subway gunfight with Mulqueen, the Jackal incredibly cannot put a bullet in the ex-IRA gunman! Here’s the Jackal behind a pillar swapping lead with Mulqueen who is standing out in the open without a bit of cover, and the Jackal cannot hit him! Which brings me to the Jackal’s sophisticated Gatling gun weapon. Does he want to make the shoot-out a bloody one with a weapon that can empty its clip of ammunition before the first shot tears into its target? Or is it simply that the Jackal is a pathetic marksman?
Richard Gere looks hopelessly miscast as an honorable IRA gunman. His emerald accent is acceptable, largely because he doesn’t have to utter a lot of singsong dialogue. The moviemakers do everything that they can to whitewash Mulqueen’s character.

“The Jackal” could have been a great cat-and-mouse thriller, but all it manages to be is a wedge of cheese with a thousand holes in its storyline.

FILM REVIEW OF ''DISTRICT 9" (2009)

Director Neill Blomkamp's freshman, feature-length, dystopian sci-fi thriller "District 9" (* out of ****)qualifies as both grotesque and grungy. Worse, heavily-laden with anti-apartheid messages, it emerges nevertheless as an uneven blend of Monty Python skits with a serious polemic about alien rights. Does anybody remember director Christopher Columbus’ “Bicentennial Man” (1999) with Robin Williams and lack of concern for alien rights? Despite some visceral action sequences that attest to Blomkamp’s expertise at staging action, this nimble but numb-skulled nail-biter puts the protagonist in a thoroughly impossible position. Essentially, “District 9” exemplifies those supernatural films that occur primarily on Earth with the 'aliens among us’ theme. Mankind knows that the aliens have arrived. In fact, not only have we accepted them, we have grossly taken advantage of them! These aliens are neither as lovable as “Wall-E” lovable nor as cunning as the “Terminator.” You could call “District 9”: 'The Day the Aliens Stood Still.'

Indeed, Blomkamp and co-scenarist Terri Tatchell encapsulate the action in a fictional expose television documentary. Intermittently, Blomkamp indulges himself with adrenalin-laced dramatic footage that no documentary film could have captured without staging it. At other times, Blomkamp cross-cuts black & white footage from surveillance cameras to show our woebegone hero at work. Essentially, he is following the same scenario as “Cloverfield,” except for those few sequences that do not fit into the documentary. Indeed, “District 9” borrows from a number of science fiction films. A gigantic alien spaceship visits Earth like in "Independence Day,” but this spacecraft cannot leave. The spaceship hovers over Johannesburg, South Africa, for three months before the authorities board it. The skeletal aliens that humans find inside are malnourished, and the good folks in Johannesburg, wind up confining these aliens in what constitutes a huge slum. The humans treat the aliens like second-class citizens and allow them to sink into squalor. The aliens resort to crime to make ends meet and are often at odds with the authorities. No, "District 9" shares little in common with the conventional "Alien Nation." These aliens look like they walked off the set of a "Predator" movie and--unlike most alien invaders--they are not as intimidating as their counterparts. These aliens remain largely at our mercy, and Blomkamp renders humanity as brutal and unscrupulous in their treatment of the aliens.

“District 9” opens with several talking heads as part of a documentary about the scandal involving the protagonist. Wikus Van De Merwe (Sharlto Copely) is an ordinary field representative for Multi-National United, (MNU), a private company that has dominion over the aliens. Escalating alien crime and violence has prompted the government to move some 1.8 million of them to new District 10 camp located outside of Johannesburg. They are being served eviction notices by MNU field representatives who are backed up by armed helicopters hovering above them. Our hero’ s father-in-law, Piet Smit (Louis Minnaar) assigns him to head up the mission. During one of his visits to a domicile, Wikus discovers a suspicious cylinder among an arms cache. When he fumbles with it, a black liquid squirts into his face, contaminating him with alien DNA. As the story open, Wikus is already under investigation. The tabloids carry pictures of him mating with aliens. We are given a recap of the story and then the second half opens as Wikus grows flippers on his left hand. Suddenly, Wikus becomes the most prized human alive with the alien DNA polluting his bloodstream. Alien guns that scientists could never have fired now discharge at Wikus’ half-breed DNA touch. Mind you, Wikus refuses to fire the weapons, but his captors shock him with cattle prods until he accommodates them. Wikus goes berserk and escapes from the laboratory. He joins forces with an intelligent, inventor-type alien named Christopher. Christopher wants to rekindle the energy of his command capsule so he can get back to the spacecraft overhead and haul freight.

Basically, "District 9" appropriates the ‘what if’ sci-fi theme and employs it as a metaphor for a social consciousness sermon about racial xenophobia. Neither Blomkamp nor Tatchell regard humanity in a sentimental light. Worse, we are asked to sympathize with a hero who is a complete imbecile. The theme of man's inhumanity to aliens comes through 'loud and clear.’ Imagine a science fiction movie that takes place in a third world country and you've summed up "District 9." These aliens aren't cool. They look like big bugs and they speak in guttural language. Everybody refers to them disparagingly as ‘prawns.’ Blomkamp translates the alien lingo in white subtitles. They are as pathetic as the hero who behaves as if he were in a Woody Allen comedy. He is a naive moron, a patsy, a fall guy. The important part of the plot transpires when he undergoes a quasi-alien metamorphosis a la Franz Kafka meets "The Fly."

Blomkamp lenses "District 9" like a documentary, and its bureaucratic hero makes an ass out of himself. He couldn't be any more abject if he were John Cleese in a Monty Python skit. Eventually, after he gets contaminated, he begins his transformation into an alien with one hand turning into an alien claw. Yes, the aliens do resemble huge insects which make them appear less hostile but far from appealing. Indeed, Blomkamp creates a very convincing alternative universe in that the story is credible and as down to earth as any sci-fi you can imagine. Eventually, the alien along with the Wikus Van De Merwe bureaucratic hero launch a one-man/one-alien war against the repressive organization MNU that keeps the alien cooped up in the worse circumstances. The section between Merwe escaping and then teaming up with Christopher is action packed, but there are no surprises in this flat movie. I cannot believe that so many people are going ape about this asinine little flick.

FILM REVIEW OF ''FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS" (1943)

The quote from John Donne's "Sermon III" opens the film: "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." In 1936, Spain endured a three-year-long civil war. General Francisco Franco Bahamonde allied himself with Fascist Italian and Nazi German sympathizers and won this brutal war. Several hundred Americans fought alongside the Loyalists. For the record, Spanish citizens that opposed Franco's takeover constituted the Loyalists. In 1939, the war concluded with Franco as dictator. Author Ernest Hemingway served as a war correspondent in Spain from 1937 to 1938 and saw the action first hand. Later, Paramount shelled out $150,000 in 1940 for Hemingway's film rights to his novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” The Hemingway novel was published in 1940,became a bestseller, and sold about 750-thousand copies. Paramount made history with this deal as the highest price that a studio paid for a novel. The “New York Times” newspaper wrote that "Paramount paid Hemingway $100,000 for the property, agreeing to an additional 10 cents a copy for each volume sold up to 500,000." Originally, Paramount wanted the legendary Cecil B. DeMille to call the shots on the film, but he abandoned the project to direct “Rurales.” DeMille never produced “Rurales.”

Paramount sources said Hemingway created his main character, Robert Jordan, with Gary Cooper in mind and later suggested Ingrid Bergman as Maria. DeMille protégé Sam Wood sought Cooper, a Samuel Goldwyn contract star, for the role, too. Previously, they had worked together on the Lou Gehrig baseball movie “The Pride of the Yankees” in 1942. Paramount obtained Bergman from David O. Selznick. Bergman replaced an actress who didn’t work out as Maria. According to Turner Classic Movies Archives, the State of California loaned the bell tolling at the beginning and the end of the film. According to studio press book information, director Wood started shooting “For Whom the Bell Tolls” in November 1941 since the snow that they needed for the setting in the Sierra Mountains was falling. According to Turner Classic Movies, “Plans to film the airplane sequences on December 7, 1941 were delayed due to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which resulted in the grounding of all commercial planes. Paramount then had to register their pilots and planes with the Civil Aeronautics Administration and receive U.S. Army approval before they were allowed to shoot the airplane sequences.” Eventually, production resumed in the Sierra Mountains during the summer of 1942. The Lumsden Bridge near the Tuolumne River in Yosemite National Park served as the bridge in some scenes that Robert Jordan winds up destroying. Paramount spent $2,681,298 to make “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”

While the Production Code Administration worried about the political content of “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” the censors displayed greater anxiety over the—as the MPAA/PCA Collection at the AMPAS Library notes--"illicit sex affair" between Jordan and Maria. According to AMPAS, the filmmakers were told to "omit entirely from the picture the sleeping bag" sequence, and to "endeavor to remove...the suggestion that Maria has been raped." The word “rape” is never uttered in “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and Jordan repeatedly dissuades Maria from confessing to him the details of her rape. Predictably, Spain banned the film. Three years after Franco died; “For Whom the Bell Tolls” received its Spanish premiere in 1978. Initially, the film opened on July 14, 1943 in New York City, and the studio donated proceeds to the National War Fund. Incidentally, American women adopted Bergman's short hair. Greek actress Katina Paxinou, in her screen debut, received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as the gutsy Pilar. The film also received nominations for other Academy Awards, including Best Picture; Best Actor (Gary Cooper); Best Supporting Actor (Akim Tamiroff); Best Actress (Ingrid Bergman); Art Direction/Interior Decoration (Color); Cinematography (Color); Film Editing, (Sherman Todd and John Link); Music (Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture).

Although Ernst Hemingway chose Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper as the leads in director Sam Wood's cinematic adaptation of "For Whom the Bell Tolls," the novelist hated the movie because the repressive Hollywood Production Code Administration made Paramount Pictures excise virtually all of the political content of "Stagecoach" scenarist Dudley Nichols' script. Indeed, what the Production Code did was to remove anything derogatory about General Franco's regime, ruling in Spain at that point, that Cooper and his Nationalist resistance compatriots sought to defeat. This was certainly not the first movie that had its plot eviscerated. The 1938 Spanish Civil War movie "Blockade" with Henry Fonda has suffered a similar fate. It was obvious which side was right and which side was wrong, but the Code prevented them from identifying them by name.

"For Whom the Bell Tolls" (**** out of ****) takes place in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War as the protagonist, American teacher-turned-Republican soldier Robert Jordan, blasts a Nationalist troop train to smithereens. Enemy soldiers swarm after Jordan (Gary Cooper of "Sergeant York") and his friend Kashkin (Feodor Fedorovich Chaliapin Jr. of "Mission to Moscow") and wound the latter. Kashkin holds Jordan to his promise to kill him because he refuses be captured. Nobody wants to fall into the savage hands of the Republicans. This form of mercy killing is a rule of thumb among the Republican. Nevertheless, Jordan hates having to kill Kaskhin and calls it "murder." Meantime, Jordan escapes to Madrid to rendezvous with Republican General Golz (Leo Bulgakov of "This Land is Mine") briefs him on a new mission to dynamite an important bridge at the same time that the Republicans launch a surprise air assault. Jordan has three days to prepare.

An older Spanish guide Anselmo (Vladimir Sokoloff of "Scarlet Street") leads our hero to the bridge spanning a gorge and then escorts him to a Nationalist outpost in a mountain cave not far from the structure. A small band of guerrilla fighters and Gypsy refugees take orders from Pablo (Akim Tamiroff of "Union Pacific") and his fire breathing wife Pilar. According to his wife, Pablo has lost his nerve and she supervises their exploits. Pilar (Katina Paxinou of "Confidential Agent") has nothing but contempt for her cowardly drunkard of a husband. Robert conceals the explosive in the cave and gets to know his new companions, among them a carefree gypsy Rafael (Mikhail Rasumny of "Comrade X"); Primitivo (Victor Varconi of "Strange Cargo"); Andres (Eric Feldary of "Cloak and Dagger"), Fernando (Fortunio Bonanova of "Citizen Kane"), and young Maria, (Ingrid Bergman of "Casablanca"), a Spanish refugee that the Nationalists raped after they shot her parents. Palo and his men rescued Maria from a prison train. Robert needs Pablo's assistance to blow up the bridge. Pablo, worried about a Nationalist reprisal, gives Jordan the cold shoulder.

Meanwhile, Pilar warns Jordan that Pablo cannot be trusted. Pablo is not happy since Pilar has assumed command of his men and behaves in a suspicious manner. Later, Fernando reveals that he left camp to be with his wife in the city. He eavesdropped on loquacious Nationalists chatting about gossip of a possible Republican attack on the bridge. Pilar, Maria and Robert climb through the mountains to meet the rebel El Sordo (Joseph Calleia of "The Gorilla"), a renegade gypsy, who agrees to steal the horses they need to escape after the bridge is destroyed. Gradually, over a three day interval, Jordan and Maria become lovers. Eventually, Maria tells him that the Nationalist soldier abused her. Mind you, Nichols could not use the word 'rape' in 1943, and Jordan doesn't want to hear about the details. A snowstorm has everybody worried that Nationalist patrols may spot the tracks of El Sordo's stolen horses and follow them to the cave. Pablo's drunken behavior prompts the others send him into exile.

After Pablo's departure, Pilar reveals that Pablo has not always yellow. When the war began, Pablo proved himself a courageous leader. Organizing the citizens against a Nationalist attack, Pablo helped save their town. He blew up the wall around the city hall where the Nationalists had been cornered and decided not to give up. Pablo forced these city officials to face the wrath of the citizens. These men brave a gauntlet before the enraged citizens hurl them off a high cliff to their deaths.

The savagery of his countrymen sickens Pablo and refuses to participate in the fighting. Later, Pablo shows up at the cave with a change of heart and agrees to support Jordan's mission to blow the bridge. The next day, Robert has to shoot a Nationalist cavalryman who rides too close to the cave. A patrol rides up and El Sordo's gang diverts them from Jordan and company. El Sordo and his men take refuge in a mountain outpost and fight until fighter planes wipe them out. Meanwhile, the treacherous Pablo sabotages Jordan's equipment. Anselmo warns Jordan that Nationalist troops are fortifying the bridge. Robert fears that the Nationalists know of the Republican surprise attack. He dispatches Andres on a hopeless mission behind enemy lines with a message for Golz to cancel the offensive. During the night, Jordan and Maria make love. Before dawn, Pilar uncovers Pablo's treachery, and Robert rigs up make-shift detonators from hand grenade. As Jordan is placing the dynamite, a Nationalist armored column trundles into view. The bridge is destroyed, but Anselmo dies in the blast. As Jordan and company escape, the soldiers open fire and a shell knocks Jordan off his horse and he breaks his leg. Jordan convinces Maria to leave with Pillar and Pablo and dies when the soldiers rush him.

Director Sam Wood paces the action so that he can tell several stories at once and he generates considerable suspense and tension in the final quarter hour of this epic. The legendary production designer William Cameron Menzies created the fake bridge over the gorge. Composer Victor Young's score is wonderfully evocative. Film critics at the prestigious magazines of the day virtually denounced the film. LIFE magazine wrote: "Althoug it has been publicized as 'one of the greatest movies of all time,' "For Whom the Bell Tolls" is hardly that. To most it will be a good picture that for various reasons missing being a great one. The chief complaint will be the length of the movie. Running for almost three hours it becomes tiring, lacks a natural humor and more than once becomes self-conscious." NEW REPUBLIC film critic Manny Farber complained about the color: "I am not sure how much of the picture's peculiar lack of effect is the result of its technicolor. I myself find it difficult to take seriously a movie made in technicolor: profundity seems out of key with the carnival spirt of the color, which is always gay and bright, masklike, without substance." Farber also griped that the censors at the Production Code "killed the theme."

According to TIME magazine, Paramount presented the film as a 'roadshow attraction' with ticket prices ranging between 75 cents to a minimum of $1.10. Meanwhile, THE SATURDAY REVIEW OF LITERATURE decried the film. "The news on Paramount's long-awainted production of "For Whom the Bell Tolls" is pretty nearly all bad. It's too late, it's too long, and it's too painfully anxious not to hurt anybody's feelings. It emphasizes all of the book's inherent weaknesses, and instead of striking a ringing blow agains the forces of reaction, dribbled off into a series of pittypats." NEWSWEEK wrote "In general, it is advisable to regard FWTBT as a poignant, ill-starred romance, played against a grimly melodramatic background. Even here, though, the film leaves a good deal to be desired. Director Sam Wood does manage to whip the action into a superb fury of excitement and suspense in his scenes of carnage--particularly in the climactic destruction of the bridge, and in El Sordo's gallant, hopeless delaying action on a vulnerable mountaintop. Yet such moments only infrequently break a series of garrulous, though artistically arranged, close-ups, in a story that lacks the variety to sustain its excessive running time." THE NATION faulted the use of technicolor as Faber had in THE NEW REPUBLIC. "The Technicolor is even unluckier. It is a good as the best experts, at his stage, can make it: which still means the rankest kind of magazine-illustration and postcard art. Color is very nice for costume pieces and musical comedies, and has a great aesthetic future in films, but it still gets fatally in the way of any serious imitation of reality." Also, THE NATION's critic James Agee noted: "Mr. Hemingway's sleeping bag, by the way, is so discreetly used that you can never at any moment be sure who is in or out nuendo." ATLANTIC MONTHLY wrote: "There is a bright side to the Paramount tour de force, however. After a three-hour orgy of mispresentation, after blinking at the false use of technicolor that resembles tearoom candles more than Spain, the beholder can leave the theatre in an exalted frame of mind, because of the performance of the great actress, Katina Paxinou. She was the Pilar of whom Hemingway wrote, whom all of us knew under one name or another--the blood and dust of a suffering Spain. Every word and movement, every silence and gesture of Paxinou, was not only convincing but unforgettable. Concerning her great contribution, ennobling an otherwise dull and harmful picture, Hollywood is unanimous and overflowing with praise."

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE BLOB'' (1958)

“The Blob” (*** out of ****) qualifies as a cult sci-fi film not only because it launched 27-year old Steve McQueen on a trajectory to superstardom, but also because it exploited the popular themes both of alien invasion and teenage delinquency that were inseparable in the 1950s. Interestingly, nobody in the Kay Linaker & Theodore Simonson screenplay ever refers to the amorphous, scarlet-red protoplasm that plummeted to Earth in a meteor and menaced everybody in the small town of Downingtown Pennsylvania on a Friday night as “The Blob.” Steve McQueen won the role of Josh Randall, the old West bounty hunter in “Wanted: Dead or Alive,” after producer Dick Powell saw this Paramount Pictures’ release. Meanwhile McQueen’s attractive girlfriend Aneta Corsaut went on to star opposite Andy Griffith in “The Andy Griffith Show” as Sheriff Taylor’s school teacher girlfriend Helen Crump. Of course, neither McQueen nor Corsaut were teenagers, but then rarely did actual teenagers play actual teenagers.

Director Irvin S. Yeaworth, Jr., made his directorial debut with “The Blob.” Linaker & Simonson’s screenplay synthesized four genres: first, the alien invasion; second, teenage delinquency; third, a murder mystery, and fourth; a horror chiller. Moreover, while the gelatinous substance assumes various shapes, it remains largely anonymous. In other words, the eponymous Jell-O neither talks nor communicates by telepathy. Instead, it kills without a qualm and discriminates against nobody. The tone of “The Blob” is fairly serious in spite of its somewhat campy nature.

As the filmmakers point out on the Criterion DVD release of “The Blob,” the movie opens uncharacteristically for a sci-fi horror thriller with our hero and heroine in a remote rural locale making out and kissing. Jane (Anita Corsaut) and Steve (Steve McQueen) see a large meteor fall to the earth and drive off to find it. Meanwhile, an old man finds the meteor and prods it with a stick. The crust of the meteor cracks open and a slimy bunch of goop clings to the stick. When the old timer (Olin Howland of “The Paleface”) gets a closer look at it, the goop attaches itself to his hand. The old guy runs screaming from the crater and Steve nearly hits him with his jalopy. Steve and Jane pick the guy up and take him to see Dr. Hallen in town.

Hallen is poised to leave town for a medical conference when Steve and Jane bring the old guy to his office. Hallen phones his nurse to return since he may need to perform an amputation. Of course, Hallen has never seen anything like the substance on the man’s forearm. Hallen sends Steve and Jane to find out what happened. Our heroes run into another group of teenagers that ridicule Steve’s fast driving. Steve fools him into a reverse drive race, but the local police chief Dave (Earl Rowe) lets him off the hook. Steve and the teenagers visit the site of the meteor crater and find the warm remains of the meteor.

After they visit the old man’s house and rescue a dog, the teenagers split for a spooky late night movie while Steve and Jane return to Dr. Hallen’s office. During the interim, the blob has entirely absorbed the old geezer, killed Hallen’s nurse and attacked the doctor. Neither acid thrown on the protoplasm nor Hallen’s shotgun have any effect on the blob. Steve catches a glimpse of the blob absorbing Hallen.

When Steve and Jane go to the police department to report the incident, Dave is frankly incredulous, while Sergeant Bert (John Benson) believes that it is a prank. Bert has an axe to grind with teenagers because his wife died when one struck her car.

Steve and Jane take them to Hallen’s office, but they can find neither hide nor hair of anybody, but Dave admits that the office has been vandalized. Against Sgt. Bert’s advice, Dave turns the teens over to their respective parents. No sooner have Steve and Jane fooled their folks into believing that they are snugly asleep in bed than they venture out again. They drive into town and spot the old man’s dog that got away from them in front of a supermarket. When they go to retrieve the mutt, Steve steps in front of the electric eye door of the grocery store and it opens. They find nobody inside, but they encounter the blob. Steve and Jane take refuge in a freezer and the blob doesn’t attack them.

Later, after they escape from the blob, Steve persuades his teenager buddies that challenged him in a street race to alert the authorities because he is supposed to be home in bed. Police Chief Dave and the fire department arrive at the supermarket. Steve tries to convince Dave that the blob is in the store. Sgt. Bert proves that nothing is wrong. About that time, the blob kills the theater projectionist and attacks the moviegoers. Suddenly, a horde of people exit the theater and Dave believes Steve. Steve and Jane wind up at a lunch counter that the blob attacks. The proprietor and our heroes hole up in the cellar and Steve discovers that a fire extinguisher with its freezing contents forces the blob to back off.

The authorities collect every fire extinguisher in town and manage to freeze the blob. The Pentagon sends down a team to transport the blob to the North Pole. As the remains of the blob drift down to the polar ice pack, the end credit appears with a ghostly giant question mark. Producer James B. Harris obtained stock military footage of a Globe master military transport plane depositing the parachute and its cargo.

“The Blob” proved to be a drive-in sensation and Steve McQueen’s surge to stardom gave the film added momentum. Unless you are a juvenile, this little horror movie isn’t scary at all, but Yeaworth and his scenarists create a sufficient amount of paranoia and sympathy for our heroes. They never show the blob actually assimilating its victims and leave this to your imagination, so “The Blob” isn’t without a modicum of subtlety. In his first starring role, McQueen is simply terrific and conjures up a surfeit of charisma despite the lengths that he must resort to so that the authorities will take him seriously. Corsaut is fine as his girlfriend. Although it isn’t a stellar sci-fi/horror film, “The Blob” is a lot of fun and takes itself seriously enough so that it isn’t as stupid as the Larry Hagman helmed sequel “Beware! The Blob!” (1972). The 1988 remake had a better production budget and took itself seriously, too, but neither film benefited from having a major star in the making.

Milla Jovovich and Steve Zahn play newlyweds in "Pitch Black" writer & director David Twohy's "The Perfect Getaway" (***1/2out of ****) who encounter peril in paradise on the picture post card Hawaiian island of Kauai when they learn that homicidal maniacs are on the prowl. This scenic thriller boasts one of the best twists that you will see, but perhaps won't see until it has surprised you. The casting of Jovovich and Zahn—as unlikely a couple as you might imagine—is perfect when you consider the other two couples that co-star with them.

Our newlyweds fly to Hawaii to hike to a remote beach. Before they arrive at their destination, Cydney(Milla Jovovich of the "Resident Evil" movies) and Cliff (Steve Zahn of "Strange Wilderness), learn that a murderous couple has slain one couple and the local police are hot on their trail. The two couples that they wind up contending with behave like natural born killers, and Twohy keeps you guessing until the last quarter-hour reveals who poses the genuine threat. "The Perfect Getaway" goes against the grain by creating suspense and tension in wide-open spaces during daylight hours the same way that Alfred Hitchcock did in his classic Cary Grant movie "North By Northwest." Sadly, "The Perfect Getaway" isn't entirely perfect owing to a last minute flaw in the plot that is never adequately resolved. Nevertheless, if you're searching for an intelligent, white-knuckled exercise in suspense, "The Perfect Getaway" is the movie that you need to getaway and watch. Thriller chillers like "The Perfect Getaway" thrive on red herrings. These cleverly crafted narrative ploys are designed to mislead viewers into believing that the people who look suspicious really are suspicious. Twohy opens the action with video sequences from our couple's wedding with their many friends wishing them well for the future. The scene shifts then to Cydney and Cliff cruising along carefree in their jeep while Cydney shoots a video of them with their Sony HDT camcorder. Our unsuspecting couple have decided to hike through the lush Hawaiian wilderness and during a helicopter ride, they choose their destination. They stock up on provisions at a local store and wheel away ready to go. A discarded newspaper caught under their front tire contains a front page story about a murdered couple for our benefit. As our heroes ride through the rural beauty, they spot another couple walking along the road. As it turns out, hitchhikers Cleo (Chris Hemsworth) and Kale (Marley Shelton), aren't exactly in route for the same destination. Initial misgivings about picking up hitchhikers make our heroes reconsider their offer to give them a ride. They are ready to ditch this duo, but then have second thoughts and agree to take them. Kale decides that he doesn't want to ride with them because he doesn't like their attitude towards he and his girlfriend. Everything about this sleazy looking couple, however, gives off bad vibes, and Cydney and Cliff are relieved when they refuse to ride with them.

No sooner have our heroes gotten onto the trail than they run into another equally suspicious couple that literally wear signs around their necks that they could be the murderers. Nick (Timothy Olyphant of "Hitman") smiles far too often and concocts tall tales about his military exploits. He carries weapons that make Cliff's skin crawl and later he pokes fun at Cliff's fear. Nick's Southern girlfriend Gina (Kiele Sanchez), reinforces the anxieties that our couple have about them. Nick loses Cliff in the woods as they stalk for a goat for an evening meal, and Nick returns with the carcass draped across his shoulders. He deposits in front of Sanchez and she guts the carcass and removes the entrails. At this point, Cydney and Cliff are worrying that Nick and Sanchez are going to eviscerate them, too. Twohy sweetens up the story with moments of spine-tingling suspense that will make you squirm uncomfortably. He makes Cydney and Cliff appear helpless in comparison to the other two couples and our heroes are sweating with considerable anxiety.

About an hour into this cat & mouse exercise in melodrama, the killers unveil themselves and our heroes have to think fast and take action even faster. There is a glitch near the end that mars this otherwise first-rate yarn but it may not bother you as much as it troubled me. Mystery fans should enjoy this nervy epic that makes the most of our own fears about evil people. Twohy does a good job of stringing audiences along until the big reveal and then he slams the action into high gear. You have to wonder if the murderous couple are going to triumph as is the case in so many modern horror stories like "The Descent." Prepare to gnaw your knuckles if you watch "The Perfect Getaway."

FILM REVIEW OF ''G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF THE COBRA" (2009)

“Van Helsing” director Stephen Sommers pays tribute to several Hollywood blockbusters in his latest effort “G.I. Joe, The Rise of the Cobra,” (*** out of ****)the second-live action film celebrating the legendary line of Hasbro action figures. Sommers makes allusions in “G.I. Joe” to the James Bond epics “Moonraker,” “Thunderball,” and “The Spy Who Loved Me” as well as the Clint Eastwood Cold War thriller “Firefox” and Jean-Claude Van Damme sci-fi flick “Universal Soldier. “G.I. Joe” bristles with larger-than-life heroes and villains clashing with super-charged weapons amid futuristic pyrotechnics. Not surprisingly, characterization takes a backseat to the high-octane, adrenalin-laced action sequences. Sadly, the formulaic storyline doesn’t spring as many surprises as most big action films, but Sommers keeps the action moving swiftly.

A treacherous Scottish arms dealer named James McCullen (Christopher Eccleston of "Dr. Who"), who is in league with a vast criminal organization called COBRA, has spent ten years creating a apocalyptic new weapon with NATO funding. McCullen’s Mars Weapons Company have subverted microscopic green nanomites originally used to eliminate cancer into feisty little buggers can munch their way through either the armor on an army tank or the Eiffel Tower. McCullen presents this formidable weapon to NATO, and our two heroes, U.S. Army officers Duke (Channing Tatum of “Public Enemies”) and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans of “Dance Movie”), escort it via a heavily armed convoy with Apache helicopters flying overhead as escorts. Out of nowhere the military escort is ambushed. A stealthy ninja in white, Storm Shadow (South Korean superstar Byung-hun Lee), and a spectacularly sexy kick-butt babe-in-black, the Baroness (Sienna Miller of “Factory Girl”), try to steal the suitcase containing the four warheads with the deadly nano technology. Duke recognizes the Baroness as a girl that he almost married. Fortunately, our heroes manage to hang onto the warheads because the elite G.I. Joe commando team intervenes and thwarts the villains. A black-clad ninja, Snake Eyes (Ray Park of “Fanboys”), crosses swords with Shadow Storm. As we learn afterwards, these guys have a history of hate. Later, the villains manage to reprogram a homing device in the suitcase and the Baroness and her team invades the G.I. Joe headquarters—called the Pit--deep beneath the desert sands of the Sahara in Egypt. They catch the heroes off guard, wound General Hawk, and steal the warheads.

McCullen has teamed up with a malevolent scientific genius, the Doctor (Joseph Gordon-Levitt of “The Look Out”), who injects this nano serum into soldiers. We see one soldier thrust his arm into a glass case housing a venomous cobra and the snake bites him. The soldier withdraws his arm and the nano technology in his bloodstream repels the venom. You see it leak out of his wounds. We're talking some bad mothers here! McCullen wants to demonstrate to the world how lethal his cannibalistic nano technology is and dispatches his minions to Paris to destroy the Eiffel Tower. Meanwhile, Duke and Ripcord convince General Hawk (Dennis Quaid of “Vantage Point”) to let them join the team in exchange for Duke’s information about the Baroness. Duke had planned to marry her, but things got complicated when he made a promise to look after her brother during a raid in Africa. Our heroes pass all the grueling trials, including some devised by a combat instructor (Brendan Fraser of the “Mummy” movies in a cameo). Duke and Ripcord don a couple of accelerator outfits, created by the Stan Winston Studio, which enable them to hoof it around Paris at 40 miles per hour, dodge missiles streaking toward them, and hurtle cars like daredevils, as they pursue the Baroness and Shadow Storm. This qualifies as the best action scene in “G.I. Joe.”

At 118 minutes, “G.I. Joe” rarely sacrifices its momentum, except to plunge us into frequent flashbacks so we can learn important events that shaped the lives of the heroes and the villains. The Stuart Beattie, David Elliot and Paul Lovett screenplay isn't for an instant remotely believable, but the action is pretty exciting. Unfortunately, predictability sets in early, enough so that a couple of revelations lack sufficient punch. Furthermore, Sommers and his scribes shun any effort to create characters here because that would interfere with the hyper-kinetic action sequences.

Sommers directs with a sure hand, but the humor that made his previous movies so charming is conspicuously absent. The chief villain mimics the James Bond villain Drax from “Moonraker” (1979) because he steals his own weapons back from the military. Later, Ripcord pilots a state-of-the-art “Firefox” jet with a sophisticated weapons system that responds to vocal commands instead of hands-on application. He has to chase two deadly missiles before each destroys major world capitals, another cliffhanger “Moonraker” ploy, and blast them to smithereens. The massive polar ice cap base that the COBRA organization has built recalls another Bond bonanza “The Spy Who Loved Me.” Kevin J. O'Connor and Arnold Vosloo are two other “Mummy” cast members who show up here, and Vosloo gets to impersonate the President. The nanomites recall the scarabs that swarmed throughout “The Mummy.”

People who loved the “G.I. Joe” cartoon show might be in a better, more informed position to criticize this actioneer. However, it should be known that Ripcord wasn’t an African-American in the cartoon but the villains did launch an assault on the Eiffel Tower. The performances here are serviceable. Channing Tatum seems rather leaden, but then most action heroes are one-dimensional. Our heroes aren’t as flamboyant as the villains. Christopher Eccleston chews the scenery with considerable relish like his nanomites and makes a fantastic villain, while Joseph Gordon-Levitt makes the most of his evil doctor. Although it isn’t as audacious as “Transformers 2,” “G.I. Joe” ranks as an above-average testosterone thriller, with an ending that leaves the film open to an inevitable sequel.