FILM REVIEW OF ''FORREST GUMP" (1994)

“Back to the Future” trilogy director Robert Zemeckis surpassed himself in ways that he probably never imagined when he made “Forrest Gump.” Clocking in at two hours and forty minutes, this bittersweet PG-13 rated comedy about the epic misadventures of a slow-witted dolt from rural Alabama with a below-average I.Q. who lives through several milestone events in the 1960s received the Oscar for Best Picture of 1994. Not only did Zemeckis earn a Best Director Oscar, but also Tom Hanks’ took home the Academy statuette for Best Actor with his insightful, down-to-earth thesping. Forrest Gump is not the brightest bulb in the grid, but Hanks conveys this quality without ever stooping to histrionics. Above all, Hanks delivers a performance that has innocence and dignity intertwined. Moreover, “Forrest Gump” (**** out of ****)qualifies as Hanks’ best film.

“Forrest Gump” unfolds in Savannah, Georgia, as the eponymous character narrates the story of his life in a number of flashbacks. Indeed, two-thirds of the action takes place with Forrest on the bench relating his exploits to other people waiting for their bus. Zemeckis’ attention to details including the use of “People” magazine that the first woman is seen reading on the bench next to Forrest. The first time that we see young Forrest, he has just been fitted with a pair of leg braces at the doctor’s office while his mother (Sally Fields of “Norma Ray”) watches. She is determined to see to it that father-less Forrest gets to live as normal a life as possible. The school principal (Sam Anderson of “La Bamba”) fails to convince her that Forrest’s low I.Q. of 75 means that he should not attend regular school classes. Despite Forrest’s intellectual’s shortcomings, Mrs. Gump persuades the principal to permit Forrest to enroll in normal classes by having loud, noisy sex with him. The next time that we see young Forrest (newcomer Michael Humphreys) he hesitates about climbing aboard the school bus because he doesn’t know the bus driver and has been warned by his mother not to accept rides from strangers. The driver and Forrest introduce themselves to each other and he steps aboard because they are now no longer strangers. Forrest meets his first best friend Jenny Curran when she is the only student riding the bus who will let him sit beside her. Later, Forrest meets his second best friend on his way to military boot camp when Bubba makes room for him to sit beside him after others have turned him away.

Jenny and Forrest cultivate their friendship to the point that other students decide to attack Forrest. Initially, these obnoxious kids throw rocks at Forrest while he is walking home with Jenny. “Run, Forrest, run,” screams Jenny to our hero as the kids hurl more rocks and pursue him on their bicycles. Forrest takes off running and his braces disintegrate and he breaks into a loping stride that the kids on their bikes cannot match. The first chronological transition from young Forrest to Tom Hanks as Forrest occurs when the same kids—only older—attack Forrest and Jenny (Robin Wright of “The Princess Bride”) and try to run him down in their pick-up truck. Again, Forrest outruns them and scrambles through a practice scrimmage that Alabama football coach Bear Bryant (Sonny Shroyer of “Gator”) is holding. Forrest winds up in college, joins the football and scores touchdowns for the Alabama Crimson Tide. Forrest proves to be a sensation for the Tide and football is the first sport that he makes a name for himself. Later, he becomes a ping-pong ball champion in second-half of this witty spectacle. During his stay at Alabama, Forrest is exposed to the famous stance in the doorway by real-life Alabama governor George Wallace when the University of Alabama was integrated by African-American students. As one of the black students is entering the school, she drops a book and Forrest retrieves it on camera. Later, Forrest visits the White House, guzzles 15 Dr. Pepper sodas—his favorite soft drink--and gets to shake hands with the real President John F. Kennedy. When Kennedy asks him how he feels, Forrest tells him that he has to pee.

Meanwhile, Jenny has grown up, left her abusive father to live with another person, and ends up in an all-girls’ school. Forrest shows up and beats up Jenny’s date because he thinks that the guy is getting rough with her. Jenny gives Forrest his first sexual experience. She cups his hand over her breast and he blows a gasket while Jenny’s roommate—apparently asleep—listens in horror as Forrest admits that he has messed up the roommate’s bathrobe. Jenny informs Forrest that she wants to become a folk singer like her idol Joan Baez. Forrest joins the U.S. Army and takes a furlough to Memphis, Tennessee, to see Jenny perform folk songs on stage. Forrest knows that Jenny got expelled from her college for posing nude in a ‘Girls of the South’ issue of Playboy magazine, but he isn’t prepared for what he sees when she performs in the nude singing a Bob Dylan song. When a spectator heckles Jenny, Forrest comes to her rescue.

In the military, Forrest meets his second best friend, Private Benjamin Buford 'Bubba' Blue (Mykelti Williamson of “Waiting to Exhale”) and Bubba regales Forrest throughout boot camp with stories about his own life and the part that shrimp has played in it. Indeed, shrimp is the food is mentioned frequently than any other kind of food in "Forrest Gump.” Bubba and Forrest are shipped off to Vietnam where they learn not to salute their commanding officer, Lieutenant Dan Taylor (Gary Sinise of “Of Mice and Men”), because he tells them that the Viet Cong will shoot him. The Viet Cong surprise Lt. Dan and his platoon during an offensive and confusion reigns as U.S. troops scramble for cover. Lt. Dan orders Forrest to run and true to his character, Forrest takes off hoofing it through the jungle and gets out of harm’s way before he realizes that he must go back for Bubba. Along the way, Forrest saves several of his comrades, including Lt. Dan who has been wounded. Forrest retrieves Bubba in the nick of time as the Air Force swoop in to napalm the enemy. Unfortunately, Bubba dies tragically in combat and his last words to Forrest are appropriately enough, "I just want to go home." Forrest catches some lead in his rear end and spends his time in the hospital on his belly, with bandages on his buttocks. During his medical confinement, Forrest indulges himself in his favorite snack—all the ice cream that he can eat. Once our hero recovers from his wound, he learns how to play ping-pong and becomes a champion.

Irony pervades “Forrest Gump.” Although he possesses the lowest I.Q. of everybody, Forrest discovers the true meaning of life, survives the horrors of combat, and emerges from Vietnam as well as the everyday hassle of life was the smartest character. Everybody from start to finish wants to pigeonhole Forrest Gump from the school principal to Lt. Dan, but Forrest surprises everybody in the long run. The military awards Forrest the Congressional Medal of Honor for his daring exploits in saving so many of his fellow soldiers during the Viet Cong ambush. On the commentary track, Zemeckis states that Jenny is a metaphor for America searching for itself. She represents the failure that so many people in America during the 1960s experienced. Eventually, Forrest runs into Jenny again when he attends a peace rally at the Washington, D.C., monument and they splash through the refractory pool into each others arms. Jenny takes up residence with Forrest after a particularly rough episode in her life, but she disappoints Forrest by leaving him without warning. The only way that Forrest can deal with his overwhelming grief is to hit the road running again and he jogs across America and becomes a celebrity. As the film enters its final quarter, we learn that Forrest has been sitting on the bench awaiting the right bus so that he can catch it and ride it to Jenny’s apartment. The woman sitting next to him informs him that Jenny’s apartment is located a mere six blocks away and Forrest takes off running toward it. He learns to his shock that Jenny—who has been working as a waitress--has had a baby, and she has named it Forrest. Initially, Forrest is dumbfounded until Jenny reveals that Forrest is the father. Forrest sits down with his son (Haley Joel Osment of “The Sixth Sense”) and they watch Bert and Ernie on “Sesame Street.”

According to Zemeckis, "The writer, Eric Roth, departed substantially from the book. We flipped the two elements of the book, making the love story primary and the fantastic adventures secondary. Also, the book was cynical and colder than the movie. In the movie, Gump is a completely decent character, always true to his word. He has no agenda and no opinion about anything except Jenny, his mother and God.” Indeed, Zemeckis attributes most of the success of “Forrest Gump” to Roth’s screenplay. Nevertheless, Zemeckis adds several interesting touches to the film. For example, during the Vietnam combat sequences, the Viet Cong enemy are never shown. Zemeckis strives to show everything from Forrest Gump’s perspective and he violates this rule only when he intersperses vignettes of Jenny that Forrest narrates that he could never have known about in the greater scheme of things.

Significantly, the film pioneered some revolutionary techniques, such as inserting a live actor into historic archival footage of important events as well as enabling Oscar nominated actor Gary Sinise to appear convincing as a handicapped Vietnam veteran who has lost both legs in combat. If the structure of “Forrest Gump” is reminiscent of David Fincher’s recent opus “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” this is no surprise because Eric Roth penned scripts for both “Forrest Gump” as well as “Benjamin Button.” Roth got an Oscar for his adaptation of Winston Groom’s novel. Not surprisingly, “Forrest Gump” was awarded Oscars for best visual effects. Interestingly, Paramount Pictures produced this film for $55-million dollars and coined over $600 million dollars from it domestically as well as internationally. “Forrest Gump” was nominated for six other Oscars, including Best Cinematography, Best Make-up, and Best Original Score. Incredibly, John Travolta had the first crack at “Forrest Gump” and later admitted that he made a terrible mistake by passing up this juicy role.

FILM REVIEW OF ''MR. MAJESTYK" (1974)

Charles Bronson’s cougar-like presence, Elmore Leonard’s clever dialogue, and Richard Fleischer’s straight-faced helming makes “Mr. Majestyk” (**** out of ****) an entertaining, sometimes brutal knuckle-buster with some “3:10 to Yuma” thrown in for good measure. When Fleischer and company aren’t demonstrating the durability of Ford tough trunks, our happy-go-lucky mustached hero falls back on his unorthodox combat skills that he put to good use in Vietnam to battle the mob. Indeed, “Mr. Majestyk” exhibits a liberal mind-set grafted onto a meat & potatoes crime melodrama between a couple of titans. The villainous Al Lettieri packs menace like heat in his performance as a syndicate killer. Predictably, Bronson and Lettieri mix it up with satisfying results for action hungry spectators. The way that our hero takes care on the villain in the last quarter hour is literally ballistic. “Mr. Majestyk” shows Bronson at his most charismatic. He wears the dark golf-cap like he had been wearing it his entire life and he looks at home in his denims. Watching Charles Bronson beg to make a free phone call from an innocuous female storekeeper and then get another phone call with a two bottles of beer to go is a rare treat. This is Bronson as his most blue collar.

Shrewdly, scenarist Elmore Leonard and Fleisher align the stalwart hero with the fate of migrant workers and he becomes their champion, even though the rest of the action focuses on the live-and-let-die struggle between the principals. The opening scene establishes the film’s social consciousness roots. Mr. Majestyk has just hired a school bus load of migrants to harvest his 160 acres of watermelons. A carload of migrants wheel in after the bus departs for Majestyk’s farm and he leaves. Nancy Chavez (Linda Cristal of “The High Chaparral”) requests the key to the washroom and the gas station attendant notifies them that both toilets are broken. Majestyk challenges the attendant that he is suggesting that he—Majestyk—broke the men’s toilet. The attendant informs him that his boss wants nothing to do with migrants and forbids him to let them use the toilet. Majestyk suggests that the migrants can use the trash can in front of the gas station, and the grievous gas station attendant capitulates and allows them to use the facilities. “Don’t be in there all day,” he snaps.

Chavez catches a ride with Majestyk out to his fields and Majestyk finds that another batch of workers is picking his melons for him. Bobby Kopas (Paul Koslo of “The Stone Killer”) wears a Roy Rogers outfit and tells Majestyk that he only has to pay his workers a dollar twenty an hour instead of a dollar-forty like he has to pay the Hispanics. When Majestyk tries to clear the field of the cheap worthless labor, Kopas pulls out a shotgun and his buddy tells up a loud speaker to drown out Majestyk. Majestyk disarms Kopas, reverses the shotgun, pops him in the balls with the stock and then blasts the loud speaker. Before he sends Kopas and company running, he says, “You want my opinion, you’re in the wrong business.” No sooner has Majestyk ousted Bobby Kopas than the country sheriff shows up with an arrest warrant charging out hero with assault on Kopas.

At the county sheriff’s office, Detective Lieutenant McAllen (Frank Maxwell of “The Violators”) learns that Majestyk did nine months in Folsom Prison on an assault charge. A guy with a beer bottle attacked him in a bar and Majestyk left him the worst for wear. His wife divorced him while he was in the pen. Later, we learn that Majestyk drove trucks, fought in Vietnam, got captured but escaped with four enemy soldiers. He spent three years as a Ranger Instructor at Fort Benning, Georgia. Eventually, Majestyk encounters his adversary the notorious Frank Renda (Al Lettieri of “McQ”) in the county lock-up. At lunch, Renda refuses to eat his sausage and Majestyk asked for it. Renda dumps his food tray onto the floor and invites Majestyk to scourge for it. When Majestyk tries to bum a cigarette from Renda, an African-American inmate offers him a smoke and tells him that Renda is dangerous. Afterward, the sheriff’s department is transferring inmates and Renda—we learn that he has been arrested nine times with out a conviction—is slated to be taken to the county seat for pre-trial examination on a charge of first degree murder.

At the county seat, Renda’s gunmen, led by resourceful Gene Lundy (Taylor Lacher of “Final Chapter: Walking Tall”), hit the sheriff’s convoy, blow up a cruiser, and kill a number of deputies before things turn sour for them. During the ruckus, Majestyk orders the other convicts to remove the wounded as well as the dead deputies. He commandeers the bus with Renda still in cuffs and hauls ass for a remote safe haven. Renda assures Majestyk that he has no qualms against killing and has killed seven people. He promises to kill Majestyk if Majestyk refuses to make a deal with him. Majestyk is still worried about his melons and cuts a deal with McAllen to get his assault charges dropped in exchange for bringing in Renda. Majestyk calls Renda’s contact, Wiley (Lee Purcell of “Dirty Little Billy”) and she arrives to pick them up in her red Ford sedan. Renda thinks that he has made a deal with Majestyk, but our hero turns the tables on Renda and orders Wiley to drive to the authorities. Wiley slips Renda a gun from her purse. Renda and Majestyk struggle over it. Majestyk manages to escape from Renda and the villain’s people spirit him away to freedom and safety. Majestyk turns himself back into McAllen in Edna, Colorado, but Renda is far from satisfied. He is obsessed with killing Majestyk and orders his associate to get Kopas to drop the assault charges that he can go after him. Mind you, all of this occurs in the first 45 minutes!

“Mr. Majestyk” is the perfect starring role for Bronson who manages to be hard-knuckled but humorous. The scene where the angry syndicate killers obliterate the protagonist’s stacked watermelon makes for a neat metaphor for their plans for Majestyk. Fleischer does a good job of staging a shoot-out in broad daylight between the authorities and the villains at the crossroads of a small city. The scenes were the Ford truck vault over gullies and slam-bang through rough-hewn surroudings is fantastic! As usual, Leonard’s dialogue is wonderfully quirky. The scenery is spectacular and Linda Cristal serves as Bronson’s love interest. Charles Bernstein supplies a stout, flavorful orchestral score. Bronson devotees will savor the way that the villains bend the law like licorice to suits their devious ends. The supporting cast, including Lee Purcell, Paul Koslo, and Alejandro Rey, is first-class.

FILM REVIEW OF ''ASTRO BOY" (2009)

“Flushed Away” co-director David Bowers makes his stand-alone directing debut on the $65-million, Summit Entertainment, big-screen remake of “Astro Boy,” (**** ot of ****) the first example of anime that Japanese television broadcast in 1963. Initially, “Astro Boy” went by the name Tetsuwan Atomu, or Mighty Atom. Later, when the character made his debut on American television, the fictional robotic protagonist acquired the name of Astro Boy. Naturally, “Kindergarten Cop” scenarist Timothy Harris and Bowers have diverged slightly from the original, but they have kept the essential storyline largely intact. Historically, “Astro Boy” made his literary debut in Japanese comic books back in 1952. Osamu Tezuka, who created “Astro Boy” and has since been hailed as “the God of Manga,” turned his back on a career in medicine to write stories about an android “Pinocchio” whose feats of strength and speed more than match the DC Comics’ hero Superman. The success of the original Japanese television show spurred a remake both in 1983 and in 2003. Essentially, this pint-sized automaton spends its time waging a perpetual war on crime, evil, and injustice. Humans that hate robots, robots-run-amok, and alien invaders constitute Astro Boy’s primary adversaries. Excellent computer-generated animation, charismatic voice performances by Nicholas Cage, Donald Sutherland, Kristin Bell, and Nathan Lane, and Bowers’ energetic helming make this 94-minute opus refreshing as well as worth watching.

This fantastic but formulaic Japanese-animated science fiction adventure epic takes place in a futuristic society where robots perform all the menial tasks and are discriminated against because they lack humanity. A father loses his son during a laboratory mishap involving a military robot implanted with a core substance that enables it to defy the three rules of robots as established by sci-fi guru Isaac Asimov. The brilliant but selfish scientist Dr. Tenma (Nicholas Cage) has created ‘the Peacekeeper,’ a hulking cyborg that General Stone (Donald Sutherland of “M.A.S.H.”) has commissioned to solidify his presidency from all contenders. Tenma’s inquisitive whiz-kid son Tobias (Freddie Highmore of "The Spiderwick Chronicles") wants to witness the robot trials. Tenma has Toby locked up for safety, but this smarty pants schoolboy figures a way to escape. Later, he finds himself trapped in the same area with the heavily armed Peacekeeper robot. When the machine tries to penetrate a force shield with awesome array of armaments, the blasts render it useless and atomize Tobias. The grieving Dr. Tenma retrieves the only remnant of his son: a baseball cap. He takes a strand of hair from the cap, extracts the DNA, pulls out all of the memories and inserts them into a cyborg version of his son. The allusion to Pinocchio is clearly obvious. Unfortunately, Tenma tires of his son the robot and pines for the real McCoy. The catch here is the robotic version of the boy does not know that he is a robot.

Eventually, the father cannot stand the sight of the robot because he knows that it is not his son. As it turns out, the robot has a blue-core in its chest that allows it to pull off some pretty amazing stunts. When the evil political leader wants Dr. Tenma to remove the blue core from his son to put into the war robot, the father turns against him. Astro Boy escapes, but is exiled when enough explosions knock him off the floating chunk of earth called Metro City to the ground below where rusting robots lay piled in heaps. Metro City is a solitary island of land that levitates above the polluted earth. Astro Boy discovers new companions, orphaned humans, but he also realizes now that he is a robot. He can understand what robots are saying when they speak. Now, Astro Boy has to keep is identity a secret from his new friends, foremost of whom is a pretty little thing named Cora (Kristen Bell of "Veronica Mars"). These kids scour the earth for robot parts for another scientist, Ham Egg (Nathan Lane of "The Producers") who rebuilds robots and matches them against each other in gladiatorial struggles to the death in a coliseum Roman style. Astro Boy helps rebuild a gigantic robot named ZOG and Ham Egg reveals Astro Boy's secret and forces him to fight ZOG. The only problem is that Astro Boy refuses to kill. Meanwhile, the evil military leader, General Stone (Donald Sutherland of "M.A.S.H") sends forces to retrieve Astro Boy. One of the funniest scenes occurs when Astro Boy is battling a “Transformers” style robot and learns that he is equipped with a pair of machine guns loaded into his buttocks!

Director David Bowers never lets the momentum slow down. The hyperkinetic action scenes are spectacular with our underdog champ Astro Boy pitted against some wicked foes that want him dead. The theme of racial intolerance pervades the action with robots seen as our inferiors until—in the words of one human—Astro Boy emerges with more humanity than most humans. Occasionally, Bowers’ film takes on a grim feeling, particularly when Dr. Tenma turns against his son. What sets “Astro Boy” apart from the usual competition is the subtlety of its storyline. This colorful storytelling is ideal for both children and adults.

FILM REVIEW OF ''LAW ABIDING CITIZEN" (2009)

"Set It Up" director F. Gary Gray's sophisticated but far-fetched law and order actioneer "Law Abiding Citizen" (**** out of ****) ranks as the one of best mediations about our flawed justice system in the guise of a cracker-jack popcorn thriller. Good movies pack twists and turns as well as surprises, and "Street Kings" scenarist Kurt Wimmer serves up at least five (count'em) surprises in this high-octane hybrid of prison pictures and mass murderer epics. Moreover, Wimmer has created an imaginative cat & mouse conflict of wills between a stalwart hero and an ingenious villain who share shades of gray. In other words, Jamie Foxx's prosecutor appears callous, while Gerard Butler's villain retains some sympathy. You may find yourself rooting for bad-guy Butler over good-guy Foxx. Meanwhile, Gray stages the white-knuckled action with finesse to spare. "Law Abiding Citizen" surpasses Gray's earlier nail-biters "The Italian Job," "The Negotiator" and "A Man Apart." Not only does Gerard Butler constantly upstage a dour Jamie Foxx, but Butler delivers the strongest performance. He comes close to chewing the scenery, but the villain that he plays would chew scenery so his juicy performance isn't too far off base.

"Law-Abiding Citizen" opens with two desperate criminals, Clarence Darby (Christian Stotle of "Public Enemies") and Rupert Ames (Josh Stewart of "The Collector"), invading a house in suburban Philadelphia. The two are posing as food delivery guys; at least, Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler of "The Ugly Truth") opens the door for them because he mistakenly believes they are in food delivery. Before he has time to react, they smash him savagely with a baseball bat, knock him down, and then gag and tie him with plastic zip-ties. A helpless Clyde watches in horror as Clarence stabs his wife (Brook Stacy Mills of "Hairspray")and is about to rape her when Clyde's daughter (newcomer Ksenia Hulayev) enters the room. The thugs abduct the daughter and the next thing we hear is that the little girl has been murdered, too. Since he cannot assemble enough evidence to convict these hoodlums, career-oriented Assistant Prosecutor Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx of "The Soloist") decides to preserve his winning record of prosecutions and cuts a deal with Clarence. To get a lighter sentence, the dastardly Clarence testifies that Rupert killed Clyde's wife.

Initially, when he hears about the plea bargain, Clyde is shocked. He saw his family butchered and he hasn't forgotten the murders. Rice points out two things. First, Clarence is going to jail for a long time. Second, Rupert has been sentenced to death by lethal injection based on Clarence testimony. Reluctantly, Clyde trusts Rice to do the right thing, but he has vengeance lurking in his mind. Grief-stricken, Clyde cannot help but feel that justice has been denied him. When it comes time to execute Rupert, he dies in the worse way possible and creates a sensation for Nick and his co-worker, Sarah Lowell (Leslie Bibb of "Iron Man"), who has never attended an execution. Ten years elapse and Clarence gets out of jail, but not for long. Clyde kidnaps him, takes him to an anonymous warehouse and breaks out some of the props that would go with a "Saw." Clyde sends Rice a DVD copy of Clarence's murder, but Clyde cannot be identified in the video because he has on a welder's mask. Things come to a boil when the video arrives at Rice's house and his daughter gets her hands on it. She thinks that it is a video shot of her at a musical recital.

Clyde is waiting when the police arrive, and they take him into custody. Rice appreciates Clyde's vengeance because he has a daughter, too. Afterward, when Rice sets out to prosecute him, Clyde wants to make a deal. What Rice doesn't know is that Clyde is manipulating him.
Eventually, Clyde winds up in solitary confinement, locked up and away from everybody. Rice thinks that everything is cool because Clyde is where he can harm nobody. No sooner is Clyde in solitary than he goes to work. He warns Rice that he will kill, too, unless they release him. Rice is incredulous when public officials who had something to do with the Shelton murder case begin to mysteriously die in front page murders. The mayor of Philadelphia (Viola Davis of "Doubt") demands that Rice take action against Shelton, but Rice can find nothing. After all, Clyde is locked up tight in a maximum security cell with no way to get out of prison.

This thought-provoking morality yarn never wears out its welcome during its nimble 108 minutes. Mind you, the only flaw in the film is its outlandish quality. Nevertheless, the theme that everybody must be held accountable for their actions is played out to perfection by the filmmakers. The first-class supporting class includes Colm Meaney of TV's "Star Trek: The Next Generation" as a Philly detective, Bruce McGill of "Obsessed" as Rice's colleague and Annie Corley of "Monster" as a Philadelphia judge. What you don't catch the first time out in this complex crime movies adds to the entertainment of second and third viewings. Make no mistake, "Law Abiding Citizen" earned its R-rating for strong bloody brutal violence and torture, a scene of rape, and pervasive language. Although its contains some pretty graphic murder sequences, "Law Abiding Citizen" is nowhere near as sadistic or repellent as the latest "Saw" movie "Saw VI."

FILM REVIEW OF ''A TASTE OF HELL'' (1973)

"A Taste of Hell" (* out of ****)has little taste and is hell to watch. This thoroughly ordinary World War II melodrama takes place in the Philippines during 1942after General Douglas MacArthur had left the country to the Japanese and their usual sadistic skullduggery. Mind you, the Japanese are portrayed as treacherous dastards. The military action that occurs here is not part of a coordinated overall campaign. The heroes find themselves in the position that they might have to relocate if the enemy brings in reinforcements. In other words, "A Taste of Hell" is about low stakes. The action, the romance, and the battles constitute nothing memorable either in their impact or depiction. The most interesting performance is given by Victor Diaz as the villain who has many opportunities to throw back his head and laugh insanely like a bandit.

The first scene sets the stage for a vendetta between the hero and the villain. Major Kuromoto (Victor Diaz of "Project: Kill")catches They catches U.S. Army Lieutenant Barry Mann (John Garwood of "Nam's Angels") and his guerrilla army of natives in the open and get the drop on them. Kuromoto wants Mann alive and vows to kill all his men if the American refuses to surrender. Mann demands the Kuromoto let his men live and he will surrender. Kuromoto promises Mann that his men will receive "the proper treatment" and then massacres them when they do surrender. Mann is wounded in the arm and crippled for life. An explosion hurls him into a river that carries him downstream. Kuromoto is convinced that Mann is dead.

Unable to speak coherently, Mann wanders around in the jungle for the bulk of the
movie's 90-minutes in civilian attire with a battered hat to conceal his hideous features. "A Taste of Hell" is not a conventional World War II adventure opus like "Ambush Bay," "The Walls of Hell," or "Once Before I Die." You don't see any military equipment like tanks, planes, battleships, or even jeeps and it doesn't contain a standard-issue briefing scene with a map and superior officer describing the mission as suicidal. Indeed, there are no scenes with a radio operator calling
in a request for air support or a supply drop. Essentially, "A Taste of
Hell" is a behind-enemy-lines actioneer with tame heroics. There is also a subplot about a hunched-back adolescent and his friendship with the disfigured Mann. Another problem is that "A Taste of Hell" boasts no sympathetic characters.

Later, savage Japanese soldiers raid a village, murder a patriotic resistance leader, and abduct ten of the most beautiful women. Maria (Lisa Lorena of "Black Belt Avengers") is one of the women taken. She was once Lieutenant Mann's girlfriend. She keeps pictures of Mann around and lights candle to his memory. Jack Lowell (William Smith of "Conan the Barbarian") shows up in civilian clothes with an Army issue .45 caliber automatic pistol and a grease gun to help coordinate a
guerrilla attack against the Japanese. Kuramoto anticipates that the guerrillas will launch their attack at night, but they decide to catch the Japanese by surprise with a dawn attack. The heroes don't arrive in time, however, to prevent the Japanese from raping the women. We are shown soldiers manhandling the helpless, screaming native girls in a hut.

Meanwhile, Mann infiltrates the Japanese camp and starts knocking off soldiers. He hacks off Kuramoto's head with a huge knife when he catches him trying to rape Maria. The decapitation scene is passable. In the end, nobody of prominence survives the action-packed attack. Jack shoots Mann as Mann is helping Maria escape, and Maria takes a bullet in the stomach. The Japanese gun down Lowell before the battle concludes and he dies without firing a shot. Nobody wins.

Believe it or not, this low-budget, B-movie monstrosity was produced by notorious porno producer Harry H. Novak, better known for soft T&A features like "The Dirty Mind of Young Sally," "Midnight Plowboy," and"The Exotic Dreams of Casanova." No, freshman co-directors Basil Bradbury and Neil Yarema drum up neither suspense nor tension. The only thing that they do well is hide the hero's face until we have to see it. "A Taste of Hell" lacks any nudity, but contains modest amounts of blood & gore. Diaz chews the scenery like a Spaghetti western bandit. None of the characters change or show any depth. The film concludes with the phrase ". . . and Satan smiled." The firearms look authentic as do the Japanese uniforms, but there is nothing noteworthy about this pathetic potboiler. The sole virture of "A Taste of Hell" is that it appears to have been lensed entirely on location without any visual effects or obvious backdrops. William Smith looks glum throughout the action.

FILM REVIEW OF "TENTACLES" (1977)

Solid production values, Nestore Ungaro’s exemplary underwater photography, a name-dropping cast of vintage Hollywood stars, and a terrific fight between an octopus and two killers whales makes “Beyond the Door” director Ovidio G. Assonitis’s “Jaws” horror movie rip-off “Tentacles” (**1/2 out of ****) worth watching about a giant squid terrorizing a coastal American town. This octopus doesn’t discriminate when it comes to his diet. You can be an infant, an adult with a peg leg, a beautiful bikini clad dame, or an entire yacht itself and the eponymous predator will dine on you. Incidentally, though we don’t get to see the octopus that often, the octopus looks believable, not like the octopus in the Ed Wood classic “Bride of the Monster” (1955) that Bela Lugosi flailed around with in a hilarious scene. The octopus was clearly phony just as it was clear Lugosi was making all of its moves for the octopus. Additionally, this octopus looks better than the “Twenty-Thousand Leagues under the Sea” octopus. Happily, “Tentacles” isn’t laughable and Assonitis and company maintain a straight-faced, serious attitude toward these shenanigans and refrain from camping up the plot.

Sadly, the chief flaw in the screenplay by a quartet of scribes--Steven Carabatsos, Tito Carpi, Jerome Max, and Sonia Molteni--for this atmospheric creature feature is the shortage of sympathetic characters. Most of the suspense is undermined because only one of the stars winds up in jeopardy. Assonitis tastefully handles the death of an infant before he moves along with the usual victims of seagoing predators. Nevertheless, any movie that opens with an infant in a baby carriage serving as the initial snack for a gigantic squid cannot be one-hundred percent bad. Indeed, Assonitis and his scenarists do a splendid job of setting up the storyline, better than Spielberg did with “Jaws.” Underwater construction and the use of radio in the resort town of Solana Beach is what prompted the squid to prey on humanity and once it has had a taste of blood, it cannot assuage its appetite. The stalking scenes from the octopus’ perspective forge a sense of unease and eventually the sight of the squid traveling on top of the water like a submarine is kind of creepy. In fact, this “Jaws” rip-off anticipates “Jaws 2” by endangering a fleet of young boaters during a regatta. Unlike “Jaws,” “Tentacles” provides a reason for the appearance of the cannibal octopus.

After a baby in a carriage and a peg-legged sailor vanish in the ocean in separate incidents, Sheriff Robards (Claude Akins of “Return of the Seven”) and newspaper reporter Ned Turner (John Huston of “The Deserter”) investigate their disappearance. The bodies for the most part have been reduced to skeletons. A horribly decayed corpse washes up out of the drink at one point to scare a couple necking on a boat, but the rest of the victims have had their flesh peeling from their bones and the marrow sucked out of them. Sheriff Robards warns Turner not to sensationalize the story until they obtain more information. Perceptively, Turner observes that it all adds up to a nightmare.

Meanwhile, Mr. Whitehead, President of Trojan Construction (Henry Fonda of “The Grapes of Wrath”) reminds Turner to not draw hasty conclusions unless he can furnish the facts to back them up. Turner believes that Whitehead’s company and their underwater construction are to blame. Of course, Turner is right, but he doesn’t get an opportunity to bask in his beliefs. Whitehead discovers that overzealous engineer John Corey (Cesare Danova of CBS-TV’s “Garrison’s Guerrillas”) in an effort to accelerate the construction violated regulations. Whitehead orders Corey to stop his illegal activities in this California beachfront community.

Turner goes out of town to consult with Will Gleason (Bo Hopkins of “The Wild Bunch”) who is a scuba diver and marine biologist. Gleason informs Turner that the tentacles of an octopus are worse than the claws of a tiger. He has trained two killer Orcas and sends two underwater experts to the town to investigate for him. The giant squid attacks them when they go down to check out the ocean floor. Eventually, Gleason arrives in town with his wife to conduct the investigation himself. The day that he is not on his yacht, the octopus attacks the yacht and sinks it. In the middle of all this mayhem the squid eats Gleason’s wife. Gleason brings in his two whales. The last half-hour of “Tentacles” depicts the struggle between Gleason and his two Orcas with the huge octopus. Watching the Orcas tangle with the squid is like watching angry dogs tear into a bear. During the fight, the octopus touches off an underwater avalanche and Gleason is trapped.

Assonitis has made a better-than-average octopus opus, but the film lacks the general air of terror and enough scary scenes to make it a goose-bump inducing horror chiller. Largely, Assonitis’s claim to fame is his screamer “Beyond the Door.” “Beyond the Door” was an “Exorcist” style, satanic possession thriller that coined $40-million internationally while scaring up $10-million in the United States. Fonda confines himself to his house, while the Huston character and the Winters’ character are brother and sister. The major set-piece that “Jaws 2” appropriated, but on a smaller scale, is the regatta. “The Stranger Returns” composer Stelvio Cipriani employs a harpsichord for suspense in his imaginative orchestral soundtrack.

FILM REVIEW OF ''GOODFELLAS'' (1990)

“Raging Bull” director Martin Scorsese received his third Oscar nomination as Best Director for “Goodfellas,” starring Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, and Joe Pesci, an engrossing epic about life in the mafia based on Nicholas Pileggi’s bestselling biography about real-life gangster Henry Hill. This blue collar crime saga differs from mafia melodramas like Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather” because Scorsese refrains from either eavesdropping on the upper echelons of organized crime management or depicting the actual logistics involved in its major heist. In other words, scenes concerning the hierarchy of mob bosses convening to resolve rivalries among their families or scenes about the actual heist are never shown. Nevertheless, “Goodfellas” is violent, profane, and unrelenting in its R-rated portrayal of crime and punishment. Pesci won the Best Supporting Actor’s Oscar, while “Goodfellas” received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Film Editing, and Best Screenplay based on material adapted from another medium. Incidentally, Kevin Costner’s “Dances with Wolves” trumped “Goodfellas” for the Oscar.

Essentially, Scorsese’s film traces the rise and fall of Brooklyn-born, Irish/Sicilian American Henry Hill from working as a teenager at a mafia cab stand to his adult exploits as a full-fledged mafia soldier. Scorsese glamorizes Hill’s life during the first hour as a crook, and the young Hill wins our sympathy as an underdog. Everything turns to sour in the second hour, however, as the mutt mutates into a murderer. After several years of getting away with his crimes, our protagonist winds up in prison, gets paroled, resorts to selling cocaine, finds himself at odds with his own mafia types before he decides to participate in the Justice Department’s Witness Protection Program. Incidentally, the title “Goodfellas” refers to the mafia concept that when an individual works for the mob then he becomes one of mob. In other words, the family that slays and steals together stays together. The most familiar term used to describe a person in the mafia is ‘wise guy,’ but Scorsese had to change the title of Pileggi’s book “Wise Guy” to “Goodfellas” so nobody would confuse the film with the CBS-TV series with Ken Wahl about an undercover mafia informant. Primarily, Scorsese relies on flashbacks to relate the story, but he breaks the fourth wall eventually so the protagonist can address the audience directly. Like all well-done crime sagas, “Goodfellas” epitomizes the capitalistic American work ethic. This Horatio Alger crime saga sees our innocent hero pulling himself up by the shoestrings and making a success of himself. Nevertheless, like all moral crime films from the 1930s, the hero is doomed to lose it all.

The first scene in “Goodfellas” sets the tone for this grim film. Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro of “Raging Bull”), Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci of “Lethal Weapon 2”) and Henry (Ray Liotta of “Article 99”) are cruising down the highway at night when Henry gets curious about a noise that sounds suspiciously like their sedan has had a flat tire. After Henry pulls the car over, Jimmy and Tommy inspect the trunk where they have stashed the bloody body of a man swathed with sheets. Tommy stabs the man repeatedly and Jimmy blasts at the man with his revolver. The camera pushes in on Henry watching Jimmy and Tommy kill the man sprawled helplessly in the trunk and then we hear Henry utter in a voice-over, “As far back as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a gangster." Intermittently, the Liotta character addresses the audience, furnishing important information about the mafia milieu, until the last few minutes when the protagonist breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience.

“Goodfellas” qualifies as a slam-bang crime thriller. This is not a film about set-pieces like you see in Coppola’s “Godfather” movies or Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon A Time in America.” Scorsese infiltrates the audience into the mafia and shares many of the mob’s secrets that have become familiar with film-going audiences in a way that seems fresh and off-the-cuff. Initially, we sympathize with young Henry (newcomer Christopher Serrone) who takes a job at Tuddy Cicero’s cab stand running errands for the gangsters in the neighborhood. Before long Henry is earning more money than his hot-tempered father, and he loves the respect that the mobsters lavish on him. Tuddy (Frank DeLio of “Kiss of Death”) lets him park Cadillacs, sell contraband items, smash car windows and play fire-bug. Unlike his working class Irish father who takes a belt to him when he discovers that his son has quit attending school, the mobsters are more of a family to Henry than his own kin. At one point, the police arrest Henry for selling cigarettes. After the charges are dismissed, Henry fears that the mob will punish him for his arrest, but they act as if the arrest and trial were a bar mitzvah. The head of the crime family, Paul Cicero (Paul Sorvino of “Slow Dancing in the Big City”) comments that Henry has had his cherry broken. Paulie, as his henchmen affectionately refer to him, is an old school Mafioso. He shares Don Vito Corleone’s revulsion toward narcotics and wants nothing to do with the lucrative drug racket. As the equivalent of hot-headed Sonny Corleone, Jimmy congratulates Henry for never informing on his friends and keeping his mouth shut.

As an adult, Henry becomes fast friends with Jimmy, who Henry assures us is “one of the most feared guy in the city” and pint-sized Tommy who isn’t afraid of anybody. This insider’s look at the mafia follows these three mafiateers as they steal, rob, lie, cheat, and kill their way to the a fortune. When Tommy cannot convince a girl to go out on a date with unless he finds a suitable fellow for her friend, Tommy twists Henry’s reluctant arm. Henry meets Karen (Lorraine Bracco, later of HBO’s “The Sopranos”) who becomes his wife. There is one scene when Henry escorts Karen to a popular nightclub that dazzles her because everybody showers them with respect and praise. Although she doesn’t know exactly how Henry makes his living, Henry tells her that he works for the union in the construction business. No sooner does Henry marry Karen and have kids than he starts cheating on her with whores that he sets up in nearby houses and Karen initially believes him when he cannot come home for business reasons. One morning Henry awakens to Karen straddling him in bed with a snub-nosed revolver aimed between his eyes. This is a chilling scene.

Henry and Jimmy wind up cooling their heels in prison briefly when they rough-up a guy in Florida and his wife blows the whistle on them. During his prison stint, Henry discovers cocaine. When he gets out on parole, he continues to wholesale narcotics despite Paulie’s stern warnings that he doesn’t tolerate trafficking in narcotics. Henry has to put up with random idiocy occasionally with regard to his drug runners. For example, one apparently reliable woman that he pays to carry his drugs with her during her airline flights believes that she must always wear her lucky hat if she is not going to be busted. A wig merchant sets up our heroes when he lets them in on the biggest heist in history. Jimmy and Henry orchestrate the infamous Lufthansa heist at JFK Airport in 1978 where they stole an estimated $5 million in cash and $875,000 in jewels. The Lufthansa heist still ranks as the largest cash robbery in the United States. Meanwhile, Henry violates one of the rules of the drug trade. You don’t get high on your own supply. He snorts as well as sells cocaine and the authorities catch up with him. At the same time, Jimmy and Tommy have been knocking off their Lufthansa accomplices. Consequently, when Henry is arrested, Jimmy fears that he may, to use the mob term, ‘rat him out.’

Tommy—the only full bloodied Sicilian—wins the honor of becoming a ‘made man’ in the mafia, but Tommy has murdered a ‘made man’ earlier and the mafia uses the ceremony as a ruse to rub him out. Scorsese doesn’t heap on buckets of gore, but Tommy’s death is pretty gory. The mob puts bullet through the back of his head that exits through an eye socket like a geyser of blood. Paranoid that Jimmy will ice him, Henry accepts an offer from the Justice Department to turn stool pigeon and testify against his former friends to keep from being sent to prison. Ultimately, Jimmy and Paul go to the big house, while Henry winds up going straight and becoming in his own words a “schnook.” Everything goes in a circle in “Goodfellas” in the sense that what goes around comes around and Henry is back when he began, except he is ensconced in the suburbs.

It is a testament to Scorsese’s skill as co-writer and director that the repugnant world of crime looks so compelling. Jimmy and Tommy are brutal, unrepentant thugs. A life of crime turns Henry into a cold, calculating operator who enjoys all the advantages of mob living. Like a movie made during the Production Code era (1934-1968) that dictated that crime should not pay, our protagonist gets his comeuppance. Nevertheless, Scorsese shows his sense of humor in one scene when Tommy, Jimmy, and Henry awaken Tommy’s mother at his house and she insists on cooking a meal for them. Scorsese never lets the momentum of “Goodfellas” slacken and this crime drama boasts enough surprises to keep audiences on their toes. Altogether, “Goodfellas” rates as one of the top ten mob movies and its soundtrack of nostalgic tunes doesn’t hurt it. According to the Internet Movie Database, the F-work is said 296 times, roughly two times every minute.