FILM REVIEW OF "THE BIG STEAL" (1949)

"Out of the Past" leads Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer team up again in director Don Siegel's fast-paced, lightweight, romantic crime thriller "The Big Steal." Although "Crime by Night" scribe Daniel Mainwaring and "Dead Reckoning" writer Gerald Drayson Adams have penned a fairly conventional actioneer, the narrative exposes one vast difference between Americans and Mexicans. Americans work up a lather getting to where they are going, while the Hispanic populace takes it easy. Several times our fast and furious American protagonists find themselves being slowed down by the Hispanics who appear in no particular hurry to get things done. Not only does Siegel snap up the suspense, but he also turns this frenzied chase into a scenic travelogue.

The hero and heroine rampage from the port of Vera Cruz through sun-drenched Mexico after an elusive as well as larcenous criminal. Jim Fiske (Patric Knowles of "Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman") owes Joan Graham (Greer) the sum of $2-thousand that she loaned to him. She has followed him below the border to retrieve her money. They were apparently going to get married. Meanwhile, it seems that Fiske has waylaid an Army Lieutenant, Duke Halliday (Robert Mitchum) who was picking up a $300-thousand Army payroll to take back to the base. As the finance officer, Halliday was responsible for the loot. When he explains that Fiske robbed him, Captain Blake suspects Halliday put Fiske up to the robbery. Halliday goes AWOL to recover the loot and finds Captain Vincent Blake (tough guy William Bendix of "Guadalcanal Diary") in hot pursuit, too. The fight that Blake and Halliday get into at the outset of the action is pretty rough. Siegel appears to have accelerated the film so that Halliday's elbow blow against the unsuspecting Blake stuns the captain.

This nifty but notorious little B-picture went into production about the same time that Robert Mitchum was arrested for smoking marihuana. A large amount of action occurs on the roads as the characters careen through towns. Eventually, a sly Mexican police officer, Inspector General Ortega (Ramon Novarro of "Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ"), who is brushing up on his English, takes an interest in the activities of these Americans and has them shadowed. He intervenes at one point and everybody lingers at a hotel. Basically, "The Big Steal" (*** out of ****) unfolds like a game of cat and mouse. Fiske cleverly eludes Halliday and Graham while they elude a determined Blake. Blake goes to Inspector General Ortega and tells him that he has lost his credentials; specifically extradition papers to take Halliday back into custody and return him to America. Fiske literally erects roadblocks for our hero and heroine and they do likewise to Blake. At one point, Halliday loosens a flock of goats to block the road. A rather lengthy scene finds Halliday and Joan stalled on a remote road where a bridge is being torn up. The Mexican official is initially reluctant to help them. Furthermore, they cannot turn around and retrace their path because Blake breathing down their collective necks. Joan explains to the road superintendent that they are eloping, and her father doesn't like Halliday. She explains that her father wants her to marry "a short ugly man" and she prefers "a big pretty" man. Joan's lie prompts the road superintendent to create a momentary way through the construction so they can continue onto the highway.

The action concludes with a wilderness shoot-out. A guy named Cole armed with a revolver and a rifleman named Jose ambush Duke and Joan as they approach Seton hacienda. This Seton is the same Julius Seton that Joan encountered earlier in the plot. She almost destroyed a priceless artifact by distracting Seton's assistant. Now, in the fourth quarter, Seton reappears. We learn that he is a fence as well as a collector of priceless artifacts. Seton is paying Fiske $150-thousand for the hot $300-thousand. Duke kills Jose, but Cole gets the drop on both Duke and Joan. Cole brings Duke and Joan to Seton. Moments later Blake bursts in with his gun drawn. Fiske explains the deal about the $150-thousand and Blake agrees to split it with Fiske. As Fiske is leaving, Blake guns him down. Afterward, Blake assures Joan, "You can't trust a guy like that." Blake phones Inspector General Ortega that he was bringing Duke in for Ortega to arrest. Unfortunately, he adds, Duke tried to escape and he had to kill him. A fight erupts with Duke and Blake tangling again while Joan scuffles with Seton over a priceless artifact. Interestingly, their first encounter led to his assistant nearly dropping a priceless artifact. Seton doesn't fare so well in the second encounter that begins with Joan smashing a priceless artifact. Joan wounds Seton and Duke triumphs over Blake. The big revelation is that Blake and Fiske were accomplices. The picture wraps up with the leads observing mating ceremonies and then children parade pass them as if to suggest that procreation after marriage is the suitable thing to do.

Siegel does a nice job of helming this mayhem. The pace rarely slackens and the characters convey exposition about their predicaments without slowing down the action. Interesting enough, Siegel likes to show the shadow of some characters on the wall before he reveals who they are. When Blake approaches Halliday's state room aboard the ship, we see his shadow on the wall before we see him. Later, after Fiske leaves his hotel room with Joan in the shower, he heads down on hall while we see the shadow of Halliday approaching Fiske's door.

FILM REVIEW OF ''IRON MAN 2" (2010)

“Iron Man 2” (**1/2 out of ****) ranks as an overblown, CGI-riddled, second-rate sequel.

Director Jon Favreau’s original 2008 Marvel super hero saga delivered a slam-bang, refreshing blend of super-heroism and bad attitude on the part of its egotistical protagonist, while Jeff Bridges proved a worthy opponent as his treacherous vice president who replicated his high-tech suit of armor and challenged him. While Favreau’s ambitious sequel delivers more than enough pyrotechnics, “Iron Man 2” is neither as nimble nor as engrossing as its groundbreaking predecessor. Indeed, Iron Man faces a new contender. Brutal Ivan Vanko isn’t as memorable as the sinister Obadiah Stane, but he does appropriate high moral ground as part of his crusade to topple our hero. Meantime, Robert Downey, Jr. is every bit as good as he was the first time, and he tackles bigger problems for his encore in this follow-up adaptation of a popular comic-book series that first appeared in 1963. Unfortunately, “Tropic Thunder” scenarist Justin Theroux wraps everything up a predictable plot that presents a plethora of complications but few surprises. Some movies suffer from too many characters and too great an agenda. Too much of everything cripples “Iron Man 2.” The middle section of this 124-minute marathon buckles under the weight of excessive plotting and extra characters before the film recovers sufficiently for a triumphant ending.

The action unfolds in chilly Moscow as destitute Soviet physicist Anton Vanko (Yevgeni Lazarev of “Lord of War”) dies with his son, Ivan (Mickey Rourke of “Sin City”), at his side. While this is happening, the local news contains a broadcast of Tony Stark coming out of his metal closet to admit that he is Iron Man. Before the elder Vanko passes away, he assures his son that Ivan should have been in billionaire industrialist Tony Stark’s shoes as Iron Man. As it turns out, Stark’s late father Howard (John Slattery of “Traffic”) and Anton were partners who collaborated on the invention of the arc reactor. Eventually, Anton was deported to the Soviet Union where he managed to scrape out an miserable livelihood. Ivan finds the blueprints that his father created with Howard Stark. He sets about to construct a primitive version of Iron Man’s breastplate and adds two crackling fiber-optic whips that can slice through metal as if it were butter. Look out Tony Stark! If Ivan doesn’t represent a minor threat in the overall scheme of things, Tony discovers that the very suit that enables him to carry out his vigilante crime fighting exploits is contaminating his blood and gradually killing him. In other words, our hero has got to find a new energy source that won’t kill him. Meantime, a United States Senate Investigation committee, headed up by slimy Pennsylvania Senator Stern (Garry Shandling of “What Planet Are You From?”), insists that Stark hand over the technology of his Iron Man outfit to the government for military application. Naturally, Stark refuses to cooperate. He explains that the suit and he are one, and that America need not fear anybody cloning his flying suit of armor.

Bored with the routine of running his massive corporation, Tony promotes his right hand woman, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow of “Great Expectations”), as the CEO of Stark Industries. Of course, Pepper is flabbergasted by this extravagant gesture on Tony’s part. Our hero flies off to Monaco to race in the Grand Prix and collides with Ivan and his razor-sharp whips. Pepper and Tony’s chauffeur Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau of “Couples Retreat”) careen onto the race course and toss our protagonist his portable suitcase version of his outfit. In no time at all, Iron Man emerges and defeats Ivan. Not long afterward, Tony’s worst enemy--rival weapons manufacturer Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell of “Moon”) -- breaks Vanko out of prison and then cuts a bargain with him to clone Tony’s Iron Man outfit. Ivan, however, is no flunky, and he embarks on an entirely different program. Instead of replicating Iron Man’s outfit, he masterminds an army of drones that Hammer plans to sell to the Pentagon. Stark stages the Stark Expo in Flushing Meadows, New York, to carry on his father's legacy. Anybody who creates a worthwhile contribution to technology can display their handiwork. Hammer unveils his drones, but learns too late that Ivan’s infamous scheme supersedes his own plans.

The chief problem with “Iron Man 2” is its lackluster villain. As Ivan Vanko, Rourke appears appropriately nefarious as a walking, talking tattoo with a grudge against our champion, but he poses only a disposable threat. Mind you, he looks menacing enough, but his lack of charisma is only matched by his absence of hygiene. Now, Ivan’s outfit looks more interesting, but Iron Man turns it against him in no time as he does the drones. Basically, Ivan combines Iron Man's adversary the Crimson Dynamo and the super villain Whiplash. Sam Rockwell’s buffoonish second string villain spends most of his time making an idiot out of himself. Essentially, he is an expendable character. On the other hand, comedian Garry Shandling virtually steals every scene that he has as a Congressman, particularly the last scene when he decorates Tony Stark for saving the country from Ivan. Sexy actress Scarlett Johansson shows up as Natalie Rushman, a mysterious undercover female commando who defies gravity in the scenes of close combat that she has with men. She is a feminine looking Amazon with graceful acrobatic moves. She replaces Pepper since Tony promoted Pepper upstairs. Don Cheadle takes over the role of Lieutenant Colonel "Rhodey" Rhodes from Terence Howard. Rhodes snatches one of Tony’s Iron Man outfits because he doesn’t want his friend to have a monopoly on world power. Favreau gives actor Samuel L. Jackson more screen time this time as Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., but this character does little more than act as a press agent for the eventual "Avengers" team-up movie.

Unfortunately, this installment generates neither enough excitement nor irony to overwhelm its own inertia. Anybody who walks out before the long end credits conclude their tedious roll will miss a brief scene where our hero’s new antagonist leaves his calling card in a sprawling pit.

FILM REVIEW OF "COTTON COMES TO HARLEM" (1970)

Not only did “Cotton Comes to Harlem” (***1/2 OUT OF ****) mark the directorial debut of actor & writer Ossie Davis, but also this pre-blaxploitation epic introduced audiences to a couple of tough-talking, incorruptible New York Police Detectives nicknamed ‘Gravedigger’ Jones (Godfrey Cambridge of “Watermelon Man”) and ‘Coffin Ed’ Johnson (Raymond St. Jacques of “Cool Breeze”) who suspect that a charismatic religious figure may be swindling his own poor people. Technically, since the term “blaxploitation” didn't enter the lexicon until 1972, this movie poised itself on the cutting edge before the edge starting cutting with films such as the “Shaft” franchise, “Superfly,” and “Slaughter” movies. The chief difference between “Cotton Comes to Harlem” and a standard-issue, formulaic white crime thriller is the protagonists are African-American. The slang is predominantly African-American, but other minorities participate in the action, primarily the Italian mafia. The protagonists are the usual iconoclasts who have alienated themselves from higher authority with their abrasive behavior. Predictably, about three-quarters of the way into the action, a superior officer removes them from the case, largely because he feels that they are acting out of prejudice against one of their own people. Early, the same police captain had complained bitterly that Gravedigger and Coffin Ed have smart mouths, are quick with their fists, and too fast with their guns. Clearly, as far as the captain is concerned, Gravedigger and Coffin Ed qualify as maniacs who have no business in an investigation that is a powder keg of racial tensions. Nevertheless, their white police lieutenant defends their behavior. He explains that they have a special way of handling Harlem crime and if they suspect somebody of criminal behavior, the lieutenant defers to their judgment. Meantime, Gravedigger and Coffin Ed see their job has protecting “the Black folks from the White folks.”

Initially, when we first see the Reverend Deke O'Malley (Calvin Lockhart of “Dark of the Sun”), he is riding in a Rolls Royce, cruising through gritty Harlem streets to a rally for his "Back To Africa" campaign. A gold-colored armored car with the black silhouette cut-out of a luxury liner displayed prominently on its roof follows. Rev. Deke refers to this ship as ‘Black Beauty.’ He is selling tickets for it at a $100 minimum to take African-Americans back to Africa, away from the white man and his rats and poverty. Although the white establishment supports Deke, Gravedigger and Coffin Ed believe Deke is swindling poor blacks out of their hard earned dollars. During the rally, Deke explains that God anointed him while he was in jail to build an ark and take his people back to Africa. While this self-proclaimed Noah assures blacks he can provide them with a better way of life away from racist white America, masked thugs in orange suits armed with submachine gun shoot up the gathering and rifle the safe in Deke’s gold-armored truck. They kill one of Deke’s uniformed guards, John (Tony Brubaker of “Slaughter's Big Rip-Off”), and his wife Mabel watches him die. The robbers careen off in a meat truck with Deke following them and Gravedigger and Coffin Ed in hot pursuit.

During the chase, a cotton bale tumbles from the rear of the truck onto the sidewalk. The robbers strafe Gravedigger and Coffin Ed. Our heroes collide with a produce wagon transporting watermelons. Eventually, the robber’s truck and the armored car crash and burn up. Meanwhile, Gravedigger and Coffin Ed search for Deke. They visit his girlfriend, Iris (Judy Pace of “Three in the Attic”), and question her with luck about Deke’s whereabouts. While they are interrogating Iris, Sergeant Jarema (Dick Sabol of “Come Back Charleston Blue”) enters and informs them Lieutenant Anderson (Eugene Roche of “The Happening”), wants them at the scene of the accident. They order Jarema stay behind to keep an eye on Iris. Iris taunts Jarema into having sex with her. She makes him wear a brown paper bag. While he is putting on the bag, she escapes. Jarema locks himself out of her apartment, completely naked in the hallway for the other residents to see.

Captain Bryce (John Anderson of “Young Billy Young”) reprimands our heroes for suspecting that Rev. Deke O’Malley is a confidence artist. Bryce points out that the State Department and other high-prolife white groups have the highest regard for O’Malley. Later, Bryce complains to Anderson about their behavior. Deke decides to stay out of sight and conduct his own investigation. He convinces the wife of one of his dead guards to let him stay with her. Eventually, Gravedigger and Coffin Ed get Iris to inform on Deke and he goes to jail, but his attorney gets him out. Everybody is looking now for the bale of cotton that contains the stolen $87-thousand. Uncle Budd (Red Foxx of “Sanford & Son”) finds the bale and sells it for $25 to Abe Goodman. A mysterious stranger in black with a beret, Calhoun (J.D. Cannon of “Lawman”), visits Uncle Budd on his junk barge and inquires about the bale of cotton. Calhoun comes on tough until Deke’s second-in-command Barry (Teddy Wilson of “Cleopatra Jones”) confronts him and runs him off. Uncle Budd buys the cotton bale back for $30 from Goodman. Later, that night, Calhoun and his gang and Deke and his men converge on Goodman’s Junkyard. A firefight erupts and Digger is nearly struck by a truck. Nevertheless, our heroes nab Deke, haul him in for questioning, and expose him for the swindler that he is. Iris, who was found unconscious at Mabel Hill’s apartment, has told the authorities that Deke hired impostors to masquerade as the District Attorney’s Office. These impostors showed up at Deke’s rally moments before the orange jump-suit clad gunners raked the spectators with gunfire and killed John Hill.

Davis dilutes the thrills and chills of the meat truck & armored car pursuit scene with four smaller scenes within it. These four sub-scenes feature mild comedy, while the primary scene depicts a chase through the streets of New York City. The first sub-scene involves a guy trying to attract the attention of three lovely ladies strolling on the sidewalk. None ever acknowledge his existence. The second involves a hustler stealing a rack of dresses from a street vendor when the chase momentarily distracts him. The third concerns a stoned individual trying to ignite a joint. The smoker staggers into the street and miraculously neither the armored truck nor the police cruiser collide with him. This gag resembles the physical comedy that Buster Keaton practiced in silent movies. The fourth gag involves a street artist painting an expressionist portrait of a gullible Christian woman while the pickpocket Early Riser wields a pair of scissors to cut through her skirt to steal the purse that she is clutching between her legs. These four sub-scenes feature mild comedy, while the primary scene depicts a straight-forward chase through the streets of New York City that ends with the pickpocket being struck and killed. During the chase, the gunmen in the meat truck riddle the unmarked police car, shatter its window into shards, blow out its headlights, and obliterate the outside rearview mirrors. Oops, the driver’s outside rear view reappears after bullets have torn it off the door when our heroes crash into a watermelon wagon.

Geoffrey Cambridge and Raymond St. Jacques make a believable pair of cops who interact as if they have known each other for a long time. As Coffin Ed, St. Jacques is the hard-nosed detective of the two with a short fuse who prefers to get physical with suspects, meaning pummel them with his knuckled up fists. During a confrontation with a black street vigilante gang, our heroes are compared to monsters. The beret wearing, tan-uniform clad brothers refer to Gravedigger as 'King Kong' and Coffin Ed as 'Frankenstein.' As the villain, Calvin Lockhart gives a dynamic performance and makes a serviceable villain.

Director Ossie Davis and television scribe Arnold Pearl penned the screenplay from Chester Himes’ novel. Some of the dialogue is very sharp as are the blaxploitation slogans: “Keep it black till I get back.” “Is that black enough for you?” Several messages pervade this above-average crime thriller about the search for stolen loot. First, the meek shall inherit the Earth. Second, crime doesn’t pay and criminals have to pay to ply their criminal vocation. Harlem blacks should control Harlem, not the Italian mafia. Our heroes force the Italian mafia to turn over their Harlem operation to a Black racketeer. Black women can outsmart white men. One black woman is depicted as a ‘stone fox,’ and she makes a buffoon of a cretinous white police sergeant. The interesting question that arises but is never resolved—and by extension gives “Cotton Comes to Harlem” a surreal quality—concerns the raw, unprocessed bale of cotton. Where did it come from and what is it doing in Harlem? Nobody ever answers this question.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE BACK-UP PLAN" (2010)

Admittedly, when some gals can’t find Mr. Right, they resort to artificial insemination to jump-start a family on their own. The premise of freshman director Alan Poul’s chick flick comedy about planned parenthood, "The Back-Up Plan" (** OUT OF ****), is flawed from the outset. We’re asked to believe that drop dead gorgeous Jennifer Lopez has had no luck landing a father material. The irony here is that once our desperate heroine allows her physician to impregnate her with frozen sperm, she meets Mr. Right. Sitcom scenarist Kate Angelo has penned a predictable but frivolous saga about single motherhood that relies incredibly enough on delivery-related gross-out gags and scatological humor. No, nothing in the “The Back-Up Plan” qualifies as offensive. Some guys may find the subject matter uncomfortable, like too much information about the birthing process. Unfortunately, the fair-to-mellow humor doesn’t hoist this bland comedy out of the doldrums. A typical girl-finds-guy, girl-loses-guy, girl-wins-guy-back comedy, “The Back-Up Plan” comes with all the obligatory obstacles but lacks anything like spontaneity. In other words, this J-L0 epic generates only half of the hilarity of either “Knocked Up” or “Baby Mama.” Indeed, the humor here is aimed primarily at women. Poul gets the antics off on the right foot, but the story doesn't go anywhere you haven't been before in a thousand other comedies. Our thirtysomething heroine endures the usual bouts of morning sickness, hormonal episodes, and culinary cravings. Ultimately, the complication that splits up our two lovers drums up nominal drama. Meanwhile, no matter how dumpy J-Lo gets, the diva still looks dazzling. The most interesting but least developed faction of characters is a lesbian support group who have banded together to help single moms through pregnancy.

Zoe (Jennifer Lopez of “U-Turn”) owns a New York City pet shop called Hudson Mutts in Greenwich Village with the usual wisecracking employees. She also owns a small but playful handicapped Boston bull terrier named Nuts hat scrambles around in its own little doggie wheelchair. Basically, whenever Zoe needs to say something at home, she talks to the bull terrier. Undeniably, the pooch is an endearing scene-stealer, and it’s a shame that he’s mute. Having a supernatural pup might have made this movie more entertaining. J-Lo gets to slip in a message about puppy farms and the dangers of inbreeding. Nevertheless, our heroine has to contend with a hormonal clock that is ticking. The problem is she has not been able to land the right man. Basically, Zoe had a traumatic childhood. At age eight, she watched her mother die from cancer and her father abandon her because he couldn’t take the responsibility. Consequently, our heroine doesn’t believe that she can hook up with a guy and keep him. Despite all the warnings that her life-long best friend, Mona (Michaela Watkins of “Inconceivable”) gives her about the trials and tribulations of motherhood, Zoe remains adamant about having kids. No sooner has Dr. Harris (Robert Klein of “Hooper”) artificially inseminated Zoe than she collides with Mr. Right while hailing a cab. Predictably, Stan (Alex O'Loughlin of CBS-TV’s ill-fated “Moonlight”) jumps into the same cab that Zoe has flagged down. Neither can decide who should have the taxi so both get out and the cabbie cruises away. This incident is funny, but like most of the humor in “The Back-Up Plan” falls short of side-splitting. Later, at a Tribeca farmer’s market, Zoe and Stan run into each other again. He sells organic cheese and owns a goat farm. Stan has had little luck with the opposite sex, too. He dreams about owning an organic gourmet restaurant and is currently attending night classes to get his college degree. The two manage to hit it off and move in with each other. They shop for strollers and imagine what the future holds. Suddenly, Zoe fears that Stan will leave her. Guess what, he does. Just when Zoe thinks she cannot trust Stan, her grandmother Nana (Linda Lavin of CBS-TV’s “Alice,” who raised her after her mother died, decides to marry her fiance, Arthur (Tom Bosley of "Happy Days”), after keeping the poor fellow on tenterhooks for twenty-two years. Nana tells Zoe that Zoe and Stan looked so happy together that she had to marry Arthur. Imagine how Zoe feels.

The ladies that watch this romantic comedy may not be able to take their eyes off virile Aussie heartthrob Alex O'Loughlin who parades around without a shirt. Sadly, the chemistry between Lopez and O’Loughlin registers only minor tremors on the Richter Scale. They are agreeable and pleasant, but they don’t look like they were meant for each other. Some familiar faces from the past flesh out this lackluster romantic comedy. Namely, Linda Laven and Tom Bosley lighten up this meandering mess as a couple who haven't been able to commit to marriage for 20 years. Comedian Anthony Anderson seems restrained in his two scenes with O'Loughlin as an anonymous playground dad who contends with a son who brings him a fistful of feces. The crude humor about human feces doesn’t make you laugh as grimace because the filmmakers struggle to make these poop scenes funny. The bizarre single mom support group that our heroine attends early on in the action contains a scene near the end where a tattooed dame delivers a baby in a wading pool while making goofy barnyard noises. She also lets one go in the pool much to the chagrin of our hero. The outtakes, especially with the wheelchair doggie, are worth sticking around for as the end credits roll. The laughs in “The Back-Up Plan” are mellow just as the drama is soft-headed. Mind you, this movie marks Lopez’s first starring role in a theatrical feature since the 2006 movie “An Unfinished Life.” Clearly, Lopez didn't have much of a back-up plan with she selected this superficial potboiler.

FILM REVIEW OF "FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE" (ITALIAN-1965)

Sergio Leone's superlative "For a Few Dollars More" with Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef ranks in the top five of all Spaghetti westerns. This exciting bounty hunter shoot'em up has Monco (Clint Eastwood) forming an uneasy alliance with Colonel Douglas Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef) to wipe out a ruthless gang of murderous desperadoes. Monco wants the bounty on El Indio (Gian Maria Volonte of "A Bullet for the General") and his gang, while Colonel Mortimer vows to kill Indio strictly out of revenge because the dastard raped his sister and she committed suicide. A multitude of distinctive Leone touches appear in this fabulous frontier saga; this represents the first time that Leone would stage a gunfight in the round. Meanwhile, Ennio Morricone's theme music is classic with its chiming bells, piercing whistles, and crisp whip cracks, but it is the tender and moving watch-piece theme that is really memorable here. Leone and cinematographer Massimo Dallamano lensed this 132 minute oater in the craggy mountainous regions of southern Spain that substitute marvelously for the American southwest. Every time that a six-gun toting character tramps the gritty earth with his jingling, spur-clad boots, you can hear the scratchy sound of dirt being displaced. The sets seem so much more authentic the way that they have been grafted to the spartan scenery.

The opening words on screen establish "For A Few Dollars More" as a bounty hunting western: "Where life has no value, death sometimes has its price. This is why the bounty hunters appeared." Clint Eastwood returns as the monosyllabic gunman dressed in a serape, with wrist-bands, and a Colt's .45 revolver with a coiled snake on the plow handle grip. He is referred to throughout "For A Few Dollars More" as Manco. More than Eastwood's stoic performance, it is Lee Van Cleef's formidable presence as a natty stranger clad in black who carries an arsenal of weapons on his horse that makes this western stand out. Originally, Leone had sought the services of Lee Marvin. Marvin would have been exemplary, but veteran western heavy Lee Van Cleef made the role of Colonel Mortimer into one of his most memorable roles. Later, Van Cleef would take the Colonel character a bit farther in Gianfranco Parolini's exciting saga "Sabata." As the pot-smoking villain, Gian Maria Volonte challenges both men at every turn of the plot. Volonte looks like the equivalent of a wolf with his lupine features and grizzled hair. There is a psychotic glint in his eyes that make you believe that he prefers to shoot first and ask questions later. "For A Few Dollars More" represents the first western in over 40 years where a character actually smokes a marihuana cigarette. Everybody here looks like a mutant, especially Klaus Kinski cast as a killer named 'Wild' with a hunchback. Leone characterizes each character with an Ennio Morricone musical motif.

"For A Few Dollars More" begins with Colonel Mortimer killing a repulsively ugly outlaw named Guy Calloway (José Terrón of ""God Forgives... I Don't!") after he tries to flee from the Colonel. Initially, Colonel Mortimer is riding on a train reading the Bible. He pulls the emergency cord to get off the train at Tucumcari. The railroad officials aren't very happy about this sudden stopover. Mortimer enters a saloon and shows the bartender a wanted poster of Guy Calloway. He wants to know where Calloway is and gets tough with the bartender. The bartender says nothing about Calloway's whereabouts, but he rolls his eyes to the ceiling in a glance the indicates that Calloway is upstairs. Mortimer slides the wanted poster under the door of Calloway's room and steps to the side as bullets splinter the door. When Mortimer enters the hotel room, he finds a lady soaking nude in a bath tub. He pokes his head out the window and spot Calloway heading for his horse. Mortimer wields a rifle, kills Guy's horse and then kills Guy with a bullet in the forehead as the villain shoots at him. Mortimer collects a thousand dollars for Calloway, and the scene shifts to White Rocks where Monco (Clint Eastwood)enters a saloon and runs into the sheriff. He asks the sheriff three questions and spots Red. He steps up to Red's table and intervenes in a card game so that he can play one himself with Red. 'Baby' Red Cavanaugh (José Marco of "Man of the Cursed Valley") plays the hand with Manco and gets a 3 Kings of Heart, a 10 of spades, and queen of hearts. Manco beats him with a queen of spades, a jack of diamonds, and three aces, one of spades, one of hearts, and one of diamonds. Manco winds up not only killing him but three of Red's gunslinging partners. When Manco collects the $2-thousand in bounty money, the sheriff tells him that it would take him three years to earn that much money.

Now that Leone has set up his two heroes, he shifts the scene again to introduce the villain as a band of killers break El Indio out of prison. Coincidentally, Indio shares his cell with a carpenter (Dante Maggio of "The Fighting Fists of Shangai Joe") who knows a thing or two about the safe at the Bank of El Paso. El Indio and his trigger-happy gunslingers kill all the uniformed prison guards and Indio shoots the warden in the face and blasts four more bullets into him. Indio allows one sentry to survive so that he can tell the story. Later, Indio tracks down the man who turned him into the authorities and used the bounty money to start a family. They bring the traitor, his wife and infant son to a run-down mission. Groggy (Luigi Pistilli of "Death Rides A Horse") shows up and shoots another gunman's spur rowel so that it starts spinning and then he shoots it to make it stop spinning. Indio's men murder the man's wife and 18 month old son and then Indio prods the man into a duel with the watch-piece used as a timer. Not surprisingly, Indio draws first and guns the man down. Thereafter, Nino gives Indio a marihuana joint to smoke.

Meanwhile, Mortimer searches for a bank that only a maniac would try to rob and learns that the Bank of El Paso is just such a bank. Indeed, Indio plans to rob a bank, but he has planned a very unconventional hold-up. Monco and Colonel Mortimer arrive in town at the same time. They agree to work together but neither truly trusts the other. Earlier, they spent an evening shooting at each other's hats that ended into a stand-off. Monco shot at Mortimer's hat and the hat skidded past Mortimer. Comparatively, Mortimer blows Monco's hat off his head and continues to shoot at it in the air. Afterward, they devise a plan that calls on Monco infiltrating the gang. Monco uses dynamite to blow a hole in the cell occupied by El Indio's right-hand man Sancho Perez (Panos Papadopoulos of "The Indian Tomb") who is serving time in prison. When Indio asked him why he wants to join his gang, Monco says that he wants to kill them all for the bounty on their heads. Indio appreciates Monco's audacity and admits him to his gang.

The bank hold-up itself differs from most westerns of the day. After they blast a hole in the rear of the bank, the bandits take the entire safe, something that would be imitated in "Sabata," and haul it off in a wagon. Mortimer worms his way into the gang because he claims that he can open it with nitro after the villains cannot blast it open without destroying the bank notes. Each shoot out is terrifically staged and the gunshots themselves are nothing like the American equivalent. The final shoot-out in the round with the chimes on the watch serving as the timing device is imaginative. "For a Few Dollars More" is better than both "A Fistful of Dollars" and "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly." British spaghetti western expert Christopher Frayling has written an excellent book about this movie and its shattering impact on American westerns as well as Italian westerns.

FILM REVIEW OF ''DEATH AT A FUNERAL" (2010)

Everything that can possibly go wrong at a memorial service does go wrong in “Nurse Betty” director Neil LaBute’s witty but tasteless comedy “Death at a Funeral,” (**** OUT OF ****) starring Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence, Danny Glover, James Marsden, Tracy Morgan and Zoe Saldana. Ostensibly a faithful rehash of director Frank Oz’s British comedy with the same title, this predominately African-American remake—just three years after the original—qualifies as a side-splitting experience from fade-in to fade-out with our protagonists contending with one surprise after another to get their dearly departed dad and his mourners through the memorial. Incidentally, Peter Dinklage reprises his role from the original as “mysterious stranger.” British scenarist Dean Craig, who penned the original “Funeral,” banks on outrageous situations as well as Chris Rock’s commentary about these incidents to yield laughs galore. Essentially, Craig has relocated the action to Southern California. The primary characters consist of an oddball variety of believable, quirky, but sympathetic folks. Indeed, the cast acts virtually as an ensemble in some scenes. Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence complement each other without trying to outdo each other. James Marsden has a field day with his character-driven shenanigans, while Tracy Morgan draws some of the biggest laughs when he tangles with Danny Glover. The important thing here--as in most good comedies--is that the cast and the director don’t deliberately behave as if they were making a comedy. Nobody tries to be funny. The humor emerges in the collision between the characters and predicaments wholly beyond their control. Watching the reactions of both Rock and Lawrence constitutes half of the fun of “Death at a Funeral.”

Tax accountant Aaron Barnes (Chris Rock of “Good Hair”) is not a happy camper as “Death at a Funeral” unfolds. Imagine Aaron’s reaction when the funeral home delivers the wrong corpse to his house! When they open the casket for our protagonist, Aaron finds himself staring down at an Asian gentleman (Jamison Yang of “Surfer, Dude”) rather than his deceased father Edward (Bob Minor of "The Gingerbread Man"). Since Edward's death, Aaron’s overwrought mother, Cynthia (Loretta Divine of “Waiting to Exhale”), has been pestering both Aaron and his 37-year old wife Michelle (Regina Hall of “Scary Movie”) about giving her a grandchild to take her mind off her late husband. Moreover, Aaron finds himself struggling to compose a eulogy for his father. Tradition dictates that the oldest son must deliver it. Nevertheless, some people, such as Aaron's uncle Duncan (Ron Glass of TV’s “Barney Miller”), think Aaron’s younger brother, Ryan (Martin Lawrence of “Bad Boys”), should have drawn that assignment. As it turns out, Aaron is only nine months older than Ryan. You see, Aaron has written a book, but he has refused to let anybody read it. Meanwhile, Cynthia is so overjoyed when her celebrity son Ryan arrives that she knocks down Michelle in her haste to embrace her baby. Ryan is a bespectacled, mustached, smooth-talking womanizer. He is also a published writer so deep in debt that he doesn’t have a dime. When Aaron asks him to help out with the expensive funeral bill, Ryan refuses. Instead, Ryan sets out to seduce a sexy 18-year old girl, Martina (Regine Nehy of "Lakeview Terrace"), who sends his hormones into an uproar. The inevitable jokes about R. Kelly follow.

Meantime, Aaron's cousin Elaine (Zoe Saldana of “Avatar”) is attending the memorial service with her latest boyfriend Oscar ((James Marsden of “X-Men”), and Oscar is pretty nervous about running into Elaine’s father Duncan again. Oscar doesn’t think that Duncan approves of him. Elaine and Oscar cruise over to pick up her brother Jeffrey (Columbus Short of “Armored”), and Elaine sneaks a Valium. What Elaine doesn’t know is that Jeffrey has whipped up a hallucinogenic cocktail of mescaline and acid for his friends and stashed it in a bottle with a Valium prescription. Jeffrey doesn’t discover what Elaine has done until he notices Oscar’s bizarre behavior. At one point during the memorial service, Oscar is so confident that he has seen the coffin moving that he interrupts the preacher, Reverend Davis (Keith David of “Delta Farce”), in the middle of his sermon. A melee ensues as Aaron and company try to subdue Oscar. Predictably, the casket topples onto the floor and out rolls Edward’s inert corpse! If Oscar’s misguided shenanigans were not enough to contend with, a stranger named Frank (Peter Dinklage of “Elf”) corners Aaron with incriminating photos of Edward and he cuddling up to each other like the gay lovers that they were. Frank demands $30-thousand dollars or he will show the photos to Cynthia.

Elaine’s ex-boyfriend Derek (Luke Wilson of “Home Fries”) and long-time family friend Norman (Tracy Morgan of “Cop Out”) have to make a detour at a nursing home to collect cantankerous Uncle Russell (Danny Glover of “Lethal Weapon”) and bring him with them. The wheel chair bound Uncle Russell doesn’t give Norman a moment’s peace. Derek is hoping that he can patch things up with Elaine, and he does his best to change her mind about him. On the other hand, everything that Norman does for Uncle Russell draws criticism from the oldster. Things get really out of hand when Norman has to assist Uncle Russell to the toilet and Norman’s hand gets trapped under Uncle Russell. Mind you, this is only the set-up for even more hilarity that follows.

Between the wrongly delivered corpse and Uncle Russell’s antics, “Death at a Funeral” has enough high-jinks to keep you chuckling out loud. Dull moments are few and far between, and this superficial but funny Paramount Pictures gagfest never loses track with its objective: making us laugh. The refreshing thing about “Death at a Funeral” is how LaBute confines the most action to the family household without inducing a sense of claustrophobia. Anybody who enjoys Chris Rock, Martin Lawrence, and Tracy Morgan will have a rollicking good time at this contagiously funny, but dark comedy about mortality and the secrets that death exposes about an individual.

FILM REVIEW OF ''DEFENDOR" (Canadian-2008)

Serio-comic movies about ordinary Joes who don costumes and behave like superheroes are quickly becoming a dime a dozen. John Ritter played a struggling actor in “Hero-At-Large” (1980) who thwarted a robbery while wearing a Captain Avenger costume for a movie that he was hired to promote. Crackpot inventor Damon Wayans suited up as a super hero in “Blankman” (1994) after he created a bulletproof wardrobe. The 2006 indie feature “Special” saw Michael Rapaport of “True Romance” as a nobody police traffic-ticket writing cop named Les who participates in an experimental study for new antidepressant medication named Specioprin Hydrochloride. Rapaport becomes delusional and believes he can levitate himself off his sofa and penetrate walls without injury. Freshman Canadian writer & director Peter Stebbings has woven a similar but insightful yarn along these lines, “Defendor” (*** OUT OF ****), about a mentally challenged chap (Woody Harrelson) who believes that he is bullet-proof and tries to clean up his hometown. He targets a ruthless Serbian gangster as his nemesis that he nicknames ‘Captain Industry.’ Unlike its predecessors, “Defendor” unfolds as a straightforward crime movie with a hero who is truly deluded from the start and the villains are genuine thugs who want to terminate our hero with extreme prejudice. Along the way, Stebbings contributes some interesting ideas about the psychology of an individual who puts his life on the line to help others. Mind you, none of the aforementioned characters remotely resemble high profile vigilante crime busters like “Batman,” “The Green Hornet,” and their ilk. Captain Avenger, Blankman, and Les aren’t millionaire philanthropists or acrobats. The idea of a guy dressing up to curb crime is far from original; Republic Film studios made their share of serials about these crime fighters in the 1940s, but Stebbings isn’t out to ridicule his hero. Although the hero of “Defendor” is incompetent, what he stands for provides him with a wealth of dignity.

Arthur Poppington (Woody Harrelson of “Zombieland”) is a lowly, inconsequential city employee. He is the kind of guy that you sometimes see at roadway construction sites who holds a two-sided traffic sign with STOP on one side and SLOW on the other. During the day, he is unassuming Arthur. After dark he decks himself out in a black outfit, a SWAT-style helmet with mini-lights and a camera connected to a portable VHS recorder on his back and tries to battle crime. Arthur doesn’t have a Bat Cave or a Fortress of Solitude, but he feels called upon to defend the defenseless. His mother left him when he was an adolescent and he never knew his father. Meanwhile, his one-armed grandfather, who fought in World War I, explains that Arthur’s mother, Fay (Charlotte Sullivan of “Fever Pitch”), died using illegal drugs. Arthur’s objective is to eliminate the drug dealers that deprived him of his mother. Our hero’s morality springs from his obsession with comic books such as “G.I. Joe.” Meantime, Arthur’s costume is wholly improvised; right down to the capital-letter D that he duct-tapes onto the front of his outfit. The arsenal that he relies on consists of a slingshot, marbles, lime juice--he squints this into the eyes of his adversaries, wasps, and a World War I trench club. Arthur believes that men who wield firearms are cowards. People who call him ‘Defender’ really infuriate Arthur, and he stipulates that his name ends with an ‘or’ rather than an ‘er.’ As you can easily imagine, Arthur is neither shrewd nor courageous. Actually, he believes that he is bulletproof!

Writer & director Stebbings has taken an estimated budget of $3.5 million and helmed a film that looks incredibly sophisticated and generates loads of atmosphere for our underdog hero. Despite this miniscule budget, Stebbings orchestrates events so that the film achieves a level of modest complexity. The narrative leaps and lunges back and forth in time to flesh out our protagonist while propelling the film along its formulaic path. Anybody who attempts to perform superheroic deeds has got to be delusional and “Defendor” opens with Arthur undergoing a court ordered psychiatric evaluation. Again, the action goes into flashback mode, and we learn how Arthur embarked on his crime fighting odyssey. Arthur’s first encounter occurs when he assaults an undercover policeman, Chuck Dooney (Elias Koteas of “The Fourth Kind”), who has a rendezvous with a crack-smoking prostitute named Angel (Kat Dennings of “Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist”) in a remote part of Hammertown. Defendor roughs Dooney up and the police arrest Defendor. Captain Fairbanks (Clark Johnson of “S.W.A.T.”) chats with Arthur and then releases him, but refuses to return the trench tool. Nevertheless, in that rare display of superheroism, Defendor confiscates the weapon that the police took away from him. Defendor has a Houdini-like ability to show up and vanish as if he were never where he was.

Later, Defendor defends a graffiti artist from Dooney and his henchmen, but the henchmen catch up with Defendor and beat him to a pulp. Nearby in the shadows, puffing away on her crack pipe stands Angel. She tries to revive Defendor, and Stebbings cross-cuts between Angel trying to revive him to Arthur as an adolescent (Max Dreesen of “The Jazzman”) being awakened by his drug-addicted mother who tells him that she is going away. Anyway, Angel and Arthur become friends and she hangs out with him at a dilapidated city garage that nobody uses any more where our hero hangs his hat. Arthur’s only other friend is Paul Carter (Michael Kelly of “Law Abiding Citizen”) who serves as a City Public Works supervisor. Paul and Arthur share a bond; Arthur saved Paul’s son from being struck by a car. After Arthur is arrested for assaulting Kat’s father, the judge allows Arthur to live with Paul rather than face prison. The catch, however, is Arthur cannot don his Defendor outfit. Of course, Arthur cannot accommodate the court when the villains snatch Kat to keep Arthur silent. You see Arthur knows when the slime-ball villains headed up by Kristic (Alan C. Peterson of “Shooter”) are expecting a container of guns and girls from Odessa. Before Arthur can rescue Kat, she rescues herself when the perverted corrupt cop Dooney tries to force her to have sexual relations with him and she shoots him in the genitals. The finale when Defendor crashes the pier with his bucket truck, loosens swarms of wasps and marbles is something to see!

Apart from its tragic ending, “Defendor” qualifies as a good movie that is evenly paced.