FILM REVIEW OF ''KID RODELO" (U.S.-SPANISH 1966)

"Four Guns to the Border" director Richard Carlson helmed this thoroughly lackluster Louis L'Amour western "Kid Rodelo,"(** OUT OF ****) with Don Murray, Janet Leigh, and Oscar-winner Broderick Crawford.  This straightforward, humorless, horse opera concerns survival of the fittest on the frontier. Appropriately enough, lean, handsome Murray is cast as the virtuous hero, while paunchy, gravel-voiced Crawford excels a treacherous outlaw with an itchy trigger finger. Eventually, these two wind up on a rugged desert trail transporting $50-thousand in gold with remorseless Yaqui Indians shadowing them like vultures. The prison hires Yaquis to bring back escaped prisoners, and the Yaquis usually bring them back face down and draped across the saddles of their horses. Unlike the Rangers, the Yaquis need not bother with the same pesky jurisdictional issues that the Rangers must contend with when crossing the border into Mexico.  These Yaquis are particularly proficient at what they do, and their leader, Cavalry Hat (José Villasante of “Django the Condemned”), covets the hero's boots.  The only thing that distinguishes this western is the eponymous hero’s knowledge of desert plants, specifically cholla cactus with their poisonous spines which can lame a horse.

Kid Rodelo (Don Murray of "From Hell to Texas") has been released after serving a year inside Yuma Territorial Prison, while villainous Joe Harbin (Broderick Crawford of "All the King's Men") sweats out a life sentence because he shot his partner. Meantime, Harbin's accomplice, Thomas Reese (José Nieto of "Dr. Zhivago"), hatches a plan to break out of Yuma. He has stolen two wooden matches from the kitchen. Harbin and he toil in the stone quarry where they hammer holes into the rocks with a drill to insert dynamite to blast the formation. They plant some extra sticks of dynamite and all hell cuts loose. In the novel, Joe's accomplice is named Tom Badger and he survives until the finale, whereas Reese dies not long after they break out of prison. Anyway, Harbin and Reese take the Warden (Emilio Rodríguez) as a hostage to make good their escape. They shoot their way out of Yuma using the Warden as a shield and dump him once they have gotten away.

Now, they light out in hot pursuit of the Kid who has caught a ride with another some other suspicious characters who are conveniently watching for him to show up.  Link (Richard Carlson of "Creature from the Black Lagoon") and his girlfriend Nora (Janet Leigh of "Psycho") are waiting for the Kid as he trudges on foot along the trail from the prison.  Link wants the money, too, and he has hired another gunslinger, sleazy Balas (Julio Peña), to help him.  After they reach a largely abandoned town, Link and Balas enter a house and find a box concealed beneath the wooden floorboards.  They get into an argument over Balas' percentage of the loot.  The greedy Balas insists on a greater share and guns down Link without a qualm.  Later, Balas joins Joe after he guns down Reese, but they don’t trust each other.  Gopher (Alfonso Sanfélix) dies later after they have crossed the border.  Balas takes the gold piece that Joe gave Gopher after he made him a partner.  Balas suggests that they flip for the coin, and Joe grabs the coin before it hits the ground and appropriates it as his coin.  Eventually, Cavalry Hat picks off Joe as he is about to gun down Rodelo.

This threadbare oater was lensed on location in rugged Spain.  Strangely enough, the pinch-penny producers filmed this outdoors yarn in black & white.  This Paramount Pictures release seems unusual because most westerns by that time were photographed in color, even those old timer oaters that producer A.C. Lyles made.  "Badman's Territory" scenarist Jack Natteford departs drastically from the source material in at least one crucial respect, and this change might upset hardcore, morally rigidly, L’Amour fans.  For example, Link is named Jake, and Balas is named Clint.  Nevertheless, this is nothing compared with the outcome of the action and the disposal of the gold.  The characters amount largely to stereotypes as they did in the novel.  Like most L'Amour heroes, Kid Rodelo knows his way around the desert like an expert, particularly the whereabouts of water holes.  Carlson and Natteford exploit Rodelo’s environmental familiarity, such as knowing about the flora and fauna to keep them alive.  The performances are okay, while Leigh appears as little more than window dressing.  She does do one important thing at the end. This gritty western tries to imitate the Spaghetti westerns, but Carlson imparts little color or charisma.  The villains are cutthroat dastards, willing to kill anybody to keep from sharing the loot.  The simple Johnny Douglas orchestral score represents an exercise in minimalism.  The finale on the shore of the Gulf of Baja differs from most westerns because you don’t often see the action end on a beach.  Altogether, as a film, “Kid Rodelo” doesn’t surpass the L’Amour novel despite the scenic splendor of the Spanish landscape and the obvious amoral Spaghetti western influence on the ending.  The chief difference between the novel and the film is Rodelo planned to return the gold to the authorities to clear his name for his supposed part in the robbery.  In the novel, he was arrested because he was caught riding with Joe, but Rodelo didn’t know anything about the robbery. The film concludes with Rodelo and Nora bathing in the surf then walking off as permanent partners.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE HALLELUJAH TRAIL" (1965)

In his well-researched landmark biography of John Sturges, film critic Glenn Lovall points out the failure of “The Hallelujah Trail” at the box office forced John Sturges back into being a contract director. Unfortunately, this ambitious, $ 7 million dollar, two-hour and forty-five minute western extravaganza did prove to be Sturges’ undoing.  Sadly, according to Wikipedia, this United Artists’ release generated only $4 million during its initial release. Nevertheless, I’ve always thought it was an incredibly hilarious and splendidly staged western comedy.  The closest that Sturges had come to making a comedy was the Frank Sinatra & Dean Martin western “Sergeants Three,” but “The Hallelujah Trail” (*** OUT OF ****) was far from anything that “The Magnificent Seven” helmer had ever undertaken.  Sturges assembled a first-rate cast.  Burt Lancaster, who starred in Sturges’ first big western “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral,” took top billing as Colonel Thaddeus Gearhart.  Gearhart was a traditional, straight-laced U.S. Calvary commander who is in charge of a frontier fort who has a beautiful daughter, Louise Gearhart (Pamela Tiffin of “One, Two, Three”), who is hopelessly in love with an officer, Captain Paul Slater (Jim Hutton of “Major Dundee”), who serves under Gearhart at the fort.  At one point, Gearhart finds Slater and his daughter rolling around on his bear skin rug.  The hugely funny western takes advantage of the usual elements of most standard-issue oaters.  There is the inevitable clash between the U.S. Calvary and the Native Americans.  Similarly, the alcoholic frontiersmen ruffle the feathers of the Ladies of the Temperance Movement.  This sprawling, ‘battle of the sexes’ western brings together all these parties for an incredible finale in a swamp.

John Gay’s complicated screenplay based on William Gulick’s entertaining western novel concerns the efforts of desperate Denver merchants inspired by 'Oracle' Jones (Donald Pleasence of “The Great Escape”) to get a wagon train of liquor to them before they exhaust their supplies for the winter.  Signs indicate that the winter will be the worst in years, and the merchants refuse to run out of suds.  Moreover, a citizens’ committee shares the merchant’s anxiety.  Meantime, beer merchant Frank Wallingham (Brian Keith of “The Wind and the Lion”) organizes an emergency shipment of booze to Denver. However, he must contend with some obnoxious Irish teamsters, led by Kevin O'Flaherty (Tom Stern of “Clay Pigeon”), who feel he is exploiting them.  O'Flaherty constantly addresses Wallingham as “your lordship,” and Wallingham grumbles about it the entire time.  Of course, when the Indians learn about this huge shipment of liquor, they decide to help themselves to it.  Walllingham demands that Gearhart provide an escort to safeguard his booze from Chief Walks-Stooped-Over (Martin Landau of “Impossible Impossible”) as well as Chief Five Barrels (Robert J. Wilke of “The Magnificent Seven”) and they bring along their respective tribes.  If contending with Indians armed with Winchester repeating rifles weren’t enough of a challenge, Wallingham faces opposition from a well-known Temperance champion, Miss Cora Templeton Massingale (Lee Remick of “The Omen”), who just happens to be holding meetings at Gearhart’s fort.  Massingale decides to intercept the shipment of suds and destroy the cargo, and Gearhart’s daughter joins her. Naturally, an upset Colonel Gearhart decides Sergeant Buell (John Anderson of “The Satan Bug”) and he must provide an escort for these dames to keep them out of harm’s way.

Lancaster is absolutely brilliant as the square-jawed, Calvary colonel who must supervise everything in this massive sagebrusher. His comic timing is impeccable.  The scenes he has with Lee Remick will keep you in stitches as she manipulates him skillfully throughout the narrative. The contempt these two characters have for each other inevitably brings them together in the long run. The dialogue is crisp and smirk inducing, especially when Gearhart reprimands his top sergeant to his lack of Army strategy.  Sturges doesn’t slight anybody, and he gives some rather unusual parts to actors who had never done anything like these roles. Martin Landau is terrifically amusing as Chief Who Walks Stooped Over, and British actor Donald Pleasence, who eventually played villain in “Will Penny,” is cast as a barfly.  Crowning all these wonderful performances is Elmer Bernstein’s impressive orchestral score and “Satan Bug” lenser Robert Surtee’s radiant widescreen photography. In addition to “The Hallelujah Trail,” Surtees photographed not only “Escape from Fort Bravo,” but also “The Law and Jake Wade” for Sturges.  If you enjoy happily-ever-after comedies where the performers behave as if they were is a serious dramatic saga, “The Hallelujah Trail” qualifies as ideal entertainment.

FILM REVIEW OF ''SURVIVOR" (2014)

"Ninja Assassin" director James McTeigue's "Survivor" (***1/2 OUT OF ****) qualifies as a tense, London-based, international-terrorist thriller about a wrongly accused American Foreign Service Officer sought for murdering a colleague, while a lethal assassin pursues her to finish his execution.  Milla Jovovich plays the heroine, but she isn't in full kick butt "Resident Evil" mode, wielding weapons and mixed martial arts. Instead, she is simply exemplary at her job, rides a motorcycle with style, speaks several languages, and knows how to stay one step ahead of her fleet-footed adversaries.  Nevertheless, while this makes her an efficient, no-nonsense protagonist, nothing about her character is terribly interesting. In a splendid example of casting against the grain, former 007 star Pierce Brosnan exudes menace as an evil assassin who refuses to quit. Brosnan's hit-man is nicknamed 'the Watchmaker,' and he is both smart and resourceful.  One of 'the Watchmaker's smartest efforts occurs when he takes a short-cut to catch up with our heroine as she scrambles down a staircase.  The Watchmaker spots a series of lights attached by a cable dangling in the stairway well.  Improbably, he leaps onto it and shoots out the lights as he slides down the cable.  Of course, he doesn't get her, but it is a really cool move of his part. This scene is reminiscent of Matt Damon in "The Bourne Identity" when he used a man's body to drop from several floors in a stairway well to reach the bottom.  A solid supporting cast, with James D'Arcy and Angela Bassett in minor roles, backs up Jovovich and Brosnan.  At the core of this outlandish but briskly-paced thriller is a terrorist's ambitious plan to use the New Year's Eve ceremonies in Times Square as the setting to detonate a bomb.  McTeigue maintains palatable tension throughout this above-average nail-biter despite a minor lapse in credibility that occurs about three-fourths of the way through his 96-minute, PG-13 melodrama.

Passport visa clearance is a hot issue at the American Embassy in London where Kate works, and she has the final say on who gets a passport.  Nonetheless, a fellow Embassy employee, Bill Talbot (Robert Forster of "Jackie Brown"), wants her to lighten up with regard to a physician, Emile Balan (Roger Rees of "The Prestige"), who wants to attend a conference in the U.S.  Warning signs come up that alert Kate Abbott (Milla Jovovich of "The Fifth Element") and she has second thoughts.  During the prologue, two American helicopter pilots are shot down over Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, and the villainous natives let one of the pilots live while they doused the other with gasoline and immolate him. Now, Bill Talbot is struggling to get Kate out of the picture, but the villains have his son, believed dead, in custody and are blackmailing him. Indeed, he is desperate enough that the villains hire a ruthless assassin, Nash (Pierce Brosnan of "Die Another Day") to blow up the Embassy staff, including Abbott, who is attending Bill's birthday party at a fashionable British restaurant. Ironically enough, the Embassy staff are going to be served pressed duck. Our heroine escapes by the skin of her teeth because nobody remembered to bring Bill's birthday present. She leaves the restaurant and enters a shop across the street about the same time that Nash triggers the bomb. Imagine Nash's surprise when he spots Abbott in the street looking battered and worse for the wear from the experience. He whips out an automatic pistol with a silencer attached to it and pursues her.

Naturally, since Kate is the protagonist and the protagonist must survive, Nash's accuracy with his weapon is compromised enough that she escapes.  Later, adhering to protocol, she encounters Bill at a rendezvous safe zone in a public park. Shocked at her presence, Bill pulls out an automatic pistol and tries to kill Kate. The two struggle over Bill’s weapon, and Bill winds up accidentally shooting himself in the stomach. Following all the classic tropes since "North by Northwest," Kate ends up with the pistol in her fist. Moreover, Bill staggers into public view, and sightseers snap photos and lens videos of the dumbstruck Kate several steps behind the mortally wounded Talbot with the pistol conspicuously held in her hand. Of course, she denies her guilt but then takes flight. Now, the video has gone viral, and Kate's superior, Sam Parker (Dylan McDermott of "In the Line of Fire"), is trying to reach her before British authorities with shoot-on-site orders can catch her. Indeed, the troubled U.S. Ambassador, Maureen Crane (Angela Bassett of “Waiting to Exhale”) contacts British security expert Paul Anderson (James D’Arcy) and grants him clearance to kill Abbott. The first half-hour goes by really rapidly despite its formulaic shenanigans, and McTeigue generates an air of urgency as Kate takes it on the lam and Nash resolves to liquidate her. Kate enjoys extraordinary luck eluding the authorities and Nash is the kind of assassin who likes to tie up as many loose ends as possible. Incredibly, she manages to impersonate a tourist and gets back to the United States in time to barely take down Nash. The finale atop a Big Apple skyscraper with Jovovich battling it out with Brosnan will have you on the edge of your seat holding your breath. Not only does "Survivor" live up to its generic title but it also is a terrific little thriller.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE TRANSPORTER REFUELED" (2015)

Tall, wiry, British actor Ed Skrein resembles the late Hollywood superstar actor James Coburn of the “Our Man Flint” franchise.  Not only does Skrein make a suitable substitute for brawny Jason Statham in “The Transporter Refueled” (***1/2 OUT OF ****), but Skrein also appears agile enough to carry EuropaCorp’s cinematic reboot on the strength of his personality. Skrein and Statham are cut from the same cloth.  Muscular, crew-cut, and rough hewn, these fellows tote a stick around on their shoulders and dare somebody presumptuous to knock it off.   Statham looks more like a traditional movie hero because he fits Frank Martin like a surgical glove.  Skrein looks like a far younger Frank Martin, and I believe writer/producer Luc Besson cast the former “Game of Thrones” actor for this quality.  Skrein looks like he was born to kick butt, and he radiates a raw-edged spontaneity that makes him ideal as Statham’s replacement.  Add to it his blue-collar British accent, and Skrein is reminiscent of Michael Caine when he was a Young Turk.  Clearly, if the franchise performs at the box office like the Statham trilogy, Skrein could own the role until he sheds that lean, hungry, wolfish tenacity that he brings to his younger Frank Martin.  

Meantime, “Brick Mansions” director Camille Delamarre stages several dynamic scenes in this swiftly-paced, $22-million thriller with as many audacious but entertaining escapades as any of Statham’s “Transporter” epics ever delivered.  Instead of Inspector Marcel Tarconi (François Berléand) interfering with Frank Martin's activities, the new Transporter has to put up with his dear old dad, and British actor Ray Stevenson relishes the parental role with scene-stealing charm.  Stevenson and Skrein have chemistry together, and it will be a sad day when one or the other departs from the franchise.  Naturally, the production values are stunning; the scenery is gorgeous; the close-quarters combat scenes savage enough; the sexy babes provocative; and Michel Julienne's careening car chase sequences are exhilarating.

Neither Delamarre nor scenarists Adam Cooper and Bill Cottage of the forthcoming “Allegiant: Part 1,” including Luc Besson of the original “Transporter,” have tampered with the formula.  Indeed, the same rules still stand in “The Transporter Refueled.”  First, Frank dictates that the deal must never change.  Second, Frank insists on no names.  Third, Frank never opens the package.  The melodrama of either any “Transporter” movie or television episode grows out of our hero’s decision to break his own rules.   This time around Frank Martin doesn’t have to second guess French Police Inspector  Tarconi, because Tarconi wasn’t written into “Refueled.”  Instead, Frank Martin must forever contend with his father’s constant criticism.  Frank, Senior (Ray Stevenson of “Punisher—War Zone”) is a former British Intelligence agent who has been put out to pasture and doesn’t savor the prospect of listening to his arteries hardening.  Actually, Frank, Senior, probably wouldn’t have volunteered for some of the shenanigans that he finds himself embroiled in, but he behaves as if his heart were in it.  Of course, young Frank, or ‘Junior,’ as his father affectionately refers to him throughout this rugged, PG-13 rated, 96-minute opus, gets tangled up with a quartet of duplicitous dames. 

Anna (Loan Chabanol of “Fading Gigolo”) contacts Frank at a restaurant after he refuses to discuss a deal over the phone.  No sooner has our hero picked up this brunette in a blond wig the next day in front of a bank than he discovers that she has duped him.   Anna promised him two packages, but two more brunettes in blond wigs with bundles of loot join them.  As it turns out, these two babes, Gina (Gabriella Wright of “22 Bullets”) and Qiao (newcomer Wenxia Yu) as well as Maria (Tatiana Pajkovic of “Nynne”), constitute a quartet of Musketeers.   Anna’s money grubbing mother sold her daughter into prostitution for $500.   Like Gina, Maria, and Qiao, Anna has decided to stop taking things lying down.  She cooks up an ambitious scheme to wreck revenge on their despicable pimps who are raking in hundreds of millions while the girls wind up doing all the grunt work.

“The Transporter Refueled” features unsavory villains who deal in prostitution and human trafficking.  They would rather slit your throats than spit on you, and they eliminate their chief competition on the French Riviera with gunfire during the first quarter hour.  Not long afterward, Anna finds herself forced to ply her comely wares on the streets.  Fifteen years elapse, and Anna has grown up and dreams up a plan to pay back the dastards who forced her onto her back to make them millions.  These girls quote Dumas: “All for one, and one for all.”  They take Frank, Senior, hostage to get Frank, Junior to cooperate.  Before we’re treated to Anna’s grandiose scheme, we get to watch the new Frank Martin stomp a quintet of hoods who insist that he surrender his black, Audi S8 car to them in a parking garage.

“The Transporter Refueled” is beautifully lensed, but formulaic nonsense.  I enjoyed it as much as the three Statham epics and the two-season, Chris Vance “Transporter” television series.  Radivoje Bukvic, Yuri Kolokolnikov, and Lenn Kudrjawizki--the actors who play the villains--are cut from the same dangerous cloth as Skrein.  These guys make the kind of surefire villains that are appropriate for a gritty, hard-edged crime movie like “The Transporter Refueled.”  The close-quarters combat scenes resemble those that Statham had in his trilogy.  At one point, the new “Transporter” dukes it out with three adversaries in a room crammed with filing cabinets.  The kinetic choreography of this fisticuffs scene is both inspired and ferocious. When our hero isn’t battering his formidable opponents with his fists, he is slamming shut their various appendages in cabinet drawers.  These fights bristle with an amusing Jackie Chan vibe. Camille Delamarre doesn’t squander a second and emphasizes the outlandish. A gritty underworld saga of revenge, deceit, and Tarantino-like showdowns, "The Transporter Refueled" propels its narrative like a high-octane blend of white-knuckled adrenaline and fresh harsh faces.