FILM REVIEW OF ''THE RETURN OF JOSEY WALES" (1986)

The people who produced "The Return of Josey Wales" should have changed the hero's name. "Return" went straight to video in 1986 without significant theatrical release, while "The Outlaw Josey Wales" was released in 1976. Ten years is a long time to delay a sequel, though "Star Trek" fans weathered decades before their cult NBC-TV show finally reached the big-screen. Reportedly, Clint Eastwood had considered making Forrest Carter's second Josey Wales novel "The Vengeance Trail of Josey Wales" as a sequel. Nothing came of the project. Anyway, only the fictional characters from the original show up in "The Return of Josey Wales." None of the original cast members reprised their roles, and Clint Eastwood had nothing to do with the low-budget oater. Forrest Carter, author of both "Josey Wales" western novels received screen credit for both story and screenplay.  The producers changed the ending.  Several characters from the original novel reappeared in the second novel in an early chapter.  Nevertheless, “The Return of Josey Wales” is at best generic from fade-in to fade out compared not only with the previous movie as well as Carter’s novel. 

Producer/Second Unit Director R.O. Taylor received credit as "writer: special scenes."

"The Outlaw Josey Wales" qualified as an indisputable magnum opus. Meanwhile, "The Return of Josey Wales" (* OUT OF ****)npales by comparison, more of a drab, saddle-sore, horse opera with little to distinguish it. According to IMDb.COM, the produced lensed on location at the Alamo Village, in Brackettville, Texas, where John Wayne filmed his own magnum opus "The Alamo" in 1960. A large percentage of the cinematography is master shots. Master shots are typically long shots with actors shown from head to toe in their environment.  Star/director Michael Parks, who graces himself with an adequate number of close-ups, should have known he was setting himself up for a fiasco. The original "Josey Wales" overshadows this threadbare sagebrusher. Had the protagonist's name been altered, "The Return" wouldn't have found itself at such a tremendous disadvantage compared to its lofty predecessor. The Internet Movie Database lists no release date, but I remember a trailer at a drive-in movie theater advertising it. Like another reviewer, I bought a VHS copy through Amazon so I could say that I have seen it.  The picture quality is mediocre, and the film may have been cropped to accommodate the standard 1:33.1 screen ratio.

Despite the somewhat brutal events in the prologue, you're going to feel like you're watching a conventional television western. Tame, lame, with little of the same from the original, "The Return of Josey Wales" ranks as an uninspired sequel. Repeated viewings of the Eastwood original allow you to appreciate its perfection. Eastwood did a marvelous job when he condensed the entire Civil War in the prologue after Union sympathizers slaughtered Josey’s wife and son, and later he joined Bloody Bill Anderson. "Return" doesn't raise the stakes, boasts few surprises, breaks no new ground, and doesn't leave you wanting more. Character actor Michael Parks—an outstanding thespian in his own right—replaced Clint Eastwood. Indeed, some resemblance appears between the two, and Parks looks persuasively authentic in his black sombrero, white shirt, and dark britches. Aside from preserving Josey's tobacco spitting routine, Park's Josey Wales isn't as interesting as Eastwood's character. He has no love interest in this film, and he doesn’t have any memorable showdown scenes. Parks packs one revolver in a standard, low-slung, right-sided holster, like a prime-time, TV cowboy, and wields an occasional Winchester. Eastwood's Josey Wales armed himself to the teeth with as many as four revolvers. Eastwood knew how to make an entrance, whereas Parks ambles into and out of scenes as if by accident without a trace of charisma. He mumbles in his dialogue scenes like Marlon Brando. Occasionally, he says something insightful.

As director, Parks stages the western shenanigans without fanfare.  Watching it once is probably more than enough. I've seen it several times for this review. You'll have to wait patiently about 20 minutes for the first gunfight. The gunfight is minor like something out of a Randolph Scott western. Rafael Campos is the only other recognizable cast member.  Campos gives the best performance as a liquor-loving vaquero.  Everybody else, even in speaking parts, looks and sounds like amateurs. Some of the male extras wear atrocious hats that resemble party favors instead of Stetsons. Basically, like Clint Eastwood's "The Outlaw Josey Wales, "The Return of Josey Wales" has a savage prologue involving a heinous atrocity. The hero's extended family of friends suffers at the hands of the slimy villains. "The Return of Josey Wales" doesn't deliver an eye for an eye western with an icy-cool looking hero. Parks can be heroic.  Happily, he does handle himself acceptably in the first shoot-out both on foot as well as horseback. Appropriately enough, the villains—Mexican Rurales who scalp Indians for the bounty--are unrepentant devils.

The Rurales rape a defiant saloon girl, Rose (Suzie Humphreys of "Deep in the Heart") and beat a poor bartender to a pulp, while a one-armed Mexican peon, Pablo (Paco Vela of “The Job”), witnesses these horrific acts. Later, Paco relays his information to Josey Wales. Predictably, Wales saddles up and hits the trail, but with considerably less gusto compared to its predecessor. Furthermore, one of Josey's friends, a tin-horn gambler named Ten-Spot (Robert Magruder of “Five Days from Home”) has been taken. Mexican Rurales commander, Jesus Escabedo (Everett Sifuentes of "Selena"), plans to hang Ten-Spot, and Josey tracks them down with his Mexican vaquero, Chato (Rafael Campos of "The Appaloosa"), but Chato gets himself shot-up.  Sadly, Ten-Spot catches a bullet in the finale. Josey leaves Escabedo buried up to his neck in the ground as he rides off with his friends.  In Carter’s novel, Wales repeatedly shot and killed Escabedo during a face-to-face confrontation in a canyon.  Furthermore, in Carter’s novel, real-life Apache chieftain Geronimo played a peripheral role.

Josey Wales desired better than this grubby little western delivered.

FILM REVIEW OF "A PERFECT MURDER"

The people who remade the crafty Alfred Hitchcock suspense thriller “Dial M for Murder” (1954) as “A Perfect Murder,” with Michael Douglas, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Viggo Mortensen, clearly knew their business. As cinematic remakes rate, “A Perfect Murder” (*** OUT OF ****) qualifies as a commendably entertaining, often hard-edged, but superior spouse-murdering spectacle which should baffle and captivate any armchair sleuth right up to its explosive, slam-bang finale. Not only have former Steven Seagal action director Andrew Davis and freshman scenarist Patrick Smith Kelly, cleverly updated this vintage but tawdry tale of deceit, but they have also condensed several plot elements so that the story is both more palatable as well as less predictable. Industry insiders claim that test audiences hated the initial ending, so Douglas and Paltrow came back to reshoot a new ending. Consequently, “A Perfect Murder” is never a slavish scene-by-scene remake of “Dial M for Murder,” but a deferential, no-nonsense, white knuckled yarn, with gritty touches of 1990s amorality.

In “A Perfect Murder,” ruthless but financially strapped tycoon Steven Taylor (Michael Douglas) discovers that his elegant but unfaithful wife Emily (Gwyneth Paltrow) is cheating on him with sleazy artist David Shaw (Viggo Mortensen). Emily justifies her extramarital affair because Steven suffocates her with his domineering ways. According to Emily, Steven also fails to fulfill her emotional needs. On the contrary, David quenches Emily’s passion and makes her happy. Steven confronts David early in the movie at a diner party that Emily had planned to attend alone. Changing his mind at the last possible minute, Steven accompanies Emily to the festivity where he catches his wife off-guard as she is chatting with Shaw. David and Steven speak briefly and Shaw states that he received his art degree from Berkeley.

Later, Taylor exposes Shaw for the fraud that he is, and then blackmails him. David turns out to be an ex-con with two strikes against him. Moreover, Taylor threatens to alert the police about Shaw for an unsolved crime hanging over the ex-con’s head. Not only has David lied to Steven about his shady past, but also he has lied to poor Emily. Anyway, Steven offers David a $100-thousand dollars up front to kill Emily, and he promises an additional $400-thousand on completion of the homicide. Incredibly, David agrees. Shaw prefers Taylor’s loot to Emily’s love. Steven details a simple plan. He has stashed a key outside their apartment which David can use to gain access to their apartment without arousing suspicion. While Steven is at his club for the evening playing cards, he intends to call Emily. When Emily answers on the kitchen phone, David can slip up behind and strangle her. After he murders Emily, David is supposed to tamper with the door locks to make it appear as if a burglary had occurred.

Veteran director Andrew Davis (“The Fugitive” and “Code of Silence”) and scenarist Patrick Smith Kelly have revamped the stodgy 1950s’ “Dial M for Murder” scenario and eliminated several problems that hampered the Hitchcock film. Obviously, Hitchcock could not depict the sexual and criminal elements in the story with the same artistic latitude available to contemporary filmmakers. Rated “R” for ‘restricted,’ “A Perfect Murder” contains scenes of implied nudity, simulated sex, murder, and profanity, with 9 “f--k” words, 2 “sh-t” words, and 5 “hells” sprinkled in for local color. People are either stabbing or shooting at each other in “A Perfect Murder,” and the three principle characters stalk each other like rabid gunmen in a spaghetti western. Davis keeps the sex, violence, and profanity at comparably moderate, non-gratuitous levels. Nevertheless, “A Perfect Murder” spills more blood and portrays its violence with great authenticity than “Dial M for Murder,” but nothing approaching the visceral sadism of earlier Michael Douglas outings such as “Basic Instinct” and “Fatal Attraction.” Dutifully, Davis and Kelly have left some things intact. For instance, the key still plays a pivotal part in convicting the killer.

Aside from conforming this minor Hitchcock classic to today’s more realistic standards, Davis and Kelly have actually improved on the plot. In “Dial M for Murder,” Alfred Hitchcock devoted vast intervals of time to setting up the involved story with reams of exposition. Exposition is the vitally important stuff about the story that the audience must know to appreciate the actions of the characters. None of this information, however, is readily accessible, so the characters have to mention it in their dialogue so that the audience will know what is happening. Intricately conceived as “Dial M” was, the characters spent for too much time explaining the story. In “Dial M,” Ray Milland played the role that Michael Douglas took over in “A Perfect Murder.” Milland shares an entire scene with the murderer in “Dial M” where he must remind the killer that they are old school chums separated over the years. He reveals the killer’s wicked past and blackmails him, too. Happily, the loquacity that clutters the dialogue in “Dial M” has been pared down to the absolute, bare essentials, so “A Perfect Murder” doesn’t stall out on dialogue ad nauseam. The characters in “Dial M” stand around and discuss their predicaments, while the characters in “A Perfect Murder” go out to do things.

Just as cinematic morality has changed pervasively since 1954, so too has the technology. Cell phones, for example, have replaced standard wired telephones in Steven’s intricate scheme to kill his wife. Nearly all of the main leads as well as the secondary characters have been changed. Davis and Kelly have either enlarged or shrunken their roles. The murderer and the lover in “Dial M” consist of two entirely different characters. Gone is the lover played by Robert Cummings from the Hitchcock film, while Anthony Dawson’s murderer is combined with the lover. Condensing these two roles, the filmmakers of “A Perfect Murder” streamline the plot and make it more exciting. In “Dial M,” John Williams played the stylist British detective who figured prominently in unraveled the mystery. As Det. Mohammed Karaman, his counterpart in “A Perfect Murder,” David (“Executive Decision”) Suchet occupies less screen time. He doesn’t harass the Michael Douglas villain as much as Williams’ detective did to Milland in “Dial M”. Curiously enough, the producers here make an issue out of the detective’s Arabic heritage. During the interrogation scene, Det. Karaman and Emily share a moment when she converses with him in his native language. As peripheral characterization, this is fine, but the filmmakers never integrate it into the plot. It makes you wonder if this language gimmick played a bigger part in the resolution of the action, but got cut out when the ending changed.

One of the biggest changes in “A Perfect Murder” is wife’s role. Unlike the Grace Kelly character from “Dial M” who remained largely passive, Gwyneth Paltrow plays an aggressive multi-lingual U.N. translator and aide to the U.S. Ambassador. Paltrow’s unfaithful wife gets out often enough to learn incriminating things about her husband that Grace Kelly never did in the Hitchcock original. The scene where Paltrow struggles desperately against her assailant is better than the similar scene where Grace Kelly stabbed her killer with a pair of scissors.

They’ve changed the physical settings, too. The action in “Dial M” strays only occasionally from the cramped quarters of the London apartment inhabited by Ray Milland and Grace Kelly. Transplanting the plot to America, Davis and Kelly open up the action and venture out into the means streets of New York City. Davis and Kelly ditch the expressionistic English courtroom scenes where Grace Kelly’s character was convicted of murdering the man who tried to strangle her, too! In “A Perfect Murder,” Davis and Kelly discard this part of the original plot from Frederick Knot’s play.
Veteran action helmer Andrew Davis keeps the story moving swiftly along so that the complicated plot never decelerates the action. Davis doesn’t let the pacing lollygag. He stages the action for maximum impact. The fight scenes are brutal but brief. Davis and cinematographer Dariusz Wolski often film the action so that the perspective that audiences have implicates them in the skullduggery. Wolski’s dark, brooding Rembrandt lighting enhances the air of danger. The standard shot in “A Perfect Murder” is either a close-up or a medium shot that uncomfortably confines the characters. Davis builds considerable suspense and tension by surprising his audience at intervals with sudden off-screen action that explodes on camera. Characters come barreling off-screen to smash into other unsuspecting characters on screen. These sure fire tactics guarantee that audiences will jump. Along with production designer Philip Rosenberg, Davis creates a murky, hostile environment for his characters to inhabit.

Perhaps the worst flaw in “A Perfect Murder” is the unappealing characters. None of these people deserve much sympathy. A dapper Michael Douglas gives off sinister vibes. Steven Taylor resembles Douglas’s Oscar winning performance as Gordon Gecko from Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street.” Douglas projects an effortlessly cocksure attitude that makes him an ideal thug. He wears dark apparel, and he is constantly in the midst of a scheme and a lie. As his wife Emily, Gwyneth Paltrow comes closest to attracting sympathy because she is the most vulnerable character. Nevertheless, Emily’s extramarital affair set off this chain reaction, so she isn’t entirely whitewashed. Although she wants to do the right thing, Emily is basically as selfish about herself as are both Steven and David. When we first glimpse her, she is wallowing in a spacious but seedy loft apartment with David (‘G.I. Jane’s” Viggo Mortensen). Mortensen delivers another solid performance as a scumbag. Momentarily, David’s vile painter appears to outfox both Steven and Emily. As competitors, David and Steven are almost evenly matched, though Douglas’s screen image wins out over the lesser known Mortensen.

Indeed, the Patrick Kelly screenplay bears its share of implausibilities, but so too did “Dial M.” Obviously, society does not allow movies to glamorize the act of murder, especially by letting a character commit murder without paying for the crime. Consequently, sharp and sagacious as Steven Taylor is, he is outsmarted once by the double-crossing David and later by Emily, who wins the upper hand in one of his inconsistently ignorant moments. Neither of these crucial incidents is telegraphed in the script. They occur straight out of the blue with zero foreshadowing, so that the audiences as well as Steven are caught entirely by surprise. Sure, that’s cheating, but the dramatic revelation that comes with each incident justifies it. Perhaps the biggest flaw in both movies is that a strong man cannot overpower a weak woman. Ultimately, between the two films, “A Perfect Murder” has more flash and headlong momentum than the literate and stage bound “Dial M for Murder.”

FILM REVIEW OF ''WHITEOUT'' (2009)

The trailer to the Kate Beckinsale murder-mystery “Whiteout” (** out of ****) makes it look like a remake of the classic horror thriller “The Thing From Another World.” Something crashes in the ice near a scientific research laboratory in Antarctica. A body that apparently fell from the sky is found on the frozen tundra, and a desperate murderer with an ice ax goes on the rampage. The only person standing between this maniac and his next casualty is a female U.S. Marshal who wants to resign and go home now that her stint is almost up. She has a past that is clouded with drama. The story synopsis also appropriates the “30 Days of Night” gimmick. The outpost is about to be plunged into six months of wintry oblivion while our heroes battle the killer. Moreover, a tumultuous storm forces the scientists to evacuate the base. In other words, the filmmakers do an exemplary job of establishing the inhospitable setting which they inform during the opening credits is “the most isolated landmass on Earth.” They put the heroine and her help between an icy rock and a hard place for the climactic showdown.

Unfortunately, “Whiteout” emerges as neither “The Thing” nor “30 Days of Night.” This thoroughly humdrum homicidal hokum lacks a sense of urgency. The gratuitous Beckinsale shower sequence near the beginning as she flaunts her tidy whites should titillate males. No body doubles there. Nothing else in “Swordfish” director Dominic Sena’s frostbitten yarn, however, will titillate anybody. Sophomore scenarists Jon & Erich Hoeber along with “House of Wax” (2005) remake scribes Chad & Carey Hayes serve up nothing but formula from start to finish. Furthermore, they’ve altered the 2001 graphic novel by Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber. Chiefly, they have eliminated the second heroine, a British secret service agent and replaced her with a bland United Nations investigator who may be the killer. A shortage of suspense, the expository-riddled but convoluted storytelling, and lackluster villains sabotage this shoddy saga. You might even call “Whiteout” a variation on the Sean Connery in space move “Outland” (1981) where he played a federal marshal. The plot grinds to a halt too many times. As fetching and credible as Kate Beckinsale was in the “Underworld” thrillers in her skin-tight leather suits, she looks all wrong for this comic book screen adaptation in parka and goggles.

The movie opens with a prologue set in 1957. A Soviet cargo plane—clearly a CGI replica--whips into view, like the evil space cruiser in “Star Wars,” in the first shot. The restless co-pilot wants to kill the three guys in the bay who are guarding a locked safe with a secret cargo. The co-pilot botches the job, and a gunfight erupts inside the fuselage. Everybody catches a slug in the shoot-out, and the cargo plane crashes in the in the Antarctica. Fifty years pass and the plane still hasn't been found. Meanwhile, U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko (Kate Beckinsale) is serving out the last couple of days in her two-year shift. She holed up at the outpost because of trust issues. Sena intersperses flashbacks of her partner turning rogue on her after they arrest a drug smuggler in Miami. He tries to kill her, but she blasts him. Of course, this is to assure us that she can fire a gun. Now, she is the law at the South Pole. Mostly, Carrie walks a beat and sometimes even contends with a misdemeanor. The last couple of days before everybody heads home, our heroine discovers the corpse of a geologist in the middle of nowhere in 65-below temperatures with half of its head caved in and no trace of how it got where it did. Venerable Dr. John Fury (Tom Skerritt of “M.A.S.H.”) is the head physician and means something more to Carrie than Sena and his scribes ever show us. Again, it looks like a case of role & gender reversal from “Outland.”

Carrie crosses paths with a mysterious U.N. observer Robert Pryce (Gabriel Macht of “The Spirit”) and a happy African-American pilot Delfy (Columbus Short of “Cadillac Records”) flies them all over the stunning, snow-swept terrain. At one point, Carrie and Pryce try to track down where the dead geologist had been working. Robert and Delfy watch as Carrie takes one too many steps and plunges into the snow and lands alongside a buried cargo plane. This familiar discovery plot has been used in many films, such as the 1981 opus “Treasure of the Yankee Zephyr.” They investigate and find several shot-up stiffs. They locate a smashed metal safe and find empty but ominous looking canisters. Meantime, a madman is on the rampage killing people with an ice ax. Of course, he is covered from head to foot in a parka, hood, and boots. The scriptwriters litter the action with obvious red herrings galore. The quartet of writers who wrote this forgettable thriller retread all the usual clichés. The only suspense occurs in the exteriors when people have to attach themselves to a life-line cable to keep from being blown away or lost in the Antarctic blizzards. At one point, our heroine eludes the murderer, but she winds up sacrificing two fingers from frostbite.

Beckinsale gives it her best and she really looks smashing in her undies. Tom Skerritt of "M.A.S.H. plays the kindly base doctor who would not harm a fly. Macht is squandered and given little to do. The CGI work is horribly obvious, but cinematographer Chris Soos does a skillful job of using scenic Quebec and Manitoba masquerade as Antarctica. Somewhere in this predictable whodunit lurked a better movie. Typically, the term ‘whiteout’ is a synonym for poor visibility. “Whiteout” qualifies as a washout.