Death Hunt.

Review #2423: Death Hunt.

Cast: 

Charles Bronson (Albert Johnson), Lee Marvin (Sergeant Edgar Millen), Andrew Stevens (Constable Alvin Adams), Carl Weathers (George Washington Lincoln "Sundog" Brown), Ed Lauter (Hazel), Scott Hylands (Captain Hank Tucker), Angie Dickinson (Vanessa McBride), Henry Beckman (Bill Luce), William Sanderson (Ned Warren), Jon Cedar (Constable Hawkins), and James O'Connell (Hurley) Directed by Peter R. Hunt (#279 - On Her Majesty's Secret Service)

Review: 

In 1931, there was quite a ruckus with a man of unknown origin that had arrived in the northern parts of Canda. He wasn't a licensed trapper, but people thought he was a fishy type. A visit from constables eventually resulted in one being shot and a posse being formed that came with dynamite for his cabin. In January of 1932, the posse surrounded him, and Johnson killed a constable (actually named Edgar Millen). The posse grew and grew as Johnson, not being able to just leave for the Yukon without being blocked, simply climbed a 7,000 ft peak. The Mounties responded by hiring Wilfrid "Wop" May to scout the area with a monoplane that tracked him pretty well and on February 17, 1932 at the Eagle River, the constables confronted and shot Johnson dead. It may interest you to know that several photos of Johnson's corpse were taken because of the curiosity in trying to figure out who Johnson really was, but nobody truly knows when he was even born. There had been movies based on the tale of Johnson, such as The Map Trapper (1972, TV) and Challenge to Be Free (1975), but here we have a movie made with the efforts of Hong Kong-based company Golden Harvest that was sold to 20th Century Fox (it was once to be called "Arctic Rampage"). This was the fifth feature film by Hunt as director (as Robert Aldrich was ditched by the filmmakers) who you might remember as the guy who directed On Her Majesty's Secret Service, probably the best Bond movie of, well, the period of 1969-1987*; he previously directed Marvin in Shout at the Devil (1976). This was written by Michael Grais and Mark Victor, who had one hell of a rebound with their next writing assignment: they co-wrote 1982's Poltergeist. Even was the film was being released, the producers and Marvin were already going with the "it's not a documentary" thing. Even with a budget reported to being around $10 million, the movie was not a major success at the time of release.

Eh, it's a decent little adventure when your expectations of its 97-minute runtime is a good ol' time with familiar people and a relatively casual approach to respect for one's counterpart. Sure, it isn't anybody's idea of a history lesson (there are other stories that have been treated worse). Sure, it is incredibly familiar if you think about any character that has their actions get misconstrued (so yes, it would make an interesting double feature with First Blood [1982]). And yet it is the kind of movie you either are all the way in for a nice time with familiar enjoyment in seeing Marvin and Bronson face off in a neat battle of steel-willed people in a changing time. The landscapes may be nice to view but things can change in the blink of an eye for even the most determined lone wolf, I suppose. There is beauty to be found in the wilderness but there also can be plenty of desolate isolation. In that regard, Bronson makes the obvious choice to play the lead focus for a movie that decides to find curiosity in a lone wolf that you can only gleam the surface of someone forced to action rather than just a straight killer. Marvin merely is a burnt-out guy thrust into an unenviable situation: wise-ass constables and wise-ass tag-alongs on, well, a "death hunt". All he knows in his landscape is that keeping headquarters happy is the goal more than combating every single crime possible and Marvin plays it with the usual wiry charm that I can appreciate. Weathers is his usual charming self even in a cursory supporting role while Stevens makes a fine match in seeing that young Mountie idealism meet the real world and Lauter makes a solid adversarial presence. Others come and go, whether that is Beckman and his odd nature or a not-exactly important Dickinson, but the movie balances its action with a worthwhile look at two people who would rather be anywhere else in the wilderness than being forced to take the other down. Rugged, violent and altogether a movie fit for a bored night looking for familiar faces, my kind of average movie. As a whole, it probably won't rank highly among the people that starred in it or its director, but it is an enjoyable feature for those who like familiar adventures that are committed to having a good Western time.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

*Seriously, go watch On Her Majesty's Secret Service. I have watched it annually on December 18 for the past few years.

Point Blank.

Review #2224: Point Blank.

Cast: 

Lee Marvin (Walker), Angie Dickinson (Chris), Keenan Wynn (Yost), Carroll O'Connor (Brewster), Lloyd Bochner (Frederick Carter), Michael Strong (Stegman), John Vernon (Mal Reese), Sharon Acker (Lynne), James B. Sikking (hired gun), and Sandra Warner (waitress) Directed by John Boorman (#565 - Zardoz, #975 - Deliverance, #1210 - Excalibur, #1915 - Exorcist II: The Heretic)

Review: 

"I don't think it does, but what it is, is what you see." - John Boorman

There was a time where a star could just say to let the director get his privileges right then and there. John Boorman had made his film debut with Catch Us If You Can (known as Having a Wild Weekend in the U.S.). That movie was a vehicle for the band The Dave Clark Five that had a few good notices. Anyway, Boorman was sent by who else but Irwin Winkler (producer of Double Trouble, soon to be released in 1967 and, well, the Rocky films) to meet Lee Marvin when the latter was in the midst of filming of The Dirty Dozen (also released in 1967) because Winkler was interested in having Marvin read for a script he had seen. Boorman (who was interested in making more ambitious films in Hollywood) and Marvin didn't really care for the script but were intrigued by the lead character. Anyway, Marvin bargained for approval of the script and cast in order to want to star in the film, which would be done by MGM and with those privileges granted to him, he immediately deferred it to Boorman. Officially the script was credited to Alexander Jacobs (future writer of one more Boorman film with Hell in the Pacific), David Newhouse, and Rafe Newhouse, but Boorman and Marvin essentially cultivated their own vision of what is basically a loose adaptation of the 1962 novel The Hunter, as written by Donald E. Westlake (writing under the name Richard Stark). Westlake would write two dozen books with the lead character (referred to as "Parker") prior to his death in 2008. It actually wasn't the first adaptation of a Westlake novel, as Jean-Luc Godard did a loose unauthorized adaptation of one of Westlake's other novels to mash up with The Big Sleep (1946) for what was called Made in U.S.A (1966). In 1999, a loose remake was done (i.e. a second adaptation of the book that renamed the character to Porter) that had Mel Gibson play the lead in what was called Payback, which has two distinct versions (as provided by its director in 2006). Boorman made a crack about how the script for that film seemed to resemble the one he and Marvin threw out.

There is an alluring quality to be found in its elusive energy within a clearcut revenge thriller. It is the kind of film where dream and memory really could be more than meets the eye. It is a sleek feature packed with a grimly captured atmosphere with a lead actor clearly ready to meet the challenge in basically playing a myth of a figure. The movie was a modest success with audiences and has since become a cult classic with plenty of admirers, theories and studies about it. Of course one could ask Marvin about what he thought about seeing it on screen around the time of the 1980s: he found it "very unpleasant", one made "for the violence" that saw him shocked at what was shown, particularly from himself, with him ending that thought by stating, "See, there is the fright; and this is why I think guys back off eventually. They say, 'No, I'm not going to put myself to those demons again.' The demon being the self." I probably should see more Marvin films, but even I know his hard-lined appeal from the jump of a film where he practically glides in violence, and it perhaps best comes out in the sequence (involving where the money went) where he doesn't talk (as guided to that point by Marvin) and instead lets Acker essentially ask and answer the questions herself. The fact that he is surrounded by a tremendous supporting cast helps matters in a way that one could only, well, dream, particularly with the grace of Dickinson and the magnetic slime of both Vernon and O'Connor (each had varying level of experience in films and theater, but the former is given the "Introducing" credit) to go with Wynn and his own type of foreground expressive presence. This is a 92-minute film that is uptight to the core that has boiling dedication seen within distinct sounds and color (take a look at the scene of Marvin just walking and see what I mean). By the time the film departs, one knows they have watched a worthwhile noir drenched in commitment from cast and crew for a pretty good time.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.

Ocean's 11 (1960).

Review #1709: Ocean's 11.

Cast: 

Frank Sinatra (Danny Ocean), Dean Martin (Sam Harmon), Sammy Davis Jr (Josh Howard), Peter Lawford (Jimmy Foster), Angie Dickinson (Beatrice Ocean), Richard Conte (Anthony Bergdorf), Cesar Romero (Duke Santos), Patrice Wymore (Adele Ekstrom), Joey Bishop ('Mushy' O'Connors), Akim Tamiroff (Spyros Acebos), Henry Silva (Roger Corneal), Ilka Chase (Mrs. Restes), Buddy Lester (Vince Massler), Richard Benedict ('Curly' Steffans), Jean Willes (Mrs. Bergdorf), Norman Fell (Peter Rheimer), and Clem Harvey (Louis Jackson) Directed and Produced by Lewis Milestone (#901 - The Racket and #1336 - The Front Page)

Review: 

See, the thing about heist movies is you have to make sure one really manages to collect either an interesting premise or a useful cast to generate excitement and the potential for a worthy payoff. This is a nice way of trying to dance around a movie that is probably the most star-studded mediocrity of its era. One cannot be too harsh to this film, if only because it was the penultimate work of Milestone as a film director, and his output had decreased in the 1950s (he directed seven features while shifting to television). This was the first film to feature a majority of what is dubbed the "Rat Pack", which was used to refer to a group of entertainers that made a bunch of films together along with appearing with each other in casino venues in Las Vegas (to be pedantic, it actually is the second "Rat Pack", since the first involved Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall) - in this case, the group (who once referred to themselves as "The Summit", no kidding) referred to Sinatra, Davis, Martin, Lawford, and Bishop, although there were also "mascots", which involved folks such as Angie Dickinson and Shirley MacLaine. Again, it's a silly name to refer to folks that already worked with each other quite a few times before this film (such as It Happened in Brooklyn, which had Sinatra and Lawford). Over the next 24 years, there would be a handful of movies featuring at least two members of the group, which resulted in features such as Sergeants 3 (1962) along with Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964); perhaps fittingly, the last time they appeared with each other was Cannonball Run II, a vehicle movie designed to feature as many name stars as possible. The idea for the film was told to Lawford in 1955, and he later bought the outline for $10,000 (of course, a different account involves him hearing from a director that had heard it from a gas station attendant before buying the rights in 1958) - tasked to write the story was George Clayton Johnson and Jack Golden Russell.

The only heist that this movie manages to pull is tricking you into believing it really needs to be 127 minutes. You could probably grab the script and tear a bunch of scenes out and probably come out of it with no real loss. This is a movie made to stoke the egos of folks who never seem to take this film seriously at any bit of time, and Milestone seems thoroughly outmatched to do anything other than make a plodding affair with a little bit of glitz and vignettes that creak and moans before eventually moving on to an actual heist that can't even land the payoff. Perhaps the best way to describe Sinatra's performance is to use the account stated in a book about him, in which he "would show up at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, do 20 minutes of work and then start drinking." Look, if you had to do a bunch of shows in the night and then do a bunch of filming in the morning for a film, who really wins out in the end? The "bare minimum" is a hard phrase to say about an actor who already has an Academy Award to his mantle, but there really isn't anything interesting to note about his performance beyond just saying that the charisma is lacking beyond corny phrases. The planning parts are okay, but it begs for something more than ad-libbing. Of course, the well might be a bit soiled by seeing a handful of movies with folks who seemed to be having a good time that had varied results. At least you get to hear Martin and Davis sing? Sure, Martin seems a bit too comfy at playing second banana, but at least "Ain't That a Kick in the Head" is somewhat fun to listen to. Davis suffers the most among the main group despite having the most interesting part to play in the heist, mostly because his time on screen doesn't register as much as it should (besides, the racial crack at the end is too lame to even mention). You might as well take Dickinson out of the story, because her presence is lacking to the point of comatose, packing zilch with Sinatra in attempts at playful combative chemistry that prove nothing to the actual film. Lawford might as well be replaced by a broom stick, if you think about it. The rest are here and there, essentially serving as dominos on a table with hastily-made legs that have no time for quirks. Honestly, the only interesting folks in the film are in small roles - Romero and Tamiroff (one used for leverage and the other used for comic relief). Taking nearly an hour to get to planning the heist and then getting near the 90 minute mark before actually executing it is a bit too much to ask for, no matter how much fun the folks seem to be having ad-libbing their way through. To me, you have two options with the heist: either it goes well, and they get away it...or it goes wrong. Honestly, by the time the last trick gets pulled, one just shakes their head at its mind-numbing futility. Well, I guess if one really needs a time capsule of easygoing folks in Vegas in the time before it became....well, Vegas, this might be the one to watch. If one is curious to see a bit of glitz to go with intimacy in a time long past and don't want to just look at a bunch of old photos of the city, this might be for you.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

Rio Bravo.

Review #1399: Rio Bravo.

Cast: 
John Wayne (John T. Chance), Dean Martin (Dude), Ricky Nelson (Colorado/Ryan), Angie Dickinson (Feathers), Walter Brennan (Stumpy), Ward Bond (Pat Wheeler), John Russell (Nathan Burdette), Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez (Carlos Robante), Estelita Rodriguez (Consuelo Robante), and Claude Akins (Joe Burdette) Directed by Howard Hawks (#951 - The Big Sleep and #1352 - His Girl Friday)

Review:
"A good movie is three good scenes and no bad scenes."

Collaborations can make for an entertaining film if in the hands of the right people, with this being particularly true for Howard Hawks and John Wayne, who made five films together (all but one being a Western), which began with Red River (1948). The film was written by longtime screenwriter Jules Furthman and science fiction writer/screenwriter Leigh Brackett as a loose adaptation of a short story of the same name by B.H. McCampbell. The plot outline may seem familiar to those who have viewed High Noon (1952), which Wayne and Hawks both criticized, with Wayne calling it "un-American" since he viewed it as an allegory against blacklisting and Hawks disapproving the idea of a sheriff "running around town like a chicken with his head cut off asking for help, and finally his Quaker wife had to save him". For his part, Gary Cooper (star of said criticized film) thought it was phony (which to me seems like the key side in a triangle of eye-rolling statements). Quibbles aside, Hawks would go on to make two further films that were variations on this film in the next eleven years with Wayne as the lead and Brackett as writer with El Dorado (1967) and Rio Bravo (1970) and inspiration can be found in John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 (1976).

One gets plenty of engaging entertainment here in this film, with five prominent stars besides Wayne present that come alive with their own quirks that make for riveting moments that fit the hallmarks of a Hawks film. Everything comes together without a stumble, particularly with its silent four minute opening sequence, which helps set the film up nicely and effectively with principle. It is a sprawling film that runs at 141 minutes with solid ambition and useful execution in its warmness. Wayne, playing on a type that he had done for several years (right down to the hat that was worn in several films starting with Stagecoach) does a fine job with a balancing act of stature and reaction to others that make for some amusing moments of chemistry with the others. Singers-turned actors Martin and Nelson do well in following along with Wayne in their own right, with Martin (told by Hawks to not play a cowboy but to just play a drunk) doing well with showing inner demons demanded by this part alongside growing assurance, and Nelson gives off a youthful confidence; each also is given a chance to sing, which comes around right before the climax, which is both unsurprising and not too distracting. Dickinson, in a breakthrough performance after getting her start in television, makes for a playful balance to Wayne, having a fairly believable chemistry, where one doesn't see the 25-year age difference between the two as too much of a distraction. Brennan and Bond fill out their time with warmness (moreso for the former) and capability in the time they are given to shine. Russell, though not given as much time as the others, does make for a fair adversarial presence to drive the tension for the inevitable showdown, which delivers in sealing the fate of a pretty good sprawling Western with folks one will come across plenty when searching for entertainment helmed by someone with plenty to deliver as well.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.