Blue Thunder.

Review #2536: Blue Thunder.

Cast: 

Roy Scheider (LAPD Officer Frank Murphy), Warren Oates (LAPD Capt. Jack Braddock), Candy Clark (Kate), Daniel Stern (LAPD Officer Richard Lymangood), Malcolm McDowell (United States Army Colonel F.E. Cochrane), Paul Roebling (Icelan), David Sheiner (Fletcher), Joe Santos (Montoya), Jason Bernard (The Mayor), Robin Braxton (Councilwoman Diane McNeely), Ed Bernard (Sgt. Short James Murtaugh (Alf Hewitt), Jack Murdock (Kress), with Mario Machado (Himself), and Anthony James (Grundelius) Directed by John Badham (#088 - Short Circuit, #1293 - Dracula (1979), #1456 - Saturday Night Fever, #1610 - WarGames, #1805 - The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings)

Review: 

Okay, this one came about because it was on a movie-pack. Can you blame me? The impetus for the original script by Dan O'Bannon and Don Jakoby (an old friend of O'Bannon from film school*) apparently came from their experiences with low-flying police helicopters intruding on their surroundings in Los Angeles. The script was written in late 1978 with a deal by 1979. They envisioned a psychological thriller about the perils of a police state using surveillance such as helicopters for population control. For instance, Scheider's character was "truly mad" and ended up getting shot down. Eventually, it became what O'Bannon called "more of a fantasy cartoon". John Badham brought in Dean Riesner* to do a "couple of page one rewrite jobs" on the script (which namely saw the inclusion of Stern's character and a good deal of scenes involving Oates) but did not receive credit in favor of only O'Bannon and Jakoby (the two worked on a few more screenplays together with Lifeforce [1985] and Invaders from Mars [1986]). It was filmed in the summer of 1981 but not released until 1983. Produced by Rastar for Columbia Pictures for $22 million, the movie made almost two times its budget back with audiences. In 1984, ABC aired a television spinoff that featured James Farentino and Dana Carvey that ran for eleven episodes. On a probably unrelated note, Airwolf, a show with an "advanced prototype supersonic helicopter", premiered that same year on CBS that ran for four seasons.

You don't get too many movies going "The hardware, weaponry and surveillance systems depicted in this film are real and in use in the United States today." Admittedly, it is an offbeat kind of movie, relying on sheer adrenaline for its aerial action that provides a few delights to go along with a fairly game cast to ride the wave over a film that loves to seep into fantasy but doesn't become a big joke once you're done with its 109 minute runtime. So, what's the big thing for the film? A helicopter that basically is a flying fortress that can peer into conversations from a few miles away along with armor, guns, infrared scanners, a mode to fly silently and, well, you get the idea, it's the kind of thing that could be used to help curb discontent before the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles (1984...or 2028, you might ask). I'm not particularly sure the film is too prescient about actually saying something about the surveillance state, but at least it closes on a high note with what you probably want best: helicopter fighting and stumbling onto conspiracies without becoming a crackpot*. It helps that within the mix of air-action, composites and other various tricks (as seen here), you get a worthwhile looking experience for the time spent rather than feeling like it went for nothing.

Apparently, Scheider took the role because he wanted to make sure he couldn't be available for Jaws 3-D (1983). It isn't exactly a great role to really glom onto besides the usual "everyman" type with a few quirks (fiddling with a watch, namely), but he handles it with the usual gritted patience that you care for pretty early on without terming him as an old "wiseass". Being paired with Stern proves pretty vital for a couple of chuckles in seeing what goes on for work (at least when it isn't disrupted by say, a conspiracy or gawking at people). Or leisure time with Clark (at least this isn't a case of severe age difference between lovers, merely being, what 15 years?). McDowell may not have as much to do in say, bombastic menace, but he is capable enough to present a threat worth seeing getting to the end of the line (incidentally, McDowell has a fear of flying, so note the look on his face anytime he is in the air, although I will say that helicopters aren't exactly high on the list of favorable transport). This was the penultimate film appearance for Oates, who had passed away in April 1982 during post-production (his last film was released later with Tough Enough). He still has that edge of hard-lined humor that comes through with how he makes an impression on the viewer with a few good lines that get spread out (as a presence, his is surely missed then as now) for a delight. In general, the movie moves along with a comic book sensibility to throwing things onto the wall to see what sticks, whether that involves a test run of the helicopter to a group in a secluded place (whereupon the helicopter gets the terrorist dummy targets and also shoots a bunch of bystanders) or the climax where one gets to see a few tricks to avoid deadly heat-seeking missiles (emphasis on "heat"). As a whole, you get a bit of aerial jousting to go along with some residing charm to make for a solid enough movie to enjoy on a late night, preferably with no helicopters buzzing along in the sky.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Song of the day!

Game 1 of the 2026 Western Conference Finals is today. Go Spurs Go, vanquish the (blue) Thunder.

*Fun fact: O'Bannon co-wrote the original story of Alien with Ronald Shusett and actually had a problem with the inclusion of Ash into the film. Are you kidding me, dude?

*Reisner was an interesting person in film. He appeared in films as a kid such as The Pilgrim and then became a writer with work on Code of the Secret Service (1939) before he was 25 years old and directed a movie that won an Honorary Academy Award with Bill and Coo (1948), a movie where birds were costumed as humans acting on one of the smallest film sets ever. Oh, and then he was a writer on a handful of television shows and co-writer of movies such as Dirty Harry (1971). He died of natural causes in 2002 at the age of 83.

*I'm not sure I've mentioned this before, but my conspiracy theory is that the conspiracy about the JFK assassination was spread by people too embhassased about failing to protect the president so they spread the most insane stuff to muddy the waters over it being just one guy shooting someone for his own reasons. The Jack Ruby factor, well, I guess he was just an idiot (look, why kill the assassin of the president? For clout?). That, and also I think they keep the theories alive because they are jealous of LBJ. See, I told you it would sound like a crackpot.  

Redux: Jaws.

Redux #480: Jaws.

Cast: 

Roy Scheider (Chief Martin Brody), Robert Shaw (Quint), Richard Dreyfuss (Matt Hooper), Lorraine Gary (Ellen Brody), Murray Hamilton (Mayor Larry Vaughn), Carl Gottlieb (Meadows), Jeffrey Kramer (Deputy Leonard Hendricks), Susan Backlinie (Chrissie Watkins), Lee Fierro (Mrs. Kintner), and Peter Benchley (Interviewer) Directed by Steven Spielberg (#126 - Close Encounters of the Third Kind, #168 - Raiders of the Lost Ark, #169 - Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, #170 - Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, #302 - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, #351 - Schindler's List)

Review: 

You might wonder why I'm giving a revised review of a movie I covered before. Well, that review was nearly 12 years ago on November 11, 2013. Enjoy.

Like most great movies, it all started with taking a novel into one's hands. In early 1974, Peter Benchley's debut novel Jaws was published, which had seen him take inspiration from shark attacks and the exploits of Frank Mundus, a fisherman that once caught a shark weighing over 4,000 pounds off the New York shores. Benchley thought the book wasn't going to be a hit, mainly because it was a first novel and that it was "about a fish". The result was a novel that sold over five million copies in its first 18 months. Ironically, both Benchley and Mundus became conservationists in later years, with the former telling people that he could not write the book as it was in good conscience (for Mundus, he later called the movie "the funniest and the stupidest movie I've ever seen because too many stupid things happened in it.").  Benchley was tasked to write the first draft of the screenplay, and it was he would basically do the "mechanics" of the script more so than characterization, which most notably saw him excise the affair between Brody and Hooper (upon suggestion). Others delivered uncredited work such as Howard Sackler, John Milius, Matthew Robbins, and Hal Barwood; Carl Gottlieb, who was tasked to bring in "some levity", was given co-credit with Benchley on the screenplay. The director would be Steven Spielberg, who had two features to his credit at the time with the TV-film-turned movie Duel (1971) and The Sugarland Express (1974). 159 days of production were spent around Massachusetts and the Atlantic Ocean due to overruns that saw script refinement and a bit of cast strife. You probably already know Jaws was a phenomenon, but it still sounds fun to say it: Universal spent a good deal of money marketing the movie in a media blitz and a strategy that was still not as widely used now: releasing the movie on hundreds of theaters at once for opening week, with over 400 theaters seeing the movie on June 20. For two years, Jaws was the highest-grossing movie of all time and the TV premiere of the movie in 1979 saw over half of the total US audience watch it. Years later, Benchley was asked about a deal involving sequels to Jaws, with him stating, "I don't care about sequels; who'll ever want to make a sequel to a movie about a fish?" Jaws 2, with no Spielberg or Dreyfuss, came out in 1978 as directed by Jeannot Szwarc to mixed reviews. Jaws 3-D (1983) and Jaws: The Revenge (1987, with Gary returning because...) came out later to diminishing box office returns and little-to-no creativity. Benchley went on to write seven more novels, with a handful being adapted into films such as The Deep (1977) and The Island (1980); he died in 2006 at the age of 65.

I admit that I've seen Jaws roughly three times: once in 2013, another a few years later, and lastly just a few days ago with my mom. I wanted to re-live the experience of wondering what was so great about a movie like this, and what better time than in the summer and in July? Steven Spielberg is probably the seminal entertainer for direction in the past fifty years, but I really did want to figure out (at least, again) just how he did it. Whether thought of as an action thriller or as a horror movie (let's be honest, there are people who willingly choose to ignore the latter genre because of bias), there is just something so thrilling about how this movie pushes one's buttons so effectively in great adventure. Filmmakers could only dream to make a movie run as well as one can for two hours that has no bloat or demand for more that come across here, and this is for a film that wisely spaces out its tension until it absolutely becomes important to do what it has to do. To borrow from old me, there were plenty of "animals gone bad" movies before and after this movie such as say, Grizzly (1976), Piranha (1978; widely considered among the best of the Jaws ripoffs), Alligator (1980), and so on, but Jaws just has that enthusiasm and commitment to its tension. You have to remember that the movie characters are meant to be more likable than the book characters, which dealt with a subplot involving the Mayor being tied to the Mafia and the aforementioned affair between two characters. The funny thing is that it was easier to cast Brody with a perceived "tough guy" in Scheider than the other two key roles, which apparently were not cast until the last few days of pre-production that resulted in two people being cast with how good they were in other people's movies at the time: actor/writer Robert Shaw, who had worked on the recent Universal Pictures hit in The Sting (1973) for Quint and American Graffiti (1973) star Richard Dreyfuss for Hooper. They all are essentially perfect for what needs to happen for the film. Scheider in particular shines because he fits the everyman type like a glove, one with real worries and quibbles that sells for all who know the plight of being, well, a fish out of water.

Shaw was a man of the stage who happened to write on the side, so of course he can play the ultimate rugged captain (he was a Bond adversary, for heaven's sake, he could do anything). Every line of his has a certain type of timing and cadence that we find listening to intently that is rewarded with that one particular sequence in the "U.S.S. Indianapolis monologue" that he sells in such a soulful way that it almost doesn't matter just who (Shaw, Milius, Sackler, what have you) came up with what in writing it. Apparently, Dreyfuss thought that the movie was going to be a "disaster" because of the general boredom that came in waiting to film. There's the veneer of charm within a part that apparently was molded to be Spielberg's "alter ego" (debate on that), and Dreyfuss draws a few light chuckles even in the great admirer of, well, the routines in science. Bottom line: you care about these folks. It may interest you to know that this was the debut theatrical performance of Gary, who had done a handful of television performances. But it is Hamilton and his steely smarm in the art of evasiveness that probably sticks out the most now more than ever: a person in a position of power that hears of certain facts and doggedly moves forward with his own self-serving needs anyway. Evidently, there is actual footage of real sharks in the film, as Ron and Valerie Taylor shot footage in the waters of South Australia that had an actor in a mini shark cage. The look of the shark isn't what matters in the end, what matters is the fact that it could come when it comes to suspense that came from someone who honed their craft in suspense with Duel (1971) and plays with the audience just enough to where the climax will splatter in harrowing excellence. As a whole, Jaws is the phenomenon for monster movies one would hope to aspire to do. I'm not really sure exactly where it rests on the pantheon of entertaining Spielberg movies when considering his earlier work (and what's to come), but it sure has a hell of an argument for making a good time.

Overall, I give it 10 out of 10 stars.

All That Jazz.

Review #2330: All That Jazz.

Cast: 

Roy Scheider (Joe Gideon; Keith Gordon as young Joe Gideon), Jessica Lange (Angelique, the Angel of Death), Ann Reinking (Katie Jagger), Leland Palmer (Audrey Paris), Cliff Gorman (Davis Newman), Ben Vereen (O'Connor Flood), Erzsebet Foldi (Michelle Gideon), Michael Tolan (Dr. Ballinger), Max Wright (Joshua Penn), William LeMassena (Jonesy Hecht), Chris Chase (Leslie Perry), Deborah Geffner (Victoria Porter), Anthony Holland (Paul Dann), David Margulies (Larry Goldie), John Lithgow (Lucas Sergeant), with Sandahl Bergman, Eileen Casey, Bruce Davis, Gary Flannery, Jennifer Nairn-Smith, Danny Ruvolo, Leland Schwantes, John Sowinski, Candace Tovar, and Rima Vetter (principal dancers) Directed by Bob Fosse (#904 - Cabaret)

Review: 

“It is off‐beat. Some people are locked into certain channels of thinking. They're rigid. They think you shouldn't show an operation in a musical. I know the film is strong, but the intention was to be strong. I accomplished what I set out to do, to move people out of the ordinary movie experience. So it's a compliment to all involved that the film is being talked about.”

If one remembers, Bob Fosse was quite the busy man in his age. The Chicago native was the son of a travelling salesman that was so big on being in dance that he was already performing professionally at the age of 13 before moving on to doing shows at burlesque clubs. In adulthood, he went from acting in musical productions in the late 1940s to directing and choreographing his own musical works such as the 1955 show Damn Yankees. He became a feature director with Sweet Charity (1969) that would see him rise in his peaks, which included the smash adaptation of Cabaret (1972) and his work on adapting the play Lenny to a film and also directing and choreographing the Chicago musical. The result of working on both led to him suffering a massive heart attack. He became interested in the subject of life and death as a result and when recovering from open-heart surgery, he came across the Hilma Wolitzer novel Ending. He tapped himself to work with Robert Alan Aurthur on a screenplay of the novel but found that he did not in fact want to "live with that kind of pain for a year and a half." The result of shifting course resulted in a script that would happen to share elements of Fosse's life, such as habits with certain substances (one perhaps may be struck by Fosse once being quoted as saying, "I don't have time for that kind of pain" when it came to the nature of needing to work and being afraid to stop). Various actors came in consideration for the lead role, ranging from Richard Dreyfuss (who dropped out, citing exhaustion) to Paul Newman (who declined an offer due to his issue with the character and regretted his decision), but Fosse would get his way in wanting Scheider. Fosse wrote the screenplay with Aurthur, who died of lung cancer in 1978. Fosse would direct one further film with Star 80 (a decidedly-different type of movie released in 1983) to go along with staging the production Big Deal. He died in 1987 at the age of 60 while in the process of staging a revival show of Sweet Charity. Incidentally, Reinking (who was Fosse's partner for a number of years, and, well, a star featured here) would later be involved in the direction of the 1999 musical revue of Fosse, which utilized a handful of songs from All that Jazz.

Admittedly, the comparison to Federico Fellini's 8½ (1963) came pretty early in the film's lifetime, but there is some entertainment to be found here with a fairly game cast and some useful dancing that generally will prove worthy in the end. It is an expression of ego in all the facets imaginable for a man having himself in on a joke, if you think about it enough when it comes to its energy for the climax. It stylizes the pursuit of work at the expense of everything is a way that seems so raw and yet so real at the same time, since one might as well have a ball when going down in a blaze of glory. Scheider carries the movie with an intensity that is one for the ages in more ways than one, since, yes, he really can do a bit of song and dance to go with being among the noted names of lead presences for his era. The drive and passion of all-consuming work is all compulsive and obsessive in ways that Scheider apparently related to quite well when it came to being a regular worker. The mirage of his character is that he is hard to love but perhaps harder to hate (or perhaps in a different view, its the other way). Consider the scene where he is wrapped in the space looking back at a memory with Lange (playing the angel of death) that shows him with Reinking and all the quibbles that come with how one puts up with the other for so long ("staying in", as they say"). If the film really was just a self-indulgent muddle, it would not lend time for worthwhile moments with Lange and her knowing sense of timing (as one does when listening to recollections of a man on the cusp of reckless abandon) or with Reinking being game to playing out fact and fiction with a lover. It also can be damn funny, as wonderfully captured with "Take Off With Us", in which you get to see a rehearsal of dancers with flashlights and minimal clothing to a murmuring group of producers. In short, one can get taken everywhere by razzle dazzle but never really get anywhere. It all comes to a head for the final stage of the film in "Bye Bye Life" in such poignant nature in both the choreography and the music that has such a crisp tempo for one hell of a subject matter (you've got a crowd viewing some dancers dressed up in veiny get-ups) that even shows Scheider shaking hands down on the stage. On the whole, the movie is Fosse in its distilled form with a exhilarating showman who knew what to deliver in choreographed brilliance that knows death is inevitable and yet decides to move right ahead anyway because what else is there? As the film closes out, there really is no business like show business.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.

Sorcerer.

Review #2085: Sorcerer.

Cast: 

Roy Scheider (Jackie Scanlon / Juan Dominguez), Bruno Cremer (Victor Manzon / Serrano), Francisco Rabal (Nilo), Amidou (Kassem / Martinez), Ramon Bieri (Corlette), Karl John (Marquez), Peter Capell (Lartigue), Anne-Marie Deschodt (Blanche), and Friedrich von Ledebur (Carlos) Produced and Directed by William Friedkin (#037 - The Exorcist, #1438 - The French Connection, #1477 - To Live and Die in L.A.)

Review: 

"It occurred to me at that time, this was in the middle ’70s, when America had just come through a national nervous breakdown, after the assassinations, the Vietnam war, and it seemed to me—I guess it’s always ever thus—that the world was full of strangers who hated one another, but if they didn’t cooperate, if they didn’t work together in some way, they would blow up. And this film seemed to me to be a metaphor for that idea, which I thought was a valid theme then, and now. I think it’s possibly worse now, with so many countries have weapons of mass destruction. And so, it was the theme that attracted me."

In 1950, French writer Georges Arnaud wrote Le Salaire de la peur. Three years later, it was adapted into The Wages of Fear by director Henri-Georges Clouzot, a multi-language production that starred Yves Montand (this is reflected with Sorcerer, which features subtitles for its non-English vignettes that start the film). After the release of The Exorcist in 1973, William Friedkin was thinking about what he should do next, and he came along with doing a new version of the Arnaud novel (i.e. not a remake), but he approached Clouzot by saying that he would "only use the basic premise and your theme" (which he felt was really a theme of brotherhood) while noting that he tried to get the older film re-released in theaters but no one bought on to it. He then asked Arnaud for the rights to the novel, which were accepted (after Arnaud noted that he actually didn't like Clouzot's film). Friedkin brought in Walon Green (most notably the writer of The Wild Bunch) to serve as writer; creating the outline together, the script by Green was done in a number of months. Believe it or not, the script was written for Steve McQueen. However, Friedkin balked at the idea of writing a role for McQueen's new wife Ali MacGraw (or even making her an associate producer rather than giving her a part) and filming it in America (as opposed to the primary location in the Dominican Republic). The failure of the film distressed Friedkin, which he later called "the only film I've made that I can still watch" while also musing that looking back, he would've probably done what he would have had to do to land McQueen for the lead role. While the film did have a bit of a video release, Friedkin sued Paramount and Universal, who had each claimed they didn't know who owned the film when he asked about it when the former had made a new print for a showing (they had formed a joint corporation to do the aforementioned film that folded long ago, as related by Friedkin in interviews such as this) when it came to wanting to restore a print that could be put on DVD and Blu-ray. Friedkin got his wish and served as one of the supervisors on a restored print (as financed by Warner Bros. with distinctly split distribution rights between Paramount, Warner, and Universal) that came out in 2014. His films afterwards were of varying quality that nevertheless were quite watchable, as evidenced by stuff such as Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), and Bug (2006); Friedkin died in August of 2023, just a month before the festival premiere of his last feature with The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (2023).

It is easy to see where the end of the line came for films like this came with its release on June 24, 1977...because of the film that came out just a month before (well, you may know it in Star Wars, and the irony is that Friedkin was handed the script when it was making the studio rounds of rejection and he had doubts about it being made). In the end, no one is just anything, and the sorcerer for this film is (as Friedkin put it) fate. It is undoubtedly a wonderful film in tension, filled with such rough and tumble characters that fits now more than ever with such gritty passion. It is captured with the feeling of a documentary, one that happens to have Tangerine Dream (a German electronic band) compose the music to worthwhile effect for a film that is more than just a trail through the jungle with nitroglycerin on the mind. These four people that we are entrusted to view in the prism of the jungle that they inhabit might as well serve as hell. Schneider seemingly reflects the ideas that Green wanted to show in a "desperately human" role, which namely involves a roughly shaped face and voice that you believe could be your mirror image in the bounds of viewing hell itself. The other players in the games (an assassin, a Palestinian militant, a former banker, and an Irish mobster) that play in fate prove just as well interesting in serving as pawns to toil in the passages of wages and fear. Undoubtedly, the bridge sequence is the showstopper to focus on, not because it serves as the climax or anything, but because of how wonderfully executed and tense it is (the events of how the bridge sequence was staged, which included moving the bridge set piece to Mexico and weird production stories about getting the whole thing done in a matter of months can be found here). It is a sequence that lasts just a bit over ten minutes in an already grimy two-hour runtime but by God does it dominate your attention. If there was any sequence you had to show of the film to try and get someone to at least consider the film, showing even two minutes of it would be more than enough. The sequence right after it, involving a seemingly too tall tree and a good laugh makes for a solid second in the array of interesting sequences of human terror. By the time the film closes off its delirium, you have found a film that has justified its entire reason for being as one filled with edge and style about the dangers that can come with fractured brotherhood on a ticking clock that can fall prey to the whims of fate that reflects how they had set people to their own fate before they reached their reckoning in Columbia. One can only see and hear the ending for what it reflects in what fate means to those who have to endure the choices made (and not made) by oneself. Whether one has seen The Wages of Fear or not when it comes to adaptations of the novel, Sorcerer is a gem you have to experience for yourself with a deep breath and deep admiration for the craftsmanship that is readily apparent in a year that had plenty to go around.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.

The French Connection.

Review #1438: The French Connection.

Cast: 
Gene Hackman (Det. Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle), Fernando Rey (Alain "Frog One" Charnier), Roy Scheider (Det. Buddy "Cloudy" Russo), Tony Lo Bianco (Salvatore "Sal" Boca), Marcel Bozzuffi (Pierre Nicoli), Frédéric de Pasquale (Henri Devereaux), and Bill Hickman (Bill Mulderig) Directed by William Friedkin (#037 - The Exorcist)

Review: 
"If you're going to make a film or an album of music or a painting, you cannot afford to stop and think what other people will think of it. You've got to take into consideration what your editor thinks, if, say, you're a writer. But I don't have anyone to answer to. I make a film because I want to. Sometimes they're successful, sometimes they're not, but the way I think about my films is always very personal." - William Friedkin

"Acting was something I wanted to do since I was 10 and saw my first movie, I was so captured by the action guys. Jimmy Cagney was my favorite. Without realizing it, I could see he had tremendous timing and vitality." - Gene Hackman

All decades could be studied for their grittiness, but perhaps no decade had it more interesting than the 1970s. After a decade of shifting in Hollywood and within the culture, it only figures that some of the best films from this era would be ones with tinges of moral ambiguity and raw disenchantment of the angry young man, where law and order was a catchphrase rather than a show. Accordingly, it should only make sense that the first R-rated film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture would be The French Connection, based on the non-fiction book by Robin Moore released two years prior. Produced by 20th Century Fox, it featured the pursuit by two detectives (inspired by actual detectives Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso, who both served as technical advisors in the film) of the New York Police Department of a substance smuggler in New York City. It should prove fitting that such a frank and urgent film came from a director with humble backgrounds in William Friedkin. The Chicago native was the son of a salesman and nurse that grew into becoming interested in films in his teenage years, viewing films such as Les Diaboliques, Psycho, and Citizen Kane (the last being the one to cement his love for the cinema). He went from working in the WGN-TV mail room to directing live TV shows and documentaries when he was 18, starting with The People vs. Paul Crump (1962). Incidentally, one documentary that Friedkin directed was The Thin Blue Line (1966), which focused on the police force and problems of combating increased crime. He started his feature film career with Good Times (1967), which featured Sonny and Cher in a comedy musical western. Of his first four films, only The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) proved any success with audiences or critics. And yet here he is, directing a film under the production of Philip D'Antoni, who had previously produced Bullitt (1968) for Fox only after several rejections and a small budget of $1.8 million dollars. There were a few follow-ups to this film of sorts. The Seven-Ups (1973) was directed by D'Antoni  while having Scheider as the main star as a tough-guy cop with Grosso as technical advisor and Bill Hickman back as stunt coordinator. French Connection II (1975) was a fictional sequel directed by John Frankenheimer that had Hackman and Rey return to their roles that was a mild success.

Of all the unlikely things, Hackman not being the first, second or even third choice must rank high up the list. Famed newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin was actually in the running at one point in time (he would lose out in light of his inability to drive), while Jackie Gleason was thought to be bad for box office with the failure of Gigot (1962), and Peter Boyle disapproved of the violent themes. Hackman, who was known for supporting roles such as Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and I Never Sang for My Father (1970) after going from the Pasadena Playhouse to doorman-between-acting, was found at the last moment. Similarly, Scheider had just a few small roles to his credit before this film (along with Klute) helped rise him to stardom. To have the actors get a feel for the cops they would portray, they patrolled with Egan and Grosso for a month. One can see that this proved effective in making for tremendous performances from Hackman and Scheider in how grizzled and hard-edged they prove for a film that serves as a key point for police procedural films for its era. Hackman proves especially great in showing the maniacal drive and act that one seems to need to have to be on the beat to take a criminal down on and off the clock with intensity, while Scheider follows along with measured conviction; probably the best sequence with the two is their first, with them chasing a criminal down the street that turns into questioning with offbeat fervor from Hackman ("Did you ever pick your feet in Poughkeepsie?") in a Santa suit. Rey (who came into international status with collaborations with Orson Welles and Luis Bunuel films in the 1960s and 1970s) is elegantly devious to fit this cat-and-mouse game of cops and drug kingpins without trouble. Boca and the others (including Egan and Grosso in brief roles) fill in the gritted atmosphere of thrills and action fitting to be talked about as a neo noir. Perhaps having Shaft writer Ernest Tidyman behind this screenplay helps in making this 104-minute film really tick with tension and competence. It might seem quaint to the eyes of those who have encountered plenty of procedurals in the near half century since release, but one has to start somewhere with grimy gripping films like this. The chase sequence (which had a mix of Hackman and stunt driver Hickman driving) is excellent to see play out in real traffic between a car and a train with careful angles and a poster-worthy showdown moment to boot. By the time it gets to its bittersweet finale, one knows they have watched an interesting film with plenty of looks and sounds of New York City from an era long ago with documentary-style filming from Friedkin that serves the film well in driving one up the wall and never letting things go too easily. As a whole, This is a film with a controlled obsession of sordid realism that makes for a classic of the age that had people like Hackman and Friedkin deservingly reap the rewards of for the rest of the era.

Overall, I give it 10 out of 10 stars.

Movie Night: Jaws 2.

Review #555: Jaws 2.

Cast
Roy Scheider (Martin Brody), Lorraine Gary (Ellen Brody), Murray Hamilton (Mayor Larry Vaughn), Joseph Mascolo (Len Peterson), Jeffrey Kramer (Deputy Jeff Hendricks), Collin Wilcox (Dr. Lureen Elkins), Ann Dusenberry (Tina Wilcox), Mark Gruner (Michael Brody), Barry Coe (Tom Andrews), Susan French (Grace Witherspoon), Gary Springer (Andy Nicholas), Donna Wilkes (Jackie Peters), and Gary Dubin (Eddie Marchand) Directed by Jeannot Szwarc.

Review
It figues that even though the first movie wrapped itself up nicely and leaving no doubt that the shark was dead, the studio wanted a sequel. Scheider is back at least, along with Gary and Hamilton, which is alright (a shame there's no Dreyfuss though), but let's get to the point, the movie doesn't have much chance of replicating the scare of the original movie, and the movie acknowledges that by revealing the shark many times throughout the film. So yeah, how is the film? It's pretty mediocre. Scheider does his best, and to the film's credit, most of the cast do a pretty fine job...except the teens. After a while, you start rooting for the shark. I think the thing that irritates me the most is the fact that once again nobody agrees with Brody that there's a shark attacking. The original script made more sense for why they don't believe him, as the Mayor and Peterson are apparently in debt to the Mafia (don't ask), borrowing money from them to build resorts to help restore Amity after the shark attacks devastated the town's economy in the first movie (I wouldn't want to go to a place with shark attacks either), thus explaining why the two "disbelieve" him. But instead, due to rewrites, there's now no reason for the two to not believe Brody, the man who's hunted down a shark before. At least the shark effects look decent. The tagline "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water..." is really clever and invites you with such an irresistible line. The movie is okay, but compared to the first film, it's a inferior sequel. But...what about the sequels? Well, we-I mean I am going to find out.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

Movie Night: 2010.

Review #233: 2010.

Cast
Roy Scheider (Heywood Floyd), John Lithgow (Dr. Walter Curnow), Helen Mirren (Tanya Kirbuk), Bob Balaban (Dr. Chandra), Keir Dullea (Dave Bowman), and Douglas Rain (HAL 9000) Directed by Peter Hyams.

Review
It has been a while since I have discussed 2001: A Space Odyssey. So let me give a little discussion here. It's one of those films to describe it a few words: Grand. Special. Thought-provoking. Epic in scale. Effects-galore. Classic. As for 2010, what would the be the words to describe it? I'll say that later, but anyway, the film is an adaptation of the novel 2010: Odyssey Two, which was a continuation of the movie (It's weird saying this...) The performances are alright, conveying well. Dullea and Rain return, 16 years after 2001 to reprise their performances here, which works out well. While it isn't as thought provoking as 2001, it does has enough flares of thrill and skill (and strangely recounting the events of the first one) to make you watch it on its own without much stigma. Now then, what would I describe this film in a few words? Decent-looking. Some interest. Decent. 1984 (literally). And there we go.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.