R.P.M.

Before I start ripping this movie, I'll say this.  I like director Stanley Kramer and most of his films. Mad, Mad World is one of my favorite comedies, Judgment at Nuremberg is a classic, On the Beach an underrated gem, and many, many others are worth watching for one reason or another.  As a director though, Kramer was sometimes guilty of trying to hard to teach, to deliver a message, to show what was wrong with the world.  Usually those issues came in the context of a well-made movie so it didn't bother me.  If anything, it aided the movie's cause.  That wasn't the case with 1970's R.P.M..

The late 1960s and early 1970s, a time of political and cultural upheaval as Americans grew more intensely frustrated with the direction our country was taking.  A sub-culture of people grew that was frustrated with the ways of the world, and maybe nowhere was that more evident than any college campuses, grounds for free thinking and free thought. Students were taught to think for themselves, not blindly go along with what older, powerful authority figures told them.  That didn't always end well with public protests ending violently, and even shootings in some cases.  A ripe picking ground for a movie if handled correctly.  If. 

At Hudson University, a large group of students led by two grad students, Rossiter (Gary Lockwood) and Steve (Paul Winfield) has peacefully taken over an administration building that holds key information necessary to the university. The only way they'll leave the building is if a list of their 12 demands are met, each and every one of them.  For starters, the students want popular sociology professor, Franklin 'Paco' Perez (Anthony Quinn), to take over as university president. Curious to see if all the things he's learned and taught over his years as a professor are in fact true, he takes the job.  Meeting and negotiating with the students, Perez is able to comply with nine of their 12 demands.  But the students won't budge on the three, and no matter what the acting president thinks or wants, it doesn't seem like there is a way to compromise.

One of the biggest struggles this movie goes through is finding an appropriate, consistent tone throughout.  Is it a folksy, out of the norm look at noble students trying to impact their world?  Maybe.  Singer-songwriter Melanie has a couple songs used in the soundtrack used over some montages of Perez walking around campus, painting a picture of an idyllic college with no problems. Or on the other hand, is it an indictment of the system, condemning both the students leading the charge and the board of directors trying to limit the damages done?  Yes and no, because both sides are criticized if in a somewhat unbalanced way.  For this story to work better, a stronger stance needed to be taken and not that gray area in the middle.

Instead of choosing, the tone and indictment leads more to painting the rebelling students as the heroic saviors of society.  The board of directors are portrayed as old fogies who have no knowledge of what bothers their student body.  A painfully obvious dig has Perez listening to the board, imagining them as clowns and jokers blathering on and on about the money, the stigma, the dilemma being caused.  We get it. They're old and don't understand the younger generation.  You don't need to hit us over the head with a mallet to get the idea across.  Conversely, the students are presented as somewhat heroic, but in the end they just come off as pretentious know-it-alls, not noble idealists.  They spout off all sorts of nonsense about their ideals and principles, ripping to pieces the one guy -- acting President Perez -- who's genuinely trying to help them because he sees their struggle.  Good choice, make both sides look like idiots.

So in a pretentious, very talky movie, something good has to be going on at some point, doesn't it?  Yes, and his name is Anthony Quinn.  Even in some of the lower quality movies he starred in over the years, Quinn always seemed to rise above the dreck.  The popular professor who makes his students think and question what they know is a somewhat cliched character, but it's based in the truth. I'd wager every college and maybe every department has a professor like that, one students seek out as opposed to avoiding them like the plague. Quinn's Perez comes from a modest background having had to work his way up through the ranks.  He legitimately wants to help the students but knows almost from the start he's fighting a losing battle. The character does border on being too perfect, too likable, but amongst all the annoying, downright obnoxious characters, I didn't mind.

Also worth mentioning in supporting roles are Ann-Margret as Perez's grad student girlfriend, Rhoda, and Lockwood as Rossiter, the leader of the student revolution. At the height of her sex kitten days, Margret is wasted. She has to look sexy, strip down a couple times, and wear slinky outfits, at times serving as Perez's conscience and sounding board.   A legitimately talented actress, she's just not given enough to do.  Lockwood as Lossiter is the bright spot among the students, a thinker and an idealist who genuinely wants to accomplish something.  A late scene between him and Quinn is a high point as they discuss the detours and turns the route has taken to get where they are.

The ending is what bothered me most though, one more not so subtle attempt to deliver a message.  Pushed to the breaking point, the university has the police evacuate the building with tear gas and cops armed with billy clubs.  The police chief (Graham Jarvis) expresses his concern that the plan won't go off as planned. Well, it goes off as well as expected. The takeover is riddled with slow-motion and extreme close-ups of pained students being tackled or hit by police.  Oh, great, one more attempt to dig the system.  A wasted effort from a typically very solid director.

R.P.M. <---one of many talky scenes (1970): * 1/2 /****