Sol Madrid

Though the name might not be instantly recognizable, director Brian G. Hutton has been at the helm of two of my favorite movies, both of them WWII flicks, Where Eagles Dare and Kelly's Heroes. He only directed nine movies while also acting in film and television so those directing efforts? Gotta scoop them up when you can. Turner Classic Movies helped me out last week, screening 1968's Sol Madrid.

An undercover Interpol officer with a checkered past, Sol Madrid (David McCallum) has been tasked with possibly his most dangerous mission yet. A longtime right-hand man to a Mafia boss in NYC, Harry Mitchell (Pat Hingle) has gone rogue and stole $500,000 from the boss while running away with said boss' girlfriend. The catch? Mitchell has a computer-like mind and is able to remember everything he's ever done for the Mob. If Interpol or the FBI can bring him in and convince him to testify, the case is almost a sure thing against the Mafia. Madrid follows some leads and finds out that Mitchell has headed south of the border to Mexico and is hiding out with a rival mob boss in Acapulco. How can Madrid get to him and then convince him? Well, it starts with finding the mob boss' girlfriend, Stacey (Stella Stevens), and convincing her to help with the promise of protection. Can it all work out?

Even considering the very cool cast assembled here, I'd never even remotely heard of this one. But courtesy of TCM, here we sit! This is a movie I wanted to love but ended up only liking it. I'll get into the cast more in a bit, but it's NUTS! Filmed in Acapulco, featuring an appropriately quirky score from Lalo Schifrin, and a style and winding story that seems like a 1960s bizarre-o film noir...'Madrid' should have been better. That's it. It just should have been better in plain and simple words. This is a 1960s crime thriller that is missing that one special thing to make it a really solid, memorable flick. As is? It's okay, pretty cool in moments, kinda dumb/weird in others.

That cast though....man, it's worth watching just to see the collection of talent assembled. Let's start with the other Man from U.N.C.L.E., David McCallum himself. He never grew into a huge star -- he's probably most well-known for his Ducky role in NCIS -- but it's always cool to see him in a leading role, especially an anti-hero role like this. We meet Sol Madrid as he's resting in an apartment full of drugged-out heroin users. What an introduction! From there, it's one cold-blooded decision after another, all the while observing what's going on around him and planning steps in advance of everyone around him. Brutal, calculating and looking at the bottom line, Madrid risks it all over and over again. And that name? Sol Madrid?!? Sounds very fake, but damn, I wish I had a badass, ridiculously goofy and cool name like that.

I'm a sucker for ensemble casts though, and what we've got here for 'Madrid' is pretty impressive. Stevens specialized in these type of roles in the late 60s and early 70s as the damaged woman so it's right in her wheelhouse! She certainly has some fiery scenes with McCallum's Madrid. How about some tough guys?!? Hey, everybody, it's Telly Savalas as Emil Dietrich, a drug supplier with a rivalry against the Mafia! Next up, Ricardo Montalban as Jalisco, another undercover officer and Madrid's contact who may be too comfortable in his job. Oh, and there's Rip Torn as Villanova, the mob boss with a vengeful streak right up his back. Not a bad group, huh?

Also look for Paul Lukas as an older, experienced mobster, Michael Ansara as a Mexican police officer, Perry Lopez as Francisco, Dietrich's enforcer, and Michael Conrad as Scarpi, a mafia hitman tasked with killing Madrid and Stacey.

Probably the biggest flaw in this 90-minute flick is the story. It's far from pointed and doesn't seem to know where it's going, where it wants to end up. To get his hands on Mitchell, McCallum's Madrid partners up with Dietrich to bring huge amounts of heroin into the U.S. In a painfully slow scene, we actually see the smuggling effort, bringing an already slow pace down to a snail's speed. Things pick up in the final act with some good twists and finally some action, but as a whole, this isn't a consistent movie. Decent, pretty entertaining but with some serious flaws.

Sol Madrid (1968): ** 1/2 /****

The Long and the Short and the Tall

So I'm kinda slow sometimes. I'm not the most tech-oriented of people so I just kinda assumed iTunes just offered music downloads and rentals of new movies. Yeah...nope. There's hundreds and thousands of movies available to rent and/or buy!!! You'd think I would have realized this years ago, but anyhoo, here we sit. I found a flick I've long sought out, 1961's The Long and the Short and the Tall.

During the Japanese invasion of Burma in 1942, a small, seven-man patrol commanded by Sgt. Mitchem (Richard Todd) is deep in the jungle miles away from their base camp. Their mission? Record sounds of troop movements and vehicles moving through the jungle that will be used to trick Japanese troops into thinking they're facing more opposition than they really are. With his right-hand man, Corporal Johnstone (Richard Harris), at his side, Mitchem is trying to keep things in line with inexperienced soldiers making up the patrol. As they prepare to wrap up the mission, the patrol begins to have radio issues, and the men begin to question if something is up. Several are convinced they've been cut off by Japanese troops, and they're now on their own deep in the jungle. Can they make it back to the camp? Their situation is muddled even more when a lone Japanese soldier walks into their camp. Now they're alone and isolated and also have to decide what to do with their prisoner.

Talk about a dark, anti-war flick. This is your movie if you're looking for one. Director Leslie Norman helms this British film that's based off a play and doesn't have much of a reputation built up over the years. It's surprising in that sense because 'Long' is quite the quality movie. Sure, it has flaws but it tries things that movies weren't even thinking of trying, much less attempting yet. Filmed in a stark black and white, the story was filmed on indoor sets in England. Rather than film in real jungles, the decision works. The plants and vegetation permeate the screen to give things quite the claustrophobic feel that hangs in the air. The Japanese troops could be anywhere, but we just can't see them. Music is kept to a minimum with very little taking away from the ever-developing story.

For both good and bad, one of the most interesting things in 'Long' is the dialogue. Based off a play, this is movie dependent on an abundance of dialogue. Why does it work? It feels authentic...when I could understand it. The patrol is made up of soldiers from all over Great Britain, Scotland and Ireland so we get all sorts of thick brogues and cockney accents. This is a movie dependent on getting to know the soldiers through these conversations. We learn little about them in terms of background, but we start to see their personalities, their dynamics, their rivalries, their hatreds. At times, it gets to be a little much because it just wears on your ears, 90-plus minutes of soldiers bitching and moaning at each other.

So in terms of reality, 'Long' gets big points. These aren't heroic, gung-ho soldiers seeking glory. They just want to stay alive. Todd and Harris are good together as the only two veterans among the group. There's also Laurence Harvey as Bamforth, an annoying motormouth from London, Ronald Fraser as MacLeish, the wishy-washy Scotsman, David McCallum as Whitaker, the mousy radioman, John Meillon as Smith, the most intelligent among the group but simply looking to follow orders, and John Rees as Evans, Bamforth's friend and a bit of a follower. There isn't a likable man in the bunch, just less despicable individuals. This isn't an anti-war movie made about Vietnam. This was made in the early 1960s and is already beginning to reflect how the world felt about war and violence and so-called bravery and heroism. Quite a cast, all of them playing humans, not robotic killing machines. Harvey especially hams it up, pushing buttons left and right to the point he's unbearable as a character. Quite the performance if you think of it that way.

It's in the last half that things really take a turn for the dark when the patrol takes a prisoner (Kenji Takaki) and must decide what to do about him. Take him along? Leave him behind to possibly talk? Or the most uncomfortable option...kill him in cold-blood?  The story blends morality, ethics, survival, the rules of war, right and wrong, all of it as the situation gets harrier and harrier. The finale takes some interesting turns, some of them more predictable than others, but they work. Overall, it's a really good movie that's missing that special something. I really recommend it, but it's more of a quality movie than an entertaining movie. Still worth chasing it down but know what you're getting into here.

The Long and the Short and the Tall (1961): ** 1/2 /****

Mosquito Squadron

For four seasons in the mid 1960s, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. aired on NBC, pairing Robert Vaughn and David McCallum as two secret agents solving everything espionage could offer. By 1968 though, the show had been cancelled, leaving both actors to pursue other endeavors. Besides The Great Escape (made before UNCLE) and his recent starring turn in N.C.I.S., I haven't seen much else with McCallum. Let's jump into 1969's Mosquito Squadron.

Flying on a dangerous mission to knock out German rocket emplacements, Lt. Quint Munroe (McCallum), sees his friend and squadron commander, David Scott (David Buck), shot down in helping accomplish the mission. As he himself struggles with the loss of his friend, Munroe must also tell Scott's wife, Beth (Suzanne Neve), about her husband's death. In telling her though, he realizes he's had feelings for his longtime friend's now-widow. Dealing with some inner turmoil as he decides what to do, Munroe is also tasked with a new, far more dangerous and even more important mission. The Germans' efforts to develop a more powerful rocket is far underway, and the French underground has discovered where the Germans are building the rockets. Using a bomb with specifications suited for the mission, Munroe must lead a small squadron to knock out the place. There's more though. Scotty isn't dead, and he and other Allied prisoners are being used as a human shield near the bombing site.

Made on the relative cheap in the late 1960s, this WWII flick from director Boris Sagal is made in the vein of similar flicks like Battle of Britain, 633 Squadron and plenty of other aerial combat stories. Check that, it's not just made in the vein of those movies. It actually borrows quite liberally from those, even using footage from '633' and Operation Crossbow rather extensively. The pre-credits sequence is almost entirely from 'Crossbow', and significant amounts of aerial footage sprinkled in throughout are from '633.' I've long said a cheap, low-budget isn't a dealbreaker by any means, but there's got to be something better (even a little distracting) to overcome the cheapness. Mosquito just doesn't have it in a dull 89-minute flick.

Aerial combat is a frequent, worthy and entertaining background for countless war movies. Unfortunately, that's not enough for this cheapie B-movie. In an already too slow story, far too much time is spent on the taboo relationship between McCallum's Quint and Neve's Beth. Oh no! He loves her, but he can't! His dead friend wouldn't stand for it! It's his widow! The tortured relationship is painful enough to watch in the right hands, but this one lacks any sort of chemistry, realism or sympathy. This is DULL to watch. How many times can we watch Quint and Beth riding around on bikes in the English countryside? Having a picnic? Looking tortured and adoringly into each others' eyes? I'll let you find out for yourself.

Playing the moody, emotional, troubled officer, McCallum is all right as long as the story focuses on his aerial combat involvement. At least then when we see he's struggling with the death of his friend, it seems legit. For a movie about a "Squadron," very little attention is paid to Quint's men, Nicky Henson playing his co-pilot Wiley, Michael McGovern and Michael Latimer as two other pilot specialists training. Charles Gray and Dinsdale Landen play RAF superiors, officers who must send men on dangerous missions where chances of survival is slim. Credit and/or kudos to the script because virtually none of the characters are sympathetic, interesting or even connect with us as an audience.

The only saving grace for 'Mosquito' is the final 30 minutes as Quint and Co. take part in their dangerous mission to slow down the German rocket development effort, hidden away at a heavily guarded French chateau. Quint and his pilots (just the 3 of them) will drop their special bouncing bombs, the RAF will fly cover, the French resistance will lead an attack, and the P.O.W.'s used as a human shield will attempt a dangerous escape, all of this happening at the same time. Schizo much? It's an ending that's all over the place, but relative to the rest of the movie's general boring-ness, it's a great ending. Not enough to save the movie on the whole, but enough to save it from the drecks of the one-star review.

Mosquito Squadron (1969): **/****

Hell Drivers

Driving a gravel truck doesn't seem like a real exciting basis for a tense dramatic action film, does it? Nah, I didn't think so. With an impressive cast of future stars, 1957's Hell Drivers manages to prove me wrong in a big way. Driving a gravel truck for high stakes! Let's do this!

An ex-con looking for work, Tom Yately (Stanley Baker) manages to find a job with Hawlett's Trucking Company. The job sounds simple enough; transporting truckloads of gravel from one location to another 12 miles away. There's a catch though. The small fleet of truck drivers compete on a daily basis to see who can make the most runs with a minimum number of runs required. The end result is a drive at breakneck speeds around a twisting, winding course where safety is a secondary thought. Tom just wants to do a job and make some money, but he immediately clashes with Red (Patrick McGoohan), the fleet foreman and resident champ that no one can touch. Tom tries to avoid the macho head games, avoid the confrontation and do his job, but Red isn't going to allow it.

The Music Box Theatre recently had a screening of this realistic, dark drama from director Cy Endfield which I, of course, was not able to go to. Thanks you On Demand for having it hidden away, allowing me to catch up with it! 'Drivers' has a low-budget, ultra-realistic feel that plays like a documentary more than a feature film. Filmed in a grainy black and white, that dreary English sky never looked so....dreary? I know, I'm a master wordsmith. It's a nasty, unpleasant, me-first world presented here. If a little predictable at times, it's still a movie I enjoyed a lot.

What originally caught my attention here was the casting, an impressive list of actors who would go on to bigger and better things in the coming years. An underrated actor who never quite got his due, Baker is an ideal star. It's not your typical hero role for a 1957 flick. He's quiet, a man of few words but resolute in his word and genuinely trying to put his checkered criminal past (talked about, no actual details) behind him. However, he's also not one to take any crap from a rival. The weaker parts of the story have Baker's Tom interacting with Lucy (Peggy Cummins), Hawlett's secretary, who's involved with another driver but likes Tom just the same. Again, it's not your typical lovey-dovey relationship -- far from it and thankfully so -- but these scenes take away from the real focus of the story, the epically dangerous truck driving.

Baker is a good start, but 'Drivers' is far from done. McGoohan is a crazy presence as Red, the almost primal main rival for Baker's Tom. With his crazy eyes, wild, bushy eyebrows and ripped up leather vest, he looks like he'd like to eat his rivals, not just beat them. Herbert Lom is a scene-stealer as Gino, a former Italian P.O.W. who decided to stay in England after WWII. A gentleman with some brains, he bonds quickly with Tom, forming a fast friendship. Oh, there's more. The Hawlett drivers include Sean Connery, Sid James, Gordon Jackson, Alfie Bass, Wensley Pithey and George Murcell. Also look for Wilfrid Lawson as Ed, Hawlett's mechanic who also tests potential drivers' ability (watch Baker's test HERE). There's even small parts for David McCallum as Jimmy, Tommy's younger brother, and Jill Ireland as a waitress at the restaurant all the drivers eat at. 

A movie called 'Hell Drivers' about truck drivers transporting gravel certainly didn't sound like the most exciting background for a story, but Enfield's script (along with documentarian John Kruse) keeps things moving. The footage of the trucks driving along the roads has obviously been sped up, but it's still pretty cool. These big lorries roaring down the country roads, zipping in and around traffic, shortcuts through fields and quarries, it all ends up being solid action. A straightforward, enjoyable dramatic story with a more than worthwhile cast. Definitely seek this one out.

Hell Drivers (1957): ***/****

The Great Escape

I have two favorite movies, neither of which I'm able to pick one over the other.  I love them both, and all other movies come after it, first is 1960's The Alamo which I've reviewed before and then there's 1963's The Great Escape. Introduced to it at a young age when I showed an interest in history, I've probably seen it 25 or 30 times straight through, and another 75 or 100 catching bits and pieces. For me, it is that rare perfect movie. Great story, impressive cast, exciting action, and one of the best soundtracks ever. You can't ask for much more.

In World War II, both the Allies and Axis forces had to deal with how to handle prisoners of wars. In Germany, the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, was placed in charge of these Allied prisoners, placing them in P.O.W. camps all over their occupied territory. These prisoners -- as was their sworn duty -- tried countless escapes over the length of the war in typically small groups, sometimes getting as many as a dozen out. But one true story set the bar for heroism and courage among the prisoners, the true story of 76 prisoners escaping Stalag Luft III in March 1944. Literally hundreds of prisoners were involved in the effort as the escape even had an impact on D-Day some three months later.

It's 1943, and a new prison camp has been built. The German Luftwaffe has taken the worst prisoners from all their camps and thrown them in this new camp that features all the security aspects they've learned from previous camps.  In this "perfect" camp, the Germans (Hannes Messemer is the commandant) intend to watch these men very carefully. Leading the prisoners is Roger Bartlett (Richard Attenborough), dubbed 'Big X' for his leadership at the top of the 'X Organization,' a team of prisoners working together to bust out as many captured soldiers as they can. Bartlett has bigger plans though this time around. Instead of just getting two or three prisoners out, he intends to get 250 out of the camp with a large-scale plan that includes three extremely long tunnels under the barbed-wire fence. The plan seems impossible, but the prisoners go to work, slowly working their way toward escape.

Do you know the line 'They don't make them like they used to?' This movie applies. Director John Sturges (one of my favorites and an underrated filmmaker overall) turns in his all-time best film, one that stands at or near the top in the lexicon of World War II movies. It is based in fact, sticking to the details and truths in the story, without getting bogged down.  There is action, humor (never overplayed, just natural humor arising from the situation), and characters you love and are generally rooting for. Composer Elmer Bernstein turns in a score that is one of the greats, especially the main theme, listen HERE. Bernstein's score both drives the story as needed and keeps it grounded in the quieter, emotional scenes (including one where a tunnel is discovered and its tragic consequences).  Sturges filmed in Germany -- as his assistant said, 'Germany looks like Germany.' An entire camp was built, an exact duplicate of the actual camp, bringing this 1963 epic up another notch in terms of realism and authenticity.

Sturges' movies were famous for their male-dominated ensemble casts, but this may be his most impressive. Start with Steve McQueen as Hilts, the motorcycle-riding 'Cooler King,' the role that shot him to international stardom. Then there's James Garner as Hendley, the scrounger, and Attenborough as Bartlett, the prisoner's top man, a brilliant mind who comes up with this improbable plan. Not bad, huh? Oh yeah, there's also James Donald as Ramsey, the senior British officer, Charles Bronson and John Leyton as Danny and Willie, the tunnel kings, James Coburn as Sedgwick, the manufacturer, Donald Pleasence as Blythe, the forger, David McCallum as Ashley-Pitt, "dispersal," and Gordon Jackson as MacDonald, the intelligence officer. Other prisoners include Nigel Stock, Jud Taylor and Angus Lennie in a small but essential part as Ives, Hilt's progressively wire-happy partner. A more impressive cast could be impossible to assemble.

What is amazing is that even with all those stars -- some on the rise, some already established -- is that they all register, they all make a lasting impression in a positive way. More on McQueen later, but Attenborough delivers a career-best as Big X, the driven even obsessed leader who wants to take the war back to the Germans, not sitting out the war comfortably as his captors intend. Garner's Hendley bonds with Pleasence's Blythe in some of the movie's most touching scenes, two very different people forming a friendship. Bronson and Leyton as the tunnel kings certainly make an impression, carving three tunnels out of the Earth 30 feet below the surface. Bronson is at his best, a Polish flyer with claustrophobia who hides his fear of small, enclosed spaces and digs. Coburn doesn't get a ton to do compared to the others, but is his usual, laconic self. There is not a weakness in the cast from top to bottom.

When movie fans think of The Great Escape, they usually go right to Steve McQueen, a rising star who got his crack at the big time here and didn't disappoint.  His Capt. Virgil Hilts is one of his most iconic roles, the loner, trouble-making American prisoner who attempts escape attempt after attempt.  What's funny is that his character basically disappears for vast stretches of the movie, only to reappear after a stint in the cooler and steal every scene he is in. This is McQueen at his laid back, scene-stealing best. With all the notable actor's actors around him, he is the unquestioned star thanks in great part to the finale, a motorcycle chase across Germany with his captors in hot pursuit. It is one of the greatest chases sequences ever, caped with one of the most impressive stunts ever, a 7-foot jump by stunt man Bud Ekins over a high-strung barbed-wire fence. McQueen is my favorite, but this is always his best to me.

With a final run-time of 2 hours and 53 minutes, Sturges' true story doesn't have to rush along at a lightning pace...but does anyway. The first 105 minutes or so focus exclusively on the escape attempt, putting all the little details together that need to happen. The first and biggest of course is the digging of the tunnels, 30 feet down and over 300 feet straight out. A track is built to transport prisoners/diggers, and wooden boards are needed to shore up the entire length of the tunnel. Up above, forgers create documents, tailors make clothes, Intelligence gathers information, all part of an elaborate system of security and watchmen to make sure nothing is discovered by their ever-vigilant German guards. It would have been easy for this movie to get bogged down in these details, but The Great Escape revels in them, making the mundane and possibly boring, exciting at a breakneck pace.

It is a movie called 'The Great Escape' though, and it is at its most exciting once the prisoners do escape, 76 of them in the dead of night spread out all over the German countryside. The escape attempt covers the last hour of the movie, an incredible extended sequence that is hard to top. It is almost entirely dialogue free, Bernstein's score playing over the action the whole way. Finally free of their camp, the prisoners make their efforts to hopefully reach freedom, some by train, some by bikes, others by planes, and in Hilts' case, a stolen German motorcycle.  Sturges was an action master, and this may be his tour de force sequence.

I could go on and on with this movie, and I've already sort of done so. My head is full of little tidbits of information that I've picked up over the course of repeated viewings.  Above all else through the drama, the facts, and the action is that Sturges gets the tone right from Paul Brickhill's source novel, and most importantly, the true story it is based on. These men did the impossible in an impossible situation. Knowing their chances of escape back to freedom were slim, they plodded on when they could have just as easily quit. If you didn't know and just read the details -- check out the Wikipedia entry HERE for more details -- you would say there's no way this happened, but somehow, some way, it did. The ending hits you square in the stomach as it should, but the movie ends on a positive note; McQueen's Hilts once again in the cooler, bouncing his baseball off the wall.  You may capture him again, but you'll never stop him from trying.

A perfect movie, one of the best around, and one of my two favorite movies.

The Great Escape <---trailer (1963): ****/****