Nevada Smith

Just a few weeks ago, I watched and reviewed 1964's The Carpetbaggers, the story of a business mogul expanding his empire in the 1920s and 1930s. A minor character in the story? An aging cowboy turned western movie star, Nevada Smith. His backstory is explained but not shown. That's for a prequel made two years later, 1966's Nevada Smith.

Working at his father's played-out mine that has recently produced some gold deposits, a young half-breed Max Sand (Steve McQueen) is away from the house when three outlaws (Karl Malden, Arthur Kennedy, Martin Landau) ride up looking for that gold. Max is too late to help though, arriving at the house to find the tortured, mutilated corpses of his parents. The outlaws are nowhere to be found, but their trail is easy enough to follow. Max's biggest problem though? He's capable of caring for himself on the trail, but he has little money and no real experience with guns, especially when it comes to actually using a pistol or rifle on a human being. Desperate and with no supplies left, Max tries to rob a man on the trail. Instead, the man, Jonas Cord (Brian Keith), an experienced trailsman and capable shot, teaches Max all he can in his quest for revenge. His biggest advice though? Abandon his quest for revenge and move on with his life, but Max isn't hearing it.

It had been years since I watched this 1966 western from director Henry Hathaway (a solid western director, True Grit, Sons of Katie Elder). My biggest takeaway? It isn't as good as I remembered. Still good, still enjoyable, but not as good. There's still positives to take away though. 'Nevada' was filmed on-location in Inyo National Forest and the Owens Valley in the Sierra Mountains. Visually, it is a stunningly good-looking film with the mountains as a backdrop to the revenge story. The score from composer Alfred Newman is solid -- especially the main theme -- but isn't necessarily used enough. The best thing going is the revenge motive, a pretty gruesome story at times. Not graphic, just really violent because we know what's happening. Stabbings, drownings, choking, beating, systematic shooting of an unarmed man. It can be pretty rough at times.

So if you watch this 1966 western and come away a little confused, there's a good reason. The Max Sand character is young, really young. I'm assuming a teenager, maybe approaching 20. When the movie was made in 1965, McQueen was...35. And he's a half-breed with a white father and Kiowa mother. So yeah, he doesn't really look like a teenage half-breed (with his blonde hair too) in a pretty obvious case of miscasting. Still, McQueen makes the most of it. With the revenge motive, it is a fascinating character. Max -- later dubbing himself Nevada Smith -- becomes obsessed with killing his parents' murderers no matter what the cost on those who are helping him. McQueen does a good job in a physically demanding part, doing his own stunts while also adding a dimension of pure physicality to the performance. It's not often spoken words, just a sad look here, a drop of his shoulders there. Not ideal casting, but McQueen makes the most of it.

But the rest of the cast? The rest of the cast?!? It's pretty great. Brian Keith has always been one of my favorites, but I think this is one of his bests. His Jonas Cord is only in the movie for about 20-25 minutes but steals every scene he's in. His chemistry with McQueen is pretty perfect, and their scenes together crackle, an experienced hand with a gun trying to teach the younger Max all he can through good and bad. The Jonas/Max dynamic has always been my favorite, the movie's strongest point. With the episodic story, Malden, Kennedy and Landau make the most of their screentime, three particularly nasty villains you can't wait to see get their due. Raf Vallone is good too as Father Zaacardi, a priest who comes across Max and helps him in a time of need. Also look for familiar western faces Gene Evans, Paul Fix, Pat Hingle, John Doucette, Lyle Bettger, Howard Da Silva and Strother Martin in supporting parts.

Where does 'Nevada' go a little off the tracks then? At 130 minutes, it drifts too much with some extremely slow portions involving the episodic story. There just isn't a ton of energy at times. Two semi-love interests are added, Janet Margolin as an Indian dance hall girl and Suzanne Pleshette as a Cajun girl, are meant to show Max's obsession over a possible future with either, but they become repetitive and tedious. Just not a ton happens. The performances are good, the locations cool, but it's missing that special something. Good but not great.

Also worth mentioning is a western nerd moment. Any western fan who's seen any number of 1960s westerns will recognize Chuck Roberson, Chuck Hayward and Jerry Gatlin as background players and supporting parts. 'Nevada' takes that to new levels. Watch closely and you see them all playing multiple parts. In one scene, Roberson is part of Malden's gang, and the next he's Paul Fix's deputy. It's a little much and a little lazy, something Hathaway also did in Sons of Katie Elder. Thus ends this rant.

Nevada Smith (1966): ** 1/2 /****

Fate is the Hunter

When I think of disaster movies, I think The Poseidon Adventure and other 1970s epically bad but still enjoyable movies with huge casts of stars and dated special effects.  Through the 1950s and 1960s, disaster movies were made, just not on the same scale.  Only part of 1964's Fate is the Hunter really matches up with any of the criteria for a disaster flick, but it foreshadows what was to come in the coming decades as audiences watched planes crash, earthquakes tear apart the world, towering buildings go up in flames and much, much more.

Director Ralph Nelson takes control of the helms here in this quasi-disaster flick which is both ahead of its time in storytelling but also very dated at times.  Nelson is one of those hidden gems of a director you stumble across every so often.  He was never pigeon-holed into one specific type of movie and ended up directing films across countless genres.  Action, western, drama, comedy, message movies, he tried them all and did them all well.  Never flashy but always getting the job done in above average fashion, Nelson doesn't have a true classic to his name, but his filmography is nonetheless littered with worthwhile movies.

On a flight from Los Angeles to Seattle, veteran pilot Capt. Jack Savage (Rod Taylor) and his crew run into mechanical problems and are forced to crash land on a beach, the jet airliner exploding on contact with a pier running across the beach. Everyone on board other than one stewardess (Suzanne Pleshette) is killed, and the public, the corporation, and the media want answers.  What happened that caused Savage to attempt such a difficult maneuver? All evidence points to pilot error being the cause, but airline executive, former pilot and friend of Savage's, Sam McBane (Glenn Ford), thinks something else happened. Time is running out though, and McBane must prove Savage's innocence before a board of inquiry pins the blame on the deceased pilot.

Wasting little time surprising the viewer, Nelson kills off star Rod Taylor before the credits even roll.  Just when you think Taylor's Savage has successfully landed his jet airliner carrying 49 passengers...BOOM! The plane explodes, and 'Fate is the Hunter' pops up on the screen.  Talk about a tone-setter. No worries though for Taylor fans, this is not the last we'll see of him.  His involvement in the movie from there on in besides his character being constantly talked about is through flashbacks that flesh him out as an individual.  It's those little bits of character that should help us decide if this experienced, always calm and capable pilot was really incapable of dealing with what seemed like a minor mechanical issue.  Long story short, don't miss the first 10 minutes, or you'll be lost.

The problem any movie faces when it has such a strong start is sustaining that energy over the length of the movie.  That's where 'Hunter' struggles.  The investigation is interesting enough because it's hard not to be curious about what actually caused the plane to malfunction in such a surprising way.  But Ford's questioning gets tedious quickly.  The flashbacks are beyond tedious and serve only to make Savage more of a 3-D character.  After the first flashback, it becomes too much.  We get it.  He's a good pilot who is cocky, arrogant, not always likable and quite the ladies man.  But is a movie really going to peg Taylor as a boozehound who caused the deaths of over 50 people? I think not.  It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of how Taylor didn't crash the plane because he was drunk. 

Worse than that though (as a Lost fan I can appreciate even the slowest of flashbacks) is the direction Ford's character and the story takes overall in the final half hour.  Now granted, the word 'Fate' is in the movie's title.  As the evidence comes together and Ford's McBane talks to all these possible witnesses, he begins to question if maybe, just maybe, fate played a role in that plane crashing.  An out of season bird may have flown into the engine, three other planes were all off-schedule by a few minutes, the pier was supposed to have been removed a week earlier, it just doesn't add up.  Was something else at play here? Ford's testimony is even worse when he admits all this.  I can't tell if it is just all too sappy or handled poorly, but if Nelson was trying to deliver a message with this change in direction it didn't work.  I haven't read the source novel to know one way or another, but the ending disappoints on a lot of levels.

The redeeming factor through all the negatives is the impressive cast assembled here.  Ford is never flashy but is as reliable as always with Taylor making the most of his posthumous part...in character at least. Pleshette has a small but integral part (and looks great by the way). Also look for Nancy Kwan, Constance Towers, Jane Russell in a cameo as herself in 1945, Nehemiah Persoff, an uncredited Dorothy Malone, Max Showalter, Wally Cox and many more recognizable faces even if you don't know their name. Other than the cast and some nice-looking black and white camerawork, I struggled to get through this movie.  Potentially good but never amounts to anything much.

Fate is the Hunter <---trailer (1964): **/****