Mystery Street

Since 2000 when CSI: Las Vegas premiered, the CBS police procedural/forensics has given viewers a look into the behind the scenes lives of police officers and crime scene investigators.  In this modern age of technology, the equipment available to investigators is truly amazing, able to analyze evidence seemingly in minutes.  Well, it's easy to take it for granted, especially when CSI has spinoffs, and other shows like Law and Order and Bones deal with the same topic.  It wasn't always that easy before computers made police work "easier."

Released in 1950 at the height of the film noir popularity, Mystery Street shows the life of a police investigator doing his job the only way he knows how, getting out on the streets and following up any piece of evidence or clue that could help solve the case. It reminded me a lot of All the President's Men where two reporters do the same thing trying to break a story that ends up being the Watergate scandal.  The procedures seem archaic now watching them, but the story certainly gives a look at what old-fashioned police work entailed over 60 years ago.

Driving out of Boston to meet an acquaintance and deliver some important news, call girl/escort Vivian Heldon (Jan Sterling) picks up a drunk man, Henry Shanway (Marshall Thompson) drinking his worries away after his wife lost their baby in labor. Vivian leaves Henry stranded in the middle of nowhere to go meet her mystery man who then shoots her, buries her naked on the beach and dumps the stolen car in a deep pond.  Six months pass, and the bones are found.  A local detective working for the district attorney, Peter Moralas (Ricardo Montalban), leads the investigation with help from a Boston officer (Wally Maher) to follow what little evidence they have. A Harvard medical professor (Bruce Bennett) may be their only hope as he starts to analyze the found bones, hoping it leads to something, anything that could help solve the case.

Some reviewers at IMDB asked if this was the first ever police procedural movie? I know there were others before this (Jules Dassin's The Naked City was released in 1948), but it is clear this is one of the first of many that would follow.  Think of an extended episode of Law and Order or CSI that runs about 90 minutes and this is the movie you'd get. The script isn't anything out of the ordinary, and the case itself is one you will have seen if you've watched even a few cop/lawyer TV shows.  Still, there's a grittiness to the story that keeps it interesting.  The acting is solid, director John Sturges doesn't waste time on any unnecessary subplots, and there are some very cool shots of Boston neighborhoods as the investigation moves along.

Once the investigation is laid out for Montalban's character, the story is nothing new, but the opening of the movie certainly gets points for originality.  Sturges introduces a handful of characters without explaining much as to what's going on or who they are.  Then, BAM! The cute blonde is dead, stripped and buried, and the story fast forwards 6 months to when a man walking on the beach sees bones poking out of the sand and reports them to the police.  As a viewer, we're given just enough information to make us think we know what's going on, but let's face it, we're in the dark. We're a little bit ahead of Montalban and the police but not by much. We still don't know motive or who did it, making the somewhat worn story flow along at an easier clip.

Leading the cast, this is the Ricardo Montalban I am a fan of.  We're not talking Fantasy Island here, we're talking a solid actor who was one of the first Mexican actors to hit it big in Hollywood.  The early part of his career was defined by roles like this, a Hispanic character doing a job who also has to worry about prejudices and racial undertones from the people he's working with. There is just enough of a racial edge to the story and his character to make it interesting without being overbearing. The rest of the cast is solid if unspectacular, starting with Sally Forrest as Grace Shanway, Henry's wife who is sure her husband couldn't have done what he's being accused of.  Bennett is good as the Harvard professor helping the investigation (even if his techniques are lost on everyone around him), Thompson is good at looking worried, Elsa Lanchester hams it up as Mrs. Smerling, the owner of Vivian's boarding house, Betsy Blair is a friend and neighbor of Vivian, and Edmon Ryan plays Harkley, a man Vivian ran across months before.

Watching the case and clues materialize, I couldn't help but think how police and law enforcement agencies caught anyone in a pre-computer era. All a killer would have had to do was start driving and don't look back.  By the time the police figured out what was going on, he could be in Russia. Still, it's a cool look at an era that is most definitely a thing of the past.  Now it is a movie so Montalban and Co. obviously get their guy. The finale is typical Sturges, solid action with some great camerawork, filming a chase scene in a train station and a rail yard as the murderer attempts to get away. An interesting noir overall with a mix of police procedural.

Mystery Street <---TCM trailer (1950): ***/****

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

Rags to riches stories, the American dream at its best.  Musicians, athletes, movie stars, so many seem to follow a similar career arc. Whole shows like VH1's Behind the Music followed an almost identical show about rock stars.  Meteoric rise to fame, brief period at the top, and landslide to the bottom.  Movies like Ray and Walk the Line told the true stories of Ray Charles and Johnny Cash, and as was the case with all of the above mentioned things, they were just begging to be spoofed.  It's just too easy not to.  That's where 2007's Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story steps in.

In this not so thinly veiled dig at Johnny Cash and Walk the Line (and on a bigger level anything concerning music), every one and every thing in the music business is fair game.  Starring as Dewey Cox is one of the most underrated actors in Hollywood -- drama or comedy -- John C. Reilly. Starting with Reilly, the talent involved here is downright impressive including writer Judd Apatow and a huge cast that make spot-on cameos and fill out the supporting roles.  Both equally stupid and smart, this is just a funny movie, pure and simple.

At the young age of 6, Dewey Cox accidentally slices his brother in two at the waist when a machete fight (yes, a machete fight) goes horrifically wrong.  With that trauma hanging over his head, Dewey grows up, turning to music as an outlet.  He takes to it right away, and when he's kicked out of the house at 14 by his resentful father, Dewey (O'Reilly) tries to get into the music business. He skyrockets to the top with his hit song, Walk Hard <---music video, and is on the way to the top.  But his climb to the top comes at a price, and it's only a matter of time before you reach the summit, and there's no way to go but down.  For Dewey, it's a big drop.

Playing Dewey, Reilly gives him this sort of bumpkin charm where he's beyond stupid one second but genuinely funny the next.  He borders that fine line between over the top, idiotic stereotype and a character you actually like.  Reilly is one of the funniest actors in Hollywood right now, combining really broad physical/slapstick humor (Dewey's go-to move when angry is ripping sinks out of the wall) with subtle line deliveries ("I think I'm doing okay for a 15-year old with a wife and a baby").  Helping the character and his rise and fall is that the music is genuinely good.  Sure, the lyrics are usually a joke, but they sound good, especially Walk Hard.  

Following Dewey's career, it's not just Johnny Cash that is in line for some digs.  Dewey goes through phases of country, folk, punk rock, psychedelic rock, disco, and a couple others I'm probably forgetting.  These are some of the movie's most inspired moments.  Dewey becomes a Bob Dylan knock-off (watch/listen HERE) in trying to stay relevant, doing a spot-on impression of Dylan.  We meet Elvis (The White Stripes' Jack White), Buddy Holly (Frankie Muniz), and in the movie's far and away best scene, Dewey visiting the Beatles in India in 1968 during their psychedelic phase.  The Beatles are going through some internal struggles (a rift as Dewey calls it) which produce some of the movie's best laughs.  Watch it HERE. Jack Black plays Paul, Paul Rudd is John, Justin Long is George, and Jason Schwartzman plays Ringo. 

With a story that covers over 50 years, there's a fair share of characters that Dewey comes across during his up and down career.  Just about every comedic actor around gets a scene or two in this flick.  Playing Dewey's long-suffering band are Tim Meadows (his running bit about introducing Dewey to new drugs is priceless), Chris Parnell and Matt Besser. SNL star Kristen Wiig plays Dewey's wife who he marries (at 14) when she's 12 while Jenna Fischer is the true love of his life and fellow singer/performer Darlene. David Krumholtz is his one-note manager, Raymond J. Barry his resentful father, Harold Ramis and Martin Starr as Jewish record execs, Craig Robinson as a rival club singer, and many, many more recognizable faces. Even look for musicians like Eddie Vedder, Lyle Lovett and Jewel making appearances as themselves.

Parts of the movie don't work as well as others, but that's to be expected with a comedy.  It can be hard sustaining that frenetically funny pace over 90-plus minutes. Overall, Walk Hard avoids that pretty well for about an hour.  But when the story hits 1976 and the disco era, the pacing hits a major roadblock.  It knows where it wants to end up but not quite how to get there.  That last half hour is a tad on the slow side without the laughs.  Balancing it out though, that first hour is about as funny as a comedy can be.  It works out in the end, and there's just too much talent here to pass on this movie.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story <---trailer (2007): ***/****

Assault on a Queen

I don't know if there's an actor/performer who was so effortlessly cool as Frank Sinatra. On-stage as a performer, his cool factor is unquestionable.  As an actor, he started off in the 1950s with more serious roles that allowed him to show what a talented actor he was, and then in the 1960s starting making more fan friendly movies like his Rat Pack flicks.  It was this part of his career that reminds me of John Wayne's later career. Both men did movies that appealed to them, and screw anyone who didn't enjoy them.  Going in, you can probably figure out the ending before the movie starts.

That's exactly what 1966's Assault on a Queen felt like to me. A heist movie with a handful of other elements thrown in, this felt like a rehash of other better movies while still maintaining some level of interest and entertainment.  Sinatra would only make a handful of more movies after 1966, and this clearly isn't his best acting performance.  Some reviews complain that he's sleepwalking through the part, and it's hard to prove otherwise.  Laid back and playing a variation on many characters he played in his career, Sinatra is as always still very watchable.  The movie is average in every way with a ludicrous heist involved, but that's part of the fun.  Just how stupidly entertaining can it get?

Operating a small fishing boat with his partner and drinking buddy, Linc (Errol John), former submarine officer Mark Brittain (Sinatra) is content to take tourists out fishing so he has enough money for food and booze (not necessarily in that order). Hard up for money though, Mark signs on with a mysterious couple, Vic Rossiter (Tony Franciosa) and Rosa Lucchesi (Italian beauty Virna Lisi), who are looking for sunken treasure in the Caribbean. During a dive, Mark doesn't find buried treasure, instead stumbling across a sunken WWII German sub.  One of Vic's partners, a former U-boat commander, Eric (Alf Kjellin), comes up with a crazy idea.  What if they were able to raise the sunken ship which seems to be in good condition, and use it as a pirating vessel? Vic has the perfect target, the Queen Mary and its on-board safe that almost certainly has millions of dollars and gold bars.  It seems ridiculous, but could it somehow work?

I fancy myself a fan of heist movies, and like to think I know a few things here and there about them, but the premise here is beyond ridiculous.  A WWII German sub that's been sitting on the bottom of the ocean for 20 years is not only going to be raised to the surface, but then outfitted and rehabbed so it can be taken on the open sea and pull a con job on a huge ocean liner packed with tourists?  I couldn't help but get a chuckle out of the premise.  That's what you're going with?  Working off a Rod Serling screenplay, director Jack Donahue certainly has some guts. I'll give credit when it's due though. Donahue, Serling, and the cast commit to this ridiculous story and take it seriously.  It's never campy, never a spoof of heist movies.  If it had gone that direction, the movie would have gone downhill quickly.

The movie is limited by an obvious lack of any sort of budget.  Any of the diving scenes are clearly not Sinatra with some awful uses of a stunt double with a fuller head of hair stepping in for him.  Any scenes on the sub that contain a close-up of any of the principals is a green screen shot filmed on a set/stage somewhere, and then cut to look like they're sailing the high seas.  The whole movie has that look of being an indoors movie, like the cast and crew never saw the light of day during filming.  Any outdoor shots are second unit shots with no recognizable faces involved.  Low budget doesn't necessarily mean bad, but the effort here is severely hampered by lack of funds.

Here we are again, a motley crew of thieves and specialists working together to pull off the impossible job.  Yes, it's a men (and a woman) on a mission movie. Sinatra is Sinatra in the lead, a part that gives little background information other than his sole interest in the mission seems tied to winning Lisi's hand.  Italian beauty Virna Lisi is quite the looker and is given any number of excuses to be in slinky, tight-fitting outfits.  I've never heard a mangling of English quite as nice sounding as Lisi's attempt.  Franciosa is a bright spot, trying his best to make the most of the material.  I can't think of Franciosa as anything but a smooth, suave baddie, and he's solid here in that part.  Kjellin is the wild card, we're not always sure of his intentions, with Richard Conte playing Tony, his weaselly mechanic. John gets a couple chances to shine in a solid supporting part.

So while the heist premise is ridiculous, you can't help but wonder how they'll actually attempt to pull this job off.  The heist execution makes up for a slow-moving first hour-plus because we have a general sense of how this plan will work, but nothing in detail.  Not surprisingly, it doesn't go as planned, forcing Mark, Vic, Eric and the team to improvise.  As a movie overall, it lacks a certain energy -- thanks to a dull but still underused musical score -- and any feeling of urgency of getting somewhere interesting.  Worthwhile mostly because of the cast, for die hard heist fans only.

Assault on a Queen <--- opening titles (1966): **/****

Pulp Fiction

When I reviewed Inglorious Basterds over a year ago, I said that there isn't as divisive a director as Quentin Tarantino currently working in Hollywood.  I stand by that statement still.  Is he immensely talented, an eccentric movie lover? Or is he a hack, taking here and there from previously successful movies and making them his own?  Is it a bad thing that it seems he falls somewhere in between?  I think he's both. Of course, if you're not a fan of his, it's going to take more than that to appreciate the man's films.  To each his own.  Like anything with movies, it comes down to personal preference.

What's impressive about Tarantino and the love-hate relationship moviegoers have with him is that the man just doesn't have a lot of films to his name.  He picks projects that appeal to him, not just taking anything that comes down the road.  Of the 15 directorial claims IMDB makes, only eight are feature length projects.  In their own right, each can be called in a classic (okay, a minor classic in some cases), and fans have their own individual favorites.  For many, it's an easy decision, and the movie that always seems to come up is 1994's Pulp Fiction, Tarantino's first movie after the surprising success of 1992's Reservoir Dogs.

I don't put much stock in the IMDB's fan rating system which allows fan voting to show how good/bad a movie is.  Pulp Fiction currently sits at No. 5 all-time.  I don't think it's close to being one of the top five greatest movies of all-time, but then again, IMDB voters have The Shawshank Redemption as No. 1 so take that for what's it worth.  This is a good intro to Tarantino for fans not familiar with him.  Long scenes of uninterrupted dialogue broken up by brief but extreme moments of graphic violence, style to spare, and a cast that any movie fan should be able to appreciate.  Here goes an attempt to give some sort of plot synopsis, however muddled it may be. Interweaving storylines, characters in and out of the story, and a non-linear plot certainly keep you on your toes.

Two low-level enforcer/hit men, Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson), have been dispatched on a mission from their boss, Marsellus Graham (Ving Rhames). Someone owes him money, and Vincent and Jules intend to get it back.  Vincent's also been assigned an unusual task, go on a date with Marsellus' wife, Mia (Uma Thurman) while the boss is out of town. Also going on, Marsellus has arranged for aging boxer, Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis), to throw a fight for big money, but Butch has other plans that only he knows about.  On top of that, two bottom-tier thieves (Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer) are planning their next job, and everyone is involved whether they know it or not.

Where to start, where to start? Tarantino uses his usual chapters storytelling device, breaking up the 153-minute movie into smaller segments that aren't told in chronological order. For example, we see someone get killed in one chapter, but they're alive in the next.  Gimmicky, yes, but when handled right, it's a home run, and Tarantino brings it full circle, ending the movie exactly where it started. The soundtrack is full of classic rock songs, and really runs the gamut across genres.  Style-wise, Tarantino tells a story with his camera, blending long unedited takes with quick in your face editing at other times.  Question if you will what the director is showing, but just in terms of pure movie-making skill, it's hard to beat this guy.

By 1994, John Travolta's career was all but mainlining when he accepted this part to play hitman Vincent Vega.  It was the part that put him back in the limelight and earned him an Oscar nomination in the process.  For me personally, Travolta (and his interactions with Jackson) are what makes this movie special.  It's the little things that make it work.  I couldn't place Vince's accent if I tried, but it adds something to the character.  He's a little off, maybe a little crazy, but at the same time perfectly sane.  His dance scene with Uma Thurman (watch it HERE) is about as iconic, as memorable as anything to hit theaters in the last 20 years and is so sublimely perfect it's not even worth trying to explain. I loved this character and wish there was more of him.

With a story that bounces around as much as Pulp Fiction does, some characters/storylines get more in-depth than others.  On top of all those names mentioned above, there's also parts for Eric Stoltz, Rosanna Arquette, Steve Buscemi as a smarmy waiter, Tarantino stepping in front of the camera for a quick appearance, and two perfect parts for Christopher Walken and Harvey Keitel. Walken is on-screen for no more than two minutes but delivers one of the most movingly effective and equally funny monologues I've ever seen (watch it HERE).  Keitel nails his part as 'the Wolf,' a cleaner who fixes other people's messes.  Check out Keitel's entrance HERE. These are two small parts that Tarantino clearly loved writing, stylish and unnecessary but nonetheless giving a movie those little touches that can bring it up a notch.

As much as I loved certain parts of the movie, others just fell flat.  The Bruce Willis boxer subplot didn't work as well for me as the rest of the movie -- with the exception of the Walken scene -- and I found myself fast-forwarding through it.  Tarantino can be too self-indulgent at times, and the dialogue goes on too long at times.  That said, the positives make the negatives a minor problem.  Travolta, Jackson, Rhames, Walken, Keitel, Thurman, deliver amazingly memorable performances.  For all the dialogue that never stops, there's monologues (like Jackson's in the finale SPOILERS, HERE) that make you appreciate what good writing really is.  Flawed as a movie overall, yes, but one of the best flawed movies I've seen in awhile.

Pulp Fiction <---trailer (1994): *** 1/2 /****   

The One That Got Away

Right up there with John Wayne's The Alamo, The Great Escape is my favorite movie (either A or 1-A).  I love Stalag 17, Bridge on the River Kwai, Von Ryan's Express, and I can name a handful of other prisoner of war (P.O.W.) movies that I've stumbled across and really enjoyed.  WWII prisoners of war has always been an interest of mine, but for the most part the only stories I've seen are from the perspective of Allied prisoners captured by the Germans, Japanese, or Italian.

One of the exceptions is 1957's The One That Got Away, the true story of a German flier shot down over England in 1939 and his efforts that followed to escape from British and Canadian POW camps.  A major issue I had with the story is that it was going to be hard to root for this character to succeed.  Was it going to paint the Allies as bumbling idiots who couldn't contain this one individual? He's a German prisoner, am I sure I want his character to get back to Germany?  That ended up being a minor issue compared to one plot element used seconds into the movie.  It gives away the ending before we've even met anyone or the credits rolled. Kind of a momentum killer if you ask me.

It's early in the war in 1939 when German fighter pilot Franz von Werra (Hardy Kruger) is shot down over England and quickly captured by the locals. So early in the fighting, both sides are still figuring out the best way to handle captured soldiers, and Werra intends to take advantage of the situation. Working against him is the fact that he's known as a hero back home in Germany for his actions during combat, and his captors have no intention of letting him do as he plans.  But no matter where they send him, dogged Werra keeps working to escape whether it be in Britain where all he needs to do is get across the English Channel or even into Canada where an ocean will separate him from home and freedom.

A title card opening the movie explains that Franz von Werra was the only German prisoner of war to escape from a Canadian prison camp and return to Germany successfully.  Well, that takes the mystery away a little bit, doesn't it?  It is a movie based on a true story, but it is not a widely known and accepted story.  How many viewers going into this movie would have known that little tidbit of history? Director Roy Ward Baker makes a huge mistake in telling us that information, or at least in my mind he did. Part of the entertainment value from these movies is not knowing who will successfully escape in the end. Who is going to make it? Who will get caught and how? That's not an issue here. Franz von Werra is going to escape. It's only a matter of how.

What I love about The Great Escape is following the efforts of these prisoners as they desperately attempt escapes.  It's exciting, full of tension, and with Elmer Bernstein's score playing over the action, it's some of the best and most suspenseful action sequences I've ever come across.  All that energy, all that tension is missing here for vast stretches of story.  Werra's first escape attempt is an endless stream of him running shots followed by shots of his pursuers chasing him across the same fields. A second escape as he attempts to steal a British fighter and fly it to Germany is a high point of the movie, but it gets lost in a sea of slow-moving escapes.  The finale is painfully slow, and still comes across as rushed when all is said and done.

SPOILERS well, sort of SPOILERS So yes, von Werra escapes by making it to a then-neutral United States.  The movie closes with him being rescued after crossing a frozen over St. Laurence River only to have a title card explain what happened next.  The German pilot meets with some roadblocks only to escape into Mexico, Central America and South America before returning to Germany...only to go missing a year later in a flight in the north Atlantic.  For a movie that already clocks in at 110 minutes (and is sluggish at that length), it's an odd ending.  My first thought was that a whole movie about the closing explanation would have been miles ahead of the rest of the movie in terms of excitement levels.  Instead, the story is a series of vignettes that don't add up to much overall.

With his name the only one above the title, Kruger is the going away star here.  The British cast is not impressive with roles that are necessary for the sake of the story but not particularly interesting (sorry Colin Gordon and Michael Goodliffe, among others). The problem with the von Werra character is that regardless of his cultural/ethnicity background, German, British, American, he isn't likable.  He's too cocky, too sure of himself.  Kruger excelled in these roles and does a fine job here, but at no point was I rooting for him to pull off a successful escape.  It's an average movie based on facts that could have been interesting but never gels quite like it should. Give it a try if curious at Youtube, starting with Part 1 of 10.

The One That Got Away (1957): **/****

The Grand Duel

Over the holidays, I stumbled across a collection of movies at Best Buy that caught my eye.  It was one of those public domain sets that featured 44 spaghetti westerns (some of which I'd seen) for just $14.99.  Now I've been burned by collections like this in the past.  There's a reason many of these movies are available on the public domain, starting with the actual visual quality of the movies has gone downhill quickly over the years.  Some prints are just plain bad, low-quality transfers from old VHS tapes.  But reviews were kind to this set, stating that a fair share of the flicks were in very watchable widescreen versions with solid audio.  Besides for $15, it's hard to beat 44 movies even with a few duds.

First up of the 44 movies was 1972's Grand Duel, an average spaghetti western aided by the always entertaining Lee Van Cleef as the star.  For the most part, the Italian western genre was on the decline by 1972. After the mega successful Sergio Leone Dollars trilogy, the market was flooded with rehashes, remakes and knock-offs over a several year span.  That's not to say there aren't some winners among the 600 or so spaghettis that were made.  Some were classics of the sub-genre, others were god awful examples of how not to make a movie, and I imagine there will be a few in this collection.  For Grand Duel, it falls in between the two. Solid and entertaining, but never amounts to a highly memorable finished product. Still, it's Lee Van Cleef!

Having been on the trail for several weeks, Sheriff Clayton (Van Cleef) finally catches up with wanted outlaw, Phillip Wermeer (Alberto Dentice in his only film role) at a stagecoach way-station. The only problem? A gang of bounty hunters is also waiting to bring in the infamous outlaw. Clayton helps Phillip escape the gang, but they're close on the unlikely duo's tale.  Phillip is wanted for the murder of a noted (if corrupt) family patriarch in a neighboring town even though he claims his innocence.  Clayton believes him and knows who actually killed the old man.  Forming a partnership with quite a few betrayals and backstabbings, Clayton and Phillip ride for the town of Saxon where the three Saxon brothers are looking to exact revenge.  With a hidden silver mine on the line that only Phillip knows about, the stakes just got a little bigger.

It's hard to fault anyone for trying to duplicate success, but this flick feels like a definite rehash of a handful of other spaghettis I've seen. The older gunslinger teaming up with the younger unproven gunslinger was especially nothing new to Van Cleef (see For a Few Dollars More, Face to Face, Death Rides a Horse among others). The bad guys looking to make a legit business and not caring who gets killed in the process has been done at well.  The music while good (especially the main theme, listen HERE) sounds like any number of Morricone scores, although the comedic-sounding portions are incredibly out of place.  Still, there's something to be said for being familiar with a formula and sticking with it.  Yes, if you've seen even a few spaghetti westerns, this will seem like old hat, but it's in a good way.

For Lee Van Cleef, this is Colonel Mortimer, Sabata, and several other of his notable characters rolled into one.  Down to the black outfit with the flat-brimmed hat, Van Cleef looks like he raided the wardrobe of his previous movies.  But with that evil-looking smirk and hawk nose, seeing this western veteran in even an average movie is a welcome addition.  He's cool just standing there doing nothing.  Give his character a secret about a murder everyone is curious about, and thinks just got that much better.  The reviews are mixed on Dentice as Phillip, but for a guy who never made another movie, I thought he was pretty decent.  He plays off Van Cleef well, and you know from the start he's innocent.  It's just a matter of who actually shot the old man. 

One of the best things to come out of the spaghetti western genre was villains so bad, so over the top evil that there's just no way anyone this bad ever existed.  In Grand Duel, it's three baddies, the Saxon brothers ruling this western town with an iron fist with hopes of amounting to something in both business and politics.  First, there's David (Horst Frank), the politician of the group, the unofficial leader who puts everything into motion. Second, there's Eli (Marc Mazza), the muscle and intimidation now working as sheriff of the town.  And saving the best for last, there's Adam (Klaus Grunberg), the possibly albino or at least very pale, very effeminate gunman with a face scarred by small pox. In the over the top department, there's Grunberg's Adam brazenly gunning down a wagon train full of women and children with a very historically accurate machine gun.  Looking for quality villains, this is a good place to start.

While the middle portions of the movie can be a little slow, director Giancarlo Santi bookends his movie with great openings and closings.  The opener at the desert way station is full of tension and beautifully shot even if it does use some gymnastic, acrobatic techniques in the gunfights. The finale, Clayton vs. the three Saxon brothers, is almost a shot-for-shot re-do of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly's cemetery shootout, but it's still quality.  And in a spaghetti western made on a limited budget, there's not much more you can ask for. Average but worthwhile for a watch.

Grand Duel <---trailer (1972): ** 1/2 /****

Casino Royale (1966)

After a four-year gap since Pierce Brosnan's final James Bond movie, MI6 agent 007 returned in a big way in 2006 with Daniel Craig taking over the part of the secret agent.  It was a huge success and served as an excellent reboot for the franchise, quickly climbing into my top 5 all-time Bond flicks.  Why did it work? Like most of the best movies from the franchise, it stuck close to the Ian Fleming source novel that had not been made previously...in a serious fashion at least.  That's where 1966's awful Casino Royale jumps in.

By 1966, star Sean Connery had already completed four 007 movies and had turned James Bond into one of the world's biggest stars.  It was so popular that spoofs started popping up like James Coburn as Derek Flint and Dean Martin as Matt Helm among others.  I get it, strike when the iron is hot, but in a saturated market of spy and espionage movies -- serious and spoof -- don't you want to at least turn out a quality product?  With six different directors shooting different portions of the movie, this was like How the West Was Won: 007 Style.  Besides an occasional laugh here and there, the only redeeming quality is an out-of-this world (if wasted) cast, but more on that later.

All over the world, American, British, Russian, and French agents are turning up dead and their agencies don't have the slightest clue or evidence as to who's pulling off the jobs.  The agency heads turn to retired MI6 agent, Sir James Bond (David Niven), to root out the problem. Bond is a legend in the espionage business, but his best days are behind him, and he questions what has happened to the field he worked so well in, carving out a name and reputation for himself.  He concocts a crazy plan to smoke out whoever is behind the murders; using his name, agents all over the world (Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress, Daliah Lavi, Joanna Pettet, Woody Allen, Terence Cooper) will see if working as bait draws the mastermind out of his lair. The plan might be too good though because SMERSH and mastermind Le Chiffre (Orson Welles) send agents to kill the original and still best James Bond around.

Now anyone familiar with Casino Royale -- Fleming's novel or the Craig movie -- knows that the plot described there is nothing like the book or the movie.  Bond's effort to detain Le Chiffre at the baccarat table is handled in a scene that takes about 10 minutes, not an entire movie.  Using other spy spoofs as an example, there is clearly potential here.  A character as ripe for the picking as James Bond is hard to mess up in the humor department, but this movie is a mess.  For all the subtle, perfectly delivered lines that pepper the script, there's huge scenes of excess of physical and slapstick humor that even Mel Brooks must have shaken his head at.  The finale is the worst of all with one of the 14 directors obviously not knowing where to cut things off.

Let's start with the crazy amount of talent involved here behind the camera, including John Huston (also playing M in one scene) and Robert Parrish among four other less notable names.  The writing too includes Sellers, Billy Wilder, and Joseph Heller.  How did this much talent put together such an awful movie? On top of the cast listed above, there's also parts for Deborah Kerr, William Holden, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Peter O'Toole (on-screen for about 6 seconds), Charles Boyer, George Raft, Jacqueline Bisset, and Barbara Bouchet. What's worse is that the cast appears to be having a blast making the picture.  It's just that much worse that what they're working with is beneath all of their talent.  Bit parts and extended cameos for almost all of these names limit actual on-screen time, but just in terms of name power, this movie is impressive.

The only star that I thought was legitimately good was David Niven as retired 007, Sir James Bond, enjoying his retirement in an isolated English country villa only to be thrust back into the world of espionage.  Because it is an older Bond, Niven has some fun with the part, poking fun at Connery's portrayal especially.  He gets some good laughs from his constant curiosity of how all secret agents have become sex fiends, leaving lonely, beautiful women in every city all over the Earth.  He shakes his head at all the changes he sees in the life of a spy only to embrace them once he's back into it.  A professional plain and simple, Niven makes the most of the material, rising above it to deliver a worthwhile performance.

So this movie was bad, downright awful at times, okay? I am scraping the bottom of the barrel here looking for something to write about.  Most of the movie was just so stupid and dumb I can't even complain.  It's so bad it is surreal at times.  So what can I recommend? If nothing else with this overabundance of characters, the script calls for a long list of beautiful actresses who are required to wear slinky outfits and do little else.  Kerr, Lavi, Pettet, Andress, and Bouchet are all half-naked for about 90% of the movie, and that's all I've got.  So stupidly bad, this movie has to be seen to be believed.

Casino Royale <---trailer (1966): */****

McCabe and Mrs. Miller

Revisionist westerns are completely hit or miss with me.  Made mostly in the 1960s and early 1970s as Americans and people around the world undoubtedly became a little more skeptical, a little more cynical, these westerns tried to show what the wild west was really like.  I go back and forth because I can appreciate the west was not the one so often portrayed in John Wayne movies.  It just wasn't a romantic place where everything ended with the good guys winning out.  Some revisionist westerns just go too far though.  There's a middle ground between the romantic and just ripping apart a myth or a legend for the sake of doing it.  One of the best I've come across though, proof that a revisionist look at the old west can be a classic, 1971's McCabe and Mrs. Miller.

Sometimes these westerns are prime examples of the period they were made in.  Director Robert Altman is certainly guilty of that here with his folk music soundtrack coming across as too lyrical and just trying too hard overall. But other than the poor choice in music, I feel safe saying Altman makes a nearly perfect western...if you can call this a western.  It is one of the most realistic looks a movie has ever given about what frontier life was really like.  It was a lawless place where one must fend for themselves.  Death lurked around any corner waiting to strike.  Maybe it's an anti-western, I really don't know.  But just on pure emotion with an ability to tell the simplest, darkest of stories, Altman delivers a winner.

Its the Pacific Northwest in the 1890s, and a man named John McCabe (Warren Beatty) rides into a small, muddy one-road mining town high up in the mountains.  He has his sights set on building a successful business for himself and letting the money roll in.  The plan goes perfectly as he brings three prostitutes in and goes about building a saloon for all the miners living nearby.  McCabe is quickly approached by a madam, Mrs. Constance Miller (Julie Christie), who wants to help him improve his business.  Not quite sure if he wants to go into business with a woman as a partner, McCabe wavers before ultimately deciding to do it.  It's the right choice, and his business thrives.  If anything, it thrives too much though.  The company that owns the nearby mines is very aware of his success and wants their fair share of the profits.

At the heart of this movie is Beatty and Christie as these two very similar flawed characters who find a common link between them through their arguments and disagreements.  This is the type of relationship that so many westerns attempt to show between a man and woman.  It's just natural, never forced.  The duo was actually dating in real life apart from the movie, and their chemistry certainly shows.  They have an easy-going back and forth in their conversations, whether it be an argument or a quiet discussion as they discuss what to do next.  It's also a plus that in two actors like Beatty and Christie, neither made a long list of movies during their careers.  They clearly chose quality projects to do, and this is a perfect example.

Altman has that rare knack that few directors have, an artsy reputation who still appeals to a mainstream audience.  I like his directing style because it's never in your face.  He places his camera there for a scene and lets things develop.  He filmed in West Vancouver in the mountains, giving a palatable feel of being separated from humanity in this mountaintop town.  It is a gorgeous movie, one that earned cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond a British Oscar nomination for his camerawork. It is a movie that feels authentic down to its very roots and the muddy streets these characters walk through.  The dialogue, the period dress, the sets, the guns, all authentic as possible.

Now I've made no qualms about my preference for darker, cynical movies that shy away from generic happy endings, but this one bugged me to the point where I felt sick as the ending neared.  The whole tone of the movie led me to figure out how the story was going to end up, but even seeing it feels like a train just rolled over you.  This was 1971, and Altman pulls out all the stops.  No one is immune from his wrath, including big and small businesses, lawyers (William Devane in a great one-scene cameo), the church and organized religion, and just about anything else you care to think of in between. Altman comes out firing with both barrels and isn't afraid who gets caught in the crossfire.  That said, the ending (as much as I hated it) is the perfect, appropriate finale for this movie.  Anything else would have felt inauthentic.  The American dream, my ass, Altman is beyond pessimistic here.

Depending on the viewer, certain scenes in a given movie are going to have a different impact or leave an impression.  This had several -- the ending obviously -- but one just minutes before that shows how fragile life on the frontier really was.  Keith Carradine plays a young man known simply as the Cowboy who stops by McCabe and Miller's whorehouse, enjoys himself, and then prepares to ride out.  He's confronted by one of three killers sent to dispatch McCabe and callously gunned down by the man. It is an uncomfortable scene to watch because it's clear where it's building to, and when the gunshot roars to life, you wince at the noise. With the snap of a finger, one unlucky young man is dead as quick as that.  Without any pandering to the audience or a big speech explaining what just happened, Altman gets his message across.

More on the ending so SPOILERS from here on in.  Three hired guns are sent to this mountain town to force McCabe into a deal or kill him in the process.  All three actors are virtual unknowns, making their appearance more ominous. Who are they, and what are they capable of? McCabe has a reputation as a gunfighter, but he really isn't so when push comes to shove he loads his pistol and confronts them, not unlike the showdown at the end of High Noon.  He kills them all, but at a price. He's mortally wounded and dies in the snow as a storm rages all around him. Altman films this almost 30-minute sequence with no music and little dialogue to distract from what's happening on screen.  Heartbreaking, incredibly moving, however you want to describe it. It's an upsetting but perfect ending for the story.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller <---trailer (1971): ****/****

Only Angels Have Wings

Movies are right at home, the old bread and butter, when dealing with characters running away from something, looking for another shot after some horrific mistake was made in the past.  If movies have taught us anything, for an American in this situation, there's two options...both equally deadly.  One, enlist in the French Foreign Legion where you will most likely get killed in a nasty massacre in the desert.  Two, go to South America and waste away in some dingy, damp village.  That's not the whole premise of 1939's Only Angels Have Wings, but it's close.

Reading the description of this 1939 flick from Columbia Pictures, my first reaction was how similar it sounded to the French classic The Wages of Fear and its American remake Sorcerer.  'Angels' obviously came first, but it deals with a similar topic.  Deep in an unnamed South American country, a group of Americans -- displaced by their choice or someone else forcing their hand -- working for a struggling company.  For one reason or another, they're all running from something in their past, now forced into doing a job that will just as likely kill them as make them rich.

Waiting for her ship to depart, American singer Bonnie Lee (Jean Arthur) stumbles upon a little haven of back home in a South American port city. A complex owned by a European immigrant, Dutch (Sig Ruman) and run by an American pilot, Geoff Carter (Cary Grant), has a restaurant that serves good, old-fashioned American food with a runway outside the building. Bonnie is quickly drawn to the smooth, suave, most definitely aloof Geoff, only to find out how perilous the situation is.  Dutch and Geoff have signed a contract to deliver the mail twice a week by plane to cities inland for six months and then receive a big payday.  If they fail to deliver, the contract is void.  With their stable of American pilots and World War I era planes, they've managed to make it five months and two weeks.  They're close to their goal, but the flights become ever more dangerous, and the only way through to the next city is a flight through the fog-covered, looming mountains inland.

I watched this movie over a couple of sittings -- stupid work, getting in the way of my movie watching -- and certainly enjoyed it enough, although I didn't love it. My complaint here is one I usually have with movies released in the 1930s.  Hollywood was still figuring out what worked and didn't work with movies, what audiences wanted and what they didn't want.  For the most part, the acting isn't over the top as the cast thankfully turns down the theatrical stage touches.  It is filmed completely on an indoor set which limits the scope of the story, but in an effort to balance that out, there is some great footage of these rickety looking planes flying through the mountains, taking off and landing, canceling out some of the cheaper effects to illustrate the planes "flying" through rough weather conditions.  So what was wrong with this flick? I'm not sure, but something was missing.

Director Howard Hawks carved quite a nice little niche for himself in a career that includes over 40 movies, many of them held in high regard among fans and critics. His stories often focused on a group of men brought together through unlikely, strenuous circumstances having to band together to accomplish a similar goal, bonding in the process and putting their differences aside.  'Angels' is right at home with that premise.  Grant is the tough but fair owner and chief pilot of this motley "airline," if you can call it that.  His pilots include the always reliable and entertaining Thomas Mitchell as Kid Dabb, a veteran pilot struggling with vision loss, Allyn Joslyn, Noah Beery Jr., Victor Kilian, John Carroll, and Don Barry filling out the ranks of this misfit outfit.

Through all the slower portions of the movie with the pretty awful love triangle, Geoff's crew and their story carries the movie.  Grant is at his suave, roguish best, Mitchell is as reliable as ever as the smart-mouthed sidekick, and Rugan and Co. fill in the holes wherever necessary.  A key subplot has a new pilot, Bat MacPherson (Richard Barthelmess) arriving to fly, only to find out he's got a past with Mitchell's Kid. The men hold his past decisions against him, but MacPherson rises to the occasion as he desperately attempts to prove it was all a mistake.  That's what works so well here.  All these men are running from something so whether they realize it or not, they're all in the same boat.  If this business have any hopes of succeeding, they will have to work together and put their differences aside.  For Hawks, it's a tried and true formula, and as usual, it works.

Now Hawks used that formula a few more times during his career, but he also threw in those awkward, unnecessary love triangles too.  Arthur's Bonnie falls for Cary Grant almost right away so then we get two hours of her trying to figure out if she belongs with him.  Then MacPherson's new bride (21-year old Rita Hayworth) ends up being a woman from Grant's past to complicate things.  Oh, no! Two women in love with the same man?!?  If you have an iota of intelligence, you know who he is going to end up with, but my goodness, it takes awhile getting there.  Thankfully, there's enough positive going on to outweigh the dull, slow-moving negatives. You can watch it at Youtube, starting HERE with Part 1 of 12.

Only Angels Have Wings <---trailer (1939): ***/****