The Fury

As I've brought up in several reviews before, I'm not a huge horror fan. Basically, I don't like being scared. Yeah, yeah, laugh at the scaredy cat! I usually need something to pull me into a horror movie, like an especially unique premise or as the case with 1978's The Fury, some cool casting you might not associate with the genre.

A former CIA agent, Peter Sandza (Kirk Douglas) is in the Middle East with his son, Robin (Andrew Stevens), getting ready to move back to the U.S. so Robin can go to college in the states. Well, that's the plan. Robin is kidnapped by a secret government agency with Pete's old friend and colleague, Ben Childress (John Cassavetes), leading the effort. What's behind the kidnapping? Robin seems to have some hidden powers and abilities; telekinetic powers that he doesn't have a full grasp of. Childress and the agency try to kill Peter, but he manages to escape. Now he's hiding out and trying to find out what happened to Robin and where he's been dragged off to. The key may be a high school student in Chicago, Gillian (Amy Irving), who has similar abilities to Robin and is slowly learning how to handle and manipulate them. If only all the pieces can fit together.

This isn't an out-and-out horror movie to be fair. From director Brian De Palma, 'Fury' is more of a supernatural horror flick. De Palma was coming off the mega-success of 1976's Carrie and takes the next natural step. It's not just about telekinetic creepy kids, but the government's involvement with said kids! Yeah! Reading about the story and the cast, I was psyched to give this one a shot, but in the end, I felt like the premise ends up being far better than the finished product. It's a long movie at 118 minutes and struggles with pacing and rhythm. At times, it's over the top to the point I thought it was kinda spoof-like. An uneven final product, lots of characters, some potential, but ultimately one quasi-horror flick that I won't be revisiting anytime soon.

The biggest pull 'Fury' had on me was the casting, a pairing of Kirk Douglas and John Cassavetes. Douglas was in a lull in his career, the late 1970s and 1980s providing some real stinkers for the Hollywood legend. It's a cool part, if an underwritten one, as Douglas' Pete has all sorts of espionage experience that he tries to utilize to get back his son. At 62 years old here, Douglas isn't the prototypical action hero, but he more than holds his own in the chase scenes early in the movie. I grew up watching Cassavetes in The Dirty Dozen and little else so it's always cool seeing him pop up in a cast listing. He's calm, cool and impeccably sinister as Childress, head agent on this mission to acquire all sorts of telekinetic kids. Like so much else, I wish there was more backstory with Childress and this secret agency. What's the end game? What will these kids be used for? How much backing do they actually have or is this a bit of a roguish renegade? 

I thought then I was getting one movie from the plot synopsis and ended up getting another. 'Fury' isn't just a movie about old friends turned deadly rivals. It's two stories, the Douglas/Cassavetes story moving along with a separate angle of young Gillian exploring her own powers (however scary and violent they may be). Irving does a really good job as a teenager struggling to come to terms with it all, Carrie Snodgress, Charles Durning, Fiona Lewis, and Carol Eve Rossen playing assorted doctors, physicians and assistants associated with the Paragon Institute, an organization "working" with talented kids. This felt like it could (and should) have been its own movie but no such luck. We get the two different stories that will eventually cross paths in the third act, but the pacing is rough getting there and there were several points I considered completely bailing. Things get a little goofy and a tad bit stupid in the finale with an especially graphic final scene. Some shock value from the director of Carrie? Who would have thought of that?

Now, yes, not a horror fan, but I am a sucker for certain things. High on that list? Any movie filmed in Chicago or even remotely close to the city. 'Fury' films a lot in and around Chicago, including some familiar locations for any fans of 1980's The Blues Brothers. We see everything from Lincoln Park to North Avenue Beach, Water Tower Place to Lower Wacker Drive, even the Old Chicago Shopping Mall and Amusement Park. If the story is a little dull at times, the filming locations in the background certainly help inject some life into things.

A mixed bag, but one I can't really recommend. And that's considering Spartacus, Franco and Chicago play key parts in it!

The Fury (1978): **/****

The Untouchables

So Prohibition, huh? That must have sucked. People wanted to drink, but the government said it was illegal to do so. The government agencies and police forces were tasked with limiting the bootleggers, but that was easier said than done. The most famous? Eliot Ness, a Treasury agent who became famous for helping take down Chicago gangster Al Capone. His story was turned into a successful TV show in the late 1950s and early 1960s and maybe most famously in a feature film, 1987's The Untouchables.

It's 1930 and Prohibition has turned Chicago into a warring city of dead bodies and rival gangsters fighting for control. The most powerful though is Al Capone (Robert De Niro), ruling the city and the influx of alcohol with an iron fist. Where there's demand, he's got the supply. A U.S. Treasury agent, Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner), has been called in to bring Capone to justice, hopefully bringing his crime empire down with him. Ness, idealistic and a little naive, struggles with where to start, meeting dead end after dead end as he discovers how deep Capone's empire goes. Obsessed with doing his job and doing it well, Ness keeps on, recruiting a small group of agents and police officers, including a tough Chicago beat cop, James Malone (Sean Connery), who knows the streets better than anyone. As he quickly finds out, Ness doesn't know how deep he'll have to go to accomplish his mission, especially when the bodies start to pile up.

From director Brian De Palma, this is one of those perfect guy's guy movies. It is based on Ness' real-life exploits as his crew of Untouchables took the battle to Capone in Chicago between 1929 and 1931. Yes, time is compressed, some names are changed here and there, but the point is the same. It has just about everything going for it. 'Untouchables' was filmed on location in Chicago (looks gorgeous), and it feels like Depression Era Chicago, picking up two Oscar nominations for Costume Design and Art Direction/Set Decoration. Everything from the background on the streets to the cars to the time-appropriate costumes (Armani suits never looked so good), it all adds layer after layer to the film. Also picking up an Oscar nomination is the score from composer Ennio Morricone.Listen to his full soundtrack HERE. I love the sweep of it, quiet, moving Morricone balanced with bigger, epic Morricone.

At the forefront of 'Untcouhables' is a great pairing of stars. Costner is one of the biggest stars of the 1980s with everything from Bull Durham to Field of Dreams, Silverado to No Way Out. Connery was a Hollywood legend, the firmly established star. Their on-screen dynamic is an underrated part of the success here that can get lost in the shuffle. Costner's Eliot is a hard-driving, hard-working idealist. He wants to accomplish his mission, but do it the right way, not knowing how filthy the world is he finds himself in. Connery's Malone is the flat-footed beat cop with a long career behind him. He knows everyone, knows all the secrets and inner-workings. Eliot Ness is looking for help while Malone is looking for a reason to become re-energized again after years of watching greed and corruption poison Chicago. Their scenes together crackle, dialogue just brimming with energy and plenty of great one-liners.

Joining Costner and Connery as the Untouchables are a very young Andy Garcia and a scene-stealing Charles Martin Smith. Garcia plays George Stone, a cop fresh out of the Police Academy and a dead-shot with a pistol, his Italian background hinted at but never fully explained. Garcia's Stone is inherently cool, a man of few words who lets his smirk and his pistol do his talking. Martin Smith plays Oscar Wallace, a Treasury accountant/bookkeeper who jumps at the chance to do some actual field work with the Untouchables. It's four cool characters, a great dynamic among the quartet, an odd couple men on a mission grouping that works perfectly.

Committing to gaining weight to really look the part, De Niro is a fine choice to play infamous Chicago gangster Al Capone. It is a part that would have been easy to be exaggerated, but De Niro knows how far to push it. Capone is hot-tempered, fiery and barely keeps his emotions in check. The part is mostly long scenes, monologues really, where De Niro gets to flex a bit. Richard Bradford plays the police commissioner caught in the middle of it all and maybe playing all sides, Patricia Clarkson plays Ness' pregnant wife, an uncredited Clifton James as the prosecuting district attorney, and Billy Drago as Frank Nitti, Capone's chief enforcer and accomplished killer.

With the actual history here condensed from a few years to seemingly a few months, we get an episodic story that covers a ton of ground in the 119-minute movie. More than the performances, the music, the period appropriate....well, everything, 'Untouchables' always stands out for me because of the well-staged set pieces. An ambush near the Canadian border is a gem, the machine guns rattling like crazy to Morricone's swooping score. The highlight though has Ness and Co. looking for Capone's bookkeeper, desperately trying to get out of town, at Union Station. The action, the drama, the nods to classic films (Battleship Potempkin), and the slow motion all build to this almost unbearable tension. Maybe it isn't the most unified script/story, but the set pieces help keep things together beginning to end. A gem, a must-see for fans of Costner, Connery, gangster movie fans and any Chicagoans.

The Untouchables (1987): ****/****

Mission: Impossible

Counting down the days to the fourth M:I movie, dubbed Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, and thought it was as good a time as any to look back on the movie that started this highly successful franchise, 1996's Mission: Impossible. An espionage thriller with top-notch action, it's still the best of the M:I movies....for now. Let's see how Ghost Protocol goes, but the fourth entry has its work cut out for it.

Leading an operation in Prague, MIF agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) sees his team ambushed and murdered during the mission. Meeting a supervisor in the bloody aftermath, Hunt realizes he's been set up, made to look like a treacherous mole who's been working against MIF for years. Now he must find out who set him up. With the only surviving member of his team, Claire (Emmanuelle Beart), and two similarly disavowed MIF agents, Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) and Kreiger (Jean Reno), Hunt goes on the offensive. He seeks out the actual mole by going through his only link, a black market arms dealer, Max (Vanessa Redgrave), who wants one thing and is willing to pay heavily for it; a list of all undercover MIF agents worldwide. Now Ethan has to decide how far he wants to go to prove his innocence.

I'm not particularly proud of that plot synopsis, but I think it's the best I'm going to do. It took me two or three viewings to even understand the plot in the late 90s, and that's about all the information I can give without revealing too much. What do you need to take away from that plot? Ethan Hunt needs to do some impossible things to set up a meeting with the traitor who set him up. That's the movie in a nutshell. An actual understanding of that story would be unnecessary. It's good, old fashioned secret agent fun. Go along with it, and if you're like me, at some point the story will click into place.

This is Tom Cruise at his best. The man is a legitimately good actor, but he seems most at ease in these types of movies; popcorn movies with great characters, greater action and ludicrous action sequences that let him show off his physical ability. Like he would do four years later in M:I2, Cruise does most if not all of his stunts here. He's intense, believable and because this is a secret agent requirement....he's impeccably cool. It doesn't hurt to have some fellow bad-asses around, especially Ving Rhames as Luther Stickell, computer hacker to top all hackers, and Jean Reno as Kreiger, a livewire who is as unpredictable as the missions they're on.

A good action movie -- espionage or just straight crazy ridiculous shootouts and hand to hand combat -- needs one thing to be memorable; set pieces that rise above the movie. Mission: Impossible has three, dominating much of the movie's 110-minute running time. Let's start at the beginning. The first 30 minutes is the botched mission in Prague, setting a tone where nothing will be predictable (okay, maybe a little, more on that later). Ethan's team (including uncredited parts for Emilio Estevez and Kristin Scott Thomas) is wiped out in one of the great shocking openings ever. It's just different. You figure we're watching a team of agents we'll get to see, and then BAM! They're all dead. One of my favorite movie openings ever.

That's just for starters though. Mid-movie, Ethan and Co. infiltrate CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia in a sequence that all action directors should watch and analyze. Dropping into an impregnable vault that is virtually inaccessible with sensors for heat, sound and movement, Ethan must steal the NOC list, the names and locations of every MIF agent worldwide. An extended sequence with little dialogue, it is the definition of tension, the type of mission where the tiniest thing could ruin it all. And the ending? A chase through the subway under the English Channel with a helicopter strapped to the speeding train? Ethan battling it out on top? EPIC. One, two and three very memorable set pieces when just one would have made it worthwhile.

Some twists late in the movie aren't exactly surprising if you're paying attention, but the reveal of the treacherous mole is handled so well via flashback you shouldn't be disappointed. Rounding out the cast is Jon Voight as Phelps, Ethan's long-time mentor and team leader, and the always creepy Henry Czerny as Kittridge, the CIA agent gunning for Ethan. What else to mention? Action-driving music from Danny Elfman, including the always fun M:I theme, listen HERE. Director Brian De Palma has a real winner here, a great start to a great franchise. I don't want to spoil much, but starting HERE Youtube offers nine different key clips. Can Ghost Protocol be out now?!?

Mission: Impossible <---trailer (1996): *** 1/2 /****