Mackenna's Gold

Oh, cable, how I love you. I basically have two channels on if I'm watching TV, either MLB Network or Encore Westerns. A whole channel devoted to western TV shows and movies?!? Aaahhh my head just exploded! It gives me a chance to revisit a whole bunch of movies I haven't seen in years, like 1969's Mackenna's Gold, a big-budget, all-star extravaganza that I remember liking (I think) on my first viewing. Does it hold up?

A marshal for the western town of Hadleyburg, Mackenna (Gregory Peck) is out on the trail when he's ambushed by an old Apache man who dies after a quick shootout. Before he dies, the Apache gives Mackenna a map to a famous, supposedly lost, canyon of gold ('Canon del Oro') that treasure hunters have long sought. Mackenna throws the map in the fire but not before noticing a couple landmarks on it. He's soon cornered by a Mexican bandit, Colorado (Omar Sharif), and his gang who similarly are looking for the canyon of gold. They're not alone. The desert seems full of treasure hunters and gold-hopefuls desperately searching for the gold. Discovering that Mackenna may hold the key to finding the canyon, he's taken along as Colorado's unwilling prisoner. The supposed location is days away across the vast desert with Mackenna, Colorado and his men forced to deal with a do-good posse out of Hadleyburg, an intervening cavalry troop and an Apache war party. How far will the prospect of gold drive all these folks?

I'm a sucker for westerns -- good and bad -- but this one is bad and just not that enjoyable. Talk about a movie where the ingredients don't come together (at all), and you've got this movie. The talent on-hand is unquestionable from director J. Lee Thompson, stars Gregory Peck and Omar Sharif leading a ridiculously deep cast, a cool, potential-filled story and a drop-dead look to it all...it should have been so much better. Or I guess I'd settle for just 'good' too. The formula seems to go after a western Guns of Navarone meets Treasure of the Sierra Madre combination, but it never jells into anything remotely coherent or especially enjoyable. That's tough to say because a cast this good should make a movie pretty decent on its own but alas, it wasn't meant to be this time! If you're looking for a Peck-Thompson-Carl Foreman pairing, stick with 'Navarone.'

Kudos to Encore Westerns. Watching the movie for the second time but first time since 2009, I watched it in widescreen, as it was meant to be. Thompson filmed in Super Panavision 70, a filming technique that fills the screen to epic proportions, almost like a panoramic picture. Shooting on-location in Monument Valley, Glen Canyon and Canyon de Chelly in Arizona adds a great visual appeal to the movie. Shots of riders galloping across these expanses are excellent to watch, a sight to behold, and unfortunately, one of the few genuine positives to take away from a western that's too long at 128 minutes. When a movie's looks are the best thing going...that's never a good thing.

Poor Gregory Peck, he looks like he's as bored as all get-out and doesn't quite know what to do. One of my all-time favorite actors, he's undone by all the shenanigans going on around him. Getting to play straight man to a murdering bandit, a gold-for-eyes posse, a bloodthirsty Apache war party, a murdering cavalry sergeant (an underused Telly Savalas), and all sorts of ancient legends coming to life is never a good thing. As reliable as anyone who's ever graced the screen, Peck is given little more to do than look out for Camilla Sparv's damsel in distress while navigating a love triangle with Julie Newmar's Apache warrior and Sparv. Yeah, you read that right. Catwoman plays an Apache warrior and looks great doing it! She even gets an odd nude swimming scene where she tries to kill both Peck and Sparv. So there's that!

So much of the rest of the cast is simply miscast. I like Sharif in just about any film he's ever done, but he's an odd choice to play our Mexican bandit, Colorado. His gang includes Keenan Wynn as a Mexican bandit named Sanchez, with Ted Cassidy (Lurch from The Addams Family), Rudy Diaz and Robert Phillips as Apache warriors. All spot-on casting! Brace for this list of appearances that amount to little more than cameos, members of a "posse" out of Hadleyburg that's looking for gold. The group includes Eli Wallach, Anthony Quayle, Lee J. Cobb, Burgess Meredith, Raymond Massey and Edward G. Robinson!!! Look at that Hollywood royalty! Unfortunately, they're introduced, given nothing to do and there basically because of their name recognition. So....yeah....there's that! Quite the cast, huh? I just wish they were given more to do. Maybe that character development was cut from the rumored 3-hour version of the film. Yeah, that's it I'm sure.
  
Just too many moving pieces that never get going in the same direction. There's virtually no story, just some character introductions and then they're off into the desert. The only detour are various ways to kill off characters in waves. Then, there's the beautiful location shooting, with a slight problem. Countless times, one after another, we see the location shots and then a quick cut to our actors in front of a rear projection shot. Nothing takes you out of the story's momentum like Peck, Sharif and Co. riding a "horse" as they tear across the desert. Throw in some odd, out of place narration (it's not Victor Jory's fault!), some painful theme ballads, and generally odd cutting and editing that is more and more jarring with each passing scene.

There's a meanness to the story that's hard to account for. Characters are introduced for the sake of dispatching them in unceremonious fashion, but the general tone of the movie itself isn't that dark. It feels like they're going for that "Greed will make you do horrible things" tone, but it's too light, fluffy and goofy to pull it off. There's some potential obviously with the all-star cast, some equally impressive camera angles and shots, and the location shooting, but there's just too much negative going on to ignore it. A stinker.

Mackenna's Gold (1969): **/****

The High Commissioner

A fish out of water, one of the most reliable story ideas to use when making a movie.  It's easy to take it in any direction whether it be drama, comedy or both.  It seems movies lean more toward the comedy part, but dramatic ventures can be just as good, including 1968's The High Commissioner.  A mostly forgotten smaller budget film with a good cast, 'Commissioner' has an Australian cop from the bush out of his element in London bringing in a murder suspect who happens to be a highly ranking government official.

I stumbled across this one on Netflix a few weeks ago and was curious why I'd never heard a thing about it.  The stars are pretty good considering it is a late 1960s movie -- Rod Taylor and Christopher Plummer among others -- and the story sounded like it had a fair share of political intrigue and excitement. So what's the reasoning for its almost complete lack of popularity or even recognition?  The stars are good, the intrigue is interesting, but that's it.  'Commissioner' is a straightforward thriller/action movie with a twist and turn here and there, but it doesn't possess anything major that sets it apart from the pack.

An Australian bush cop most comfortable and familiar with the Australian Outback, Scobie Malone (Taylor) receives a mission to travel to London and bring back a murder suspect from a case almost 15 years old.  There's finally enough evidence to prosecute him, Sir James Quentin (Plummer), the High Commissioner of Australia currently living and working in London.  Malone meets Quentin who agrees to go back to Australia with him, seemingly having waited all these years to be caught.  But Quentin has one request; he's leading a commission with global trade ramifications that could unite 1st and 3rd world countries.  All he needs is a few days to put it all together.  Malone somewhat suspiciously agrees, not knowing that he's getting into a sticky situation with the powers that be not pleased with Quentin's intentions.

First off, I wasn't expecting the story to focus more on the global summit than Malone's mission to bring Quentin back.  It was a pleasant surprise as the two plots balance each other out.  A good cop no matter where he's working, Malone then devotes himself to protecting Quentin and helping him in any way he can.  There's a leak in the meetings though so the Aussie cop has to narrow down the suspects, including Quentin's secretary Lisa (Camilla Sparv), his wife (Lilli Palmer), a gorgeous woman with suspicious motives (Daliah Lavi), and an American (Calvin Lockhart) who offers to help Malone in his investigation. The solution is not so surprising, but the momentum builds to the more surprising finale after that reveal.

Rod Taylor is one of my favorites, and he doesn't disappoint here as Aussie cop Scobie Malone.  Cool name aside, the character is that fish out of water trying to figure everything out.  He travels to London and is immediately out of place in this high-class setting.  But on the other hand, he's a good cop above all else and no matter the situation he commits himself.  Taylor also handles a lot of his really physical stunts, delivers some comedic one-liners and is pretty smooth in the process.  Plummer drifts in and out of the story, but ever the professional he makes the most of it.  The wisest choice made here is leaving his guilt up in the air until the end.  Did he really kill his first wife so many years ago? If he didn't kill her, why'd he run?  It all comes together nicely in the end, all the story lines converging and wrapping up with a nice tidy bow.

For a movie that's limited by a smaller budget, director Ralph Thomas balances out the limitations with some very cool location shooting.  For every matte painting or indoor set standing in for a dark London street, there's an equally impressive on-location scene.  One highlight has Taylor's Malone chasing down a possible hitman through the London streets and ending up at...Wimbledon, currently hosting the summer tennis major. It's a cool, fast-paced sequence as Malone realizes someone's making another attempt on Quentin's life.  So for all the pretty obvious indoor set shooting, there's the good to balance it all out.

So for all the positive aspects of the movie, what's missing?  I'm not quite sure.  The story lacks a certain energy at times, relying too much on the talents of the actors to carry on through the slow patches.  The biggest issue is that the story doesn't always know where it's going.  It just drifts too much as all these characters go in and out of the story.  Thankfully, the cast is up to the task so any slow parts are still entertaining enough to watch.

The High Commissioner (1968): ***/****

Downhill Racer

Through some 30-plus movies, Robert Redford has made a career of playing that roguish character you can't help but like.  Women want to be with him, and men want to be him.  The man has been in his fair share of classics, but through them all he never truly played an out-and-out villain.  Sure, there were characters that weren't on the straight and narrow, but they weren't all bad.  Tell me the Sundance Kid isn't the coolest wild west outlaw ever.  So maybe never a bad guy, but how about someone you just hate and is incredibly dislikable? 

That's 1969's Downhill Racer, a somewhat odd choice for Criterion to release on DVD but who knows what's really going on with DVD/studio releases.  Redford plays a character that is by no means a bad guy, but he's clearly not the good guy either.  He's interested in only himself and doesn't really care who gets knocked down in the process as long as it benefits him.  Besides some other issues I had with the movie, that was the biggest one.  Through all his characters, I can say that I like Robert Redford as a star and an actor.  Watching him play someone who is so egocentric was a tough pill to swallow.

When a key member of the U.S. national ski team is knocked out with an injury, coach Eugene Claire (Gene Hackman) is forced to improvise to fill out his roster. He turns to a young skier, Dave Chappellet (Redford), who clearly has the talent to be great but was never able to put it all together.  Still two years away from the winter Olympics, Dave joins the team and quickly alienates everyone around him with his interest in himself above all others.  But in the process, he starts to win races and creates quite a name for himself.  With the Olympics drawing near and his star becoming ever brighter, can Dave get a hold of himself and his ever-growing arrogance coupled with his huge talent?

The story itself is nothing new in relation to a sports movie or any other rags to riches story.  It's been done before with the down and out, poor individual gets a chance to amount to something more.  There's the inevitable rise to power and of course, that fall down the backside of that hill.  For the most part, 'Downhill' does its best to avoid most of the cliches you might have seen in a similar story elsewhere.  But it still feels like we've been here before as a viewer.  The one detour comes from the ending which certainly surprised me.  I'm still mulling it over and not quite sure what to say about it other than I could have thought of a better ending.  Still, the whole tone of the Chappellet character has been unapologetic so why mess with it?

Now just because I didn't like Redford's character doesn't mean the character isn't a good one.  Redford does an excellent job as this ambitious young skier who wants to be the best at what he does, consequences and repercussions be damned.  Through a quick scene with his father we see that his behavior isn't anything new, he's most likely been doing it for years.  It's probably Redford's easiest character to hate, but that doesn't take away from his solid performance.  Hackman unfortunately is wasted as the ski team's coach, usually having to confront Chappellet about his actions before fading into the background for long stretches.  Swedish beauty Camilla Sparv plays Carole, Dave's fling/girlfriend, while Jim McMullan plays Johnny Creech, the ski team's best athlete and therefore Dave's rival, and Karl Michael Vogler plays Machet, a well-to-do businessman with a lot to lose.

Director Michael Ritchie tells his generally plotless story -- it covers almost 3 full years -- with a documentary-like filmmaking style.  The skiing sequences (filmed in Austria and Switzerland) are the movie at their best, exciting and fast-paced, as well as the scenes of the event of the downhill race with the crowds gathering, vendors setting up shop, and media preparing to cover the event.  An annoying smooth jazz score is played over several of these scenes, but thankfully that part of the score is generally left by the wayside.  My one complaint is that obviously Redford and the cast couldn't actually do their own skiing.  Thankfully, Ritchie doesn't use any tricks to make it look like they are skiing.  He wisely just lets his stunt men do their thing.

For all the good though that comes from the documentary-like storytelling, it goes out the window to a certain point in the non-skiing scenes.  It can be dull watching Chappellet brood his way through life, pissing everyone in his life off and not looking like he cares one bit.  I'm not saying make him a different character depending on the scene, but by the end of the movie you're rooting against the guy...or at least I was.  I WANTED him to lose in the Olympics.  As for whether he does win or lose and how you feel about it, check the movie out.

Downhill Racer <---trailer (1969): ** 1/2 /****

Murderers' Row

The huge success of the James Bond series in the 1960s opened doors for all sorts of other spy movies to take over the market, both good and bad.  And after all those serious takes on the spy movie came the spoofs like James Coburn in the Flint series and Dean Martin in the Matt Helm movies.  These aren't spoofs like Scary Movie or anything of the like, but spoofs that were for one, good, and two, they were more tongue in cheek than stupid humor.

Martin made four Matt Helm movies over a three-year span, all of them fairly successful with audiences to the point a fifth was even brought up.  They're basically all James Bond movies except the name has been changed, and the humor has been ratcheted up a few hundred notches.  Now I say this having seen exactly one of the four, 1966's Murderers' Row, but it's not hard to judge a spy series with Dean Martin as the star.  Here's the formula, Martin drinking, smoking and throwing one-liners, ridiculous bad guys, beautiful women, and exotic locales.  It's all incredibly ridiculous, and still pretty entertaining almost in spite of themselves.

After faking his own death, ICE (Intelligence and CounterEspionage) agent Matt Helm (Martin) is given a mission.  A brilliant scientist has been kidnapped by a madman, Julian Wall (Karl Malden) who wants to use the scientist's abilities to hold the world ransom. The scientist, Dr. Solaris (Richard Eastham), has figured a way to control the power of the sun's rays into a beam of light able to destroy cities in seconds.  Posing as a mob enforcer, Helm heads off to Monte Carlo to look for Solaris and instead meets up with his daughter, Suzie (Ann-Margret), who's also looking for him.  Time seems to be running out though as Wall gets closer to utilizing Solaris' death ray on Washington D.C.

This has all the workings of a Bond story from a crazy plot to take over the world to complicated gadgets that would never actually work.  Then's there Ann-Margret and Swedish babe Camilla Sparv frolicking around in next to nothing for most of the movie in bathing suits, mini-skirts, and lingerie as Helm Girls instead of Bond Girls.  Instead of M, there's McDonald (James Gregory) issuing orders to an agent who does things his own way instead of by the book.  And my personal favorite, a gun that fires on a 10-second delay which does provide some rather humorous -- God, that sounds wrong -- killings.  We even get to meet some of the nameless thugs who usually ran around in the background, except here they get their one or two lines and then they're killed.

Playing super secret agent Matt Helm, Dean Martin seems to be having a ball because let's face it, he's playing himself.  It's almost alarming how much he drinks and smokes on-screen.  He's the American James Bond who's got a reputation for his way with the ladies as well as his unorthodox ways of getting the job done.  An IMDB reviewer points out Martin didn't care much for rehearsing or even reading the scripts, and it doesn't matter in the least.  He doesn't so much have lines to memorize as a series of one-liners meant for laughs throughout the movie.  This may all sound rather negative, but it's anything but.  Martin is one of my all-time favorite entertainers, and he was perfectly cut out to play a roguish, boozing, brawling secret agent.

While it's a lot of fun to watch Martin do his thing, the movie has its fair share of flaws.  One of the strengths of the Bond movies is that the villains and their plans are absolutely nuts, but they're developed at least a little.  Karl Malden is an all-time great actor who is completely wasted here as Julian Wall.  He's not intimidating in the least, his plan is dull, and he never seems to be much of a threat to Helm.  The more interesting villain is Tom Reese as Ironhead, a killer with a iron plate for a skull.  He at least poses a challenge to Helm, especially the way his demise is handled.  You can see it coming miles away, but it's still funny.

There are other flaws here with a story -- or lack of -- that drags in the middle sections.  One very long scene has Margret dancing like crazy in a club while Martin races to rescue her from a broach bomb (that's right, a broach bomb) on her dress.  Check it out HERE.  Some jokes are overplayed and instead of using them once they're reused several times.  These are all minor things, but when added up they get tiresome and kinda annoying.  Still, it's an entertaining enough, mindless movie, and I'll probably check out the other ones too.  You can watch Murderers' Row at Youtube, starting HERE.  A stupid movie but worth seeing for Dean Martin, Ann-Margret, and in general, one of the better spoofs to come out of the Bond series.

Murderers' Row <----trailer (1966): ** 1/2 /****