Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

WELCOME! Use the search engines on this site (or your own off-site engine of choice) to gain easy access to the complete MAKSQUIBS Archive; more than 5500 posts and counting. (New posts added every day or so.)

You can check on all our titles by typing the Title, Director, Actor or 'Keyword' you're looking for in the Search Engine of your choice (include the phrase MAKSQUIBS) or just use the BLOGSPOT.com Search Box at the top left corner of the page.

Feel free to place comments directly on any of the film posts and to test your film knowledge with the CONTESTS scattered here & there. (Hey! No Googling allowed. They're pretty easy.)

Send E-mails to MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com . (Let us know if the TRANSLATE WIDGET works!) Or use the Profile Page or Comments link for contact.

Thanks for stopping by.

Saturday, January 12, 2019

FORT APACHE, THE BRONX (1981)

Other than SLAP SHOT/’77, his Let-It-All-Hang-Out, feel-good, middle-age breakthru, Paul Newman was drawing blanks in the late ‘70s: two high-visibility flops for Robert Altman and a deeply embarrassing second-drawer Irwin Allen disaster pic. So this straightforward cop meller came at just the right time, setting up Newman’s impressive late-career run even if it felt more like a pilot for some tv series than a stand-alone movie.* More character study then police procedural, Daniel Petrie’s faceless direction, working hand-in-glove with John Alcott’s grubby South Bronx location lensing, is better at interpersonal relationships than action. The dramatic motor is Pam Grier’s cop-killing, drug-addled prostitute, but the main interest follows Newman and partner Ken Wahl (the handsomest pair of cops ever to share a patrol car) thru girlfriends & station-house loyalties as Edward Asner’s precinct commander is transferred in with a ‘new broom’ approach to corruption & SNAFU practices. The film cops outs at the end with a big explanation/apologia from Asner and a freeze-frame back-in-action shot of Newman, pretty phony stuff. Elsewise worth a look for tasty acting, time-capsule attitudes and vivid locations.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Sure enough, about eight months after this opened, HILL ST. BLUES debuted on NBC, with many similar ensemble cop shows to follow.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Someone should reboot GOING IN STYLE (that senior citizen bank robbery tale recently remade with Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine & Alan Arkin in roles first handled by George Burns, Art Carney & Lee Strasberg) as a tv series for reclusive cult-actors Richard Dean Anderson (MacGyver), Jan-Michael Vincent (Airwolf) and this film’s Ken Wahl (Wiseguy).

No comments: