SPITFIRE / THE FIRST OF THE FEW (1942)

You could say that only Winston Churchill’s defiant pep-talk speeches and RAF ‘Spitfire’ missions kept Britain from going under before Pearl Harbor reset WWII (eventually) in the Allies favor.  Those little Spitfire airplane fighters, and their pilots, are what Churchill was referring to when he said ’Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.’  On screen as part of the war effort, it’s a no more than adequate bio-pic of Reginald J. Mitchell, who designed them and managed to have them built by the thousands in spite of his premature death in 1937.  A brilliant, quietly stubborn absent-minded pipe-smoker here, Mitchell had an unblemished record of success in aircraft design, perfect material for patriotic hagiography.  And Leslie Howard, in his last role before being lost when his plane was shot down, is the perfect man to play him.  (He also directed this and one more film.)  Alongside David Niven, test pilot/BFF who tells of his friend in flashback after a successful sortie against the latest wave of German bombers, the film suffers a bit from 1940s technical standards as well as inevitable wartime budget restrictions, but it hardly matters.  Coupled with our knowledge of Howard’s death, the film, which happily grows stronger as it goes along, especially in some uncomfortable scenes set in pre-war Germany, becomes almost unbearably touching as Mitchell keeps his spirit & fight up while his health fails.  No doubt, largely memorable from extra-cinematic circumstances, but memorable nonetheless.  Even more so whenever William Walton’s vivid score makes the scene.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  In some late closeups of a gaunt, sickly Mitchell, his health suffering from overwork and heart disease, Howard looks strikingly like Shaun Evans, tv’s Endeavor in the INSPECTOR MORSE prequel.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  For a change, the American title (SPITFIRE) is an improvement.

DOUBLE-BILL:  For a truly great Great-Britain-Wakes-Up-To-The-German-Threat pic, there’s Powell and Pressburger’s THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP/’43.

NIGHT FALLS ON MANHATTAN (1996)

Young, idealistic Manhattan D.A. meets entrenched police corruption (and a cover-up trail leading back his way) in this solid, if predictable Sidney Lumet pic.  Writing his own script, Lumet knows he knows this territory all too well, shaking things up with eyebrow-raising casting choices, unusual structure, even devant garde jump cuts.  (He’s not trying to wake us up, but himself.)  A 3-act prologue sees escaped cop-killing Harlem drug lord targeted, cornered & tried; turning himself in on the advice of a high-profile attorney arguing self-defense against corrupt police precincts out to get him.  After that, the film proper brings internal police corruption center stage as untested Manhattan D.A. Andy Garcia learns how the cause of justice is sometimes served by bending the rules.  And if that sounds like the plot of every other Sidney Lumet film, so be it.  Seeing how he makes it spin is the key.  Here, coaxing previous D.A. Ron Leibman into recreating his Tony Award-winning Roy Cohn act from ANGELS IN AMERICA; ending Richard Dreyfuss’s above-the-title A-list days splitting the diff between radical defense attorney William Kunstler & character actor Jack Warden; giving top femme Lena Olin little to do but cook scrambled eggs for Garcia (Lumet unaware women’s roles have evolved); pretending leprechaun-sized Scot Ian Holm could be Cuban Andy Garcia’s pop in any known universe*; and spotlighting strong early turns from Colm Feore, James Gandolfini, many others.  Pretty entertaining, too.  More so when you imagine how it would be stretched out today to fill 10 streaming one-hour episodes.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Impatience and spontaneity, it’s Lumet’s gift and Achilles’ Heel.  The visual insensitivity sometimes off the charts (see THE WIZ/’78).  Count on him not to notice that visually Sean Connery, Dustin Hoffman & Matthew Broderick in FAMILY BUSINESS/’89 could never be three generations of the same family line.  Here, embarrassed by having Holm & Garcia as father & son Liam & Sean Casey, he extemporizes by showing Mom’s tombstone read Maria Nunez Casey.  See, he noticed.  Favorite clueless Lumet visual has the eyes of the kid in DANIEL/’83 who grows up to be Timothy Hutton change in a matched closeup dissolve from the kid’s brown to Hutton’s blue.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Not really better, but Lumet feels more engaged with similar stories of NYPD corruption in both PRINCE OF THE CITY and Q&A/’90.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/01/prince-of-city-1981.html

THE FABULOUS BARON MUNCHAUSEN / BARON PRÁSIL (1962)

Baron Munchausen, most imaginative of fabulists, has been adapted many times, but the main three are from 1943 Nazi Germany in AgfaColor, running 130"; Terry Gilliam, typically OTT* in 1988 at 126"; and in-between, this comparatively modest one from experimental Czech animator Karel Zeman at a mere 83".  Advantage Zeman on length alone!  All use loosely connected tall-tales as told by our eponymous Mountebank, here emphasizing his lovelorn pursuit of Princess Bianca whose heart belongs to the youthful Tonik, alongside life inside the belly-of-a-whale, Turkish Army takedown, et al.  But the reason to watch Zeman’s mad scientist approach to the varied adventures is the ‘limited’ animation techniques and the use of space, architecture & tinted color effects over detailed b&w drawings that give buildings and landscapes the feel of blueprints come to half-life.  A fetching idea, and some of the effects, mixing live action, tinting effects, silhouette puppetry movement, and all sorts of animated realizations can be both beautiful and artistically stimulating.  One horse chase toward the middle is a particularly stunning example of design in perfect harmony with execution.  If only Zeman’s work engaged on more than a clinical level.  A chilliness I think he was aware of; hence the shortest running time.  Painstaking restored in a recent Criterion set, everyone should see one Zeman movie; goodness knows Gilliam and those YELLOW SUBMARINE animators took long hard looks.  But there’s something undeniably off-putting here.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL:  *Along with BRAZIL/’85, MUNCHAUSEN is probably Gilliam’s best work, even with John Neville hopelessly overparted as lead.  (If only Ralph Richardson had still been around to play the Baron!)  A mess, of course (hey!, it’s Terry Gilliam), but with something moving about it.  But after losing sums of money even Baron Munchausen would find hard to swallow (50 to 60 1988 dollars), the film never did find a fraction of the views it deserved.

ROCCO E I SUOI FRATELLI / ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS (1960)

Just as the extended four-reel house reception finale of Luchino Visconti’s THE LEOPARD/’63 was an inspiration for the three-reel opening of Francis Ford Coppola’s THE GODFATHER/’72 (though a very different sort of house party!), so too are the many far less noted influences coursing between Coppola’s classic and Visconti’s previous family saga.  Here, the borrowings come largely in relationships & character, particularly from the titular brothers, five handsome young men from Southern Italy come north to Milan with their wailing wall of a mother to seek a better life.  Especially clear in how two middle brothers, older hothead Simone and cool Rocco, mirror Sonny & Michael Corleone.  Renato Salvatori as Simone, even looks a bit like Caan, though no one, certainly not Al Pacino, could ever hope to look even remotely like circa 1960 Alain Delon’s Rocco.*)  Visconti, more up-tempo than usual for him, makes the struggles entertaining (three of the boys hit the boxing ring) with melodramatic violence mirroring social attitudes of lower-class life in the big city.  Though sometimes he seems to by staging operas he never got around to on-stage.  (LA FORZA DEL DESTINO for the sibling feuds; CARMEN for the climatic murder).  He also gets powerful things from Claudia Cardinale as a sister-in-law and Annie Girardot as the prostitute who writhes between the brothers.  Almost all the actors in here barely known at the time, four instant stars for life.  Unlike 1943 Oscar-winner Katina Paxinou as the mother who acts as if Anna Magnani is standing by to replace her at any moment.  Beautifully shot (and now beautifully restored) by Giuseppe Rotunno; memorably scored by Nino Rota, the film became Visconti’s first (and only?) commercial blockbuster.  Deservedly so.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *And Visconti knew it.  Framing Delon as godlike icon, medium close-up, reclining, left arm raised to serve as the top of a frame line.  A Caravaggio portrait.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL:  Visconti drew his story from contemporary & classic sources.  Lots of Dostoevsky’s THE IDIOT in here for Delon, which would make Al Pacino Prince Myshkin in THE GODFATHER?!  Check out all baton passing from ROCCO and LEOPARD to GODFATHER, though pace yourself as another similarity between the films is a running time of three hours (give or take) each.

EL HOYO EN LA CERCA / THE HOLE IN THE FENCE (2021)

Mexican writer/director Joaquin del Paso’s sophomore feature, if not without sophomoric tendencies, is one disturbingly creepy socio-politico allegory hiding behind a How I Spent My Summer Vacation/Lord of the Flies schema.*  A busload of ‘tweens’ & teens seem happy enough when welcomed by camp staff & senior advisors, but there’s an uncomfortable edge to all the unsupervised boys-will-be-boys roughhousing.  And as layers of deceit flake off, we can see a design revealed under the surface tension and religious comradery as ideas of power and the rights of class entitlement pentimento into view as codes of behavior.  Gang up on the weakest; isolate the dark-skinned scholarship boy (and beat him up for sport); see how easy it is to pressure a false confession out of a scared innocent kid; dole out cheap gifts to the grateful local poor; use peer and social pressure to psychologically brutalize.  Lessons given with the tacit approval of the boys’ absent parents.  Some scenes come on too strong; others seem weirdly off point, but del Paso gets a lot right, works strongly with his cast (kids and adults) while pulling off a couple of devious ‘red herrings’ starting up/then bypassing expected homo-erotic/gay panic/dickish behavior, and letting us see how false threats on the compound are part of the show, meant to highlight class-oriented fear.  At its frequent best, this thinking man’s horror show can get inside your head.  (Note: Another 'Family Friendly' labeled film that's definitely not for the kiddies!  But kids old enough to be cast in it, like those 12 - 14 yr-old campers might get the most out of the film.) 

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Wildly influential, much honored/much adapted, William Golding’s LORD OF THE FLIES never lives up to its high-flying rep in print or on the screen.  Instead, though not strictly comparable, try Guillermo del Toro’s early masterpiece THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE/’01 which feels like a major influence on del Paso.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/08/el-espinazo-del-diablo-devils-backbone.html

IL BOEMO (2022)

Having bailed on CHEVALIER/’23 (about the so-called ‘Black Mozart’) after an execrable reel-and-a-half*, I may be overrating this bio-pic of Czech composer Josef Mysliveček, another musician with a tenuous Mozart connection, but this seems awfully good; a fascinating life-and-times effort from writer/director Petr Václav, his cast & crew, with exceptional period art direction & manners.  Hunting up jobs and titled influencers in the ununited Italy of the mid-1700s, Myslivecek (Vojtech Dyk, very fine) does the concert & society circuit of the day, wooing theater managers, fellow composers and many available unhappy ladies.  Swaggeringly tall & handsome, the young musician finds his struggles pay off once he learns how to compromise principles, flatter egos at court, and cultivate an overcharged bedside manner.  Three women stand out: an engaged beauty hoping to run off from her rich, elderly fiancé; a wealthy widow of demanding tastes & appetite; and an hysterical diva of sublime vocal/dramatic gifts.  Stunningly staged and designed, the very texture of the day perfectly caught, there’s none of the current fashion to trim events and sensibilities to modern ideas.  Honest discomfort that extends to a highly erotic ‘clothes on’ orgy.  These people are not like you and me.  And while Mysliveček has the goods to make his mark, romantic disappointments, sexual diseases, overreach and an acquired gambling habit will take him down in his early 40s.  The film sticks to operatic works and some of the actresses can’t quite pull off the dubbing (one late aria uses a trained singer instead of an actress; what a difference it makes!), but the actual musical performances (done at proper pitch with period orchestra) are the real thing though some of the stage lighting seems too modern.  The film really worth a look . . . and a listen.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Ludicrous right from the start, CHEVALIER has Mozart introducing himself as Amadeus, a name he never used (some publisher did), asking a cheering audience of 3000 to suggest an encore.  Which they do, calling out pieces by NUMBER (Violin Concerto #5; Symphony #25) as if the orchestra had all Mozart’s music ready to go on their stands or that these pieces even HAD numbers.  Then has Mozart grow jealous when Chevalier St. George out embellishes him.  Good grief.  Here, a teenage Mozart gets a delightful and believable scene, playing back and vastly improving a new piece Mysliveček has only just played for him.  Years later, when father Leopold wrote to chastise Wolfgang’s morals over the Weber girls (Mozart married the younger sister), Mozart furiously wrote back to his father stating that he was ‘no libertine like that Mysliveček!’

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  FELLINI’S CASANOVA/’76 makes for excellent comparison, mostly in IL BOEMO’s favor.  (BTW - the title translates as The Bohemian, a nickname for Italians who found Mysliveček all but impossible to pronounce.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/01/coming-off-amarcord73-federico-fellini.html

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  The rudely disinterested behavior of royalty & titled in boxes at the Naples’ opera during ‘the season,’ recreated here, is almost as bad as Stendhal described it in his LIFE OF ROSSINI from just a few decades later.

RENFIELD (2023)

Who doesn’t remember Dwight Frye as Renfield, Dracula’s mad bug-eating batman in the creaky old Bela Lugosi/Tod Browning 1931 classic.  Brought front-and-center in this Chris McKay campy vampy comic gore-fest, it’s more false advertizing than backstory, a Martial Arts/Superhero CGI blood-bath, the humor all nudge-nudge/wink-wink as Renfield tries to get Drac out of his system with Group Therapy sessions; bonds with the cop investigating drug trade murders & police corruption Renfield’s been drawn into; and busy hunting up tasty bugs to activate previously unknown superpowers.  Cue the usual CGI effects.  What any of this has to do with the Drac/Ren relationship is tenuous at best, more important, largely humorless as presented.  (The one good joke gives main villain Ben Schwartz the same hair that kid vampire had in THE MUNSTERS.)  Nicolas Cage waited his whole life for a chance to play Dracula.  He should have waited a bit longer.  Awkwafina needs more directorial help than she gets as the one ‘clean’ cop while Nicholas Hoult’s Renfield goes from Goth to Hugh Grant after a grooming.  (He’s gets the vocal inflections, but not the floppy hair of prime ‘90s Grant.)  On the other hand, as a putative franchise it lost enough money to put a stake thru its heart.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Just like Fredric March in DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE/’31, Cage has some difficulty talking thru his oversized teeth.

DOUBLE-BILL: How many ‘funny’ Dracula movies are there?   (And are any of them funny?)  LOVE AT FIRST BITE/’79, a Mel Brooks wannabe was dumb, but a game George Hamilton pretty good casting, no?  Brooks’ try, DRACULA: DEAD AND LOVING IT/’95, bad enough to end his film directing career.

NORTH WEST MOUNTED POLICE (1940)

Diminished during the silent-to-sound transition, Cecil B. DeMille repaired his rep back at Paramount after brief runs as independent and as M-G-M vassal.  But after the propulsively entertaining dross of 1932 to ‘39, the ‘40s saw DeMille become a top-grossing joke.  As a filmmaking pioneer, DeMille’s achievements in style & technique peaked late ‘teens/early ‘20s (not that the hoi polloi noticed), but grosses remained huge as artistic atrophy set in.  And now, collateral damage as soundstage exteriors he got away with in monochrome became stiff dioramas in 3-strip TechniColor; ‘colorful’ characters turned downright corny; catchphrases rang hollow.  DeMille survived, even thrived, amid the crudity as he never lost the story instinct to know what to show next.  But to a modern audience, his ‘40s films progressively become ever more ridiculous bores till he pulled himself out of his downward spiral with THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH (which is his Bible) and THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (which is his Greatest Show).  If nothing else, those two give good weight.  This one, about a real 19th century rebellion in Canada, sees a small group of Mounties fight off ’Half-Breeds’ while trying to keep Indigenous Peoples ‘Loyal to the Queen’ as Mountie Preston Foster and Texas Ranger Gary Cooper vie to capture the same half-breed villain (George Bancroft) and the heart of the same beautiful blonde nurse (Madeleine Carroll).  Not really as bad as people make out, tons of goofy supporting turns to spot, and all those spiffy red uniforms.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  DeMille films feel like Double-Bills all on their own.  But if you insist, for my money, SAMSON AND DELILAH/’49 is even worse, while the much dissed GREATEST SHOW/’52 is pretty irresistible.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/11/samson-and-delilah-1949.html    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-greatest-show-on-earth-1952.html

L’HUMANITÉ (1999)

In his second feature, French writer/director Bruno Dumont (imagine if Robert Bresson fathered Les Frères Dardenne) might be looking ahead to his own LI'L QUINQUIN/’14, another rural tale of murder that sets up, then largely ignores, police procedural forms.  Here, the victim is an 11-yr-old girl, brutally raped & killed, left on the side of a bus route road, investigated by a minimally competent local police force.  That’s where we meet Emmanuel Schotté, second detective on the case and almost comically slow on the uptake though oddly thoughtful & insightful once he does work up a response.  With his boss they gather a lot of info that doesn’t lead to much.  But it’s the human quirks of those we meet thru Schotté (a non-pro like everyone in here) that interest Dumont; their humanity if you insist.  Looking like a cross between Alfred Molina and slo-blinking babyface silent film comedian Harry Langdon, Schotté’s profile an art school exercise in unbroken line, he’s either a Saint or a Holy Fool.  Pining for a girl down the block, he tags along, even watches as she & her mec frolic & fuck.  A slow walk of a film, carefully observed without being judgmental, even toward the killer once found.  Dumont taking Renoir’s adage that ‘everyone has their reasons,’ without remembering the first part of the quotation: ‘In this world, the truly terrible thing is that everyone has their reasons.’

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, Dumont gets much further with these ideas in LI'L QUINQUIN.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/04/lil-ptit-quinquin-2014.html

AIN'T THEM BODIES SAINTS (2013)

Though it suffers from cryptic title syndrome and acute Terrence Malick-itis, this early work from David Lowery, a writer/director of most catholic taste (PETE’S DRAGON/’16 to THE GREEN KNIGHT/’21) makes its mark as an original take on some very Used Goods.  Casey Affleck & Rooney Mara, scruffy, croaky-voiced married couple, are forcibly split when he takes the rap after she shoots a policeman.  Loyal yet apart, he dreams only of crashing out and returning to meet their now 4-yr-old girl.  But the best laid plans . . .  Well, you know the drill, here spiced up with a few locals in and out of the police force (Keith Carradine, Ben Foster) who knew Affleck back when, and who care deeply for Mara; as well as pop-up bounty hunters eager for a pay out.  And while twenty producers cobbled funds together to make this, none supplied much light for Bradford Young’s crepuscular lensing.  You’ll need to squint as well as listen up to the mumbling vocals.  But it’s the rhythm of the thing that holds you in, no small gift for a budding filmmaker.  If only Lowery didn’t go overboard on the elegiac tone; he might be a story-telling folk singer with too many verses, and repeating choruses that da capo themselves to death.  Still, as following films have shown, definitely someone to watch.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: While fatalistic tales of doomed young lovers fighting against the odds started long before YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE/’37, Fritz Lang’s classic remains something of a touchstone.  And our Write-Up mentions many others in the same vein.  Beyond this LINK, use the Search Box in the upper lefthand corner of the Main Site to find them all!    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/11/you-only-live-once-1937.html

THREE WISE GIRLS (1931)

Seven writing credits your first year in Hollywood is no small achievement.  Especially when two were for Frank Capra and the other five made you go-to scrivener for Columbia Pictures boss Harry Cohn.  So while it’s no surprise this little programer flew under the radar, hidden under William Beaudine’s unexceptional megging, it’s an unusually interesting, if misnamed, early work.  The title makes it sound like one of those three roommates on the hunt for Mr. Right tales of the city (like THE GREEKS HAD A WORD FOR IT or HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE), and that’s half right.  But Riskin’s likely working title, BEHIND THE EIGHT BALL, mentioned half a dozen times, fills in the rest.  As salon model Mae Clarke explains to Jean Harlow, her small-town friend new to big city ways, Behind the Eight Ball is the position she’s stuck in as mistress to a married man promising divorce.  Sure enough, Harlow ends up repeating the pattern while her roommate pal, delicious Marie Prevost, more promisingly casts her eye on the rich guy’s chauffeur.  Riskin telegraphs his plot turns, but the playing still looks fresh & honest.  And what’s up with Harlow?  Suddenly, after looking like a miscast amateur she can act!  Even getting to show some of her own non-trampy/non-vampy actual personality.  Still a ‘dish,’ but a nice dish; shapely, sharp, and with a defensive antennae able to spot putative passes before they occur.  Harlow wouldn’t hit the bull’s eye till Anita Loos nailed her signature tough comic persona in M-G-M’s RED-HEADED WOMAN next year*, but her personality is already popping right thru the camera lens.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The married guy who takes up with Harlow, Walter Byron, never quite broke thru. But he grows on you and, in a pact with his amicable wife, Riskin briefly lands on the best idea in the film: friendly if incompatible husband & wife who’ve agreed to keep each other from making another marital mistake by refusing to grant a divorce.  Now there’s a story idea to run with.  Maybe for THE AWFUL TRUTH's Leo McCarey.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Harlow finds her true cinematic voice in RED-HEADED WOMAN/’32.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/04/red-headed-woman-1932.html

THE LIMEY (1999)

Blimey!  Terence Stamp, in a role that shrieks Sean Connery*, is just out of U.K. prison and in L.A. seeking revenge on the man he holds responsible for the death of his 20-yr-old daughter, a girl he barely knew.  But first he has to find the guy.  The film comes tricked out with barely banked violence and just enough story for director Steven Soderbergh to play around with after he finally established his mainstream bona fides via OUT OF SIGHT/’98 after a decade of money losing arty films.  (Oddly, SIGHT saved a lot of careers withoout actually making any money at the time.)  And play he does as the tale is so familiar, Soderbergh overworks editing & continuity tricks, hoping to liven up the old tropes.  Instead, the more he manipulates, the more he’s trapped, like Br’er Rabbit and the Tar Baby.  Peter Fonda, fresh off his prestige comeback in ULEE’S GOLD/’98, is clever casting as the aging record producer who’s moved on to a new young girlfriend, while the other main supporting types (Lesley Ann Warren, Barry Newman, Joe Dallesandro) come loaded with so much where-are-they-now vibes Quentin Tarantino might have blushed.  Soderbergh smartly plays the first big action shootout in ‘noises off’ fashion, with the killings ‘out of sight.’  (A self-referential gag?)  But later, isn't yet able to keep unwanted laughs out of the big Bang-Bang climax.  Still, the film moves well, looks handsome, and has a satisfying wrap up.  Plus, commercial & critical redemption just around the corner since his next was ERIN BROCKOVICH/’00.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Apparently, Michael Caine was the original casting idea, which makes sense since Mike Hodges’ GET CARTER/’71 a likely influence.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  The old clips of a young Terence Stamp worked in here are from POOR COW/’67.

NORTH DALLAS FORTY (1979)

In the late ‘70s, as Professional Football was supplanting Professional Baseball as America’s Pastime*, two major Hollywood films had the same goal: celebrate, satirize & lay bare the appeal & the hard dark hypocrisy behind the business of the game.  SEMI-TOUGH/’77 had the A-Team players: bigger stars & budget; commercially hot director; Oscar’d writers; legendary B’way producer hot to score in film.  NORTH DALLAS FORTY, from a Peter Gent bestseller (note poster), was distinctly B-Team.  Stars, director, script, all a couple of steps down.  And while DALLAS was anything but formulaic, the underdog production was true to formula in coming from behind to swamp the favorite with a surprise victory in all categories other than box-office (star names still mattered at the time); grossing a third less.   But such a better work.  Nick Nolte, easily out-acting everyone in either film, gives a tremendous perf as the aging receiver whose body is betraying him.  Especially those ‘never-fail’ hands.  He knows he’s being used up; what he doesn’t know, and what becomes the main plot, is that he’s also being used: by his coaches, by the owners, probably by best pal Mac Davis (unexpectedly fine) to further their agenda.  Director Ted Kotcheff, working looser than he did before or after, captures something open, daring & vanity-free from his cast, something he may not even have known he was getting.  And Gent’s insight shows everywhere.  (Shocking now to see how much smaller the game was at the time.)  There’s a weak link in Nolte’s love interest, Dayle Haddon a nonstarter, but everything else is spot on, violence, smoking, drugs, sexism & slowly receding racism.  Professional sports films wouldn’t be this sharp again till Ron Shelton started writing & directing them.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Out the same year, French soccer dramedy COUP DE TÊTE/’79 does professional sports tell-all as well as it’s ever been done.  Honest, appalling, funnier.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2023/03/coup-de-tete-hothead-1979.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *While football may rule ratings & profits, baseball still reigns, and by some margin, at the movies.

CHAMPAGNE CHARLIE (1944)

From wartime Ealng Studios, a spirited bio-pic of mid-19th century Music Hall entertainer George Leybourne (aka Champagne Charlie) distinctly different than similar fare out of Hollywood would have been: more reality grounded, less glamorized/less structurally neat.  Starting by happenstance thru ‘pub’ sing-a-longs, Leybourne quickly rises to Music Hall stardom and rivalry with well-established star Stanley Holloway at a competitor’s theatre.  Then pivoting to political battle for its second half when the legitimate stage tries to legally shut down Music Hall entirely and send the artists back to the pubs.  A third plotline with Leybourne pining for the boss’s daughter goes for nought when she takes up with a Duke’s colorless son.  So, by default, the modest drama lets the action fall right where it should, on the likeable acts; simple, catchy, ultimately forgettable sing-songy tunes, and most of all, some exceptionally well-caught backstage atmosphere.  (Look for the exposed gas-lit pilot lights encircling the stage frame.  Downright scary!  And no asbestos curtain.)  Ambience the special gift from director Alberto Cavalcanti keeping up pace and movement, brilliantly caught by camera team Wilkie Cooper & Douglas Slocombe working with an infinite gray-scale and stunningly coordinated planes of action for one masterful composition after another.  Rapturous; and with just enough dramatic support.  Great fun, particularly in the early going.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Want to see what Dick Van Dyke was aiming for with his infamous Cockney act in MARY POPPINS/’64?  As Leybourne, unexportable British fave Tommy Trinder, a real Marmite of a talent, shows exactly what the idea was.  These two might be cousins, same build, same height, same no-more-than-pleasant singing voice.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Be sure to get the full 1' 42" British cut; a Stateside release clipped about thirty minutes of stage acts from the running time.  The dopes.

DIARY OF A LOST GIRL / TAGEBUCH EINER VERLORENEN (1929)

Returning to America after PANDORA’S BOX/’29 in Germany, just in time to refuse sound reshoots on THE CANARY MURDER CASE/’29, effectively ending her A-list Hollywood career, Louise Brooks soon sailed back to director G.W. Pabst in Berlin for this followup.  Facing censorship & the Talkie Revolution, DIARY repeated PANDORA’S scandale but not its succès de, dropping so much footage along the way it’s always seemed an 80 minute afterthought to the earlier film.  Now, triumphantly restored to its original two-hour length in a recent German restoration (out on KINO), it still seems an afterthought, but now a worthwhile one.  Most of the difference from its authors: PANDORA’S Frank Wedekind unsettling provocateur; DIARY’S Margarete Böhme agile provocateur.  Here, Brooks, who may never have looked quite so stunning, falls and falls as passive victim (pregnant teen to reformatory to brothel), while in BOX she’s active victim, goading lovers toward murder . . . even her own.  The tone now less perverse, the presentation less expressionistic.  Though Pabst can still move in and out of stylistic extremes with the deftness of an integrated musical moving characters in and out of show tunes.  Unmissable in this refined edition, Brooks made one more film abroad before returning to the States for a few minor roles, then salesgirl at Saks Fifth Avenue, finally landing as the cinematic sage of Rochester, New York.  What a beauty, what a brain, what a bitch of a life.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  The obvious choice is PANDORA’S BOX.  But as one silent German Expressionist film goes a long way, why not try Brooks at her Hollywood peak in William Wellman’s BEGGARS OF LIFE.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/01/beggars-of-life-1928.html

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JUDGE ROY BEAN (1972)

With mocking tone typical of the day (call it rollicking savagery) from a bilious John Milius screenplay, L&ToJRB damns the facts & prints its own legend on self-appointed Texas judge & jury Roy Bean.  Paul Newman, just off POCKET MONEY/’72 with Lee Marvin, picks up his recent co-star’s act, growling & groomed like a grizzly bear.  John Huston, directing & putting in a supporting turn along with a passel of starry pals, shamelessly encourages everyone to have a good time, but the fun doesn’t transfer to the screen.*  Instead, faux nihilism as Newman’s Judge takes revenge on anyone who opposes him, getting away with murder till he leaves town to see his idol, actress Lillie Langtry and suddenly finds his lucky streak ended.  Losing everything, Bean disappears for a couple of decades only to return to a grown town where he no longer fits in, and a grown daughter (Jacqueline Bisset, natch) he doesn’t know.  Meant as a goof and as serious political commentary, both film and ideas now look pretty exhausted.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  A rare, if modest, commercial  success for First Artists productions, the company Newman, Barbra Streisand, Steve McQueen & Sidney Poitier thought would provide artistic freedom before McQueen’s career & health collapsed.  His last two films, Ibsen’s ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE/'78 and TOM HORN/'80 pretty much finished First Artists.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Huston’s follow up with Newman, THE MACKINTOSH MAN/’73, a standard-issue spy thriller, tight where this is loose.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/08/mackintosh-man-1973.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Typical Milius witticism: ‘Have you anything to say before we find you guilty?’  On the other hand, someone came up with the fine idea of having Bean’s pet bear bite a cigar right out of the judge’s mouth.

GERMINAL (2021)

Oft cited as Émile Zola’s masterpiece (does it truly top NANA,  L'OEUVRE, AU BONHEUR DES DAMES,  LA BÊTE HUMAINE or . . . or . . . or . . . ?); less debatable is that GERMNAL*, his magnificent & punishing novel on a coal town in a crisis of capitalism, communism, class & corruption, is the most purely cinematic of his works.  Even with cascading plot lines & characters spread out over his semi-fictional mining town, you easily follow its coal family laborers; managers & owners; non-local agitators & union campaigns, company town practices & bar life; love affairs & sabotaging anarchists.  A giant wheel-of-fortune narrative organized by Zola to hold together like a dramatic ‘jenga’ puzzle for him to pull out single pieces for examination while keeping structural integrity as he balances empathy with nihilistic horror.  No wonder this breathtaking achievement has proved tough to master on film with various failed mini-series and three main mega-film attempts.  From 1913, an inert 2.5 hour serial by Albert Capellani.  (His 3' LES MISERABLES from the same year far better, still quite watchable.)  A forgotten 1963 ‘cinema-of-quality’ version (not seen here) by Yves Allégret with a Charles Spaak screenplay, natch.  And a much ballyhooed All-Star dud; sane & solid under Claude Berri, tastefully purring along like late David Lean manqué; leaving no mark other than the thought that lead Gérard Depardieu is eating all the food in the house while his family starves.  So, it’s a pleasure, to note how much this recent six-part version for French tv gets right covering most of the story.  (Though how they missed showing the vengeful towns-ladies parading around town with the company store manager’s genitals stuck on a pike after they riot over food & past acts of sexual blackmail during the strike, is beyond me.)  The lead activist (an outsider who changes the worker dynamic of the entire community) isn’t as tough & charismatic as he needs to be, but most of the casting is spot on.  And the owner/managers have plenty of complexity, too, even sympathy.   Moving the time period up three or four decades seems pointless, but all in all, as far as it goes, a fine adaptation.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: To get an idea of what’s missing here, Mario Monicelli/Marcello Mastroianni’s superb THE ORGANIZER/’63.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2015/06/i-compagni-organizer-1963.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *In France, ‘Germinal’ was the seventh month in the revolutionary calendar, the Spring month of ‘germination’ when the seeds you planted started to bud.

LA CHAMBRE BLEUE / THE BLUE ROOM (2014)

Discomforting/illicit love affair from author Georges Simenon, published in the ‘60s, adapted by, updated and starring Mathieu Amalric, is well observed, but falls crucially flat without the period social mores (and possibility of capital punishment/guillotine) that would have made its lethal outcome shocking at the time.  Contentedly married (with child) to Léa Drucker, Amalric has become lost in an obsessive affair with controlling, off-balanced Stéphanie Cléau; also married and something of a sadistic bedmate.  That’s the attraction.  But a pair of murders leave circumstantial evidence pointing toward both lovers, though the film definitely leans toward one.  Amalric no doubt realizes the relationship wouldn’t be nearly so scandalous nowadays: divorce far more accepted than sixty years ago, to say nothing of kinky sex practices.  So he, along with co-scripter Cléau, deconstruct the narrative into a Cubist design and keep the running time at a trim 76".  Plus full nudity we’d not have seen 60+ years ago to add some edge to the material, just not enough.  (Edge, not nudity!)

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: It wasn’t until the middle of the third act, when we reach the courtroom, that similarities to Hitchcock’s intriguing if unsatisfying THE PARADINE CASE/'47 became apparent.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-paradine-case-1947.html

SPACEBALLS (1987)

Something of a surprise flop on release (you’ll see why); then something of a surprise home video sensation over time (you’ll see why), Mel Brooks’ last film success, a genre parody of STAR WARS et al., stuck to signature Brooks’ tastelessness, lack of filmmaking finesse, oafish jokes and garish lighting (‘Ya gotta see the gag to get the gag.’), it was even awarded a ‘Stinker of the Year’ trophy.  But good-natured silliness wins you over in spite of yourself, Brooks coming thru with his promise in HISTORY OF THE WORLD, PART ONE to make JEWS IN SPACE.  And it didn’t hurt that Brooks’ clunky look and stiff staging gain rather than lose when seen on the small screen.  With most of the gags based on absurdity of scale, Sci-Fi clichés, and a plethora of ‘dick’ jokes, there’s just enough time for Daphne Zuniga’s kidnapped Princess to be rescued by Bill Pullman (inspired) as a reckless space cowboy.  With loads of bonus ‘meta’ jokes, including a very clever time continuum routine with the cast watching themselves on an early-release VHS tape.  It’s the film’s Groucho/Harpo Marx mirror routine.  And if Brooks is no Leo McCarey, he does work off the same playbook.  Three flop genre parodies followed (ROBIN HOOD: MEN IN TIGHTS has its moments), but Brooks only found further success in stage adaption of earlier hits.  Did he run out of genres or just run out of gas.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Drinking Game: Every time Mel makes a ‘dick’ joke (Brooks a living thesaurus on penile euphemisms), take a shot.

THE DEVIL'S OWN (1997)

Last call for director Alan J. Pakula (69) and cinematographer Gordon Willis (66) finds them on auto-pilot, not necessarily a bad thing, for the only IRA terrorist thriller that might well have been titled CUTE AND CUTER.  Harrison Ford’s the cute one, ultra-principled vet NYC cop who’ll bond with, then regret boarding Irish immigrant Brad Pitt, the cuter one, unaware this foreigner, last survivor of an IRA terrorist cell, has been smuggled Stateside to buy a cache of secret weapons ‘for the cause.’  Just the sort of cerebral thriller Pakula was known for, but here put thru a development blender to take any texture out of the leads, pureed for maximum sympathy.  (Was this why Pitt threatened to ankle?)  A few touches of moral complexity boost interest in the second half, but a too convenient/too hard to swallow double climax asks for just the sort of kinetic action DNA Pakula tended to neutralize.  On the other hand, Willis isn’t afraid of being theatrical, getting just the shot needed to pull off the big Ford/Pitt confrontation with nothing more than a whitewashed brick wall and a shadow to emphasize Ford’s moral authority against Pitt’s shadowless nihilism.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK: Look fast to spot the same outdoor New York stairway Joaquin Phoenix danced down in THE JOKER/’19.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/04/joker-2019.html

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Pitt got clobbered pretty bad for his buttery Irish accent.  (He does say ‘Aye’ for ‘Yes’ too many times to count.)  But as accents go, you’ve heard far worse.

NIGHT MONSTER (1942)

Top-billed at Universal for the first (and last) time since 1932, you’d think the studio execs might have come up with a role that gave Bela Lugosi something to do.  Think again.  In a story with real possibilities, creepy-crawly atmosphere & sudden death, Bela’s the butler at a spooky mansion: answering phones; opening doors; announcing dinner . . . that’s about it.  Second-billed Lionel Atwill doesn’t get much more to do as one of three (make that four) psychiatrists, an early victim of an unknown serial killer in the house.  Horror afficionados no doubt nonplussed at finding a whodunit with supernatural trimmings.  Leif Erickson’s the house chauffeur with strong arms to force himself on housemaid Fay Helm & lady shrink Irene Hervey (excellent!) when not carting crippled master Ralph Morgan up & down the stairs.  Nils Asther hovers mysteriously about as an Occult Prince; another pair of Docs; an hysterical housekeeper to lord it over an introverted spinster, plus Don Porter as the film’s ‘normal guy.’  No wonder the first act is promising.  Even a hack megger like Ford Beebe can’t miss hitting a few bumps in the night.  Especially when that perky housemaid shows up strangled and bloodied.  But everything goes a bit dead as the corpses pile up, and a supernatural climax feels not just unconvincing but cheap.  So it went for much Universal horror product in the ‘40s.  At least, we don’t have Lon Chaney Jr. cast as a handsome leading man.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK: With his natural screen presence, why no one thought of Lugosi for straight character parts is a mystery.  Only Ernst Lubitsch gave him one, a magnificent cameo in NINOTCHKA/’39; perfectly cast, unforgettable.  If Lugosi couldn’t follow up after stealing a scene from Greta Garbo (!), he surely had the lamest agent in Hollywood.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/12/ninotchka-1939.html

BROTHER BEAR (2003)

After a heartening return to form in hand-drawn animation on LILO & STITCH/'02*, Disney blew whatever goodwill they‘d generated on what proved to be the studio’s penultimate example of old-school Disney animation.  A misbegotten idea before a single pencil was sharpened, this rather disagreeable faux Inuit fable works too hard for that ol’ LION KING vibe as a beloved older brother, rather than a father, dies in an act of protection, to set up the action.  Squabbling sibling boys rather than squabbling sibling Royals lead to the sacrifice, and a bear, rather than a stampede, is blamed.  Real guilt belongs to the kid brother, a handsome lad only just gifted with his Life Totem, a carved bear of love.  And now he only wishes to take revenge on a bear he blames for his older brother’s death.  So, of course, a mystical aurora borealis event turns him into a bear after the act, forcing him to walk a mile in . . . bear shoes?  Bear feet?  Lessons in the balance between man and nature; life & the spirit world; friendship & jealousy; mud & snow; anodyne stuff.  With ‘adorable’ comic relief characters proving more annoying than charming.  There’s the kiddie companion (a young bear, natch, a scratchy-voiced horror in his only film role); those Canadian gagsters Dave Thomas & Rick Moranis doing their Hockey Night in Canada dumb & dumber act as a couple of moose (note a pair of randy rams to see what might have been); Phil Collins’ pop songs when the producers think we’ve had our fill of traditional (Inuit?) music; sweetened  special effects (CGI?) that stick out from the visual style.  No wonder co-directors Aaron Blaise & Robert Walker (deceased in 2015) had no follow up feature over the last twenty years.  Even more, wonder why Disney bothered with a straight-to-video BROTHER BEAR 2 after this disappointment.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK:  *As mentioned above, with less than two-thirds the budget, LILO & STITCH showed what could still be done in classic Disney style.  It's currently in development for Live-Action remake.  (Boo!)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2022/07/lilo-stitch-2002.html

NEVER WAVE AT A WAC (1953)

After a decade & a half split largely between playing business women in light vehicles (Mid-Atlantic accent tilting American) & prestige literary assignments in heavier ones (Mid-Atlantic accent tilting British), Rosalind Russell found parts drying up as she hit her mid-40s, then coming to her own rescue with a hit B’way musical (WONDERFUL TOWN) soon after making this little indie comedy produced by husband Frederick Brisson.  The musical is a classic (Bernstein, Comden & Green); the film small potatoes (in spite of surprisingly strong support in front & behind the camera), but not without interest mixing Irving Berlin/Ethel Merman’s CALL ME MADAM (Washington socialite finds love on assignment) with Katharine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy’s PAT AND MIKE/’52.*  They even hired William Ching from PAT AND MIKE to repeat as ‘third wheel.’  The main switch is that while Hepburn ran away from fiancé Ching when she accidentally finds stocky true mate Tracy; Roz is running after fiancé Ching (all the way to Paris by joining the army?) when she reunites with stocky ex Paul Douglas.  The film opens quite promisingly as Russell’s Washington soiree is crashed by Douglas, come to retrieve his dog and some personal items.  Well played, funny & neatly paced by comedy vet Norman Z. McLeod, it only sets us up for disappointment at the coarse, pushy routines that follow.  (We never do get to Paris.)  Even worse with ditzy comic Marie Wilson running a parallel path to Russell by also joining the army to get away from her problems.  Wilson went on to bring the popular MY FRIEND IRMA to tv; Russell hit the jackpot with AUNTIE MAME on stage and as the top grossing pic of 1958.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Hard to believe, but Russell, Hepburn and Paul Douglas all born 1907.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *As mentioned, PAT AND MIKE; CALL ME MADAM.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/call-me-madam-1953.html

EL SUPLENTE / THE SUBSTITUTE (2022)

Exceptional film from Argentina, co-scripted & directed by Diego Lerman, with Juan Minujín* in a remarkably detailed & touching turn as a one-book novelist trying on substitute high school teaching in a tough working-class neighborhood while dealing with divorce, his 12-yr-old girl’s reluctance to excel, and his widowed-father’s failing health as he opens his dream project, a Community Kitchen.  None of these issues going quite as expected when a cache of drugs show up at school with a couple of his students possibly involved selling.  All this informing political angles as the local drug lord, running for mayor, is mad at the teacher’s father for refusing his ‘tainted’ food donations; poaching students for his operation; furious at one (Dilan, a troubled kid who volunteers at the Community Kitchen) for breaking the code of conduct by selling drugs on school property.  The latter a serious breach in local drug culture etiquette guaranteed to rile up police action against his organization.  He also thinks the teacher is just the guy he can pressure to take care of each of these problems.  So a drama that opens as if we were going to play street-wise school kids against power-of-literature tropes switches tracks without announcing its new course.  Well constructed to handle the various storylines; there’s also some engagingly off-balance romance and great spots for the 16-yr-old kids to warm toward what had been a non-priority subject.  Look for a big ox of a boy who comes alive in class with just a few lines.  With a tough, realistic look and the editing of a classicist, the film is loaded with pleasurable content, sharp execution and a big emotional climax.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Juan Minujín proves the real deal on screen.  You may have already seen him in supporting work (he’s the young Pope Francis before Jonathan Pryce takes over in THE TWO POPES/’19).  A regular in Argentinean film (lots of rom-coms), some smart Hollywood producer should tap him for a mainstream project.  How’s his English?

NED KELLY (1970)

Australia’s own Billy the Kid legend, their Pop Culture outlaw of choice, was Edward (Ned) Kelly, his tale just as tamed & romanticized for popular consumption as The Kid’s.  This middling to fair pic, from brazenly uneven writer/director Tony Richardson (imaginatively lensed by Gerry Fisher if bizarrely fitted with faux folk songs from Shel Silverstein/sung by Waylon Jennings) got a bit of commercial push and notoriety for starting (or was it stopping?) Mick Jagger’s serious acting career.  (PERFORMANCE, out later this year, finished any talk.)  Irish by heritage (hence the confusing accent) and born into a fatherless family of horse thieves, Ned’s just been released from prison when his brother is getting hauled in on similar charges.  Their resistance, and a shooting, puts the brothers on the lam, along with a couple of sympathizers, all claiming Irish sovereignty (or is it simply Irish lager?) they fight off escalating swarms of cops, government agents, and military units, before their hideout is found and they’re firebombed into submission.  Bound if unbowed, Ned goes to the gallows with righteous indignation.  (BTW, no SPOILERS here, ‘The End’ is ‘The Start’ of the pic.)  Richardson tries to jazz up a story that feels secondhand, but his one chance to bring in something fresh was Jagger’s offbeat casting, and it dies aborning thru hairstyling and a beard that transforms the R&B frontman into a Quaker lad.  What could be more of a turnoff?  No doubt Jagger thought this all was part of making this no stunt but a serious acting statement.  But since he’s unconvincing at conveying emotion, the attempt, in spite of decent surroundings, wasted effort.

DOUBLE-BILL:  A slightly higher rated NED KELLY in 2003 with Heath Ledger, Orlando Bloom, Naomi Watts, Joel Edgerton & Geoffrey Rush (not seen here) sounds even more of a whitewash.

THE COLD BLUE (2018)

  . . . plus THE MEMPHIS BELLE: A STORY OF A FLYING FORTRESS (1944)

Left to rot in the National Archives or circulating in steadily deteriorating prints, the U.S. military has been a disinterested keeper of the historically important documentaries they made during World War II; Public Domain orphans by design.  So it was something of a fluke when all 15 hours of wartime footage shot for one of the best examples of these films, William Wyler’s Oscar-winning 45-minute THE MEMPHIS BELLE, turned up safe, sound & in generally good condition in the archive vaults.  Digitally restored & reedited as the basis of a new documentary by Erik Nelson, done in a flashback construction with remembrances by some of the few surviving 8th Air Force crew members (none from The Memphis Belle), the results are often physically stunning and the reconfigured ‘teaching’ angle touching & effective.  But not a patch on Wyler’s original, far more dramatic, story-oriented cut of the culminating 25th mission of the Memphis Belle & crew on a last bombing run over Germany and then back to their British base before going home to the States.  Wyler, and his three cameramen (one died when his plane was shot down, one was William Clothier who would shoot John Ford’s late Westerns), all going up on active flights with 5-minute spools of 16mm Technicolor stock for their wind-up cameras.  An ‘extra’ on the Kino Lorber DVD of COLD BLUE, it’s really the Main Event and almost certainly never looked better.  Wyler’s daughter Catherine (an exec producer here) thinks it never looked as good.

DOUBLE-BILL:  In FIVE CAME BACK/’17, John Huston, John Ford, Frank Capra, George Stevens and William Wyler get a well-deserved mini-series to tell the story of their war time films & service.  OR: The 1990 film MEMPHIS BELLE, a pretty good film with a lousy rep.

21 BRIDGES (2019)

Maybe not 21, but plenty of bridges shown going in & out of Manhattan in montages that open & close this tricked up police procedural about a heroin grab that proves too big to handle.  The gimmick is that trigger-happy lead detective Chadwick Boseman has all 21 bridges shut down overnight to keep the thieves trapped in the city.  (Tunnels & ferries, too.)  Yet the script hardly bothers with the concept of closing the city up tight, never even thinks to have a look at motor vehicle backup.  Not much use as ticking clock, either.  (Our Italian poster comes up with a 'bridge-less' generic title.)  Elsewise, not a lot deeply wrong with this Bread-and-Butter police procedural that sees Boseman playing a variation on that old standby character, the overlooked professional finally hired for the big job, unaware he’s been chosen because he’s sure to fail . . . then comes thru after all.  Here, he’s put in charge after seven police deaths at the robbery site because of his reputation for shooting first and asking questions later.  The corrupt participants counting on Boseman to kill the pair of mid-level robbers who stumbled onto the supply (gravy) chain that runs right thru city politics, drug lords and the police force. Director Brian Kirk might well be at his best on action stuff, but hard to tell as the settings are doubly dark; first because it all plays out between 1 & 5 a.m., and second because he’s hiding mostly Philadelphia locations trying to pass as Manhattan.  Add in supporting turns bland enough for network tv and the usually great J.K. Simmons phoning it in.  But credit Boseman with keeping this one largely on course, in spite of a business-as-usual vibe that even throws on a ‘70s tag ending.  You know the shot, the big helicopter pull-back, the sudden change in film grain, the fade to credits.  Digital camera specifications may have lessened grain deterioration, but not improved the concept.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Check out that ultra-clean F-train subway car during a final face-off between Boseman and the surviving crook.  How long has it been since spic-n-span urban space, police procedural and Manhattan Transit came together?

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Don Siegel’s CHARLEY VARRICK/’73 remains the film to beat on the dangers of robbers finding more than they expect.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/05/charley-varrick-1973.html