Black Mama, White Mama (1973)

“Part two of my ‘Mama’ double bill”

If the title doesn’t tell you all that you need to know, then the cast list probably does.  If the cast list doesn’t, then welcome to civilization and where have you been?  Pam Grier- acting, as ever, mostly with her nostrils- is in a prison in the Philippines.  I imagine that she was there for a crime she didn’t commit as she gave withering looks to the guards which said “I’m better than this” but I wasn’t totally concentrating as I’d spilt a cup of tea all over my left leg at this point.  After the world’s longest shower scene, presumably designed to allow the feckless cum-shedders watching to get their onanistic pleasure out of the way and leave the cinema quietly (and damply) we get on with the plot.  Grier and the equally statuesque Margaret Markov don’t hit it off at all, in fact they’re soon throwing things on each other’s food in the canteen and get locked (topless) in a big metal box in searing heat to sweat it out for twenty-four hours.  After that, they get chained together to be taken to an even tougher prison but, en route, the prison convoy is attacked by some guerrillas and the girls take their chance to run for it.  This is not The Defiant Ones by any means!

A little conversation here reveals that Markov is a poor little rich girl running with a group of Marxists who knows too much to allow them to let her stay in prison where she may talk and Grier is a drug-dealer’s concubine who has stashed away a load of his money.  Being chained together presents a little problem; Markov wants to get back to her comrades and appeals to Grier’s better nature “you’re black, surely you can understand”, Grier doesn’t care at all about her “jive-ass” revolution she just wants to get the cash and leave the country.  Clearly, all this talk is slowing down the pace too much and Eddie Romero (directing) isn’t stupid, he knows what we want to see.  The girls have a catfight.

Next they head to the nearest town and, spying two nuns, drag them off the street and duff them up in time-honoured fashion before dressing in their habits as a disguise.  Presumably on the grounds of good taste the beating up and stripping to the undies of the Nuns happens off-screen.  Good taste my balls, I’m not watching this for sensitive film-making.  Now, while I’m on about this scene, I’m not claiming to be a brainbox or anything, but I like to think that I can dress myself okay.  What I don’t think I could do is to change from a (tiny, obviously) mini-dress into a Nun’s habit while handcuffed to someone else.  Not without some dress-making equipment, a lot of time and total ambidexterity anyway!

Oh, that’s enough about the ludicrous plot (even if Jonathan ‘Silence of the Lambs and New Order’s brilliant ‘True Faith’ video’ Demme did write it!).  Here’s what it boils down to- Pam Grier is brilliant in her trademarked early 70s hammy-but-cool way, Marjorie Markov is unexpectedly almost as good and Sid Haig is screen-chewingly brilliant as crackers bounty-hunting gangster who dresses somewhat incongruously as a cowboy.  Everyone else is shit.  There’s lots of tomato ketchup splashing around and a fair bit of nudity- including Pam’s famously odd 0 and o shaped nipples.  The film runs out of steam and ideas pretty quickly and everyone seems to wish they’d just made an “interracial lesbians in prison” movie instead because it all seems a bit too much of an effort out there in the jungle but in spite of it all it’s still tremendously entertaining- if only for Grier and Haig’s charisma.  5/10

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002)

A bit too arch

I liked this.  I thought it was very much a ‘first-time director’ effort with some gimmicky bits that detract from rather than add to the overall piece- and you don’t really need that when it’s a Charlie Kaufman script- but I enjoyed it a lot.

Sam Rockwell plays, as he often does, the role with great relish.  It’s not quite hammy, but it is certainly theatrical.  He also exposes his buttocks more than champion bottom-flasher Jean-Claude Van Damme has ever managed in a single film.  He has a ball.  In fact, it looks like everyone has a ball- except Clooney whose added responsibility seems to carry over into his role resulting in him underplaying a little too much against Rockwell and being kind of shut out like white noise.  His sub-Cary Grant comedy gurning would be out of place here but he could still benefit from ramping it up a little.

From memory it was about this point that Julia Roberts started to be considered ‘interesting’ after proving she could carry a film in Erin Brockovich (I haven’t seen that, I’m trusting reputations) but I didn’t see too much from her here to shout about.  Likewise Drew Barrymore is fun playing within herself.  And that’s okay because it all works fine, the film is loose and rolls along in a carefree manner which is suited to the material- this is really no place for histronics after all.

The concept is fantastic, obviously, playing the fantastical material straight works and even the talking heads bits- which shouldn’t work at all given the nature of the piece- contribute something.  But it isn’t quite right.  Clooney would follow this with the far superior Goodnight and Good Luck, a weightier film altogether which perhaps suits him better.  It’s just a gut feeling and I should know better than to listen to gut feelings, but I got the impression that some of the fun stuff here- the mention of Rosemary Clooney, the weird colourised cinematography, the seriously outlandish costume and sets- was a bit too arch and a bit too forced.  It’s almost like an inferior version of Terry Gilliam’s underrated Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. But I enjoyed it, that’s what matters. 5/10

I Confess (1953)

There is nothing Hitchcock loves more than a man who is under suspicion for a crime he didn’t commit.  He probably loves it even more than he loves melodramatic film titles, which is- as the Velvettes would tell you- really saying something.  The wrongly accused man is his key theme (three years later another of his many films on the theme would be called simply The Wrong Man) and the way it is used in this film could have made it the best of all of his takes on the concept.

Montgomery Clift plays Father Logan who is not only under suspicion and entirely innocent but he heard the guilty man’s confession and he knows who the real murderer is but is bound by his vows and cannot say- even in the face of the gallows!  It’s a great concept, truly it is and Monty Clift gives an extraordinarily tortured and yet restrained performance as Logan.  I don’t know too much about Clift, other than he died prematurely in sad circumstances and that his homosexuality had led him into alcohol and drug dependency, but I do know that when he was young he had it all- he was beautiful (not sexy or handsome but actually beautiful) and talented with a wonderful voice.  I bet he could even play darts if he’d put his mind to it.  In I Confess we are seeing the young, pre-accident Clift and his ability to express a thousand thoughts with fleeting expressions or a shift of his eyes is striking.  The scene where he hears O. E. Hasse’s confession is dazzling.  Hitchock knew he had something special here and he made the most of it.  It’s a wonderfully memorable scene.  What follows from there succeeds where it does because the audience is totally with Clift and that’s the hook.

The downside of this concept, however, is that the underlying uncertainty in Hitchcock’s other great innocent suspect films cannot happen here.  We never truly know until the climax whether Rear Window‘s Lars Thorwald really killed his wife or not, but we know that Clift is innocent without any lingering doubts about whether a further twist awaits us.  We also know- as seasoned movie-goers- that there is not a chance in a million that an innocent priest would be sent to the gallows in a 1953 Hollywood film.  If that was the ending, the film simply wouldn’t have been made.  And that kind of kills the suspense.  My wife’s uncle says that he’ll never watch a James Bond film “there’s no point” he claims “if you know that he isn’t going to die”.  And that’s a little of what happens here.  That element of doubt is missing and so as great a performance as Clift might give, it still isn’t quite enough.  I also didn’t think that Dimitri Tiomkin’s score aided the process as it should.  The best advert for the talents of Bernard Herrmann are the Hitchcock films which he didn’t score, that’s always been my opinion.  Tiomkin’s music is competent without adding colour to what is on screen, it lacks magic.

One of the interesting things about this film, though, is the way that Hitchcock presents it visually.  This is almost a film noir with it’s exaggerated shadows and many dramatic low-level outdoor shots of Quebec buildings.  The noir motif of light streaking in through venetian blinds was brilliantly played upon in the confession box scene too- Hitchcock had great fun there.  There is even an extended flashback sequence, another noir staple.  And yet one of the things a noir needs- at least according to my understanding and opinions vary- is a degree of tension and conflict that is the staple of the vast majority of the great man’s work and yet is sorely missing here.  Clift’s stoical determination to uphold the sanctity of the confession box is so great that he doesn’t even appear to try and push Keller (the real murderer) into confessing.  And this lack of tension makes the film sag, especially around the extended flashback scene.  I remember thinking ‘this goes on a bit’ only halfway through that, by contrast the courtroom scenes flashed by in an eye-blink.  The change in Keller’s demeanour through the course of the film from distraught to relieved to cocksure should have ramped up the tension just as Clift’s turmoil and fear should have.  But it didn’t.  While Clift is angst-ridden and Keller’s manipulative remorselessness should make for spectacular exchanges, their scenes together are flat.

And none of the sub-plots really add to the drama, though at the same time they don’t offer relief either, they merely exist alongside the main story.  Ruth and Pierre Grandfort’s marriage may be going through the wringer and Alma Keller may be struggling to hold it together, or even to want to hold it together, for her husband but the viewer isn’t grabbed by these.  As extensions on the false accusation/trust and honesty theme they are simply mentioned, they aren’t explored or even properly introduced.  This is Hitchcockian thriller without the trademark Hitchcockian thrills.

We get some wonderful little sequences like the party scene opening on a glass and then opening out to reveal that it is being balanced on a man’s head as part of a party game, but they aren’t sufficient to do more than remind you that this is Hitchcock, but not vintage Hitchcock.  It’s a shame because Hasse, the ever-reliable Karl Malden, Dolly Haas as Alma Keller and Montgomery Clift all deserved a better film for their efforts.  Good, not great.  5/10

Ooooh, something occured to me in the night that I’d probably need to check up on but given the politics of the time with McCarthyism and all, how significant was it that Hitchcock’s hero refused to speak up?  I know that Hitch was no lefty, but is this an alternative perspective to Kazan’s On The Waterfront?

The Young Victoria (2009)

I’ve seen about five films in a row without posting any notes on here, so they’ll be necessarily brief.  But that’s okay, there’s not too much to say about this really.  It has sumptuous costumes and settings, is well acted in the main by some top European actors (and we should be thankful that Keira Knightly wasn’t asked to portray the overweight monarch) and has a vaguely diverting story by the almost excellently named Julian Fellowes.  But it’s just a bit crap.  Costume dramas tend to be, perhaps it’s the period detail that distracts but I think it’s more likely that the authentically stilted dialogue works against the building up of suspense or drama or intrigue unless it is really, really well written and rendered (as in David Lean’s Great Expectations) for example.

Apart from that, there is always the problem- when making a biopic about a period of someone’s life- about how to ensure that you leave nothing unresolved.  Life simply isn’t like that and only death can really finalise matters in the way that suits a movie.  This issue is dealt with here by having half of the bad guys sent away and the remainder repenting having seen Albert take a bullet aimed at Victoria and realising that he’s more of a brainbox, hero and all-round nice guy than the conniving German sausage they had originally taken him for.  Simplistic and unsatisfying, especially in the case of Paul Bettany who had built his character’s wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing persona beautifully until he had to simply front up that Albert was tops with him.  Albert, by the way, seems to have hair that changes colour from one scene to the next.  I’ll put it down to my eyesight but it could just be that it was inconsistently dyed or managed over the course of the shooting of the film.

So anyway, Emily Blunt is passable in the lead role (if miscast physically), Jim Broadbent- who has previously played the role of Albert- has a nice cameo with a great King William quiff, Miranda Richardson underplays the role of wicked Mother well and Mark Strong is both brooding and boring as the thoroughly 2D bad-guy Sir John Conroy.  The whole thing is passably directed and the cinematography (by Hagen Bogdanski, the guy who did The Lives of Others) is markedly hit-and-miss, doing the easy things badly and the hard things well.

So it’s better than I expected but, if I’m honest, still a failure.  But a very pretty one.  With some nice wigs and pairs of trousers on display throughout.  It isn’t quite the sum of it’s parts, but it will do nice business at the Box Office.  No-one’s career will be any the worse for it and everyone’s happy.  Moderate ambitions, moderate achievement.  5/10

On The Buses (1971)

On The Buses was a popular and indeed populist British TV sitcom of the late 1960s/early 1970s and, as was common at the time, spawned a number of spin-off films which were either extensions of the premise or else rehashes with two or three episodes strung together and re-enacted as a film.  In the main, they were inferior to the original product- startlingly so in many cases- but On The Buses was actually a little better.

What distinguishes the film isn’t any greater sophistication, loftier ambition or production values- it is the budget.  For a programme about a bus driver and his conductor (and their bawdy shenanigans) being unable to stretch to many external shoots obviously prevented logistical and writing difficulties.  In the film, however, we see Stan crashing his bus into a phone box and a bus shelter.  We see him take a driving test on a skid pan, injuring Blakey in the process, and we get to see Stan and Jack trick several women drivers into driving their buses onto the motorway.  Hilarity prevails!  Okay, so I’m being a little facetious but it is still enjoyable in its own way.

I had a really interesting conversation with a guy about British cinema in the 70s last year.  He completely wrote it off.  He pointed to the sex comedies and sit-com spin-offs and contrasted it to what was coming out of Hollywood at the time.  When a man says “while Michael was having Fredo whacked we were watching Robin Askwith hiding in wardrobes“, then you have to concede that he has a point.  But the argument was skewed, that was the best Hollywood would ever get and British cinema was in a rut but still produced the likes of Get Carter, The Go-Between, Sunday Bloody Sunday, The Wicker Man, Barry Lyndon, Paper Tiger and Don’t Look Now.  On top of this I argued, and still argue, that there is some merit in the likes of On The Buses.  Movies, it is sometimes forgotten, are made to entertain and this is an entertaining movie.  The characters, familiar from the TV show, are well-drawn (if a little one-dimensional) and played consummately- not least by the underrated Michael Robbins who plays Arthur.  The storyline, which was little more than an excuse to string together some gags and the action sequences above, is actually pretty interesting and resonant of the time.  Future historians would do well to dig out On The Buses and Carry On At Your Convenience if they want to learn all about Britain at the time.

The bus company, being understaffed are exploited by the drivers who do not have to fear the sack.  They choose to recruit women drivers and the men (portrayed as the heroes) try and force them out so that they can go back to their cushy, well-paid lifestyles.   In the meantime they are still successfully chatting up every attractive young girl in sight despite being middle-aged, out of shape and unattractive (Jack’s teeth!).  What makes it so resonant is the ‘battle of the sexes’ angle- more specifically the blatantly sexist way that it is portrayed.  It’s all done in good fun and there’s no malice to get offended about; if you believe anyone would take seriously a film that suggests all women are moaners who are afraid of spiders and have no road sense then you’ve got bigger problems than this cheeky number.

The point is that this is low and sometimes painfully telegraphed humour, but funny nonetheless.  Is it any less worthy than, say, the films of Mel Brooks?  5/10

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)

The absolute tragedy of The Man Who Knew Too Much is that the opening half an hour of scene-setting and character establishment isn’t anywhere near strong enough to match up to the genuinely gripping meat of the film.  It is not that the film is boring, it’s certainly not like The Deer Hunter where the viewer’s resolve is tested and only the mentally strong can stomach the fourteen hour Wedding in order to get to the great stuff hiding away afterwards.  It is simply that the opening half-hour establishes James Stewart and Doris Day as an irritating and slightly foolish couple who think rather more highly of themselves, though maybe not of one another, than they might.  And when the film turns gripping suddenly it’s not so much that I get discombobulated by the shift, it’s simply that there’s a period where I know that I’m not engaged in the way that I should be and need to be for the film to work.  It happens of course, despite Doris Day and all the ‘oh-so-wholesome, apple pie, Que Sera Sera, too good to be true and dull as a pair of old pants’ baggage she brings I do begin to care.  I do get edgy.  I do want her to find a way to stop the shot.  That’s the skill of Hitchcock.  But he has to use so much of it redeeming the first half hour and- let’s be frank I hope this was forced upon him- the presence of Doris fucking Day and her fucking song, that the film is nowhere near the levels of dramatic excellence it could have reached.  For him to have blown his second shot at this story, and I haven’t seen the first in some years so I can only assume that he was unhappy with that too, is a real tragedy.  And it is blown- a real wasted opportunity.  Of course, as ever, I’m being hypercritical of someone I greatly admire.  If this was, say, a Barry Levinson film I’d be raving about it and moaning that he hardly ever shows any signs of this kind of skill in his other films.  But however good a job Hitch does of making up for it, there’s still no getting away from the fact that he lets her sing that fucking song in his film.  Twice!  Oscar my arse (as an Aston Villa manager may have said back in the sixties).

So I’m not going to mention her again- other than to say in some scenes she’s really pretty convincing, its just that in others she’s useless which means that she may as well have been useless all along.  Right, that’s it!  No more mentions of that woman again.  And no I’m not on about that woman, Ms Lewinsky, I’m referring- or rather no longer referring- to the blonde bombsite up there ↑.

The film then takes a wonderful turn just over half an hour in.  There has been intrigue before this with the urbane but mysterious Louis Bernard’s behaviour perplexing the normal, upright McKennas.  There’s even been a murder- Bernard in largely unexplained face-paint is butchered in a busy Marrakesh market right in front of the McKennas.  But 37 minutes in Jimmy Stewart receives a chilling call, Bernard Herrmann strikes up the band and Hitch focuses the camera on Jimmy’s hand anxiously gripping a telephone directory and the film takes flight.  Up to this point Stewart had played his character as grouchy and a little aloof, but this is stripped away instantly and he seems fallible and human and all of his ornery qualities become strengths.  It’s a clever performance by Stewart, playing an everyman character thrown into a volatile situation beyond normal comprehension could easily see the opening stages of the film played out by a sweet, happy, pleasant man- a male Doris Day if you like- rather than an uptight, opinionated, sometimes bolshie and sometimes funny guy.  And because he is a real person with a genuine and convincing angst over the safety of his son I find myself hooked.  The score helps, the direction helps but the real strength of the scene is in James Stewart’s brow.

From that turning point we’re off on a Hitchcockian rollercoaster.  If you’ve seen The 39 Steps or North By Northwest, you’ll have seen this done better but it’s still exciting.  The action sees Day and Stewart frequently separate and not always acting with the other in mind, their frantic and often instinctual actions are beautifully shot with each finding themselves in odd positions as a result of their impetuosity- the scene with Stewart barging through a taxidermists as the staff try variously to restrain him and to protect their stuffed animals is priceless, James Stewart being bitten by a stuffed tiger in a Camden backstreet is not a sight you see every day!  There are false turns, red herrings,  suspicious officials and plausible bad-guys but at no point does this get confusing, it’s all deftly balanced and explained with great visual flourishes (though the earlier technicolour does look barely better than some colourised films I’ve seen) – and builds to the great Royal Albert Hall sequence.

The scene in the Royal Albert Hall is probably as dramatic as could be without tipping over into campy melodrama.  The set-up is fantastic, though it does require a little suspension of disbelief, and allows Hitch to stretch the scene out.  The viewer is already aware of the piece of music that will coincide in the shot being fired- a climactic cymbal crash- and the piece builds to it, then fades out several times heightening the tension through Doris Day’s character.  It is a beautiful example of how to control an audience.

After this, the film falls a little flat again.  The drama of what has just gone on needs to be released in some way but the plot requires that the final loose end is tied up.  This section of the film- lamentably shoehorning in another rendition of ‘Que Sera Sera’- cannot help but be anti-climactic and the film loses some impact here too.  It is a little too contrived, a little too neatly arranged and the final scene where the couple return to their waiting guests- who would have had time to grow a beard during their absence- is as cheesy as Hitchcock ever got.

And so I find The Man Who Knew Too Much disappointing.  Plenty within it is of the highest calibre and much of the rest is really unworthy of such a great filmmaker. 5/10

Topkapi (1964)

Now this pissed me off when I watched it.  And I feel sour about that because I love Jules Dassin and I have a high regard for Maximilan Schell but this felt like such a flimsy, glossy, insubstantial film that I just felt a bit cheated.  I know that it’s a caper and I know that not every film can be Wild Strawberries and I know that it’s a bit tittish to bemoan a film for being ‘just entertainment’, but I just went in with higher expectations of the people involved.  I’m sorry, that’s the price of being so talented Jules.

I mean it’s not a bad film.  It’s entertaining, neatly plotted, looks great, is nicely paced with just enough humour to lighten the tone without turning a drama into a comedy.  Peter Ustinov has a ball as small-time crook Arthur Simpson, Maximilian Schell and the always entertaining Robert Morley are fine too and Akim Tarimoff is simply barmy as the haughty drunken cook.  In fact, I don’t know why I’m so down on it.  I think I just wanted it to be Rififi and it’s more like The Italian Job and if I can love that for being what it is, why can’t I love this?  There is, now I look back, a lot to admire here- not least in the sheer inventiveness of the heist.  And I’m beginning to think that I misjudged this badly when I was watching it.  The visual humour, tension, gadgets, dramatic scenery, outlandish characters and general tone of the film is something commonplace now, but I can’t think of many films of that type which precede it.  Even the matching suits which Ustinov, Schell and Gilles Ségal wear for the heist have become a recurring motif in movies like of Oceans 11 since.  I’m talking myself around here. 

Perhaps I should give it another try?

I was going to give this a three, but I’ve talked myself into marking it as 5/10 and one that needs re-watching soon.

Nevada Smith (1966)

My choice of film is usually fairly arbitrary and often depends upon what TCM or Film Four have scheduled or which of my high-priority LoveFilm selections arrives next.  In choosing Nevada Smith, though, I was swayed by one factor alone: Steve McQueen’s name is currently much smaller than Michael Caine’s on the tag cloud at the bottom right of my page and it just feels wrong.

I didn’t approach Nevada Smith much in the way of expectation.  It hasn’t amassed much of a reputation over the years, I don’t know much of the director Henry Hathaway’s work- aside from True Grit- and I really don’t like the work of Harold Robbins on whose novel this is based.  All this film really had going for it was its cast.  And the fact that it might help me tidy up my tag cloud.

It’s better than I expected, but not by much.  The storyline follows a familiar pattern- Steve McQueen stars as a half-Caucasian/half-native American teenager (despite McQueen being a blond 36 year old at the time) who sees his parents killed in cold blood by three men and vows to track them down and avenge the deaths.  The movie is episodic: he kills the first man (Martin Landau) in a knife fight, learns that the second (Arthur Kennedy) is in a Louisiana prison and gets sentenced himself just to kill him and then escape, and finally he hunts down the ever-reliable Karl Malden for the film’s climactic scene.

Along the way he is taught how to fight and shoot and drink and play cards by a gun salesman he tries and fails to hold up (played by an impressive Brian Keith) and he encounters a couple of love interests and a priest (played by an unconvincing Raf Vallone, he was much better as the lead Mafioso in The Italian Job) and with each of them he uses them and then turns his back on them with no further thought for them.  That is the interesting part of the film and is explored as fully as the genre allowed at that point.  Meanwhile Sergio Leone was breaking down such considerations with the contemporaneous masterpiece ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ and in that context Nevada Smith is exposed as a formulaic genre picture.

It is just a standard western if, I suppose, a little more ambitious than most.  And content to exist within the confines of genre expectations when the opportunity to examine the emptiness of revenge or the brutalisation of man as a means to overcome brutality was there.  And for that wasted opportunity, 5/10.

Che: Part One (2009)

I was looking forward to this a lot.  I have a lot of time for Del Toro and I respect a lot of what Soderbergh tries to do, even if his films usually leave me cold (not just the popcorn-sellers like Oceans Thirteen either, I can’t get on with Sex, Lies and Videotape or Erin Brockovich at all).  Most importantly of all, though, the subject matter is compelling.  But the film left me flat.

It’s well made, it looks great, Del Toro does a great job, the grainy black and white post-revolution interviews contrasted with the vivid jungle warfare were excellent- but it’s just dull.  Other than the first half-hour which drags, the film isn’t flabby- just a bit repetitive.  It’s not that nothing happens, it is simply that the film didn’t engage me when things did happen.  Certainly not when they appeared to repeat themselves (it must be hard to differentiate between repeated ambushes in the same type of jungle, I’m sure).  If the second part is like this too, then I’d say we’re looking at a three-hour movie experience extended into a four-hour-get-the-punters-in-twice cash cow.  I call that the Grindhouse effect.

Perhaps I’m being harsh because I’ve been treated to such genuinely magnificent film-making recently, but I don’t think so.  I just think Soderbergh got a bit carried away with himself and needed someone making him step back and be objective about what really enhanced the film and what didn’t.  5/10.  Imagine if there’s an extended Director’s cut- fuck me!

The Hunter (1980)

I love Steve McQueen.  I think that he’s just about my favourite actor ever.  McQueen understood the truth of the saying ‘less is more’ than anyone I’ve ever seen.  And so I’ve avoided seeing this for years.  Knowing that he made it whilst becoming ill, I didn’t want to see him diminished.

McQueen himself knew that he was aging fast and needed a new direction, his coveted project ‘An Enemy of the People’ shows that much (another film I’ve yet to see, but one that I’m intrigued to) but this film shows the way his career would’ve gone and it isn’t pretty.

‘The Hunter’ is a poor movie.  As with many films based on someone’s life story it is episodic and a little too much care is paid to not hurting anyone’s feelings.  The only real villain is a 2-D psychopath who gets as little screen time as is logistically possible.  And so we end up with what seems like a few episodes of ‘The Fall Guy’ strung together to justify some pretty decent stunt work.  It ends in about the most cloying way imaginable.  The soundtrack is laughable.  It looks like a TV movie- I’ve never heard of the director, perhaps that’s what his day job is.  In fact, you could run the film for an hour opening with Eli Wallach and the parents of the kid Bernardo and the only thing you would miss is seeing McQueen fight one of the biggest men you’ve ever seen and get distracted by a train set (kids toys are a constant presence in the film, they were McQueen’s own- as were a couple of the cars).  The film is most notable for a great chase with McQueen in a combine harvester chasing a Trans Am through a cornfield and an even better foot chase ending with McQueen hanging off a the side of a subway train.

Aside from those two set-pieces, the production values are pretty poor and no-one seems to care at all how the movie turns out, but that kind of saves it too.  McQueen is having such a good time sending himself up (his character ‘Papa’ Thorson is a terrible driver who freely admits that he’s “getting too old for this shit”) that the charm of his performance saves the movie.  He is out of shape and struggles during the action scenes but doesn’t get a corset on like William Shatner, he just shows the character as he would have been.

As I said earlier, this shows the way McQueen’s career would have gone.  He couldn’t get serious dramatic work and would’ve ended up parodying himself.  To do this once shows self-awareness and a lack of bullshit- to keep doing it is to become Sylvester Stallone.

Anyway, a poor movie saved by some decent stunts, solid work from Eli Wallach and LeVar Burton and a charming performance by my all-time favourite actor. 5/10