Sean Gallagher, Author at Words and Movies Podcast

Ocean’s Eleven (2001) – Review

“Off the top of my head, I’d say you’re looking at a Boesky, a Jim Brown, a Miss Daisy, two Jethros, and a Leon Spinks, not to mention the biggest Ella Fitzgerald ever.”

In 1997, when he reluctantly (at first) agreed to direct Out of Sight, Steven Soderbergh’s career was foundering. Though he had started out strong with his feature debut, sex, lies, and videotape being a box office and critical success (as well as winning the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival the year it was released), his follow-up movies had failed to connect with audiences or critics in the same way (though I like them, especially his third movie, King of the Hill). Soderbergh himself felt dissatisfied with the way his career was going, especially with his fourth movie, The Underneath (which, again, I like a lot), so he had made a documentary (Gray’s Anatomy, Spalding Gray’s third one-man show) and an experimental movie (Schizopolis, which he also appeared in). Still, Soderbergh felt frustrated by the fact he no longer seemed to connect with mainstream audiences, which is why he ultimately decided to direct Out of Sight. Though the movie underperformed at the box office, it was critically acclaimed, which was also the fate of his follow-up film, The Limey. The year 2000 was when Soderbergh finally broke through in mainstream Hollywood, with Erin Brockovich and Traffic. Both films did very well with audiences and critics and both films garnered multiple Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Screenplay (original for the former, adapted for the latter), and for one of the few times in history, Best Director (Soderbergh won for the latter). Coming from a position of strength now, Soderbergh could have gone back to his more experimental work – and he would do so the following year with Full Frontal and his remake of Solaris – but first, he went mainstream again with Ocean’s Eleven, his remake of the 1960 movie directed by Lewis Milestone and written by Harry Brown and Charles Lederer (from a story by George Clayton Johnson and Jack Golden Russell – Ted Griffin wrote the 2001 version). This may have seemed like a step backward for Soderbergh, but Ocean’s Eleven turned out to be one of his most entertaining and enjoyable films.

“Ten oughta do it, don’t you think…you think we need one more?…you think we need one more…all right, we’ll get one more.”

In this version, Danny Ocean (George Clooney), just out of prison, goes to Atlantic City and reconnects with Frank (Bernie Mac), who’s a croupier using the alias Ramon. Frank tells Danny Rusty (Brad Pitt), Danny’s partner, is currently in Las Vegas teaching celebrities to play poker (Holly Marie Combs, Topher Grace, Joshua Jackson, Barry Watson, and Shane West are the TV stars who play themselves here). When Danny meets up with Rusty in Vegas, he tells Rusty his plan – to rob three casinos (that share a safe) all owned by Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia). Rusty thinks the plan is crazy, as does Reuben (Elliot Gould), whom Danny and Rusty approach for financially support, but they both agree to go along with it (Reuben because Terry muscled him out of a casino he used to own). Danny and Rusty end up recruiting Virgil (Casey Affleck) and Turk Malloy (Scott Caan), two brothers who help with various tasks on the heist, Livingston (Eddie Jemison), the computer expert, Basher (Don Cheadle, uncredited), who’s good with explosives, Yen (Shaobo Qin), an acrobat, Saul (Carl Reiner), an elderly con artist whom Rusty talks out of retirement, and Linus (Matt Damon), a pickpocket. Danny informs the others while there are plenty of obstacles, the take is $160 million. What Danny doesn’t tell them is his other motivation – Terry Benedict is now married to Tess (Julia Roberts), Danny’s ex-wife, and Danny wants to get her back.

“Look, we all go way back, and, uh, I owe you from the thing with the guy in the place, and I’ll never forget it.”

The original version is probably best remembered today as the first Rat Pack movie, with the Rat Pack – Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop – and a few others (including Richard Conte, Norman Fell, and Henry Silva) playing WWII veterans who decide to knock over five casinos on New Year’s Eve and do so by shutting off the power grid (the power grid is kept for the remake, as was the backer – played by Akim Tamiroff in the original – and the reworked concept of multiple casinos being robbed; the idea of a fixer who knows of any job pulled in Vegas, and played here by Cesar Romero, is alluded to in the remake). Supposedly, when Lawford pitched the idea for the movie, Sinatra joked they should just pull the job instead,* and that lackadaisical attitude, I think, shows throughout this movie. It’s not a bad movie by any means – the robbery itself is executed well, and the Code-mandated ending is pretty clever without feeling like a cop-out – but you get the feeling no one gave a damn about anything but the money and working with old friends when you’re watching it. It doesn’t help Lewis Milestone, a director who had made some terrific movies (the original versions of All Quiet on the Western Front and Of Mice and Men, along with the entertaining noir The Strange Love of Martha Ivers) was at the twilight of his career, and you get the sense he was playing traffic cop more than anything else. Soderbergh’s version, on the other hand, is genuinely entertaining.

“Oh, leave it out! You tossers! You had one job!”

For starters, he and Griffin pack in a lot of humor. I know a lot of people had issues with Cheadle’s attempt at a Cockney accent, but since it’s a comedy, I didn’t mind, since he was funny, and admittedly, I have a weakness for hearing Cockney slang (which Soderbergh had previously indulged in with Terrence Stamp’s character in The Limey), as Cheadle does here when Basher is trying to explain how they need to find another way to cut the electricity (because when one of Reuben’s old casinos gets demolished, the people behind that inadvertently did away the method Basher was going to use) or they’ll be in Barney – upon everyone else’s blank looks, he elaborates, “Barney Rubble – trouble!” Griffin and Soderbergh also get humor out of subverting conversations, as when Linus has to pretend to be an inspector from the Nevada Gaming Commission, Rusty is telling him how to play the role, and when he gets to what he says is the most important part, Livingston calls Rusty away, leaving Linus stranded. Finally, while I can see how a little of Affleck and Caan’s bickering can go a long way for some people, the movie does have the wit to wink at that, as when Linus gets stuck in a van with the Malloy brothers while Danny, Basher and Yen go steal an electronic pinch that Basher will use to shut the power off briefly so the crew can go about the heist, and he’s so irritated with their bickering he ends up breaking into the place himself, which immediately gets security chasing after him.

This was the third movie Soderbergh served as his own cinematographer (after Schizopolis and Traffic) under his pseudonym “Peter Andrews” (though he didn’t edit under his other pseudonym, “Mary Ann Bernard” – Stephen Mirrione served as editor here). He gives the movie a sleek look, but he also keeps it moving quickly. As with Traffic, Soderbergh also tries to subvert genre expectations with the look of the movie, and the way the plot unfolds. Even though this is a heist movie, there are no gun battles, except for one that turns out to be staged. Though there are suspenseful scenes, such as when Danny and Linus set off a bomb without knowing Yen hasn’t gotten to safety on the other side, Soderbergh also leavens those scenes with humor as well, as when Danny presses the triggering device, only to find out the batteries need to be changed (which does allow for Yen to escape, though he does have, with his only line in English, some choice words for Danny and Linus when they finally meet up with him). David Holmes’ score also strikes the right tone, keeping the movie light as air. Finally, it may have been a set-up for a sequel, but having Terry Benedict continue to go after what’s been taken from him is another way Soderbergh plays with genre conventions to make this entertaining.

“You lose focus in this game for one second…”

The cast also gives the impression they’re doing more than just marking time. Clooney isn’t stretching here like he did earlier with Soderbergh (in Out of Sight) and would do later with Soderbergh as well (in Solaris), but he’s convincing as a smart and charming thief. Pitt is unflappable cool as Rusty, and he makes the running gag of his character always eating work for him. Bernie Mac is very funny, from when he’s pretending to be sicker than he really is to get transferred to Vegas to when he’s turning on both the charm and intimidation when trying to get a good deal on a vehicle the group needs. Gould, who appeared mostly on TV in the 1980’s and 1990’s, is the best he’d been in years as Reuben, stealing his scenes with a brio he hadn’t shown since his films with Robert Altman. Reiner also shows how crafty he still is as Saul – when Danny asks if he’s up for doing the con, Saul snaps, “If you ever ask me that question again, Daniel, you will not wake up the following morning!” Damon seems a little generic at first, but he’s convincing as a pickpocket and also contributes to the humor. And as I mentioned above, I think Affleck, Caan, Cheadle, and Qin are very good. Finally, Garcia, who can be a ham, dials it down while still being menacing. There were two sequels to this movie (along with an all-female spin-off, Ocean’s 8), but while they had their moments (particularly the spin-off), none of them were as entertaining as Ocean’s Eleven.

*-In The Rat Pack, Rob Cohen’s entertaining made-for-HBO movie about the group, it’s Dean Martin (played by Joe Mantegna) who says this when they’re discussing making the movie.

The Thomas Crown Affair (1999) – Review

Thomas Crown (Pierce Brosnan) at the museum, pointedly not looking at the painting he’s planning to steal.

In its February 1969 issue, Harper’s (a monthly culture, literature, and politics magazine) published Pauline Kael’s “Trash, Art, and the Movies” essay, where she argued movies dismissed as “trash” because they merely aspired to be “entertainment” were as much art as “art” movies.* Unfortunately, in order to make that valid point, Kael indulged in what rightly gets derided today as “clickbait” journalism by denigrating art films, as well as anyone who dared like them, but that’s another discussion entirely. One movie Kael defended in the essay was the 1968 release The Thomas Crown Affair, directed by Norman Jewison and written by Alan Trustman:

“If we don’t deny the pleasures to be had from certain kinds of trash and accept The Thomas Crown Affair as a pretty fair example of entertaining trash, then we may ask if a piece of trash like this has any relationship to art. And I think it does.”

Though I of course strenuously disagree with Kael’s attitude towards “’art” films, I do think she’s correct when she writes that “trash” (I prefer “entertainment”) does have a relationship to art. That said, my problem with the original version of The Thomas Crown Affair has nothing to do with whether it’s “art” or not, it’s that I don’t feel it’s entertaining enough. Granted, the heist scenes (shot by Haskell Wexler and edited by Hal Ashby, Byron Brandt, and Ralph E. Winters) are tense and exciting, and I think the use of split screens helps in that regard. I was never a member of the Steve McQueen cult, but I think he does a fine job playing the title role. Finally, while I also was never a fan of Alan and Marilyn Bergman, “The Windmills of Your Mind” is a good song used well in the movie. My problem is with Faye Dunaway, or rather, the conception of her character Vicki Anderson, the insurance investigator out to catch Crown and bed him. Admittedly, part of this may have to do with the fact the MPAA ratings system, replacing the old Hays Code, went into effect after this movie was released, so movies were still somewhat repressed. However, Jewison, Trustman, and costume designer Thea van Runkle basically turn Anderson into a girl, with the way she’s dressed (while she does wear business suits, they’re designed to be as demure and non-threatening as possible) to the way she fixates on Crown as a criminal not because of any evidence but because of “women’s intuition”. The famous scene between Crown and Anderson in the bathtub strikes sparks, but otherwise, the way Jewison shoots the two of them together feels like he slathered on the soft-focus photography. To me, the 1999 remake, directed by John McTiernan and written by Leslie Dixon and Kurt Wimmer (McTiernan did uncredited rewrites) is better because it’s more entertaining, making it more artful.

Catherine Banning (Rene Russo) and Detective Michael McCann (Denis Leary) discuss the theft.

In this version, Thomas Crown (Pierce Brosnan) is still a top-notch business tycoon who turns to robbery because he’s bored, but instead of hiring a crew to rob banks, he instead hires a crew to attempt a heist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (which is never named, though it’s pretty obvious – the interiors of those scenes were actually done at the New York Public Library on 42^nd Street), except that crew is merely a distraction (they’re easily caught) so Crown himself can steal a valuable Monet. Detective Michael McCann (Denis Leary), who’s in charge of investigating the robbery (along with his partner, Detective Paretti (Frankie Faison)), finds himself working with Catherine Banning (Rene Russo), an investigator from the company that insured the painting. As with the original, Banning figures out Crown is the one who committed the robbery, and as with the original, she wants both to catch him and bed him. As with the original, things don’t entirely work out as planned.

Crown congratulates himself on stealing the painting.

While the original was set, and shot, in Boston, the remake is set, and shot for the most part, in New York City (though it was also shot on location in Martinique when Crown and Banning take off for an island getaway), which means McTiernan has a wealth of New York City actors to use in small roles. Admittedly, some of them don’t have much to do – I’m not sure what led Ben Gazzara or Fritz Weaver (as, respectively, Crown’s lawyer and Crown’s business associate) to appear in this movie unless they originally had bigger parts or they received a good paycheck for their efforts – but people like Michael Lombard (as Bobby, head of security on the floor of the museum), Mark Margolis (as Knutzhorn, an imprisoned forger who has a connection with Crown), and Daniel Oreskes (as the leader of the robbers Crown hires), whom TV viewers would know from their appearances on the original Law & Order, add zip to their roles. Although I don’t normally notice geography when I’m watching a movie, even in movies set in NYC (I can tell if a movie set in NYC was shot elsewhere because it’ll have a certain feel to it, but unless it’s egregious, I don’t mind too much if I’m caught up in the story), I did recognize a couple of locations here, such as the outside of the museum, as well as a scene where Crown and Banning are in Greenwich Village, and McTiernan and cinematographer Tom Priestly Jr. shoot those scenes well. The music score by Bill Conti is another reason why the movie works, as it strikes the perfect light tone, though the best part of the music is the use of two songs. “Windmills of Your Mind”, which was performed by Noel Harrison in the original, gets played as an instrumental during the Greenwich Village scene, and is well covered by Sting over the closing credits. Also, during the final museum scene, Nina Simone’s live version of “Sinnerman” plays, and in addition to being arguably her best song, it also works very well within the scene.

Still, as dazzling as the movie is to listen to and look at (the latter is also helped by the crisp pace McTiernan, Priestly, and editor John Wright give the movie, especially in the heist scenes at the beginning and end of the movie), it wouldn’t work nearly as well without the characters and performances being compelling. McCann is sort of the standard character of the third wheel outside the two romantic leads, as well as being the standard character of the by-the-book detective in a crime movie. Yet that proves to be a good fit for Leary, as well as restraining him to the parameters of the role. Admittedly, I’m someone who thinks a little of Leary can go a long way, and who likes him more when he is working within the context of a role, as in The Ref, his other best performance, where he did riffs on his stand-up persona but also had to do so alongside squabbling couple Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey (Wag the Dog is also a very good movie, and he’s fine in it, but a lot of actors could have played the role, whereas no one could have played Gus in The Ref like Leary did). Leary is more restrained here, basically projecting a sarcastic persona – when he asks Banning if he can drop her off someplace, only to find out she keeps an apartment in New York City (not to mention she’s coming to his office), he responds, “She keeps an apartment. I keep goldfish.” Leary also suggests his usual anger (when McCann sees Banning is upset with the idea Crown is lying to her at one point, but she insists she’s okay, he recalls how when his girlfriend married someone else out of the blue, he had sex with five women in three days, wrecked his car, and got suspended for beating up a suspect, “but I was okay”) rather than going into full-rant mode. Yet at the same time, Leary is also able to suggest how McCann also has feelings for Banning while recognizing he won’t get anywhere with her, and that he knows there’s real police work he does (busting someone who ripped off poor people, putting away an abusive husband and father), so when Banning, in saying goodbye to him near the end, tells him, “You’re a good man,” you believe it. Leary and Faison also provide good comic relief in their reactions to what Banning does, or even the disgusting-looking drink she brings into work one day (“You don’t want to know” is her response). Dunaway appears in this version as Crown’s psychiatrist, and I know some critics grumbled about the idea someone like Crown would want, much less need, a shrink, but I have a theory her character is all in his head (McTiernan and Priestly shoot her in a black background to contrast with her blond hair), and she’s undercutting Crown’s thoughts at every turn, so I think she works in the context of the role.

Crown at the start of the second heist scene.

Of course, the main reason the movie works so well is the chemistry between Brosnan and Russo. At the time, Brosnan was still in the middle of his run with James Bond, which I think was his weakest period, as well as some of the weaker Bond movies (with the exception of Goldeneye – the parts of Tomorrow Never Dies I like have less to do with Brosnan and more to do with Michelle Yeoh, Jonathan Pryce, and in a smaller role, Vincent Schiavelli), where the charm he showed so effortlessly on Remington Steele seemed forced. When I first saw this movie in theaters, I thought Brosnan was honestly charming as Crown but not necessarily deep. After this movie came out, Brosnan started moving towards more character roles (he had shown he could do comedy in Mrs. Doubtfire, which I didn’t like otherwise, and Mars Attacks, which I did), as when he completely subverted his Bond persona as an amoral spy in The Tailor of Panama and a down-on-his-luck assassin in The Matador, so coming back to this movie shows Brosnan does get the chance to do more than play a persona. McTiernan and Wimmer, who wrote the male parts (Dixon wrote the female parts), have Crown replicate some of the things he did in the original (playing golf, hang gliding), but also give him some bits of business, such as when he challenges Banning by saying, “Do you want to dance, or do you want to dance?”, or when McTiernan and Priestly use a 360 degree pan of Crown right before the second heist scene starts and he says, “Play ball!” (according to McTiernan, that’s what Babe Ruth said right before his last game). Brosnan of course can put on the surface charm Crown has, but he also suggests how he’s intrigued by Banning because she’s someone who can spar with him on an equal level, which Russo brings to the role.

Banning when she thinks she’s lost Crown.

Russo made her mark earlier that decade (after making her film debut in the 1989 baseball comedy Major League) in mainstream movies such as In the Line of Fire, Outbreak, Get Shorty, Tin Cup, and Lethal Weapon 3 and 4, where she was paired with leading men like Clint Eastwood, Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Costner, and Mel Gibson (she also worked with the latter on Ransom). Except for In the Line of Fire, these weren’t the type of movies that got remembered at Oscar time, but Russo held her own with all of them, and convinced you she was capable whether playing a Secret Service agent, a CDC doctor, a B-movie actress, or a psychologist, and playing both comedy (as in Tin Cup when she’s totally flummoxed when Costner confesses he’s in love with her) or drama (as with In the Line of Fire, when Eastwood finally talks about guarding the car when JFK was shot, and she impulsively takes his hand to comfort him). McTiernan and Priestly first shoot Banning as she’s walking behind McCann while Paretti and a museum official explain what happened (in a nice joke, the would-be robbers used an actual Trojan Horse to get inside the museum), just blending in, until she walks up to McCann (whom she insists on calling “lieutenant” at first) as he’s kneeling down, and she blows holes in his theory of the crime. She’s able to figure out what happen (that the robbers were a smokescreen for Crown robbing the Monet), and while she does develop a hunch about Crown when she first sees him, Banning also doesn’t pursue him until she finds out Crown had unsuccessfully tried to bid on the same painting at an auction. Unlike Dunaway in the original, Russo also dresses like an adult here (Kate Harrington and Mark Zunino are the costume designers here), while not being afraid to show her sex appeal in order to try and manipulate Crown, even as she finds herself becoming attracted to him. Banning doesn’t bend the ethics of her profession as much as Anderson did in the original (where she kidnapped a child), though she does break and enter into Crown’s apartment to get the painting (naturally, Crown had prepared for that, which is another nice touch), and she gets furious when she thinks Crown has gotten the better of her, in both personal and professional terms. Russo had shown herself capable of playing roles with more dramatic heft in Ransom (though she’s playing the stereotypical wife role, she gets to show real grief, as when she finds out her son’s been kidnapped, or anger when she thinks Gibson has gotten her son killed), but she ups her game here.

McTiernan is probably best remembered today for being the director of the original Die Hard, which was a game-changer as far as action movies go, and for hiring a private investigator to illegally wiretap one of the producers of the Rollerball remake he directed (as well as being imprisoned for perjury when questioned about that), so this movie might get lost in the shuffle when compared to those events. Similarly, the movie came out in 1999, which many (myself included) call one of the best years for movies ever, and saw the release of many boundary-breaking movies. But I would argue another reason why 1999 was such a good year for movies is because there were a lot of mainstream movies that didn’t necessarily break boundaries but were good examples of entertainments. In that context, the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair stands out, much more, in my opinion, than the original did.

*-In an interview she gave in the 1980’s, Kael admitted if she had known Hollywood would almost exclusively turn to make “trash”, she would have had second thoughts about writing the essay.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988) – Review

John Huston is credited with saying there was no sense in remaking a good movie, that one should only remake a bad movie so it will turn out better. One movie that shows the validity of that argument is Frank Oz’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which is a remake of Ralph Levy’s Bedtime Story (Dale Launer rewrote Paul Henning and Stanley Shapiro’s screenplay for the remake). Both versions of the movie involve con artists in a Mediterranean resort town. Lawrence Jameson (spelled Jamison in the remake; played by David Niven in the original and Michael Caine in the remake) goes after rich, high-cultured women (or those who think of themselves as such) by pretending to be a prince who needs money for his kingdom. Freddy Benson (played in the original by Marlon Brando, and in the remake by Steve Martin) plays for lower stakes, and is cruder; in the original, he pretends to be a soldier who is visiting the house his grandmother used to live in (which a beautiful woman happens to live in), while in the remake, he pretends to be raising money so his grandmother could have an operation. When the two of them cross paths (Freddy comes to the town Lawrence operates out of), Lawrence tries to get rid of Freddy, first by having him arrested, then, after Freddy figures out who Lawrence really is, pretending him to take him as a partner while actually trying to drive him away. Finally, they decide to decide a winner between their duel by betting on who can fleece Janet (Walker in the original, played by Shirley Jones, and Colgate in the remake, and played by Glenne Headly) of her money.

The difference in the two movies is one of tone and of trust. Levy plays everything much too arch in the original, and encourages his actors to play it as such; I’m normally a fan or Brando, but this definitely ranks as one of his weakest, and most smug, performances, as he clearly thinks himself above the material (which might very well be true), and Niven, who can be very good when he’s got the right material (as in Bachelor Mother) is also too arch here. Not only this, but Levy and cinematographer Clifford Stine seem to have no idea how to shoot the movie to make it come off as funny. It certainly doesn’t help Levy also sets the tone as similar to other so-called “sex comedies” of the era in being too coy. Finally, the ending of the original, where Janet, after finding out Lawrence had lied (the psychiatrist he’s pretending to be actually died), decides to marry Freddy, comes off as too smug.

Oz, on the other hand, plays the tone just right, pushing the envelope whenever possible (In a PG movie, of course) towards making Freddy and Lawrence live up to being scoundrels. He’s helped enormously by Launer’s screenplay; as he did in Ruthless People, he shows it’s funny to watch a smart movie about immoral people and the games they play against each other. That also goes towards the treatment of the woman character. Whereas Levy’s movie played Janet’s character in a coy way (which Jones, who had done good work in Oklahoma! and Elmer Gantry, can’t do much with), Headly plays Janet with a kind of innocence and vivaciousness, which is crucial to making her character, and the story, work. As far as the trust goes, Oz and Launer never telegraph the twists the movie takes, unlike the original, trusting we as the audience can figure it out, while at the same time playing fair. It helps as the dueling scoundrels, Caine is effortlessly charming, while showing a streak of hatred towards Freddy, and Martin (who also worked with Oz and Launer on the script, especially on the ending) does some of his best physical comedy scenes (as when he’s pretending to be Lawrence’s deranged brother Ruprecht) while also, again, not afraid to make Freddy a real scoundrel. They’re supported well by Anton Rodgers (as Inspector Andre, the corrupt police detective in league with Lawrence) and Ian McDiarmid (as Lawrence’s butler Arthur). Credit should also go to cinematographer Michael Ballhaus (best known for his work with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Martin Scorsese), who gives the movie an elegant look and also knows hot to bring the comedy out, and composer Miles Goodman, who writes a light, airy score that sets the tone just right. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is a great example, for me, of a remake superior to the original.

The Man who Knew Too Much (1956) – Review

As with the idea of a MacGuffin, the concept of “refrigerator logic” had been around for a long time in narrative (though obviously called something else before refrigerators, or iceboxes, had been invented, if there was a term for it at all), but it was Alfred Hitchcock who helped popularize it (though he referred to it as an “icebox scene”). The idea is, you’re watching a movie, you get caught up in it, then when you come home and open the refrigerator to get something, you stop and say, “Wait a minute – in THE FUGITIVE, where is Harrison Ford getting the money to do all of what he’s doing when he’s on the run, and how is it Tommy Lee Jones can be walking up one flight of stairs while Ford is going down another flight of stairs on the opposite side of the building, and yet Jones can make out who it is?” If you are truly caught up in the story, these kinds of things don’t matter; only if you aren’t will they occur to you while you’re watching/reading it. I say this partly because my first encounter with refrigerator logic came with Hitchcock’s remake of his own The Man who Knew Too Much.

Jo (Doris Day), Hank (Christopher Olsen), and Ben McKenna (James Stewart).

Before I get to that moment, a word about the story (the movie was written by John Michael Hayes, adapted from the 1934 version that was written by Charles Bennett and D.B. Wyndham-Lewis). Ben McKenna (James Stewart), a doctor, and his wife Jo (Doris Day), a former singer, are on vacation in what was then known as French Morocco (now just Morocco), along with their son Hank (Christopher Olsen). They’re on a bus ride when the bus swerves, and Hank, who has been walking down the aisle, accidentally pulls off a Muslim woman’s face veil when he’s trying to keep from falling. The woman’s husband starts to yell and Hank and Ben until Louis Bernard (Daniel Gelin), a Frenchman onboard the bus, intervenes and calms the husband down. A grateful Ben starts chatting Louis up, and even invites him for drinks back at the hotel, but while he and Jo both find Louis charming, Jo is suspicious of Louis because he won’t answer direct questions about himself yet seems to ask them about everything. Jo’s suspicions seem to be confirmed when Louis breaks a dinner date without explanation but shows up at the same restaurant as her and Ben with a woman, and without explaining anything to them. Also at the restaurant, Ben and Jo meet Edward (Bernard Miles) and Lucy Drayton (Brenda de Banzie), a British couple who had been staring at them (though Lucy says it’s because she thought she recognized Jo from when she was a singer). The next day, the McKennas (with Hank in tow) and Draytons go the market when they notice a man being chased, and that man also gets stabbed. Turns out it’s Louis, and before he dies, he tells Ben about an assassination plot in London involving Ambrose Chapel. The police want to question Ben about what happened, and so he and Jo go to the station, while Edward comes along in case they need a translator (as it turns out, the police captain speaks English quite well), and Lucy takes Hank to the hotel. However, during Ben’s interrogation, he gets a call from a mysterious man who warns Ben if he repeats a word of what Louis Bernard told him to the police, Hank will be killed. The rest of the movie involves Ben and Jo going to London to try and find Ambrose Chapel (at first, they think it’s a person, but Jo realizes it’s a place) without getting the police involved so Hank doesn’t get killed.

Louis Bernard (Daniel Gelin) charms the McKennas.

Aside from the length of the movies (the 1934 original is only 75 minutes long, while the 1956 version runs two hours exactly), the fact the main couple in the original is British (played by Leslie Banks and Edna Best, and called Bob and Jill Lawrence), and the fact in the original, they have a daughter who’s kidnapped (named Betty, and played by Nova Pilbeam), the main difference between the two versions is in the first half, as well as the climax. The 1934 version starts out in Switzerland, where Jill is competing in a clay pigeon shooting contest, and the two already know Louis Bernard (though the movie never really explains how). Louis is also killed here, but in the original, he tells Bob where to find information about the planned assassination as well (which becomes the movie’s MacGuffin), and the villains (led by Peter Lorre) kidnap Betty to keep Bob from talking. Although both movies have a similar set piece taking place at a concert hall (more on that below), after that, the original has a shoot-out between the villains and the police at a temple. This shoot-out is one of the reasons why I think the original doesn’t work as well as the remake does, as I don’t think Hitchcock builds much suspense out of it. Also, while Banks, Best and Pilbeam are good as the family, the relationship they have with Louis Bernard here doesn’t make as much sense as it does in the remake. Of course, Peter Lorre does make a compelling villain (as the assassin in the remake, Reggie Nalder is good, though not as good as Lorre), but I think the remake is better in every way.

Jo and Ben look at where they think Hank is being held.

For one thing, Hitchcock and Hayes take time in developing the McKennas as a family. Right before he catches sight of Louis Bernard being chased in the market, for example, Ben and Jo have a laugh about the fact their vacation is being paid for by all of Ben’s patients. We also get to see Jo singing, as she sings “Que Sera, Sera” for Hank before he goes to bed, and the song becomes crucial later when she performs it at an embassy, so we’re not just being told about her abilities (Day didn’t think much of the song – written by Ray Evans and Jay Livingston – at first, but it became her biggest hit). Hitchcock also ably mixes humor and suspense with the scenes in the Mckennas’ hotel room in London, where Ben and then Jo try to find out about Ambrose Chapel all while keeping Jo’s friends (played by Carolyn Jones and Alan Mowbray, among others) in the dark about what’s going on (leading to a good joke at the end). Also, Ben and Jo may represent the All-American couple here, but Hitchcock and Hayes aren’t afraid of making Ben uncomfortable – Hitchcock makes sport of Stewart’s height when he has to sit on the floor of a restaurant, as well as his clumsiness when he tries to eat according to Arab custom and fails – as well as unlikable (Ben may have good medical reasons for having Jo take a sedative before he tells her Hank’s been kidnapped, but Jo rightly calls him out for it). Finally, Stewart and Day work very well together. This is the one movie Stewart did with Hitchcock where he played a role more in line with his pre-WWII persona, and he does a good job with it. I must confess I’ve never been a big fan of Day (I’m not a fan of perky, and I think she’s too strenuous for the most part), but Hitchcock brings out some unexpected depth in her, especially in the scene where she finds out Hank’s been kidnapped, as well as when she realizes the truth about Ambrose Chapel. The rest of the cast is also good, with Miles being effective as someone who may seem like a nice person but isn’t, de Banzie as someone not comfortable with every aspect of her role in the intrigue, and Gelin is effectively mysterious.*

“A single crash of cymbals and how it rocked the lives of an American family”, as per the opening credits.

One major behind-the-scenes collaborator on this movie was composer Bernard Herrmann, in the second of seven movies they did together (The Trouble with Harry, Hitchcock’s black comedy from the previous year, was the first). Although his score may not be as famous as the ones he wrote for Vertigo, North by Northwest, or Psycho, it does help keep you in suspense throughout. However, there is one major piece of music in the movie (aside from “Que Sera, Sera) that Herrmann did not write, and that’s Arthur Benjamin’s “Storm Clouds”, a cantata being performed at the Royal Albert Hall near the end of the movie. “Storm Clouds” was also used in the original, when Jill, like Jo in the remake, follows the assassin to Royal Albert Hall, and Herrmann liked the piece so much that he decided to use it in the remake, though he expanded the orchestration of the piece and padded it out (Herrmann can also be seen conducting the orchestra and choir in a rare film appearance). Cinematographer Robert Burks (in the eighth of his ten collaborations with Hitchcock) and editor George Tomasini also make this work, knowing when to slow down (the conversation among the McKennas on the bus) and when the speed things up (the climax at the Royal Albert Hall, though Hitchcock also deserves credit for doing the scene without dialogue even though a speech was written for Stewart in the scene).

Jo performs the Oscar-winning song “Que Sera, Sera”.

Nowadays, it seems Hitchcock afficionados rank this movie low compared to other movies he did with Stewart, as they think Rear Window and Vertigo are more ambitious thematically (and contain more perversity), and even Rope had technical ambitions this movie doesn’t. But I think this movie has narrative perversity, which brings me back to the refrigerator logic in the movie. If you look at the second paragraph, where I’ve written the plot description, you’ll see it – if the bus doesn’t swerve, and Hank doesn’t accidentally pull the veil off the Muslim woman’s face, Ben and Jo never meet Louis Bernard, and the entire plot goes out the window. Only Hitchcock could get away with hanging an entire movie on such a monumental coincidence. In the book Hitchcock/Truffaut, Hitchcock told Francois Truffaut the original was the work of a talented amateur, while the remake was the work of a professional. Hitchcock apparently preferred the original version of The Man who Knew Too Much, but I prefer the version made by the professional.

*-Gelin also came up with a suggestion for the scene where Louis tells Ben about the assassination plot as he’s dying. It looks like Louis is wearing brownface to look Moroccan when he’s stabbed and when he approaches Ben. However, the makeup artists were unable to figure out how to get that makeup to slide off Ben’s fingers when he touches Louis’ face, so it was Gelin who suggested they put light-colored powder on Jimmy Stewart’s fingers so they would leave streaks on Gelin’s face.

Loving (2016) – Review

Mildred (Ruth Negga) and Richard Loving (Joel Edgerton).

Jeff Nichols is another acclaimed director whom I’ve never fully been able to get behind. He has a sharp visual eye, but his stories have never been quite satisfactory to me, even Take Shelter, his acclaimed 2011 film starring Jessica Chastain and his usual star Michael Shannon. Not until Midnight Special, Nichols’ take on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, did I start to warm up to him, and even that film lost its footing near the end. I had no such problems, however, with Nichols’ fine docudrama Loving (not to be confused with Irvin Kershner’s film of the same name, which I covered when I wrote about my favorite films of 1970).

Recreating the famous photo from Life magazine.

Richard Loving (Joel Edgerton) was a construction worker in Central Point, Virginia, who knew Mildred Jeter (Ruth Negga) since they were younger. When Mildred got pregnant by him, Richard unhesitatingly agreed to marry her, which by itself was not unusual. However, this was 1958, and Virginia was a number of states at the time that had anti-miscegenation laws outlawing interracial marriage, and since Richard was white and Mildred was black, they were forced to leave Virginia (though they came back briefly so Richard’s mother Lola (Sharon Blackwood), a midwife, could help deliver Mildred’s baby). The Lovings moved to Washington D.C., and while Richard was able to find steady work, and their three children seemed happy enough, Mildred never really felt at home there. One day, she wrote a letter to Robert F. Kennedy, then the U.S. attorney general, to ask if there was anything he could do to help her and Richard. Kennedy ended up referring the letter to the ACLU, and Bernard Cohen (Nick Kroll), a lawyer associated with them, took on the case, promising to work pro bono on the Lovings’ behalf. They ended up moving back to Virginia (Cohen suggested it, and Richard resisted, but in the movie, when one of their children gets hit by a car – though he doesn’t get hurt – Mildred told Richard they needed to move back). Cohen, with the help of constitutional law expert Phil Hirschkop (Jon Bass), ended up bringing the case to the Supreme Court, and in Loving v. Virginia, decided June 12, 1967, the court unanimously declared Virginia’s law was unconstitutional under the 14th amendment, and also declared such laws to be unconstitutional nationwide.

Oddly enough, for a movie about such an important case, Nichols devotes little time to specific legal details. We do see Mildred and Richard’s initial arrest by Sheriff Brooks (Martin Csokas), and their initial attorney Frank Beazley (Bill Camp) arrange a plea deal with Judge Bazile (Frank Jensen), as well as Cohen and Hirschkop presenting their initial arguments to the Supreme Court, but that’s about it. Instead, Nichols focuses on the day-to-day lives of the Lovings themselves, inspired by Nancy Buirski’s documentary THE LOVING STORY from 2011. Since both Mildred and Richard were reticent by nature, and were devoted to each other, this makes for a quiet, rambling film, rather than your usual muckraking or uplifting approach. Some critics were put off by this, but I was drawn in. Nichols and cinematographer Adam Stone (who also shot Take Shelter and Midnight Special) capture the slow rhythms of Central Point, and the ease at which Mildred’s family and friends have with each other there. He also shows how Mildred, in her own quiet way, was the one who forced the decisions; she was the one who wanted to have her first baby back in Central Point, she was the one who contacted Kennedy, she was the one who kept in touch with Cohen, she was the one who pushed Richard for them to move back to Central Point, and she was the one who did the publicity, which Richard wanted no part of.

Bernard Cohen (Nick Kroll), the Loving’s lawyer.

Negga, whom I remember best playing the somewhat sympathetic villain on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., brings a quiet dignity to Ruth. When she shows Mildred making her decisions on what to do, there’s no fuss about her manner at all, just simple determination. Edgerton, who was in Midnight Special, also brings a quiet reserve to his performance; when Cohen asks if there’s anything Richard wants him to argue at the Supreme Court, he replies, “Tell the judge I love my wife.” Kroll brings a charge to all of his scenes, and Shannon for once plays against type as the affable Life magazine photographer Grey Villet, who took the famous picture of the Lovings sitting on the couch, intimate with each other, while watching “The Andy Griffith Show”. Loving is more about the people involved in Loving v Virginia than the case, and Nichols makes it work here.

Loving 1970 – Review

Selma (Eva Marie Saint) and Brooks Wilson (George Segal).

When people extol the virtues of 70’s movies, they tend to focus on the big names, from directors – Altman, Coppola, Scorsese – and actors – De Niro, Nicholson, and Pacino. However, while it’s certainly true many of the best films of the 70’s (in my opinion) came from those singular talents, it’s important to remember there were other great films that came out during that time that also shared little in common with those other great films except maybe an emotional honesty about its story and characters. One such case is Irvin Kershner’s suburban drama Loving, which came out in 1970.

If Kershner is remembered as a director today, it’s usually for four genre movies he did late in his career; Eyes of Laura Mars, a strange but fascinating horror/thriller starring Faye Dunaway and Tommy Lee Jones, Never Say Never Again, the last James Bond movie to star Sean Connery, Robocop 2, the sequel to the 1987 hit film, and, of course, The Empire Strikes Back, which many people (myself included) consider to be the best of the Star Wars franchise. But before those films, Kershner seemed to be drawn to tales of people struggling to achieve dreams that don’t quite come off, like The Luck of Ginger Coffey (a highly underrated Canadian film starring Robert Shaw in the title role) and A Fine Madness (his first film with Connery). George Segal had already received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but his biggest days as a light leading man were still ahead of him. And Eva Marie Saint already had two iconic roles to her credit, as the grieving sister of a murdered dockworker in On the Waterfront and the sexy spy in North by Northwest, but hadn’t appeared in too many movies since then, and while some of them were good (The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming), most weren’t (Exodus, The Sandpiper). From these somewhat disparate talents came a terrific drama that, unfortunately, seems largely forgotten today.

Brooks gets into an argument with Grace (Janis Young).

Adapted by Don Devlin from the novel Brooks Wilson Ltd by J.M. Ryan (which I’ve never read, and which apparently is out of print), the movie tells the story of Brooks Wilson (Segal), an artist and freelance graphic designer. When we first see him, he’s in New York City painting in his studio, while his Grace (Janis Young), who works at a museum and who also is his girlfriend, sits at a desk. She soon storms off, and Brooks stops what he’s doing to chase after her. He eventually catches up to her, they argue (though we don’t hear it), they seem to make up, and he walks her to where she’s going, but when he tries to kiss her, she bolts. He then looks at his watch, realizes he’s late, and gets a taxi. Turns out he’s going to a play his daughter Lizzie (Lorraine Cullen) is in, and his wife Selma (Saint), and his other daughter Hannah (Cheryl Bucher) are there as well.

As it turns out, Brooks is also caught in his professional life as well as his personal life. The money he makes comes from his freelance work, and his agent Edward (Keenan Wynn) and Skip (Roy Scheider), who works at the ad agency Brooks is currently freelancing for, are both trying to land him a job with Lepridon (Sterling Hayden), a somewhat surly trucking company magnate. Yet while Brooks goes through the motions of trying to land the account – even, while somewhat drunk (more on that later), managing to impress Lepridon by saying how much he loves trucks – he’s not sure he wants the account. Or, at least he’s not sure he wants the trappings that come with it (if he gets the account, Selma wants to buy a bigger, more expensive house). What he really wants to do is just draw or paint (we see him do this even at his daughter’s school, just drawing on a blackboard), even though it won’t pay as much as the illustrating does, because he won’t have to put up with people correcting him all the time (we see Charles (James Manis), Edward’s assistant, trying to get Brooks to change some of his illustrations, to no avail).

Brooks gets drunk and belligerent at a bar.

Admittedly, we’ve seen this story many times before; the cry of the artist who thinks they’re too good for the real world. We’ve also seen it set against the context of the suburbs, with a character feeling stifled by the “conformity” of them and yearning to break free (usually a man, only occasionally, as in Diary of a Mad Housewife, a woman). What distinguishes Kershner and Devlin’s treatment of this material is how even-handed it is (this could very well be true to Ryan’s book, but again, I unfortunately have never read it). Brooks is in all likelihood a talented artist – at least from the work we see, including the nude painting he paints – but the movie doesn’t try to make him out to be a modern-day Van Gogh, or someone like that, stifled by the commercial world; he’s good enough to make a living. And while he drinks a lot, including at a lunch where he makes a few tasteless remarks, and at the party that takes up the last third of the movie, the movie doesn’t explain whether he drinks so much because he’s unhappy with his life, or if he’s unhappy with his life because he drinks so much. It’s just there. Also, while Brooks has a girlfriend (who is ready to leave him because he won’t leave Selma), and is also being pursued by Nelly (Nancie Phillips), wife of his neighbor Will (David Doyle, best known as Bosley on the original TV series version of Charlie’s Angels), Brooks obviously does love Selma and his two daughters, and again, the movie neither endorses nor judges his affair. Kershner and Devlin just show it, letting you draw your own conclusions. Obviously, this wouldn’t matter as much if Segal wasn’t so good as Brooks. Pauline Kael pointed out in her rave review of the film (which is what got me interested in watching the film in the first place) that because of Segal’s likable performance and persona, we can’t dismiss Brooks no matter how much we might not like his actions (as Kael puts it, dismissing him would be like dismissing almost all of humanity). He also plays drunk without ever overdoing it, and you even believe it when, while still somewhat drunk, he manages to charm Lepridon.

Although Brooks (and Segal) is the main focus of the movie, he’s not the only part. Kershner and Devlin pay attention to every character, no matter how small; when Brooks and Selma go visit that more expensive house Selma wants, the divorcing couple (Ed Crowley and Diana Douglas) that owns the house even gets a brief scene showing their humanity. Cullen and Bucher had never acted before, and except for Cullen’s appearance in Diary of a Mad Housewife that same year, never acted again, but they have a believable rapport as sisters, and add to the color of Brooks’ household. Wynn avoids the usual agent stereotype to make his character human and believable. Hayden only has one scene, but you see both his slightly eccentric nature and believe he could have made all that money. Finally, Grace is perhaps slightly underwritten, but Young never plays her as shrill (we see in a flashback how she and Brooks were in love), and we understand why she ultimately wants out of her relationship with Brooks.

But the film wouldn’t work nearly as well without Saint’s performance as Selma. The easiest thing to do to stack the deck in favor of Brooks would be to make Selma’s character frigid or repressed, or any variation of that. Saint may not be what she was in North by Northwest, but she’s still pretty and desirable. What’s more, she still loves Brooks, and still wants him, as we see in a scene where she’s posing in an embrace with him for a picture and she doesn’t want to let go. Yet at the same time, Selma won’t put up with his crap. She’s capable of deflecting his complaints with humor (when Brooks asks for a comb to get a hair out of his eggs, she plucks it out and jokes he needs tweezers instead), but she’s also unafraid of making her anger known (as when he refuses a dinner plate she’s saved for him when he comes home drunk and late, and she slams it down on the table). Saint never overdoes any of these actions, either, and always is able to suggest her own inner life. Late in the movie, at the party, Selma suffers a great humiliation (which I won’t spoil), and Saint is subtle in her reaction – she barely keeps her face composes, and brings her arm up partway to her neck, as if she wants to block out what she’s seeing but she can’t – which makes it all the more powerful. As necessary as Segal is to making us care about Brooks even when we don’t like him, he wouldn’t be the same without someone as powerful as Saint to react to.

There is one other valuable player in this movie, and that’s cinematographer Gordon Willis. When we think of Willis, we tend to think of his work on the Godfather movies, his work with Woody Allen (particularly Annie Hall, Manhattan and Zelig), and All the President’s Men, movies that all earned him the nickname “The Prince of Darkness”. But he was comfortable working with a wider range of genres than you might think, and among those were smaller scale dramas such as this one. This was only his second feature film (he started out making documentaries in the Air Force and, when he was discharged, became an assistant cameraman before his first film as cinematographer in 1969 with End of the Road). Already, it shows his talent for, as he has put it in interviews, taking something complex and making it simple. As is his wont, he uses a lot of long takes, whether the characters are moving or not, to let the emotions of the scene build up. And while there are plenty of scenes where he does earn his nickname, none of them are there just to show off, but make sense to the plot, especially a crucial scene between Brooks and Nelly at the party. Willis’ work, along with all the other principals, is just another reason why Loving, I think, is one of the great underrated movies of the 70’s.

No Way Out (1987)

Tom Farrell (Kevin Costner) explains what’s going on to an unseen Sam Hesselman (George Dzundza).

The following was originally written on Facebook when I was writing about my favorite movies released in the U.S. in 1987.

While I have always said my movie education came from my father – when I was 13 and our family moved to California, he bought a videodisc player, and would bring home an old movie he had bought almost every week to show us – the other part of my movie education started when I became a teenager and went to see movies on my own, or with friends. 1987 and 1988 were the years I remember going most often to the movies, either at Hughes Auditorium at Gonzaga, or, during the summer, going to the movies in theaters when I was back home in Walnut Creek. This was all the newer movies, of course (I’ve mentioned how my father, for the most part, wasn’t a fan of pop culture after 1960 or so), but seeing these, I feel, was an integral part of my taking those tentative steps towards growing up (not the only ones, of course). As much as I enjoyed movies like Silverado, for example, I knew there were certain conventions they followed. So when I went to see Roger Donaldson’s No Way Out one August weekend, I had no idea it was going to be a Hollywood movie that actually dared to pull the rug out from underneath the audience at the end. In addition, I still think the rest of the movie still holds up very well.

Tom and Susan Atwell (Sean Young) flirt with each other.

Adapted by Robert Garland from the novel The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing (which had already been filmed in 1948 by John Farrow), the movie updates the original setting (a big city media empire) to Washington D.C.. Lt. Commander Tom Farrell (Kevin Costner) gets assigned there to work for Secretary of State David Brice (Gene Hackman) as his liaison with the intelligence community, specifically the CIA – though Farrell’s old friend Scott Pritchard (Will Patton) is Brice’s chief of staff, Farrell actually got the job after performing a daring rescue on his ship. As it happens, both Farrell and Brice share the same girlfriend, Susan Atwell (Sean Young), whom Farrell met at the presidential inauguration ball. Farrell knows this, but all Brice knows is Atwell is seeing someone else. One night, after she and Farrell have been away for the weekend, Brice confronts her at her home, they get into a fight, and he accidentally kills her. Filled with guilt, Brice goes over to visit Pritchard and confesses what he did. Pritchard, looking to protect his boss, has other ideas. He convinces Brice to blame the crime on “Yuri” – the CIA code name for the Soviet spy they’re convinced has been a sleeper agent inside the U.S. – and to have the Criminal Investigative Division (CID), which works out of the Pentagon, to take over the investigation. Farrell is put in charge of all of this (so the Secretary has a fall guy if necessary), meaning he’s investigating a crime where, thanks to all of the circumstantial evidence (including a faded Polaroid print Pritchard found, from a picture Atwell had taken of Farrell), he’s the primary suspect.

Tom and his boss, Secretary of State David Brice (Gene Hackman).

It must be acknowledged, of course, while Patton does a terrific job as Pritchard, he’s playing a villainous gay character, which is a tired stereotype (the fact that part came not only from Fearing’s novel, but was also implied – as much as could be in a Hays Code era movie – in George McCready’s performance in the movie version doesn’t entirely mitigate that, of course). Other than the twist ending, the other memorable scene of the movie for many was the sex scene Atwell and Farrell have in a limo, and the fact Atwell is killed later made some critics categorize Donaldson’s movie as yet another “Fuck and die” movie, as many thrillers in the 80’s were borrowing a page from slasher films of the 70’s and punishing women for having sex by killing them. I’ve mentioned before how I also don’t like movies that utilize that type of plotline, although, in this case, I would argue in “Fuck and die” movies, you’re being encouraged to root for the woman to die for having sex, whereas here, you’re supposed to feel shocked and upset about it happening.

Having said all of that, Donaldson and Garland have made another movie where every little detail pay off later, and not just that Polaroid; details Farrell didn’t even think of, like the gift Brice got from a foreign minister that he gave Atwell (which is what Farrell eventually uses to try and implicate Brice), end up being important later. Not only that, but the movie shifts from romantic comedy/drama to thriller mode without breaking a sweat. Moving the setting of the novel (and the original movie) from a media empire to the government also works, as it raises the stakes of Farrell’s attempts to clear his name. Speaking of which, the movie would fit in to Hitchcock’s thrillers, and not just because of the way it blends comedy (the flirtatious banter between Farrell and Atwell when they first meet) with suspense (the chase scene between Farrell and two agents “associated” with special forces – one of them played by Marshall Bell – as he races them to protect a witness (Iman) from them; that chase sequence, as with the whole movie, is shot well by John Alcott – his last movie before he died; it’s dedicated to him – and edited well by William Hoy and Neil Travis). It also follows one of Hitchcock’s favorite plots of an innocent man trying to clear their name, but adds a couple of twists to it, one being the innocent man is in charge of the investigation, and the other, the major one, is the “innocent” man, as it happens, isn’t so innocent after all.

The house where the movie begins and ends.

I mentioned before how Costner had been cut out of THE BIG CHILL, but gave performances I liked in Testament and Silverado. His breakout movie, The Untouchables, had come out two months earlier, and I’m not a big fan of that movie (though I’ve come to like it more than I did at first glance, it’s still more shiny surface than anything else for me) or of Costner’s performance as Elliot Ness there. Having said that, I do believe it was that movie, and that performance, that helped make his performance as Farrell work so well here. It helped create an image of an “all-American” hero, and Costner plays into that again with his portrayal of Farrell, which is crucial to the movie working as well as it does, especially when that final twist comes up. Even the one scene that may tip the movie’s hand – when Farrell calls someone from a phone booth in the Pentagon – can be explained away, thanks to Costner’s performance and determination. Hackman has played this type of role before, but he plays it very well. I’ve mentioned how I like Patton’s work here, and he’s especially good in a scene where he realizes something about the plot. Young has great chemistry with Costner. There’s also good work from George Dzundza as a co-worker and friend of Farrell’s, who becomes an innocent victim of the machinations of the plot, and Jason Bernard as the head of CID. Maurice Jarre’s score also keeps the suspense ratcheted up. Even if the Cold War machinations that drive the plot date the movie somewhat, No Way Out still stands as one of the best thrillers I’ve ever seen, and the way the movie changes everything around with that twist ending makes it stick in the mind long afterwards.

No Way Out (1950) review

Dr. Brooks (Sidney Poitier) and Dr. Wharton (Stephen McNally).

In the years immediately following World War II, Hollywood finally seemed to wake up to the fact racism was a bad thing (to be fair, there are still parts of the country that still haven’t figured that out). Granted, Hollywood didn’t own up to how they had depicted African-Americans (or other people of color) in the years before or during WWII (In This Our Life, John Huston’s follow-up to The Maltese Falcon, is not considered one of his best among his fans, but it does deserve credit for how it depicts its African-American characters, and Sahara, the WWII movie co-starring Humphrey Bogart, also treats its African-American characters with dignity and respect, but those were few and far between), but at least they were finally willing to confront racism as a subject. In 1949, there were four movies dealing with racism against African-Americans: Home of the Brave, directed by Mark Robson, Intruder in the Dust, directed by Clarence Brown (and adapted from the novel by William Faulkner), Lost Boundaries, directed by Alfred L. Werker, and Pinky, directed by Elia Kazan. Of those, Intruder in the Dust is considered the best of them, with the least amount of compromises in regards to the Hays Code, studio timidity, or racist sensibilities. I like Intruder in the Dust, particularly for the performances of Juano Hernandez, Will Geer, and Porter Hall, but I believe the best movie to deal with racism in the immediate post-WWII era was No Way Out, directed and co-written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (who co-wrote the movie with Lesser Samuels; Philip Yordan also did uncredited work on the script).

Ray Biddle (Richard Widmark) glowers at Dr. Brooks.

Dr. Luther Brooks (Sidney Poitier) is the first African-American doctor to work at an unnamed city hospital (modeled on what was then called Cook County Hospital in Chicago, now called John H. Stoger Jr. Hospital). One night, when he’s the attending physician at the prison ward, Ray Biddle (Richard Widmark) and his brother Johnny are brought in after they were both wounded in the leg during an attempted robbery. Ray is a racist, and he’s further inflamed when Dr. Brooks, to the bemusement of the guards on duty, believes Johnny is suffering from a brain tumor and starts checking for that (giving Johnny a spinal tap), rather than being concerned with the gunshot wound. Johnny ends up dying, and Ray accuses Dr. Brooks of killing his brother. Dr. Brooks convinces his superior, Dr. Dan Wharton (Stephen McNally), they need to perform an autopsy on Johnny, and since they need the approval of a family member (and Ray certainly won’t approve), the two doctors approach Johnny’s widow, Edie Johnson (Linda Darnell), to approve an autopsy to prove Johnny died of a brain tumor and not a gunshot wound. Edie, however, is torn between conflicting loyalties, especially when Ray (as much as she despises him) plays on her racism. At the same time, Brooks’ co-worker Lefty Jones (Dots Johnson), a hospital orderly, and other members of the African-American community realize the whites are going to cause a riot, and despite Brooks’ pleas, are preparing to respond with force of their own. This leads Brooks to take matters into his own hands by having himself arrested for Johnny’s murder to force an autopsy, but this also leads to a confrontation with Ray.

Dr. Brooks and Dr. Wharton try to convince Edie (Linda Darnell) to approve an autopsy for her late husband.

This was a departure for Mankiewicz, as he was known for dialogue-driven comedy/dramas such as A Letter to Three Wives, People Will Talk (appropriately enough), The Barefoot Contessa, and best of all, All About Eve. At first glance, this material might have been more suited to someone like Kazan. However, Mankiewicz apparently sought this material out because he wanted to make a Kazan-type film. What’s interesting is that Mankiewicz doesn’t try and soft-pedal the material. He wanted to show the ugly nature of racism, and we certainly get that with Ray, not just in what he says to Dr. Brooks, but also in the way he acts towards Dr. Brooks, such as when Ray attacks him at the end. Granted, in the over 70 years since this movie was made, Hollywood still seems to only be able to portray racism at its most obvious, so this may not seem like a stretch today. However, unlike many of the movies tackling racism in some way today, Mankiewicz also shows more casual racism. We get that with the hospital guards who question what Dr. Brooks is doing in treating Ray’s brother in a way they wouldn’t question a white doctor, as well as in in the scene where those guards give Ray bad news about a fight between his friends and members of the African-American community, and they use a racial slur not as blatant as the n-word, but still offensive. Mankiewicz also shows that in the scene where Dr. Wharton is trying to convince Dr. Moreland (Stanley Ridges) to approve Dr. Brooks’ request to have an autopsy performed, and Moreland is more concerned about the fact if he fires Brooks, it’ll be bad publicity – plus, he tells Wharton not to tell him about race. Finally, there’s the scene where Ray takes a scalpel and slips it into Dr. Brooks’ pocket and the nurses don’t immediately come to his defense after Dr. Brooks accuses Ray of stealing it, even though Brooks is a doctor there. In his commentary on the DVD, film noir specialist Eddie Muller speculated the reason why the movie wasn’t shown too much on TV is because Mankiewicz didn’t pull any punches when it came to showing racism.

Edie gets threatened by Ray and his brother George (Harry Bellaver).

Admittedly, Mankiewicz does slip up in other ways. Some of that is plot points – the scene where Dr. Wharton, while waiting for the elevator at the hospital, is telling someone he’s going to a hotel seems to be there only so Ray can be in earshot so after he and his brother George (Harry Bellaver) overpower a guard, they can lure Dr. Brooks there. Some of that is the speeches some characters get stuck with, particularly Cora (Mildred Joanne Smith), Dr. Brooks’ wife. And some of that is Mankiewicz does, unfortunately, trying to placate white audiences by making sure there are “good” whites in the picture, so we get scenes like when Dr. Brooks gushes about how much he appreciates Wharton (it makes sense he’d be grateful to Wharton, but it comes off as patronizing to Dr. Brooks).* Still, for the most part, Mankiewicz keeps control of the material. Also, while his is first and foremost a message film, Mankiewicz, with the help of cinematographer Milton R. Krasner (who shot two other movies for Mankiewicz), make this look like a noir film, especially in the fight between the poor whites and the African-Americans, or at Wharton’s home when Ray is getting ready to ambush Dr. Brooks. The plot also has the trappings of a noir in the fact it’s about an innocent man who gets caught in a quagmire, as well as a good bad girl in the form of Edie, who does briefly backslide into being racist thanks to Ray egging her on, but then turns away from that. Mankiewicz and Samuels also portray George in an interesting way in that George is a deaf-mute, but that doesn’t account for, or excuse, his racism.

Dr. Brooks and Edie reluctantly treat the badly-wounded Ray.

Like many actors who have played racists over the years, Widmark in real life was a liberal (he even apologized to Poitier after many takes until Poitier told him they were just acting – the two became friends, and went on to co-star again in The Long Ships and The Bedford Incident, while Poitier would later direct Widmark in Hanky Panky). Widmark had made his mark by playing villainous or treacherous characters in movies like Kiss of Death and Road House (Panic in the Streets, the Kazan film that came out the same year as No Way Out, was Widmark’s first attempt to play against type), but what’s revealing in his performance is how he isn’t afraid to make Ray look pathetic as well as racist, especially at the end when he collapses. Darnell would later call this the only good film she ever did, and while I wouldn’t agree (I like Unfaithfully Yours and A Letter to Three Wives, the latter her first film with Mankiewicz), I certainly think it’s her best performance. The way she’s able to let you know what Edie is thinking when she tricks George to get away from him (she blasts the radio loudly, knowing he can’t hear it but the neighbors will, and when they come in, she gets away in the confusion) is a good example of, as is the scene when she bonds with Gladys (Amanda Randolph), Wharton’s maid. Like Widmark, McNally was mostly known for playing villainous characters (the same year this film came out, he played James Stewart’s outlaw brother in Winchester ’73), but he plays well against type here. Rudolph manages to make the most of her stock role, and there are also early appearances from real-life couple Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee as a couple (Dee plays Dr. Brooks’ sister, while Davis plays his brother-in-law). But the movie rests on Poitier’s shoulders. This was his first leading role (he had been an extra in a feature and had also appeared in a documentary), but Poitier already seems like a natural. Admittedly, Dr. Brooks is the type of role that Poitier would find himself playing more and more over the next two decades, but there are some interesting wrinkles here, especially at the end. It may seem like a sop when Dr. Brooks decides to treat a wounded Ray even after Ray attacks him, but his rationale for treating Ray is that he’s trying to stay true to the Hippocratic oath, rather than some false statement about trying to get along. Not only that, but long before the famous scene of Poitier slapping a white man who slapped him in the film In the Heat of the Night, Poitier gets to snarl, “Don’t cry, white boy, you’re gonna live” to Ray when he’s crying in pain. It’s scenes like that which help make No Way Out still hold up today as both a good anti-racist film and a good film, period.

*-On the other hand, when the hospital orderly (Dot Johnson) tells Dr. Brooks about how the African-Americans are going to fight the whites, and Dr. Brooks tells him they’ll be no better than the whites are if they resort to violence, the orderly responds, “Ain’t it asking a lot for us to be better than them when we get killed just for trying to prove we’re as good?”, which is not something you’d expect to hear in a 1950 movie.

Starship Troopers review

Along with Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein was one of the leading science fiction writers to emerge after World War II. He was praised for the accuracy he brought to the science part of his fiction. Heinlein was also the rare writer who seemed to be praised on both sides of the political aisle (reflecting his own political journey from left to right to being a libertarian). Stranger in a Strange Land (which I’ve never read) was widely praised by the counter-culture for its views on the sexual revolution. Starship Troopers, on the other hand, was praised by right-wingers for its unabashed militarism. To its detractors, the latter novel is a fascist novel disguised as science fiction. I’m not sure I’d go that far – when I initially read it in the 1990’s, I took it as being Sands of Iwo Jima set in the future – but there’s no question it is very gung-ho about war and the military (along with being gung-ho about corporal punishment and believing only certain people had the right to vote). So it makes you curious if producer Jon Davison and screenwriter Ed Neumeier secretly knew what they were doing when they pursued Paul Verhoeven (whom they had worked with successfully on Robocop), who had grown up in the Netherlands when it was occupied by Nazi Germany during WWII, to direct the movie version of Heinlein’s novel, because the resulting movie, Starship Troopers, took that pro-militarism attitude and turned it entire on its head.* When it came out in 1997, Starship Troopers was a box-office bomb, and critics weren’t much kinder (Gene Siskel was one of the few critics who liked it, and he only gave it a mild recommendation). Today, however, it’s become a cult hit for those who realize it was a satire on the novel, and while I don’t love it, I think it’s terrific.

As with the novel, the movie is set in the 23rd century, where Earth is ruled by the military under the guise of the United Citizen Federation, and they’re at war with bugs, who are fighting the Earth on planets Earth is trying to colonize from their home base on Kiendathu. It’s at this time Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien), a star athlete, enlists as a mobile infantryman, over the objections of his parents. Also joining up are Carmen Ibanez (Denise Richards), an ace space pilot and Rico’s girlfriend (at first), Carl Jenkins (Neil Patrick Harris), a psychic who ends up in military intelligence, and Izabelle “Dizzy” Flores (Dina Mayer), who joins the mobile infantry unit because she’s in love with Rico. While Carmen joins the space air force, breaks up with Rico, and becomes close to Zander Barcalow (Patrick Muldoon), another pilot, Rico goes through training with Izzy, under the command of Sgt. Zim (Clancy Brown), who respects Rico because he was taught by Jean Rasczak (Michael Ironside), who later joins the military again. While Rico initially impresses Zim enough to be promoted to squad leader, he later quits military training after an exercise he supervises inadvertently causes the death of one of his men. However, Rico goes back to the military when a bug attack kills his parents, and he and Izzy, along with Ace Levy (Jake Busey), who was in the training class with Rico, and Sugar Watkins (Seth Gilliam) to be part of the Roughnecks (led by Rasczak) fighting unit, who does the bulk of the fighting against the bug army., though the fight turns out to be tougher, and bloodier, than anyone expected

In his Dutch films, Verhoeven was allowed to explicitly show sex and violence, along with a satirical edge in movies like Soldier of Orange, Spetters, and The 4^th Man. In Hollywood, on the other hand, Verhoeven had to dial down the sex part, except for Basic Instinct and Showgirls (both movies have a cult following and are considered in some circles as being as subversive as Verhoeven’s Dutch films, but I think that’s giving too much credit to Joe Eszterhas, the screenwriter of both films) – he does have the nude shower scene here, which he got the cast to agree to when he and cinematographer Jost Vacano agreed to shoot the scene while nude – but has been allowed to show explicit violence. Yet as in Robocop and Total Recall (my favorite of Verhoeven’s Hollywood movies), the violence in Starship Troopers never feels gratuitous, but necessary to the story. Forgoing Heinlein’s novel, Verhoeven does not try to make war glorious, but makes it a living hell, yet at the same time, showing a society that produces people who seem to be equipped to do little else except fight bugs and maybe even get killed by them.

Of course, part of what makes the violence work so well in the movie – aside from the way Verhoeven, Vacano, and editors Mark Goldblatt and Caroline Ross help stage it – is the satire Verhoeven brings to balance the movie out. Verhoeven stated in interviews he took inspiration from movies Hollywood made during WWII, but especially the movies of Leni Riefenstahl, specifically Triumph of the Will and Olympia (George Lucas, of course, used imagery from the former in the final scenes of Star Wars: A New Hope, but Verhoeven takes it to another level here). Part of that comes through in the pro-military commercials and news segments that appear throughout the movie (similar to the ones in Robocop), with narration by John Cunningham (a veteran stage and TV actor who has also appeared in such movies as Mystic Pizza, School Ties, and Nixon) that always ends with, “Would you like to know more?” Part of that also comes from the costumes designed by Ellen Mirojnick, who outfits most of the characters in military uniforms that wouldn’t look out of place in Triumph of the Will. Part of that also comes from Neumeier’s dialogue, which also wouldn’t seem out of place in a military propaganda film (when experts are debating the war on TV, and one mentions the bugs may have developed intelligence, another one snorts, “Frankly, I find the idea of a bug that thinks offensive!”). Still, most of the satire comes from how Verhoeven cast the movie with actors who would have fit right in on Melrose Place, being blond and blue-eyed – and if you’re wondering about folks from Argentina (which is where the Earth scenes take place, though that part of the movie was shot in Los Angeles, where the bug planet scenes were shot the South Dakota and Wyoming) being blond and blue-eyed, remember a number of Nazis who fled Germany at the end of WWII to escape capture settled in Argentina.

In the years since the movie was released, a healthy debate has sprung up among fans of the movie as to which of the cast members were in on the joke. Although Van Dien had stated in interviews at the time that he recognized the film was meant to be a satire, his subsequent career choices (he was in one of the first Christian-themed movies, The Omega Code, as well as daytime and prime time soap operas on TV) doesn’t give you much confidence in that statement. On the other hand, it’s clear Brown, Harris, and Ironside recognize what kind of movie they’re in – Ironside especially when he’s espousing pro-military attitudes that even Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from Full Metal Jacket might have blanched at – and I would argue Mayer also seems to get that it’s a satire, even if her character was changed from the novel (Dizzy was a man in the novel) to give Rico a love interest. Richards is an interesting case. In the DVD commentary, Verhoeven insists Carmen was meant to be a feminist character, while test audiences didn’t react well to her, even wishing she had been the one who dies. While a lot of that can be seen as the misogyny of the audiences of the time, and Carmen certainly gets shown as being capable of what she does, I always thought she should have been a more compelling character, and I’m not sure if it’s the fault of Richards, Verhoeven, the writing, or a combination. That said, based on the movies she did after this, particularly Wild Things and Undercover Brother, which are both tongue-in-cheek genre pieces (the former for the erotic thriller, the latter for blaxploitation movies) – and while I don’t think much of The World is Not Enough, the James Bond movies pre-Daniel Craig were tongue-in-cheek – it’s likely Richards did get the humor of the movie, even if she doesn’t come across that way. Regardless, the actors for the most part are good, particularly Brown, Harris, and Mayer. Starship Troopers doesn’t rank as my favorite Verhoeven, but I admire its audaciousness in turning the militarism of Heinlein’s novel on its head.

*-Neumeier had actually written an original screenplay called “Bug Hunt at Outpost 7”, but when he showed it to Davison, Davison pointed out the similarities to Heinlein’s novel.

Kiss Me Deadly review

The early-to-mid 1970’s in American movies is justly remembered as the time of the New Hollywood movement (or Hollywood New Wave), where directors wanted to depict a different kind of America than what had been put on screen during the studio era, and also combine a love for that studio era with a love of the type of non-English language films (especially European and Japanese) that had played on American screens in the 1950’s and 1960’s. What doesn’t get remembered as much is the 1970’s also saw a number of movies that were revisionist versions of genre movies of the studio era, particularly the western and the private eye movie, which encompassed both the amateur sleuth/drawing room mystery type of private eye movie (like The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes) and the hardboiled type of private eye movie. For the latter, The Long Goodbye (directed by Robert Altman), Chinatown (directed by Roman Polanski), and Night Moves (directed by Arthur Penn) are considered among the best examples. All due respect to those movies – I love Chinatown and Night Moves, and have come around on The Long Goodbye, though it’s still not my favorite Altman – but I would argue Kiss Me Deadly, directed by Robert Aldrich and based on the novel by Mickey Spillane (adapted by A.I. Bezzerides), beat them to the punch.

Spillane wrote in the tradition of hard-boiled detective fiction as established by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. However, whereas Hammett and Chandler wrote about flawed characters who nonetheless tried to adhere to a moral code, Spillane’s most famous character, private detective Mike Hammer, was unapologetically a brutalist who nonetheless saw himself as a moral crusader against anybody who Spillane didn’t like (especially drug dealers and Communists). Towards that end, Spillane, who started out writing for comic books until he switched to novels because they paid better, eschewed Hammett’s spare prose and Chandler’s romanticism (which admittedly could get wearying at times) for rat-a-tat, punchy writing that would seem like a parody of macho posturing were it not for the fact Spillane so obviously believed in it. Hammer was his hero, and it’s precisely this ideal that Aldrich and Bezzerides undercut with their movie version.

Hammer (Ralph Meeker) is driving one night when he comes across Christine (Cloris Leachman, in her film debut) running barefoot along the road, and wearing only a trenchcoat. She tells him, “Remember me” before some men drive Hammer off the road, take Christine, kill her, and leave him for dead. Hammer wakes up in the hospital, accompanied by Velda (Maxine Cooper), his secretary/lover, and Lt. Pat Murphy (Wesley Addy), his friend on the police force. Though Murphy tries to tell him not to investigate any further, Hammer tries to find out what happened to Christine, as he thinks it’s part of something big. He goes to Christine’s apartment, where he discovers Lily Carver (Gaby Rodgers), who claims to have been Christine’s roommate, and says she’s scared the people who killed Christine will come after her too. Hammer also ends up tangling with Carl Evello (Paul Stewart), a gangster who works with Dr. Soberin (Albert Dekker), a mysterious crooked doctor, as well as the search for a mysterious black box, or as Velda refers to it, “the great whatsit.”

The private detectives in earlier film noirs, such as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon or Philip Marlowe in Murder my Sweet and The Big Sleep, were involved in missing persons cases, and even though those cases ended up revealing a lot more, the detectives were darker than “amateur” sleuths like Philo Vance and the Falcon, and they also butted heads with the police (most notably the scene in The Maltese Falcon when Spade delivers an angry rant towards the district attorney, only interrupting himself to ask the stenographer if he’s getting everything down), there was still an air of respectability about them (the closest to disreputable is probably Jeff Bailey, aka Jeff Markham, the private eye played by Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past, and he finds out there are lines even he won’t cross). There’s nothing respectable about Hammer. He works on divorce cases – if it’s a husband suspected of cheating, Velda seduces him to catch him in the act, while if it’s the wife, it’s Hammer who does the work – and again, he tries to find out what happened to Christine not because of any sense of morality, but because he thinks he’s onto something big that will help him break out. Also, even though this was made during the Production Code era, Hammer is willing to manhandle anyone (including an opera singer and a coroner) to get information, as well as seduce any woman he comes across (even Evello’s girl). About the only redeeming qualities Hammer has are his friendship with Nick (Nick Dennis), his auto mechanic, his friendships with African-American characters (including Eddie Yeager (Juano Hernandez), a gym owner), and his drive to save Velda when she’s kidnapped. This is in direct contrast to Spillane’s novel, where Hammer’s actions are considered heroic, even by Murphy, whereas in the movie, he’s warning Hammer to stay off the case because he’s screwing everything up.

Along with the attitude towards Hammer, the other major change from the novel (even though Aldrich and Bezzerides keep a lot of it) is what Soberin, and eventually Hammer, are after. In the novel, it was heroin, as Spillane had it in for drug dealers, whom he considered on a par with Communists, whereas in the film, it’s an attaché case containing something nuclear-related. That part is hinted at in the film when Murphy drops the hint, “Manhattan Project, Los Alamos, Trinity” to Hammer in order to warn him off, as well as when Dr. Soberin describes the box as “Pandora’s Box”. It also gets hinted at when Hammer finds the case at an athletic club and opens it, only to close it immediately after the light and radiation burn his wrist. That sets the stage for one of the most infamous endings ever, when Lily – or, at least, the woman pretending to be Lily; she’s actually working with Dr. Soberin – shoots Dr. Soberin dead because he won’t share what’s in the case with her, then shoots Hammer before opening the case, only for that same light and radiation to emerge, burning her to death and causing the house she and the others are in to eventually explode. Oddly enough, in the studio-enforced ending, everyone dies, while in Aldrich and Bezzerides’ ending, a wounded Hammer manages to rescue Velda and they both escape.

One trait the film does share with the novel is Aldrich’s baroque style matches Spillane’s rat-a-tat prose, though without the macho posturing that made the novel wearying for me. Aldrich and cinematographer Ernest Laszlo (in the fourth of five movies together) deftly blend location shooting (the exteriors) with sets (the interiors). At one point in the movie, Hammer is kidnapped by Shug Smallhouse (Jack Lambert) and Charlie Max (Jack Elam), two of Evello’s thugs, and gets drugged, which was not new for film noir – in Murder my Sweet, Edward Dmytryk’s adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell my Lovely, Philip Marlowe gets drugged as well by the bad guys – but what makes this sequence different is Aldrich and Laszlo shoot Soberin (when he’s questioning Hammer) so you never see his face, making him all the more menacing and otherworldly. And the final sequence certainly shows Aldrich pulling out all the stops. This also serves as a nice contrast to Bezzerides’ dialogue, which is elliptical where Spillane’s was punchy, which is brought out with Dr. Soberin, who speaks almost entirely in flowery riddles, even near the end, when “Lily” is asking him what’s in the case (or as she calls it, the box), and he speaks of Pandora’s Box, among other things.

At the time, Meeker had been a contract player for MGM, as well as a stage actor (he replaced Marlon Brando on A Streetcar Named Desire, and originated the role of Hal, the drifter, in Picnic: William Holden played the role in the 1955 movie version), with his best role being the affable if somewhat troubled ex-cavalryman Anderson in Anthony Mann’s dark western The Naked Spur. Playing Hammer required Meeker to step up his game, and he does, using his physicality in a way that he’d never really do again. Meeker can go from superficially charming to menacing on a dime here, especially when he’s at Evello’s party and goes from coming on to one of the women there to beating up on Shut and Charlie. Of the three main actresses, only Leachman went on to have a prolific acting career, though Cooper concentrated on political activism and Rodgers was involved with songwriting. Still, all three are very good. Velda may be jaded, but she’s smart in ways Hammer never will be, and Cooper projects that well. Leachman doesn’t have a lot of screen time, but you certainly understand why Hammer is curious to find out what happened to her, as she projects an air of mystery. In an interview, Rodgers apparently said Aldrich told her to play the part as if she was a lesbian, which is a wrongful stereotype considering how psychotic “Lily” turns out to be, but Rodgers also projects an air of mystery that works for the character. Finally, while Dekker and Stewart did play good guys in their career, and well (Dekker as Gregory Peck’s editor in Gentleman’s Agreement, Stewart as an ace reporter in Deadline U.S.A. and a nightclub owner in the Elvis Presley vehicle King Creole), they were at their best in villainous roles, and they’re both appropriately menacing here. Though Kiss Me Deadly wasn’t popular with critics at the time, today, it’s rightly seen as a terrific film (influencing, among other films, Pulp Fiction, which also had a mysterious case as part of its plot), and again, a revisionist film noir long before the term came about.