Movie Review: The Big Heat (1953)

A gritty and brutal revenge noire thriller, The Big Heat is one of the finest examples of the genre. The story of a cop dead set on taking on a large criminal syndicate sizzles with clear-eyed intensity, thanks to sharp writing, edgy directing and fine performances.

Lowly cop Tom Duncan shoots himself in an apparently straightforward case of suicide. According to his widow Bertha (Jeanette Nolan), Tom was depressed due to ill health. But then the homicide detective in charge of the case, Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford), receives a call from a Lucy Chapman (Dorothy Green). She claims to have been Tom's mistress, and insists that his health was fine and that he demonstrated wealth well beyond a cop's salary. Lucy quickly turns up dead. Sensing that there is more to the suicide than meets the eye, Bannion attempts to continue the investigation, but is waved off by his commander, Lieutenant Ted Wilks (Willis Bouchey).

Bannion: Lucy Chapman used to be Duncan's girlfriend.
Wilks: And the army's and navy's.

Bannion ignores the order to let the matter drop, confronting powerful mob boss Mike Lagana (Alexander Scourby) about Lucy's death. Lagana quickly retaliates, and Bannion's family pays the price. Bannion declares war on the criminals, including Lagana, his main partner in crime Vince Stone (Lee Marvin), Stone's henchman Larry Gordon (Adam Williams), and the powerful politicians on Lagana's payroll. When Bannion gets close to Stone's girlfriend Debby Marsh (Gloria Grahame), events cascade into uncontrolled violence.

The Big Heat is an uncompromising thrill ride. Director Fritz Lang constructs a hard-hitting police drama, inundated with violence, propelled by the ferocity of one man deciding to fight back against much larger forces, consequences be damned. Dave Bannion designates himself as a catalyst to upset the status quo, not necessarily knowing who will be victimized nor what the new order will look like, but certain that the existing corrupt arrangements need to be reset.

Debby (to Bannion): When Vince talks business, I go out and get my legs waxed or something.

Lang and his cinematographer and namesake Charles Lang give The Big Heat sharp black and white edges, the movie mostly taking place indoors, at night, and at clubs and hotel rooms filled with blinds, shadows, harsh lights, thick smoke, hard liquor, and crawling with unsavoury characters. In contrast, Bannion's tiny apartment where he lives with his wife (Jocelyn Brando) and young daughter is bathed in the comfort of bright light and white furnishings.

Vince: Hey, that's nice perfume.
Debby: Something new. It attracts mosquitoes and repels men.

The violence of The Big Heat is eye-popping. With cigarettes as torture devices and scalding hot coffee as a weapon, pretty faces get hideously burned and disfigured. The shootings are numerous and the death count is high, particularly among the women. The dialogue is just as sharp, courtesy of a Sydney Boehm screenplay, with crime boss Lagana getting some of the best lines imparting his wisdom to the low lifes in his empire.

Mike Lagana: Prisons are bulging with dummies who wonder how they got there.

Glenn Ford bulldozes his way through the film, The Big Heat perfectly suited to his uncompromising screen persona. Lee Marvin and Alexander Scourby make formidable foes, Scourby more intellectual as Lagana and Marvin dangerously prone to brutality as Stone, a most memorable oily villain.

Gloria Grahame, Jeanette Nolan, Jocelyn Brando and, briefly, Dorothy Green play the quartet of women characters embroiled willingly or otherwise in the world that Bannion is about to disrupt, and all four contribute to the drama. Grahame's Debby Marsh is the most complex character in the movie, a mobster's moll aware of her place and aware that it's not a good one.

Debby: The main thing is to have the money. I've been rich and I've been poor. Believe me, rich is better.

By the time the bullets stop flying, every character in The Big Heat has been changed. Once the heat is turned up high enough, the pot explodes, and the spill is ever so messy.

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Movie Review: From Here To Eternity (1953)

The lives and loves of soldiers stationed at Pear Harbour in the months leading up to the Japanese attack, From Here To Eternity is a rather turgid examination of sordid behaviour, rescued by memorable characters and copious emotions.

With World War Two rumbling in the headlines, Captain Dana Holmes (Philip Ober) is nominally in charge of Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. Holmes is an ineffective leader much more interested in recruiting members to his unit's boxing team rather than ensuring good morale and readiness. He is also a rampant womaniser, altogether neglecting his wife Karen (Deborah Kerr). Sergeant Milton Warden (Burt Lancaster) is Holmes' second in command, and in the leadership vacuum does his best to keep the affairs of the barracks in order. Finally disgusted with Holmes, Warden starts a dangerously illicit affair with Karen.

Meanwhile, Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt (Montgomery Clift), a single-minded and determined bugler, transfers into the unit, and is immediately pressured by Holmes to join the boxing team. Prewitt refuses, having once badly hurt a man in a bout. With Holmes' tacit approval, Prewitt becomes a target for daily wretched treatment. One of the few men to befriend Prewitt is Private Angelo Maggio (Frank Sinatra), a scrappy and resourceful Italian-American who runs afoul of the burly James "Fatso" Judson (Ernest Borgnine), a boorish Sergeant of the Guard at the stockade.

Prewitt takes his undeserved punishment without complaint and manages to start a steamy relationship with Lorene Burke (Donna Reed), a "hostess" at the local entertainment club. With discipline disintegrating among the men as personal vendettas and affairs of the heart dominate their lives, the Japanese attack arrives as a monumental surprise.

Based on the James Jones novel inspired by his actual experiences, From Here To Eternity is a prototype of the hormone-drenched television soaps that would take over the world of entertainment in another few years. Viewed in the most crass terms, the film is about rather dim-witted characters behaving badly, soldiers of every rank with little to do except find useless trouble with women, trouble with the bottle, and trouble with each other.

But in spite of itself, From Here To Eternity registers an impact thanks to three sharply drawn characters. Sergeant Warden, Private Prewitt and Private Maggio are likable because they are real, flawed, stubborn, and frustratingly unable to avoid life's pitfalls. These men would not be peace time soldiers if they were really good at anything else, and the film mercifully avoids turning them into unrealistic principled heroes.

Instead, Warden succumbs to his lust and embarks on an affair that has "career-ending move" written all over it, Prewitt ignore the clear wishes of Holmes and subjects himself to a life of humiliation, adding to his agony by getting entangled with Lorene (a prostitute in the novel converted to a hostess to satisfy the movie sensibilities of the day), and Maggio has the courage to take on Fatso but not the brains to realize that the outcome is unlikely to be in his favour. All three are dim, yes, but also refreshingly authentic, unsophisticated men proving why they ended up in the army.

Using sparkling black and white, director Fred Zinnemann conjures up some high-impact scenes, most famous being Warden and Karen cavorting on the beach with the foamy surf washing away any sense of guilt. More emotionally intense are Warden and Prewitt having a drunken conversation in the middle of a dirt road, both of their lives reduced to pathetic lamentations, and Prewitt tearfully playing taps to honour a fallen colleague.

Montgomery Clift does emerge with the most fervent performance, creating in Private Prewitt an intractable man who does not mind being externally kicked around as long as he is comfortable with his internal code of conduct. Clift conveys a dark brew of seething anger kept in check by remarkable conviction. Frank Sinatra is also excellent in a role he lobbied heavily for, Maggio dominating every scene he is in with an attitude of battling good humour, intent on making the best out of life's limited opportunities. In contrast with both Clift and Sinatra, the sturdy Lancaster plays the sturdy Lancaster, exactly what is expected of him.

Deborah Kerr steps way outside of her zone of comfort to play a woman leaving a trail of broken toyboy soldiers in her wake, while Donna Reed as the warmer, more intimate Lorene is also memorable as the unexpected soul mate for the brooding Prewitt.

From Here To Eternity dominated the Academy Awards, receiving 13 nominations and winning 8, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay and both Supporting Actor awards for Sinatra and Reed. Warden, Prewitt and Maggio may not represent exemplary behaviour, but sometimes glory can be found in celebrating the foibles of normal men.

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The Movies Of Gregory Peck

All Gregory Peck movies reviewed on the Ace Black Blog are linked below:

Spellbound (1945)

Twelve O'Clock High (1949)

The Snows Of Kilimanjaro (1952)

The Guns Of Navarone (1961)

How The West Was Won (1962)

To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)

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The Index of Movie Stars is here.

Movie Review: The Snows Of Kilimanjaro (1952)

The reminiscences of an acerbic writer reflecting on his life and loves while awaiting either medical aid or death in Africa, The Snows Of Kilimanjaro is an introspective journey that gradually but surely gathers inner strength.

Writer and amateur big game hunter Harry Street (Gregory Peck) has a badly infected leg at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa. Helpless on his back and almost delirious with pain, Harry is nevertheless self-obsessed and churlish. He verbally spars with his companion and caregiver Helen (Susan Hayward), before slipping into remembrances of his life's key moments.

Aspiring to be a writer since he was a young man, and always attracted to a life of travel and adventure, Harry meets Cynthia Green (Ava Gardner) in Paris. She becomes the love of his life, and joins him on a game hunting expedition in Africa. But when Cynthia finds out that she is pregnant, she longs for a stable life of domesticity, but realizes that Harry only ever wants to travel and pursue new experiences as inspiration for his writing. They part ways under difficult circumstances in Spain. Harry has further romances with a domineering Countess (Hildegard Knef) and then meets Helen, but Cynthia never fully leaves his heart, and they are fated to meet again.

The Casey Robinson script keeps the spirit of Ernest Hemingway's semi-autobiographical short story, but changes many essential elements, including introducing the crucial character of Cynthia Green and altering the ending. The film becomes primarily an ode to essential love lost as seen through Hemingway's caustic lens on life.

The Snows Of Kilimanjaro does have to struggle against an unsympathetic central character. Harry Street is not exactly easy to like, almost outright mean to Helen, who happens to be the only friend he has as the buzzards circle over his immobile body and rotting leg. And as the memories reveal more about Harry, he proves to be deaf to Cynthia's needs, narcissistic in pursuing his own agenda, oblivious to the feelings of others, and quick to mock those closest to him.

But gradually, a sympathetic man emerges, finally coming to terms with what matters in life and pursuing  more noble pursuits, including a war against creeping oppression and a final, desperate attempt to revive the core relationship of his life. The surprising power of the movie comes from the gathering strength of Street's character, as he evolves into a man slow to recognize the signposts of life, but ultimately following them, albeit possibly too late.

Henry King directs in lush colour, The Snows Of Kilimanjaro enjoying grand visual depth and plenty of stock footage of the African wilds, as well as European scenes in Paris and Madrid that are alternately impressive and melancholy. Harry's first meeting with Cynthia in Paris is a magical encounter of mood, music, movement and mirth, brought together by the magnetism of a love meant to spark over a common cigarette lighter. In other scenes King mixes the authenticity of a writer's free spirit with the competing demands of compromise to thrive in life, a contest in which Street often performed poorly.

Peck does well in a role against type, Harry on the opposite side of the street from the upstanding heroes often embodied by Peck. Gardner gives an assured performance as a vulnerable Cynthia, a woman a couple of steps ahead of her man in understanding life but not willing to ruin his rush to boyish adventurism. By comparison, Hayward has relatively little to do, as Helen is consigned to fending off Harry's pessimistic jabs, unwilling to fight back against an already stricken man. Leo G. Carroll has a typically small but important role as Harry's uncle.

The Snows Of Kilimanjaro is a thoughtfully slow exploration of an error-filled life. As in big game hunting, knowing when to take a shot and when to back away comes naturally for some, but is a lifelong pursuit for others.

 

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Movie Review: The Big Trees (1952)

Loggers against conservationists in the redwood forests of California, The Big Trees is as ordinary as its title.

Jim Fallon (Kirk Douglas) is a smooth talking entrepreneur lumber baron looking to make a large profit from the release of government land for logging. Teaming up with gruff but resourceful former prospector Yukon Burns (Edgar Buchanan), he makes his way to northern California, where the large redwoods could yield handsome returns.

But a local religious community lives in the forest and treats the soaring trees as divine. Elder Bixby (Charles Meredith) is their spiritual leader, and his feisty daughter Alicia (Eve Miller) leads the charge to make life difficult for Fallon and his men. However, a romance nevertheless ignites between Alicia and Fallon, as a rival team of evil timber harvesters spark a violent war in the forest.

Douglas agreed to star in The Big Trees for free in exchange for being released from his long-term contract with Warner Bros. And a general sense of ennui pervades the project. The film feels rushed, underdeveloped, and in many instances plain silly.

Douglas lends undeniable star power and no shortage of charisma, but the supporting cast is strictly C-list. The plot is initially halfway passable, but gets lost in plenty of incomprehensible talk about land deeds and property tights. The narrative then starts to creak in worrisomely wrong directions when the tree worshippers show up, quickly followed by a contrived romance and then faceless nasty bad guys whose sole intent is to make Fallon appear less heartless in comparison.

In quick succession, The Big Trees ends with a rail bridge disintegrating, a dam exploding, and a damsel in distress being saved in the nick of time, and all three events come across as randomly placed action highlights thrown in by director Felix E. Feist in a desperate attempt to enliven a fairly fustian affair. The Big Trees survive, but some reputations do get cut down to size.

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Book Review: The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey (1989)

Stephen Covey's advice for personal and professional success has withstood the test of time. The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People is an essential and accessible guide to the fundamental principles required to thrive.

Covey constructs his habits to first target personal discipline, the first three habits instilling the ideas of self-determination and the individual ability to shape the future by breaking old habits and presupposed dispositions, being proactive, genuinely imagining desired outcomes, and focusing efforts in the areas that matter towards achieving these outcomes. The first three habits are the building blocks for independence and what Covey calls personal victory.

The next three habits focus on strengthening relationships with others, Covey emphasizing that positive collaboration yields results much stronger than the sum of the parts. The keys to interdependence and public victory are seeking win/win solutions, ensuring that the perspective of others is genuinely understood and internalized, and harmonizing team strength to create a much greater whole that any one individual can conjure. The seventh habit is continuous self-improvement through physical, mental, spiritual and emotional nourishment.

The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People is written in an earnest yet highly attainable style, Covey mixing theories with plenty of examples, often from his personal life, to demonstrate the habits in action (or the undesirable outcome of ignoring them). His voice is that of the sage and calm uncle, positive, encouraging and wise and yet uncompromising in knowing what works and what does not. As a minor quibble, the book does on a few occasions descend into too many lists within lists, Covey sometimes delving a bit too deep into some areas best left for the individual or to focused seminars.

The habits are presented as life-long avenues of learning rather than quick wins or short cuts to success. Indeed, Covey repeatedly makes the distinction between principle-centred change and personality make-overs, the former being dramatically more fundamental, more lasting, and ultimately much more essential for true success.

The 7 Habit Of Highly Effective People is a timeless classic, one of the few genuinely fundamental books to understand the essence of personal leadership.

Subtitled: Personal Lessons In Personal Change. 
Published in paperback by Fireside - Simon and Schuster.
318 pages plus Appendices and Index.

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Movie Review: The World According To Garp (1982)

An adaptation of the John Irving best-selling novel, The World According To Garp is the story of a cute bastard who grows up in a world rocked by feminism. The movie is episodic and at times rudderless, but the central performances and an endearing quirkiness help to maintain good engagement.

During World War Two, nurse Jenny Fields (Glenn Close), a fiercely independent budding feminist, shocks her parents (Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy) by announcing that she is intentionally and happily pregnant out of wedlock. The father, a badly wounded tailgunner known only as Technical Sergeant Garp, died soon after Jenny, wanting a child but no entanglement with a man, used him as a sperm source. Jenny gives her newborn boy the name T.S. Garp, and he grows up longing for the father he never knew.

In college, Garp (Robin Williams) falls in love with Helen Holm (Mary Beth Hurt), the daughter of his wrestling coach. Garp and his mother move to New York and both embark on writing careers. Jenny's first book, a feminist manifesto, is a huge success and catapults her into the limelight as an icon for the movement. She establishes a shelter for abused women, militant feminists, and assorted hangers-on, including Roberta Muldoon (John Lithgow), a transgendered former pro footballer. Garp's literary career is slower to take off, but he marries Helen, they have two boys, and maintain a good relationship with Jenny. Both Garp and Helen have fidelity problems that threaten the family's happiness, while Jenny is attracted to the idea of a run for political office.

George Roy Hill directs The World According To Garp as a balance between mature comedy and light drama, the film tackling serious issues without necessarily taking itself too seriously. The main weakness in the script (co-written by Irving) strikes about halfway through, once a grown Garp has married Helen and Jenny has achieved her fame: all the narrative arcs of the movie appear to be resolved, and future adventures in the lives of Garp and Jenny take on a disconnected, what-next tone. A book thrives on springing sequential surprises, but a 130 minute movie typically needs better-defined boulevards for the characters to navigate.

Some choppiness aside, The World According To Garp is an agreeable chronicle of feminism, and as such is much more about the mother than the son. While Garp is mostly an interested observer reacting to events rather than shaping them, it is Jenny Fields who is shaking the world around her to achieve the change that she wants to see. Jenny never met an initiative that she did not want to seize, and her journey from nurse to single mother to feminist icon to shelter provider and finally aspiring politician is the story of post-war feminism.

The movie gives Jenny her due, with Glenn Close delivering a confident performance filled with pragmatic heroism. But she also emerges as a change agent without an essential backstory. The motivations and circumstances that drove Jenny to carve her own pioneering path lamentably remain strictly off camera.

As for Garp, his story is that of Jenny's bastard son, three words that carry huge rewards and penalties. Thanks to his mother, Garp has no choice but to see the world through the newly enlightened eyes of men who will need to thrive alongside empowered women. Garp becomes the prototype, faults and all, for the men of the baby boom generation charting a course through a world where women are suddenly leaders rather than followers in social change. Robin Williams brings his approachable charms to the role, and controls his more manic tendencies.

John Lithgow was deservedly nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for bringing to life Roberta Muldoon, a confident man-turned-woman who thrives in the new reality made possible by the tidal wave of social change. Mary Beth Hurt provides positive support as Helen, a woman who herself is not necessarily a change catalyst but who is now more free to explore the new rules, including rewritten sexual empowerment axioms, created by the Jenny Fields of the world.

Garp's world is never less than interesting and is often humorously turbulent, thanks to the courage of the women in his life.

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CD Review: Formshifter, by Allegaeon (2012)

Allegaeon's second album continues to excavate a beefy mountain of technical melodic death metal, but comes out with the same ore from every vein. Formshifter is full of effort and energy, but fails to ever properly take off.

A definite sameness takes over the album relatively quickly, sometimes worsening to a constant drone, as the tracks meld into one another, lacking definition and sharp edges. The execution is professional, but the melodies miss a sense of enlightenment, the compositions are more the product of construction than inspiration, and the riffs and solos float in their own universe and rarely set the blood racing.

The song structures and signatures are unusually predictable, with no evidence of playfulness or brave adventurism. A mid-tempo pace dominates, while the muscular wall of melodic death metal sound, full of technical wizardry and the occasional modern thrash decoration, more often than not lands with a thud and wonders where to go next. 

Bucking the trend is The Azrael Trigger, which delivers the tightest, most dangerous assault on the album, Ezra Haynes finally finding the unrelenting enthusiasm to bring out the danger in his voice, while guitarists Ryan Glisan and Greg Burgess trade the CD's best solo moments. Tartessos: The Hidden Xenocryst, A Path Disclosed and album closer Secrets Of The Sequence manage a degree of prominence, without breaking out.

There are other good moments scattered throughout the rest of Formshifter, but they are generally detached from what surrounds them. The absence of focused cohesion is the most prominent weakness, Formshifter unfortunately too floppy to find a hard spine.


Band:

Ezra Haynes - Vocals
Ryan Glisan - Guitar
Greg Burgess - Guitar
Corey - Bass

Drums - J. P. Andrande


Songlist (ratings out of 10):

1. Behold (God I Am) - 7
2. Tartessos: The Hidden Xenocryst - 8
3. A Path Disclosed - 8
4. Twelve Vals For The Legions - 7
5. Iconic Images - 7
6. The Azrael Trigger - 9
7. From The Stars Death Came - 7
8. Timeline Dissonance - 6
9. Formshifter - 7
10. Secrets Of The Sequence - 8

Average: 7.40

Engineered, Mixed, and Mastered by Daniel Castleman.

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Movie Review: Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (1964)

A black comedy imagining a hot end to the cold war, Dr. Strangelove is a caustic epic. Through the story of a rogue American general launching an unprovoked nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, Stanley Kubrick deliciously dismembers the culture of war, exposing the infantile incompetence of the generals and their politicians.

President Muffley: Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!

General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) gives orders for a group of nuclear bombers under his command to attack targets in the Soviet Union. Major T. J. Kong (Slim Pickens), a commander of one of the bombers, receives the orders, confirms them, and sets off to drop his nuclear payload on the target assigned for his B-52. Captain Lionel Mandrake (Peter Sellers), a British exchange officer and Ripper's second in command, realizes too late that Ripper has gone mad and is bent on starting a global nuclear war.

General Ripper: I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

Once the magnitude of the crisis becomes clear, US President Merkin Muffley (Sellers again) convenes his advisers in the War Room, where a large wall screen shows the real-time progress of the bombers as they approach their targets. General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) is a warmonger who would like to seize the opportunity and launch an all out war. Dr. Strangelove (Sellers once again), a wheelchair-bound nuclear scientist and a former Nazi with a gloved and occasionally out of control right arm, informs the President that the Soviets have an unstoppable "doomsday machine" that will automatically detonate and destroy the planet if the Soviets are attacked. With the Americans helping the Soviets to destroy the incoming bombers, and American troops frantically attacking Ripper's base to seize the recall code, Major Kong has to evade enemy fire and stoically make his way towards his target.

President Muffley, discussing Ripper with Turgidson: There's nothing to figure out, General Turgidson. This man is obviously a psychotic.
General Turgidson: We-he-ell, uh, I'd like to hold off judgment on a thing like that, sir, until all the facts are in.
Muffley: General Turgidson! When you instituted the human reliability tests, you assured me there was no possibility of such a thing ever occurring!
Turgidson: Well, I, uh, don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir.

One of the best comedies of all time, Dr. Strangelove is 90 sharp minutes of biting satire. Based on the book Red Alert by Peter George, the film is filled with classic moments as Kubrick takes every opportunity to peel back and crumple the pompous absurdity of war and the men who wage it.

Filmed in black with just some white, Kubrick and cinematographer Gilbert Taylor provide the movie with a shiny darkness, whether inside the cavernous war room or on board Kong's claustrophobic bomber. The world is about to be destroyed from decision rooms painted black, filled with shiny equipment, indirect light and men who look good making all the wrong decisions.

President Muffley, speaking to the Soviet Premier: I'm sorry too, Dmitri. I'm very sorry. All right, you're sorrier than I am. But I am sorry as well. I am as sorry as you are, Dmitri. Don't say that you're the more sorry than I am because I am capable of being just as sorry as you are. So we're both sorry, all right? All right.

The opening credit sequence, with beautiful music accompanying war machinery, sets the scene and points the way to Kubrick's majestic artistry with classical music and futuristic man-made marvels in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Also in Dr. Strangelove, Vera Lynn's poignant Second World War song We'll Meet Again is an ode to a planet on the verge of self-destruction. The Fallout post-apocalyptic game series picked up on this theme, using songs of the past (notably Louis Armstrong's A Kiss To Build A Dream On and The Ink Spots' I Don't Want To Set The World On Fire) as the soundtrack for the end of the future.

Dr. Strangelove: The whole point of the doomsday machine...is lost if you keep it a secret!

The performances are uniformly pitch perfect, knifelike comedy delivered with a straight face. Peter Sellers was never better, his three roles forming three sides of the war triangle: soldier, politician and weapons expert. Mandrake is a man in uniform swept up in events he has no control over, Muffley is the president who approved the command system that allowed Ripper to go rogue and now has to deal with the resulting mess, while Strangelove is the mad (in many ways) weapons scientist, almost gleeful that his nuclear industry is again and finally being used in anger. That he is also an ex-Nazi and not in control of his own rampaging right arm is just a layering on of commentary on the inner circle trusted to advise on matters of war. And yes, humanity's love of deadly conflict is, indeed, strange.

Dr. Strangelove: Mein Führer, I can WALK!

George C. Scott as General Buck Turgidson inflates the warmongering general stereotype to fill the war room with his breathless anti-commie rhetoric, whipping himself up into a bloodthirsty frenzy. For Turgidson, acceptable casualties are calculated with a margin of error in the tens of millions, and it's all a victory as long as the enemy's losses are greater.

Slim Pickens is a cowboy in the sky as Major Kong, and despite his eccentricities Kong is faithful to his orders, skilled in leading his crew, determined to fulfil his mission, and willing to go to extremes to ensure its success.

War is hell, and it's also ridiculous. Dr. Strangelove takes aim and riddles its target with a barrage of piercing mockery.

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Movie Review: The Racket (1951)

A straightforward crime thriller about one honest cop taking on a crime syndicate, The Racket benefits from a potent duel between the central characters played by Robert Mitchum and Robert Ryan. However, the rest of the movie stumbles into fairly conventional territory.

A professional criminal syndicate headed by a never seen "old man" has seized control of all illegal enterprises in the city. Led on the ground by long time local gang chief Nick Scanlon (Ryan), the syndicate also controls the civic administration and justice system through bribes, with the business of crime operated out of legitimate-looking companies. Scanlon's latest initiative is to get crooked District Attorney Mortimer Welch (Ray Collins) elected as a judge.

The one incorruptible senior cop in the city is Captain Thomas McQuigg (Mitchum), and he is determined to get Scanlon off the street. McQuigg tries to enlist the unwilling help of nightclub singer Irene Hays (Lizabeth Scott) to testify against Scanlon, and also finds an ally in idealistic honest cop Bob Johnson (William Talman). When Scanlon begins to sense that his old fashioned brutish tactics are at odds with the syndicate's newer, more corporate way of doing things, he lashes out against his enemies.

Produced by Howard Hawks to capitalize on a real-life high profile investigation into New York crime and corruption, and based on a stage play from the late 1920s, The Racket boils down to a two person face-off. Nick Scanlon and Thomas McQuigg are equally stubborn in wanting to get their way, and the film is a collision between irresistible force and immovable object.

In the acting competition, Robert Ryan's intensity registers higher than Robert Mitchum's integrity. Ryan has more to play with, since Scanlon is both a perpetrator of crime and a victim of a shifting landscape, his old fashioned, break-their-bones methods losing favour under the new regime of the old man. Ryan demonstrates authority drowning in increasing panic, as the law closes in from one end and his criminal allies frown on his violent retaliation.

In contrast, Mitchum is less interesting as a strictly linear straight cop, Hawks and his studio RKO Pictures apparently eager to rehabilitate his image after marijuana-related untoward publicity. Unable to use his laid-back persona to generate hidden menace, Mitchum resorts to the uninspired side of understated.

Director John Cromwell errs on the side of over-complication, with an avalanche of names littering most conversations and minor hoodlum characters getting unnecessary prominence without the necessary context.

The Racket is basic no frills cops versus criminals, honest in intent, humourless in style, and hard-edged in delivery.

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