Movie Review: Best Seller (1987)

Genre: Thriller  

Director: John Flynn  

Starring: Brian Dennehy, James Woods  

Running Time: 95 minutes  

Synopsis: Police officer and celebrated writer Dennis Meechum (Brian Dennehy) became famous after publishing a best-selling book about a notorious heist that left several officers dead. 15 years later Dennis is a single dad, tired of policing, and suffering from writer's block. Professional assassin Cleve (James Woods) approaches Dennis to write a non-fiction book exposing the ruthless methods of wealthy industrialist Madlock. The skeptical Dennis investigates Cleve's story, and his own life is soon endangered.

What Works Well: This briskly-paced thriller mixes an original premise and moments of action with a thorny buddy story, Larry Cohen's script most interested in the intriguing dynamics between detective and assassin. Dennis is following a scent without losing sight of his purpose, while Cleve's psychotic yet strangely sympathetic hitman is seeking respect and redemption. James Woods delivers one of his best performances, finding a cool edge but never over-stepping into theatricality.

 

What Does Not Work As Well: Unfortunately, the secondary characters are barely sketched in, creating a hollow chamber around the plot idea. The capitalistic villain Madlock could have been so much more, and the women in Dennis' life (his daughter and agent) are reduced to stock representations. The middle act struggles for content and overcooks Cleve's smugness and Dennis' cynicism.

Key Quote:

Cleve (to Dennis): You need me. We need each other.

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Movie Review: F/X (1986)

Genre: Thriller  

Director: Robert Mandel  

Starring: Bryan Brown, Brian Dennehy, Diana Venora, Cliff De Young, Jerry Orbach  

Running Time: 108 minutes  

Synopsis: In New York City, movie special effects expert Rollie Tyler (Bryan Brown) is hired by Justice Department official Lipton (Cliff De Young) to stage the death of mob informer DeFranco (Jerry Orbach). But immediately after the fake assassination, Rollie finds himself a target and realizes he has been set-up, with his girlfriend Ellen (Diana Venora) also endangered. Rollie has to use his special effects skills to escape and clear his name, while gruff police Detective McCarthy (Brian Dennehy) wades into the case.

What Works Well: A relatively innovative premise creates intriguing opportunities for melding visual tricks of the screen into the "real" movie-created world. Bryan Brown is lithe and suave in the central role, and Brian Dennehy as a frumpy battering ram of a detective provides a good counterpoint. Director Robert Mandel ensures brisk pacing and high-energy chase and action scenes.

What Does Not Work As Well: The plot mechanics are ludicrous to the point of not even attempting an explanation. Rollie transitions, in a quite a hurry, from a regular Joe to an all-action hero with secret agent abilities and willingness to use lethal force. The whiff of a B-movie is accentuated by clunky dialogue and amateurish secondary performances, with Martha Gehman as Rollie's assistant suffering the most.

Key Quote:

Ellen: Nobody cares about making movies about people any more. All they care about is special effects.

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Movie Review: Gorky Park (1983)

Genre: Mystery Thriller

Director: Michael Apted

Starring: William hurt, Lee Marvin, Brian Dennehy, Joanna Pacula, Ian Bannen, Ian McDiarmid

Running Time: 123 minutes

Synopsis: Three murdered bodies are found in Moscow's Gorky Park. Police officer Arkady Renko (William Hurt) investigates and establishes connections between the victims and influential American businessman Jack Osborne (Lee Marvin). Meanwhile movie set worker Irina (Joanna Pacula), who is Osborne's friend and desperate to escape the USSR, is hiding secrets. Renko also tangles with New York City Detective William Kirwill (Brian Dennehy), the brother of one of the victims. 

What Works Well: The adaptation of the novel by Martin Cruz Smith enjoys high quality production values and creates a grey mood of mistrust, born from a marriage of communism and the bitter cold. Enough personal motivations in pursuit of greed and freedom ensure a base level of engagement, punctuated by short and sharp bursts of action and violence.

What Does Not Work As Well: Dennis Potter's script is overstuffed and uncoordinated, many major events taking place off-screen and crucial new revelations carelessly dropped into conversations. The plot details (something to do with smuggling sables) are more bizarre than effective, with neither the crimes nor the romance registering emotionally. William Hurt's deliberate performance slow-dances with blatant mis-casting, while Lee Marvin does only marginally better by gliding on a current of disinterest.

Conclusion: The frigid exteriors match the cold execution.



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Movie Review: Righteous Kill (2008)

A police drama featuring two veteran acting heavyweights, Righteous Kill wastes its cast on a tired and lacklustre premise and a dreadful twist.

A grainy tape appears to show police detective Turk (Robert De Niro) confessing to a series of extrajudicial murders, violently disposing of criminals who escape the law. In flashback, it is revealed that Turk (Robert De Niro) and fellow veteran detective Rooster (Al Pacino) have been partners for a long time, with Turk frequently combustible and Rooster more laidback. Turk blows steam through a sex-only relationship with detective Karen Corelli (Carla Gugino), who likes her intercourse sessions on the rough side.

A while back Turk resorted to planting evidence to apprehend a rapist and killer who had cheated the justice system. Soon thereafter, the murders of other criminals start. A short poem is left at the scene of each crime, earning the serial killer the moniker "Poetry Boy". With Lieutenant Hingis (Brian Dennehy) demanding answers, Turk and Rooster alternately cooperate and clash with younger detectives Perez (John Leguizamo) and Riley (Donnie Wahlberg). Suspicion begins to swirl around Turk, but the murder rate only accelerates.

De Niro and Pacino co-starred in the stellar Heat, but here they share many more scenes and are often on the screen together. 30 years prior they were two of the most celebrated and intense actors on the planet, and it's testament to their talent and endurance that Righteous Kill only matters because they are in it.

But that's where any notions that this is a good film come to a grinding and comprehensive stop. Directed by Jon Avnet and written by Russell Gewirtz, Righteous Kill is devoid of tension, suspense, action or any semblance of artistry. The murders are mechanical, soulless and mostly presented in a context vacuum, and the premise of cops turning into killers to clean up the mistakes of the justice system was old back in the 1970s.

The rest of the movie consists of anywhere between two and five cops on the screen talking, bickering and regurgitating the same arguments. They insult each other and get in each other's faces before sullenly going off to the next murder scene. Rinse and repeat. The robotic scenes are only interrupted by Turk's narrated confession on a grainy recording, a set-up for a cheap movie trick that would have been rejected in an introductory scriptwriting class. Rather than rescue the film, the twist ending buries it deeper in the dustbin.

Watching De Niro and Pacino is never less than worthwhile; it's such a pity that this collaboration arrived so late, and on such a righteously feeble project.

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Movie Review: 10 (1979)

A sex comedy about the mess men can create at the midpoint of their life, 10 achieves laughs but also dawdles for too long in obvious territory.

Beverly Hills-based music composer George Webber (Dudley Moore) arrives at a full-fledged mid-life crisis after his 42nd birthday. Neither his lover Samantha Taylor (Julie Andrews) nor his friend and co-composer Hugh (Robert Webber) can help. Things get worse when George stumbles onto the wedding of Jenny (Bo Derek), and is immediately infatuated with the stunning young bride, whom he rates as an 11 on a scale of 1 to 10.

George starts to drink excessively, abandons Samantha and follows Jenny to a Mexico honeymoon resort, where he befriends Don (Brian Dennehy) the bartender. George stalks Jenny on the beach, fantasizing about an unlikely romance and trying to work up the courage to conjure up a meeting. Meanwhile, Mary Lewis (Dee Wallace) is a lonely woman at the same resort, and she sets her sights on George.

Cast as the almost mythical subject of a middle-aged man's lust, 10 catapulted Bo Derek from obscurity to superstardom. Her braided cornrow hairstyle and skin-coloured one-piece swimsuit became instantly recognizable and much-copied, and she was immediately appointed as the newest Hollywood sex symbol.

With Derek dominating the headlines, the film itself is almost, but not quite, irrelevant. Director Blake Edwards does not help his own cause by flubbing the pacing, somehow contriving to extend the flimsy story to over two hours.

Almost every scene and idea is tediously stretched beyond what is necessary, the initial laugh always drowned in a chorus of prolongation. George walking across the hot sand is funny; but not after the first 30 seconds. George tumbling down an embankment and attempting to climb back up is maybe funny; but not after many minutes of panting and gasping. George and Samantha missing each other's phone calls is amusing the first couple of times; by the fifth round, the joke is truly spent.

And Dudley Moore is afforded far too much drinking time, with scene after scene of George chugging back the alcohol and stumbling around in a drunken stupor in a desperate attempt to reverse his age.

She may not know the first thing about acting, but here the better moments almost always feature Derek, whether running on the beach in slow motion or matter-of-factly exposing George to the generational gap that he will never be able to traverse. Edwards fully commits to the world of adults with plenty of nudity, and the bedroom scenes, once they arrive, carry the requisite awkward edge. Ravel's Bolero (Jenny's favourite lovemaking soundtrack) enjoyed a massive worldwide revival.

The rest of the cast members are capable but hampered by the excessive focus on George. Julie Andrews as Samantha is the grounding mechanism that George refuses to hold onto, but she disappears for long stretches from the second half. Brian Dennehy and Robert Webber provide robust support but both deserved more screentime, as did Dee Wallace.

The theme of middle-aged angst is run thoroughly through the wash-dry cycle, but Edwards appears oblivious to George's life of immense privilege. His emotional troubles are the embodiment of the ultra rich and comfortable finding something - anything - to whine about between trips in the Rolls-Royce.

10 enjoys its moments at the expense of the wayward male mind, but while Bo Derek may have briefly been the world's 11, the film scores a more mundane 6.

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The Movies Of Brian Dennehy

All movies starring Brian Dennehy and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

10 (1979)

First Blood (1982)

Gorky Park (1983)

Silverado (1985)

F/X (1986)

Legal Eagles (1986)

Best Seller (1987)

Presumed Innocent (1990)

Assault On Precinct 13 (2005)

Righteous Kill (2008)

The Next Three Days (2010)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Assault On Precinct 13 (2005)

A police-under-siege action thriller, Assault On Precinct 13 tries to find some balance between a hail of bullets and character interaction. But by dumping logic into the Detroit snow, the film achieves guff rather than grit.

Undercover detective Jake Roenick (Ethan Hawke) leads his small team into a botched drug sting operation, resulting in the loss of two officers. Eight months later, Roenick is still traumatized, killing time at a desk job and making no progress with psychiatrist Alex Sabian (Maria Bello). It's New Year's Eve, Detroit is smothered by a snow storm, and Roenick, secretary Drea de Matteo (Iris Ferry) and veteran Sergeant Jasper O'Shea (Brian Dennehy) are staffing the otherwise abandoned Precinct 13 for the final time before the station closes for good.

Crime boss Marion Bishop (Laurence Fishburne) is arrested after killing an undercover police officer, and the snow storm forces his prisoner bus to unexpectedly divert to Precinct 13 for the night. Roenick places the high profile Bishop and a bunch of petty prisoners into the station prison cells, and soon enough Precinct 13 is under armed assault. It's not Bishop's men who are out to free him, but rather rogue cops under the leadership of Captain Marcus Duvall (Gabriel Byrne) who need to silence Bishop and all witnesses before he reveals the depth of corruption in the police ranks. With no help in sight, Roenick has to hunker down for the night and organize a defence, which forces him into an uneasy alliance with Bishop.

A remake of the 1976 John Carpenter film of the same name, Assault On Precinct 13 features no shortage of gruesome action. Bullets to the brain and icicles in the eye are just some of the treats director Jean-François Richet throws at the screen for full splatter effect. On the more cerebral level, there is an honest attempt to give Roenick a backstory, but the narrative is not well served by the very tired premise of the hero hiding in a bottle to escape a bad episode in his life.

The third and final attempt to distinguish the film is the complex relationship between Roenick the honest cop and Bishop the master crime lord, two men from opposite sides of the law forced to work together against a common enemy for just one night. Thanks to fine performances from Ethan Hawke and Laurence Fishburne, the dynamic between the reluctant protector and the supremely confidant target brings a trace of depth to an otherwise rudimentary film.

But any good intentions to deliver a quality thriller are severely undermined by the stupid bad guys syndrome, which ultimately obliterates any promise held by the film. Gabriel Byrne as lead villain Marcus Duvall fails miserably in a lame attempt to convey evil intent. Meanwhile his army of heavily armed and fully equipped murderous men are somehow outsmarted in every confrontation by Roenick and his ragtag group made up of prisoners, one beat cop and a couple of civilians.

There is no escaping the sense that the assault could have been over in about three and half minutes had Duvall brought his full force to bear, as any smart antagonist aiming to murder a group of people in cold blood would have done. Matters are made much worse when the equivalent of a mini-war rages for hours at Precinct 13, and no external force responds to all the gun fire. Detroit may be bad; it's not this lawless, yet.

Inside the besieged building Maria Bello gets a couple of good scenes but then dissolves into victimhood when the shooting starts, while Iris Ferry's take on secretary Drea as an oversexed doll seems to be entirely incongruous. The other prisoners offer roles for John Leguizamo and rapper Ja Rule.

Assault On Precinct 13 ends at daybreak with combatants pursuing each other in a forest shrouded by fog. They can't see each other, and neither can anyone see much point in this unnecessary remake.

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Movie Review: Silverado (1985)

A valiant attempt to revitalize the Western, Silverado packs in all the genre elements but lacks the required subtlety and sophistication to craft a memorable experience.

In the wild west, Emmett (Scott Glenn) shoots dead four assailant trying to kill him. He then saves the life of Paden (Kevin Kline), who had been left to die in the desert, and the two men join forces and make their way to the town of Turley. Emmett helps his brother Jake (Kevin Costner) escape from the clutches of sheriff Langston (John Cleese), while Paden renews acquaintances with Cobb (Brian Dennehy), his former riding partner. Emmett, Paden and Jake then team up with Mal (Danny Glover), a black cowboy and expert marksman who was driven out of Turley.

The four men head to the town of Silverado, and on the way rescue a wagon train of settlers from bandits. Hannah (Rosanna Arquette), a member of the wagon train, is soon widowed and catches the eye of both Paden and Emmet. In Silverado Emmet and his new friends walk into the middle of a land dispute where Emmett's past will catch up with him, a professional gambler (Jeff Goldblum) will complicate matters, Paden will have to confront Cobb again, Mal reconnects with his father and sister, old scores are settled, and new lives are started.

Despite featuring a dream cast and boasting Kevin Costner's breakthrough role, Silverado is merely competent. The film's fundamental weakness is a simplistic good versus evil narrative that, while enjoyable as a straightforward romp, recalls the genre's earliest era, where characters were all good or all bad with no place for shadows of complexity. Silverado pretends that the 1960s and 1970s never happened when it comes to the genre's evolution, maybe in an attempt to reach out to a younger 1980s audience just looking to cheer on the good guys without straining any mental muscles.

Also contributing to Silverado's problems is a sprawling script, written by director Lawrence Kasdan and his brother Mark, that attempts to cover too much territory. The film bounces from one set-piece to another searching for all the traditional genre elements and squeezing them in, whether they belong or not, and extending the running length to a wholly unnecessary 133 minutes.

Thrown into the mix are the strangers who become allies, the canyon ambush, the wagon train in danger, the land dispute with ruthless cattlemen, the revenge story across generations, the black cowboy fighting racism, the father/son bonding, the saloon confrontation, the good girl forced to become a whore, the corrupt law officers, the expert marksman and the quick draw, the mysterious gambler, and the final shootout on the dusty main street. Silverado lines them all up and ticks them off a master checklist in what becomes an eye rolling exercise in unfocussed and soulless filmmaking.

With so much going on the characters remain superficial, the heroes and bad guys defined as such and growing only in the most predictable directions, as the film rushes to the next derivative climax. Some of the characters, including Rosanna Arquette's Hannah and Jeff Goldblum's Calvin, are quite poorly underwritten.

On the positive side, Silverado projects and maintains a jovial attitude thanks mainly to Kevin Kline's performance. Without veering into comic territory, Kline injects just enough dry humour to ensure that the film avoids taking itself too seriously. Scott Glenn, in a rare but welcome starring role, provides the counterbalance as quieter, more intense presence. Costner is a bundle of barely controlled youthful energy in a vivacious performance that launched him on a charisma-fuelled career.

Kasdan and cinematographer John Bailey bathe the film in bright yellows to create an upbeat, sun-drenched visual aesthetic, and the sets recreating Western towns are intricate if a little too polished. And the air of good intentions and professional delivery permeates the movie, with the galaxy of stars clearly having fun but also doing a fine job of bringing the disparate characters to life, Brian Dennehy a standout as the gruff Sheriff Cobb profiting from the business of being the law.

In pursuing a long-shot resurrection of a much loved genre, Silverado is difficult to dislike but also infuriatingly naive.

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Movie Review: Legal Eagles (1986)

A clumsy legal thriller with a ham-fisted romantic triangle of sorts, Legal Eagles packs the screen with star power and little else. Robert Redford, Debra Winger and Daryl Hannah are attractive to watch, but even they cannot save a bungling story light on ideas and heavy on absurdities.

When Chelsea Deardon was a child, she survived a deliberate fire that killed her father, a famous artist. Now a young woman still living in New York City, Chelsea (Hannah) is arrested and accused of stealing artwork that used to belong to her father. To complicate matters, the theft victim is art dealer Victor Taft (Terence Stamp), her father's former business partner, and the artwork that Chelsea allegedly stole was supposed to have been destroyed in the fire.

Chelsea retains defence lawyer Laura Kelly (Winger) to represent her, and she immediately locks horns with Assistant District Attorney Tom Logan (Redford) who is prosecuting the case. Taft mysteriously drops all charges and blows up a storage warehouse in a fiery explosion, while a former police detective (Brian Dennehy) who investigated the Deardon fire pops up with all sorts of insurance fraud accusations, prompting Laura and Tom to team up and dig deeper into the case. Dead bodies soon start turning up, with Chelsea always closest to the latest crime scene. Chelsea also finds her way into Logan's bed, much to the disgust of Laura.

The few good moments in Legal Eagles revolve around Debra Winger. She brings Laura Kelly to life with sweet sincerity, an insecure woman attempting to create a tough persona to survive and compete in a man's work. Winger mixes inner tenderness and self-doubt with an awareness of the need to role-play, and delivers her performance with a sparkle sorely missing in the rest of the movie.

Robert Redford cruises through Legal Eagles playing on his irresistible charm, a man on an unimpeded path to success and capable of attracting any woman. It's a performance as predictable as it is lazy. Daryl Hannah combines the innocence of the mermaid role from Splash with her dangerous gymnast moves from Blade Runner, but she is poorly served by a script that desperately requires Chelsea Deardon to be a suspect and strains all logic to place her in peril with the law. Terence Stamp and Brian Dennehy stick to the tried and true slimy snarling of secondary characters with secrets to keep.

Other than the inflated salaries, it is hard to understand where director Ivan Reitman managed to spend the $40 million budget, a fortune by 1986 standards. The action on the screen is contrived and tepid, the romantic entanglements obvious, the attempts at comic banter uniformly flat, and the legal elements almost ridiculous. Legal Eagles should have been thrown out of court for being a frivolous waste of time and resources.

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Movie Review: Presumed Innocent (1990)

A courtroom drama that creaks under the weight of a ridiculous story, Presumed Innocent is a surprise disappointment despite a star-heavy cast.

Prosecuting Attorney Raymond Horgan (Brian Dennehy) assigns his top prosecutor Rusty Sabich (Harrison Ford) to investigate the brutal murder of fellow prosecutor Carolyn Polhemus (Greta Scacchi). But Sabich himself is soon a prime suspect: he had an affair with Polhemus, she broke it off, and he is still obsessed with her. Meanwhile, it emerges that Horgan was also having an affair with Polhemus; he had secretly assigned her a bribery file to investigate; and the bribery case just so happens to involve the judge who just so happens to be assigned to Sabich's murder trial.

Raul Julia, with a smile perpetually plastered onto his face, shows up as lawyer Sandy Stern, defending Sabich and using smarm as his main weapon. He quickly destroys the case against Sabich by doing no more the exposing the doctor who performed the autopsy as an incompetent fool.

There are investigators hiding evidence, prosecutors with political agendas, and a murderer who is perfectly careful in every detail -- but places the murder weapon, soaked with blood and with the victim's hair still attached to it, back in the tool box.

This may or may not be a case of a poor film utterly failing to capture the essence of the book, but the script certainly casts doubt on the quality of the Scott Turow novel.

Still, any movie with Ford, Dennehy, Julia, Bonnie Bedelia as Sabich's wife, and Scacchi, is worth watching, and the strength of the cast keeps the movie from sinking into a complete farce as the ultra-convoluted reality-free plot ties itself into a pretzel. It is evident, however, that Scacchi 's beauty is as captivating as her acting ability is atrocious. Appropriately, her role in flashbacks is mostly reduced to gazing into the camera...deeply.

Alan J. Pakula has much better films than this on his resume. He directs here with the main intention of keeping everyone and everything deadly serious. Only Julia is allowed to smile, but Presumed Innocent is a good recipe for general hilarity.

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Movie Review: First Blood (1982)

There was a time when action movies could deliver entertainment without resorting to a cartoonish computer-generated special-effects laden climax every 10 minutes. First Blood is a reminder that an action movie can be remarkably low key in its setting and character development, and yet deliver a strong punch when based on a message inspired by real events and memorable personalities.

Sylvester Stallone, when he was famous but not yet a joke, is John Rambo, a Vietnam war veteran back in the US who is devastated to find out at the beginning of the film that the sole other combat survivor from his Special Forces unit has succumbed to cancer.

In a representation of the poor welcome home afforded to most Vietnam vets, Rambo is treated badly by the Sheriff (Brian Dennehy, who puts in an excellent but slightly exaggerated performance) and police force of a small local northwest town. The maltreatment triggers the soldier to revert back to war mode in the surrounding hills and forests (the movie is filmed in and around the town of Hope, British Columbia), and soon the war expands to include the clueless local contingent of the National Guard, who are as over-matched as the police, and Rambo gradually draws the conflict back to a final showdown within the town.

Richard Crenna arrives as Rambo's field commander and mentor, and as the police and National Guard are scurrying around pretending to know something about warfare in the forest, Crenna delivers the classic line to Dennehy: "I don't think you understand. I didn't come to rescue Rambo from you. I came here to rescue you from him."

First Blood is part of Hollywood's thoughtful post-Vietnam war examination of the conflict, an era that resulted in large scale epics like Deer Hunter (1978) and Apocalypse Now (1979), as well as smaller scale films like Coming Home (1978) and Platoon (1986).

Stallone would subsequently achieve stratospheric commercial success with Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), which while undeniably entertaining, unfortunately sacrificed nuance in favour of a jingoism.

In First Blood, Rambo is a hero who feels pain both emotional and physical, bleeds, has to tend to his wounds, tries to stop the conflict before it escalates, and spares the life of most of his enemies. Directed by Ted Kotcheff and running an efficient 96 minutes, First Blood delivers its message with uncommon integrity.

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