Movie Review: Last Man Standing (1996)

Genre: Action  

Director: Walter Hill  
Starring: Bruce Willis, Christopher Walken, Bruce Dern  

Running Time: 101 minutes  

Synopsis: West Texas in the 1930s, during the prohibition era. Mercenary drifter John Smith (Bruce Willis) arrives at the small and mostly abandoned town of Jericho. He finds the Doyle (Irish) and Strozzi (Italian) gangs locked in a battle for control of the illegal booze trade from Mexico. A dual-handgun expert, Smith decides to profit by selling his services to both sides. The ineffective Sheriff Ed Galt (Bruce Dern) does little to stop him, but Doyle's Tommy gun wielding assassin Hickey (Christopher Walken) does not appreciate Smith's interventions.

What Works Well: This credited remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (which was also unofficially remade as A Fistful Of Dollars) enjoys a lost-in-time setting of a middle-of-nowhere near-ghost town predominantly occupied by gang members. Majestic cinematography (by Lloyd Ahern), soulful music (by Ry Cooder), and natty outfits add texture to the aesthetics and the quest-for-a-cause theme. Director Walter Hill stages the short and sharp action scenes with balletic guns a-blazing ferocity.

What Does Not Work As Well: The characters appear to lack belief and soullessly go through the pre-ordained motions, not helped by excessive narration over-reaching for noir cynicism. Christopher Walken and Bruce Dern are given relatively little to do, leaving other, less interesting cast members to spar against Bruce Willis' stranger-in-a-strange-land. The narrative flow is occasionally choppy, suggesting some important material was abandoned on the editing room floor.

Key Quote:

Hickey (to Smith): I don't want to die in Texas. Chicago, maybe... but not Texas. You can meet me there if you like.



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Movie Review: Northern Borders (2013)

A coming-of-age drama, Northern Borders features two veteran actors in grumpy roles, but otherwise struggles to justify itself.

It's the 1950s, and young Austen Kittredge II (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick) arrives to stay at the rural Vermont home of his grandparents Austen Sr. and Abiah (Bruce Dern and Geneviève Bujold). The boy discovers a household devoid of love and grandparents who barely talk to each other. Austen Sr. enjoys hunting, reading and puttering around his workshop. Abiah looks after the house and her garden, and is attached to Egyptian mementos.

Austen Sr. reveals to his grandson the story of his first and long-lost love. The young Austen starts a friendship with schoolmate Theresa Dubois (Jacqueline Birgitte Hennessy) and meets his three aunts, including the black sheep Liz (Jessica Hecht), who may or may not have once robbed a bank. When electricity arrives in the area, Austen Sr. is eager to connect his workshop to the grid, but Abiah is worried about the impact to her orchard.

An adaptation of the Howard Frank Mosher book, Northern Borders is a small independent production, seemingly pulled together with funding from many private donors and with the participation of local students. Writer and director Jay Craven does make good use of rustic rural locations and secures big screen legends Bruce Dern and Geneviève Bujold for the two central roles. They add plenty of talent and serious presence, but cannot rescue an aimless script.

The film is made up of a collection of loose threads that may work well as book chapters, but struggle to define a narrative direction on the screen. The reasons why young Austen is sent to live with his grandparents remain a mystery. His friendship with Theresa is barely scratched. The enigmatic Liz exists in a void separate from all around her. Abiah's attachment to Egyptian artefacts surfaces at regular intervals but never contributes. Austen Sr.'s first and only love is an interesting backstory, but hardly justifies the lifelong silent mistreatment of Abiah, the mother of his three daughters (the sex must have been invigorating).

With two surly characters occupying the grandparent roles, the film settles down to a slow-paced study of long-term passive aggressiveness, young Austen pressed into service as a conversational go-between for two adults who should know better. With the same piece of music looping incessantly on the soundtrack and the film engaging in a spot of dumbfounding self-censorship, Northern Borders strays out of bounds.



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Movie Review: The Glass House (2001)

A suspense drama with gaslighting elements, The Glass House repeatedly threatens to become quite good without ever delivering.

In Los Angeles, 16 year old Ruby Baker (Leelee Sobieski) and her younger brother Rhett are orphaned when a car crash claims their parents. Family lawyer Alvin Begleiter (Bruce Dern) advises Ruby she stands to inherit a large estate once she achieves adulthood. In the meantime he arranges for the children to live with Terry and Erin Glass (Stellan Skarsgård and Diane Lane), former neighbours of the Bakers who have now moved into a swish Malibu villa.

The Bakers act friendly and appear wealthy, but Ruby soon notices creepy behaviour. She and Rhett are assigned a single bedroom, Terry's behaviour towards Ruby borders on lustful, and Erin may be a drug addict. Terry's car leasing business is in financial trouble, and Ruby starts to suspect Terry is more interested in her inheritance than her well-being. She turns to Begleiter and social worker Nancy Ryan (Kathy Baker) for help, but untangling Terry's intentions will be risky.

While woman-in-distress dramas are common, The Glass House adds a twist by applying the threat to a newly-orphaned 16 year old. Not quite an adult but already quite astute, Ruby is still learning to trust her instincts, and in the hands of a doleful Leelee Sobieski she is a complex protagonist defying both victim and hero stereotypes, and the best thing about the film.

Director Daniel Sackheim is more at home in television, and here never quite settles on a tone for Wesley Strick's script. The mood erratically oscillates between routine family adaptation travails, something-is-not-quite-right suspicion, and outright suspense before jumping to violence and carnage in the final act. All the shadings are handled with decent proficiency but the whole rarely gels into an effective package.

Sackheim does deliver some polished visuals. The Glass villa is a modern artwork of - what else - glass, and the scarcity of opaque walls compromises essential hiding places. The coastal highways around Malibu provide the snaky asphalt for plenty of sleek driving misadventures. 

Apart from Ruby, the other characters are routine. Stellan Skarsgård is an effective wolf, but loses his sheep's clothing early. Diane Lane is confined to one of her much less interesting roles as Erin, while Bruce Dern is underused. Rita Wilson, Michael O'Keefe and Chris Noth have small roles. 

The Glass House is never polished enough to fully shine, but it does occasionally glisten.



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Movie Review: Castle Keep (1969)

A surreal World War Two movie, Castle Keep embarks on a philosophical quest to find the intersection of war, art, and sex.

It's the winter of 1944. In Belgium, a ramshackle unit of eight US soldiers under the nominal command of Major Abraham Falconer (Burt Lancaster) occupies the Maldorais, an imposing ancient castle filled with artwork. The Count (Jean-Pierre Aumont) is the castle's owner, married to the much younger Therese (Astrid Heeren). Soon Falconer and Therese are having an open affair, with the approval of the Count, who is impotent but would welcome a son.

Private Benjamin (Al Freeman Jr.), an aspiring writer and the unit's only Black member, chronicles the men's experiences. Captain Beckman (Patrick O'Neal) is an art historian and attempts to educate the other soldiers about the castle's art collection, but they are more interested in the whorehouse at the nearby town. Sergeant Rossi (Peter Falk) finds the local bakery and reverts back to his role as baker and family man. Corporal Clearboy (Scott Wilson) is infatuated with a Volkswagen found on the castle grounds.

Falconer anticipates a German counteroffensive in the area as part of the Battle Of The Bulge. He decides to fortify the castle and make a defensive stand, placing the precious art in harm's way. Both the Count and Beckman are horrified, but Falconer is determined to forge his destiny.

The anti-war sentiment of 1969 is retrospectively applied to World War Two, and Castle Keep plants a distinctive flag as a different kind of war film. Writers Daniel Taradash and David Rayfiel adapted the 1965 William Eastlake novel with a European sensibility laced with dark humour, and director Sydney Pollack creates a stylish, often visually stunning story of war's collision with culture. While occasionally crossing over from philosophical to onerous, the film carves a uniquely cerebral identity. 

War's abhorrent incompatibility with love, art, and all things of beauty is teased out through a deceptively simple narrative structure. The castle occupies lush landscaped grounds filled with romantic statues, while the inside walls and ceilings are decorated with masterpieces. Falconer's unit arrives at this abode in a disjointed state, the men disrespecting the Major, their dialogue and behaviour atypical for soldiers. The script hints early they may all be dead anyway, representing dreams shattered by the incursion of a destructive global conflict.

Whether alive or expired, the men are beyond jaded about the war and more interested in other pursuits, including women, cars (bordering on a fetish), baking, and writing. For educated men like the Count and Beckman, destroying classic artworks is a crime. But for warriors like Falconer, complete with his eye patch and buffalo mentality, the castle is a perfect defensive fortification. He alone commands a warlike attitude, his one eye firmly focused on military objectives and intentionally blind to collateral damage.

In addition to the Volkswagen echo, the free love of the 1960s shows up in Falconer's quick sexual conquest of the willing Therese with the quiet acquiescence of the Count. Therese is the Count's wife and also his niece; it does not matter: he just wants a son, and will accept Falconer bedding Therese perhaps in return for the castle's treasure being saved.

Adding to the surreal surroundings is another group of hollow-eyed anti-war soldiers wandering through the nearby town led by Lieutenant Bix (Bruce Dern). Instead of calling for an end to the fighting they noisily protest fornication at the popular Reine Rouge whorehouse. The protestors eventually encounter mortar strikes, in what proves to be a short confrontation.

With a primary interest in war as a most barbaric anti-cultural weapon, Pollack does not pull back on the combat scenes. The second half boasts two epic battles. First Falconer's men slow down the advancing Germans with an ambush featuring whores with Molotov cocktails and a tank incursion into a church. The climactic defensive stand at the castle occupies the final 30 minutes, Pollack able to maintain the men's incongruous attitudes even as they put up a spirited defense of their new realm.

Wearing eccentricity as a medal of honour, Castle Keep towers over a landscape of emotions ravaged by endless war.

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Movie Review: Family Plot (1976)

A comedy thriller, Family Plot is Alfred Hitchcock's final film. A pleasant enough experience enlivened by an excellent cast, the story features intersecting narratives treated with a light touch.

Blanche Tyler (Barbara Harris) is a fake psychic, milking small amounts out of desperate clients. But the elderly Mrs. Julia Rainbird (Cathleen Nesbitt) offers Blanche $10,000 if she can discreetly locate her long lost nephew who stands to gain a large inheritance. Blanche presses her boyfriend and taxi driver George (Bruce Dern) into service, and he identifies the missing man as Edward Shoebridge, who is apparently dead and buried. George also locates gas station owner Joseph Maloney (Ed Lauter), who seems to have had a keen interest in declaring Ed dead.

In the meantime, Arthur Adamson (William Devane) is a seemingly respected jeweller, but along with his lover Fran (Karen Black) runs an elaborate kidnapping scam, capturing then releasing hostages in exchange for precious diamonds. Joseph alerts Arthur that George and Blanche are investigating Edward Shoebridge's background, triggering more devious plots.

For what proved to be his final outing, Hitchcock chooses to maintain a peppy and humorous attitude. Family Plot contains no suspense or horror, almost as if Hitchcock was acknowledging his brand of wicked and sophisticated prey-on-your-fears cinema was no longer relevant in an era now offering darker psychological material such as Don't Look Now and more brutal punctuation marks as in Deliverance.

So Family Plot plays like an amateur investigative mystery engaged to a suave criminal tale. Blanche and George are a likeable scrappy and argumentative couple chasing after a dream payday by poking around the puzzle of a grave that may be empty. Arthur and Fran are smooth criminals dressed up as respectable citizens pulling off non-violent kidnappings. The two stories of course will come together, dragging along no shortage of plot holes and a void of competent law enforcement.

Screenwriter Ernest Lehman worked with Hitchcock on North By Northwest, and the most obvious look back at Hitchcock's past comes courtesy of a trouble-on-the-isolated-highway sequence, Blanche and George grappling with a sabotaged car then an attempted run-down. Even here Hitchcock chooses to inject an overdose of comedy with Blanche's histrionics inside the car defanging any attempt at invoking genuine danger.

The ensemble cast is sturdy and helps to drive the film forward. The trio of Bruce Dern, William Devane and Ed Lauter represents a strong collection of beady-eyed men up to various degrees of no good. Barbara Harris and Karen Black do their part to complete the set of greed-inspired characters.

Villainous secrets and colourful mischief intermingle around the Family Plot, but for better or for worse, the master of suspense signs off with a harmless wink.

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Movie Review: Chappaquiddick (2017)

A drama based on the infamous incident that ended one life and one Presidential campaign, Chappaquiddick is a faithful recreation of the murky story, but remains emotionally stranded.

It's 1969, and Senator Ted Kennedy (Jason Clarke) is the only surviving Kennedy brother. He is mulling a future run for the presidency and trying to convince Mary Jo Kopechne (Kate Mara), a secretary who worked on his brother Bobby's campaign, to join his team. With his entourage, including cousin and fixer Joe Gargan (Ed Helms), Ted spends a day on Martha's Vineyard to compete in a yacht race.

After a party that evening in Chappaquiddick, a despondent and slightly inebriated Ted drives with Mary Jo towards the ferry terminal. He takes a wrong turn, drives off the road on a narrow bridge and the car lands upside down in a water channel. Ted somehow extricates himself but Mary Jo drowns. Despite the pleas of his team members Ted is slow to report the incident. With his presidential ambitions in tatters, he turns to his ailing father Joseph Sr. (Bruce Dern) for help, and a massive damage control machine kicks into action.

Directed by John Curran, Chappaquiddick covers familiar ground in workmanlike fashion. The tragedy that cost the life of a young woman and ruined the aspirations of the youngest Kennedy has always been shrouded in controversy thanks in part to the subsequent intense spin unleashed by the Kennedy lawyers, and the film does not try to fill in the unknown blanks.

How Kennedy made it out of the car, why did Mary Jo not escape the same way, how much effort did Kennedy put into rescuing her and why Gargan and others thought that leaving Kennedy on his own after the incident could possibly be a good idea are all questions that remain submerged in the dark waters below the bridge.

The film does try to delve into Kennedy's state of mind, a combination of shock, denial, alcohol, and disorientation presented as a potential explanation for his erratic attempts to first avoid confronting the facts and then try to hide some of the truths in the immediate aftermath. The few brief scenes showing the interaction between Ted, always perceived as the weak son, and his father Joseph, frail and near-death but still carrying frightfully domineering power, emerge as highlights.

The performances are serviceable without scaling any heights. The film's tone is steady, Curran not searching for contrived peaks of emotion, and Jason Clarke is suitably introverted but still revealing flashes of the Kennedy entitlement running through his blood.

Chappaquiddick is a story of the rich and powerful navigating a crisis, seeking an outcome that only the privileged can aspire to. In refusing to condemn or lionize Ted Kennedy the film makes its points, but does it quietly.

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Movie Review: The Driver (1978)

A minimalist chase thriller, The Driver has next to no plot but plenty of style. A sense of dark cool permeates the movie, punctuated by quite brilliant car pursuit scenes.

In Los Angeles, The Driver (Ryan O'Neal) is a mysterious man of few words who specializes in driving getaway cars for gangsters committing hold-ups. After helping a couple of criminals evade multiple police cars in a high speed chase after a casino robbery, one of the casino customers known only as The Player (Isabelle Adjani) refuses to identify The Driver, much to the disgust of The Detective (Bruce Dern).

With The Driver's reputation growing, The Detective grows more obsessed with capturing him. He sets a trap by convincing a group of low-life thugs to hire the Driver through his trusted Connection (Ronee Blakley) for a bank job that is really an elaborate set-up.

Directed and written by Walter Hill, The Driver prospers on its nothingness. Mixing film noir elements with a taut focus on three nameless people, the film thrives on a vacuum of dialogue. When The Driver and The Player speak they are limited to clipped outbursts of three to five words, and while the film often teeters on the edge of absurdity, it often lands on the right side of sleek. Most of the action takes place at night, and Los Angeles' seedier neighbourhoods have never looked this good, bathed in the lights of neon signs and car headlights.

The Driver is all the more interesting for its obvious flaws. Ryan O'Neal as the strong silent type is not as big of a disaster as he should have been. Bruce Dern's talkative, consumed detective works better for all his over-the-top colourings. And Isabelle Adjani, in her first Hollywood outing, is so dark and inexpressively pouty, probably due to a lack of comfort with the language, that she fits perfectly into the film's proudly impassive milieu.

And then Hill introduces his action set-pieces, and the film jumps into the stratosphere. There are two breathless and prolonged hyper kinetic chase showcases to open and close the film, and in the middle The Driver simply sets about carefully deconstructing a garish Mercedes as a demonstration of his abilities. Hill and cinematographer Philip H. Lathrop deliver some of the smoothest, most coherent and yet spectacular car-glorifying chases placed onto film. The sounds of roaring engines, squealing tires and police sirens emerge as easily the most dominant part of the film's soundtrack.

With an abundance of ultra-revved engines, tortured tires and over-muted characterization, The Driver is a triumph of stylistic dominance.

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Movie Review: They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)

A depression-era drama, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? is a grim descent into the psyche of despair. The story of desperate couples competing in an inhumane dance marathon is both brilliantly captivating and utterly exhausting to watch.

It's 1932, the Great Depression has destroyed the economy, and in California hundreds of economically deprived couples converge at the La Monica ballroom overlooking the Pacific Ocean to compete in a dance marathon. With a prize of $1,500 at stake for the last couple standing, the dancers have to stay continuously on the move on the dance floor, and are allowed 10 minute breaks every 2 hours and 7 meals a day. The host is Rocky (Gig Young), who runs the contest as an entertainment spectacle for a paying audience. Some of the contestants are in the competition just for the food, while the spectators sometimes throw pennies at the dance floor as encouragement, and the loose change is eagerly scooped up by the pathetic dancers.

The entrants include the tough Gloria (Jane Fonda), who teams up with Robert (Michael Sarrazin) when her original partner is not allowed to register due to a persistent cough. Other participants include grizzled former navy man Harry (Red Buttons) and his partner Shirley (Allyn Ann McLerie); aspiring actress Alice (Susannah York) and her partner Joel (Robert Fields); and veteran dance marathon contestants James (Bruce Dern) and his pregnant wife Ruby (Bonnie Bedelia).

Her unforgiving life to date means that Gloria brings a caustic, negative attitude to the dance floor. She refuses to respond to Robert's attempts to get to know her, and manages to antagonize James by continuously questioning Ruby about the wisdom of bringing a baby into a life of poverty. The hours turn to days and then weeks, the test of endurance drags on under Rocky's watchful business-focused eyes, and Gloria will have to survive more than one setback to stay among the competitors.

Directed by Sidney Pollack, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? is an almost hallucinatory experience. This is a lyrical exploration of tragic souls chasing dreams of wealth, and as staggering fatigue sets in Pollack is unrelenting in his focus on the dance floor, where bodies barely able to stand emit an overwhelming sense of sorrow. Remarkably the film maintains and builds interest over two hours, as gradually basic concepts such as winning and losing fade into the background and the theme of emotional durability in the face of the marathon's barbarity comes to the fore.

Entirely set within the mostly windowless confines of the La Monica ballroom, the cameras stay with the contestants as they push themselves through the endless marathon, a test of mental sanity as much as physical endurance. Before long Robert is struggling in vain to catch a glimpse of the outside world, as night and day meld into each other, the bands play on and the dancers shuffle their feet unenthusiastically.

The drama comes from watching the couples subject themselves to the humiliation of the competition out of sheer despondency. The marathon is not about hours or days, but weeks and then months, and the misery of the competition is compounded by the wretched realization that the dancers have no life outside the dance hall. No children, no jobs, no loved one who care about them, no hobbies, no purpose and therefore no hope. Rarely has the human wreckage of an economic depression been laid so bare.

Gloria emerges as physically and mentally strong, but also the catalyst for most of the trouble that happens between the dance sessions. She starts the marathon already at the end of her rope, quite fed up with her raw deal out of life, and unwilling to shut-up about it. She approaches her opponents and Rocky as compounding everything bad in her world, and it does not take her long to establish herself as the most derided contestant on the dance floor. She endures, turning every situation to her advantage, but Rocky knows that every contestant has a breaking point, and it is his job to find it. Fonda brings Gloria to life with a powerful, defiant performance.

The other characters create a rich tapestry of desperate yet determined contestants to the show. Harry seems too old but emerges as a sturdy competitor with Navy training to fall back on. Ruby must be mad to be competing while pregnant; but along with her husband James, they have the benefit of experience and battle scars from other marathons. And Alice the actress is here to catch agents' eyes with sparkly dresses and the sinewy moves of a wannabe movie star. Red Buttons, Bonnie Bedelia, Bruce Dern and Susannah York leave their marks on the dance floor with committed contributions.

Hovering over them all is Gig Young as Rocky the master of ceremonies, dishing out encouragement, torture and schmaltzy showmanship in equal measures. Young won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award, and his "Yowza! Yowza! Yowza!" proclamations are the stuff of film legend. Rocky is putting on a reality show, and distinct personalities, prolonged suffering, melodramatic in-fighting and couple meltdowns keep the audience coming day after day, buying tickets are lining his pockets. Some injuries along he way are par of the course, and Rocky's cadre of doctors and nurses are trained to never show any concern even when a contestant checks out forever.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? literally and figuratively pushes the limits of human suffering. It seems almost impossible, but from a starting point of abject pessimism, the dancers shuffle their way into ever darker territory.

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Movie Review: The Hateful Eight (2015)

An over-long and talkative western mostly confined to one set, The Hateful Eight is filled with shady characters and buckets of gore, but lacks essential depth.

Years after the Civil War, Union Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) is making a living as a bounty hunter. He hitches a ride on a stage coach hired by John "The Hangman" Ruth (Kurt Russell), another bounty hunter with a reputation for capturing criminals alive rather than dead, and then ensuring that they hang after due process. Ruth is escorting his prisoner Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), worth $10,000, to Red Rock to stand trial and likely hang. After taking Warren on board, he also pick up the stranded Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), who claims to be the incoming sheriff of Red Rock.

With a fast-approaching blizzard making the journey impossible, the wagon has to stop at Minnie's Haberdashery, a trail lodge. Minnie and her husband are missing, immediately arousing Warren's suspicion. Instead, the lodge is occupied by a dubious bunch including Marco the Mexican (Demián Bichir), English Pete Hicox (Tim Roth), who claims to be Red Rock's hangman, the burly Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), and the elderly Confederate General Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern). Ruth and Warren have to guard against each other and figure who is who and what everybody's motive is.

One of Quentin Tarantino's relatively weaker efforts, The Hateful Eight spends 167 minutes trying to find a boiling temperature, but regularly misses. Despite the focus on one location and ample time to build momentum, Tarantino's script is a muddled, off-form mishmash of ideas that rarely connect. Halfway through, the movie even resorts to sudden, unconvincing narration to explain unnecessary complexities.

The first half of the film is exceptionally garrulous, with scene after scene of men talking at each other but achieving little intellectual penetration or character nuance. Not much happens, and the languid build-up fails to pay-off in any sort of reward. Once the bullets start flying Tarantino immediately resorts to his signature excessive gore, and plot elements suddenly start tumbling forth, undermining most of what happened in the first 90 minutes. When the characters start to finally reveal who they are, the plot is exposed as standard western fare and it becomes clear that most of the talking was an exercise in time badly invested.

Tarantino tries too hard to find trademark dialogue highlights that can become pop culture landmarks. In the most egregious example Jackson's Major Warren delivers a long-winded vulgar story to goad Dern's General Smithers into reaching for his gun, but the tall tale twists in the wind with no context and is a case of way too much pepper and not nearly enough steak.

Still, with a cast that includes veterans Jackson, Russell and Dern, there is sufficient quality to maintain a basic level of interest. The film looks good, with Minnie's cavernous Haberdashery offering plenty of interesting corners and props. Ennio Morricone's score is rich without being particularly memorable, and Tarantino finds plenty of picturesque snow-dominated landscape shots. Jennifer Jason Leigh, tougher than most criminals, holds her own in a cast filled with tough hombres and gains in prominence as the film progresses.

The Hateful Eight is passable, but certainly bloated.

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Movie Review: The King Of Marvin Gardens (1972)

A low-key character study set in Atlantic City, The King Of Marvin Gardens celebrates early 1970s minimalism but toils to create drama around a small group of dreamers and drifters.

David Staebler (Jack Nicholson) works as an overnight talk show host at a Philadelphia radio station, entertaining his audience with long-winded fictional stories. David lives in a large house with his grandfather and seems to be sleepwalking through life in a state of minor depression.  At the request of his brother Jason (Bruce Dern), David travels to Atlantic City, where he meets Jason's girlfriends Sally (Ellen Burstyn) and Jessica (Julia Anne Robinson).

Jason is a perpetual dreamer, always on the lookout for the next big deal, and is involved with some unsavoury Atlantic City criminal types including crime boss Lewis (Scatman Crothers). Jason's latest vague scheme is to build a casino resort on a tiny island off the coast of Hawaii, and he wants David's support. The naïve Sally and Jessica dream of joining Jason in Hawaii, while engaging in their own competition to be Jason's prime play mate. With Jason full of ambition but utterly lacking in focus or ability, David has to decide how close he wants to be to his brother, while Sally and Jessica head towards a resolution of their own.

Directed by Bob Rafelson in one of six collaborations with Nicholson, The King Of Marvin Gardens zooms in on four people and stays there. With a rudimentary story that never intends to go anywhere, the script (by Jacob Brackman and Rafelson) takes its time to delve into the shifting emotions of David, Jason, Sally and Jessica. While the foursome are interesting enough, it is an undoubted struggle to sustain attention even for the shortish 104 minute running time.

It is clear early that David is carrying emotional wounds and is repressing his life to guard against any shocks. It's a different role for Nicholson, allowing him to stay deep within himself and express annoyance with minimal expressions and gestures. Jason is equally easy to categorize: a small time hustler who will always end up on the losing side of any deal. Jason is introduced in a jail cell, and he never does anything to suggest that his half-baked schemes will help him find better outcomes. Bruce Dern grabs the role and runs with it, making a splash but falling short of finding a glimmer of pathos that may have helped the film glow. Neither David nor Jason undergo much of a transformation as the two brothers bump up against each other and find little willingness for change.

Sally and Jessica are both potentially compelling characters, but the film only offers piecemeal hints about their backstory, and they are never rounded out into people. It's a wasted opportunity to expand the film into a wider circle. The movie is Julia Ann Robinson's one major film credit before her tragic death in 1975.

To make up for the relative leanness of the material, The King Of Marvin Gardens boasts plenty of style. The opening scene is a classic close up of a Nicholson monologue in dark surroundings, Rafelson revealing the setting and context ever so slowly and with a large dose of cleverness. The rest of the film is full of compelling Atlantic City scenery from the early 1970s, when old glories had well and truly faded and a thick sense of defeatism hung heavy over the boardwalk. Rafelson also takes several surreal side trips into dreamlike scenes that are fascinating in their non sequitur state. One such sequence features the foursome staging a simulated Miss America pageant, while other scenes suddenly transpose the characters to unusual settings on the beach.

The King Of Marvin Gardens is an adequate curiosity, never achieving regal status but presenting a worthwhile stroll in the company of conflicted brothers.

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The Movies Of Bruce Dern

All movies starring Bruce Dern and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Marnie (1964)

The War Wagon (1967)

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967)

Hang'Em High (1968)

Castle Keep (1969)

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)

The Cowboys (1972)

The King Of Marvin Gardens (1972)

Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid (1973, uncredited)

Family Plot (1976)

The Driver (1978)

The 'Burbs (1989)

Mulholland Falls (1996, uncredited)

Last Man Standing (1996)

The Glass House (2001)

Monster (2003)

Django Unchained (2012)

Northern Borders (2013)

Nebraska (2013)

The Hateful Eight (2015)

Our Souls At Night (2017)

Chappaquiddick (2017)

White Boy Rick (2018)

Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood (2019)

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The Movie Star Index is here.