Movie Review: Tempted (2001)

Genre: Neo-Noir  

Director: Bill Bennett  

Starring: Burt Reynolds, Saffron Burrows, Peter Facinelli  
Running Time: 95 minutes  

Synopsis: In New Orleans, construction magnate Charlie LeBlanc (Burt Reynolds) wants to test the loyalty of his much younger wife Lilly (Saffron Burrows). He hires carpenter and aspiring law student Jimmy Mulate (Peter Facinelli) to seduce her in exchange for $50,000. Charlie also retains a private investigator to spy on Lilly and Jimmy. The loyalty test spirals into murderous intentions, resulting in violence.

What Works Well: Saffron Burrows does her best to try and create a mysterious, alluring, and scheming femme fatale, while the sex scenes between Lilly and Jimmy carry some heat.

What Does Not Work As Well: The attempt to create a modern noir in a steamy New Orleans milieu is appreciated, but almost nothing here works. The problems start early with cheap-looking production values and barely coherent motivations for Charlie, suffering from a vague ailment and wanting to "test" his wife, and quickly disintegrate into inexplicable desires for murder. Director and writer Bill Bennett skips key context scenes and character-building essentials, and throws in a dumbfoundingly unrelated high profile and barely investigated murder subplot, complete with throw-the-body-in-the-river-and-hope-for-the-best improvisation.

Key Quote:

Charlie (to Jimmy): Now what I'd like you to do...is I'd like you to take a run at my wife.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: Best Friends (1982)

A romantic comedy, Best Friends aimlessly meanders from a story of couplehood to a dull meet-the-in-laws ordeal.

In Hollywood, Richard Babson and Paula McCullen (Burt Reynolds and Goldie Hawn) are a successful screenwriting couple. In a relationship for five years, they are now buying a house together and Richard proposes marriage. Paula only reluctantly agrees, fearing that marriage could ruin their close friendship.

After a quickie wedding they set out on a train trip to visit both sets of parents. Paula's folks live in a drafty house in chilly Baltimore. Her father Tim (Barnard Hughes) is long-winded and has lost interest in Paula's mother Eleanor (Jessica Tandy). They are also old-fashioned, placing Richard and Paula in separate beds and treating Richard like a child.

The next stop is a visit to the cramped Virginia apartment of Richard's parents. Ann and Tom Babson (Audra Lindley and Keenan Wynn) are disappointed their son got married without letting them know. Against Paula's wishes they throw a big party for the couple, and Paula resorts to Valium pills to survive the visit. By the time the newlyweds return home, they can barely stand each other.

Two of Hollywood's brightest stars combine, but the results are unfortunately listless. Directed by Norman Jewison, Best Friends is inspired by the true-life relationship of co-writers Valerie Curtin and Barry Levinson, but they are unable to infuse neither charm nor wit. The script defaults to structured chapters placing the couple at the mercy of dotty parents for days on end, and what starts as an exploration of long-term commitment hazards drifts into mostly unfunny vignettes about eccentric elderly folks.

Plenty of logic gaps do not help. Richard and Paula have been together for five years, and yet have never met each other's parents. And for a career-savvy couple in a long-term commitment, they are very quick to emotionally abandon each other when their parents start to act like parents. 

Reynolds and Hawn are always watchable, and try to salvage the material. They are at their natural, playful, and sexy best as Richard and Paula enjoy a brief train honeymoon on the way to Baltimore. But then the sitcom structure kicks in, and the momentum stalls.

The final act features Richard and Paula back in Hollywood and locked in a room by film producer Larry (Ron Silver) to complete screenplay rewrites. Shouting devolves into a brief but still distasteful act of violence, while the couple trade inane lines of script. Rather than pretend to work on a screenplay, Best Friends should have actually done so.



All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: Sharky's Machine (1981)

A police detective thriller and romance, Sharky's Machine features gritty violence and a sense of camaraderie, but also a klutzy plot and gauche dialogue.

In Atlanta, a botched drug bust results in narcotics police detective Tom Sharky (Burt Reynolds) being demoted to the scorned vice squad, reporting to the excitable Friscoe (Charles Durning). Sharky pulls together a team consisting of Papa (Brian Keith), Arch (Bernie Casey) and Nosh (Richard Libertini). They start to investigate a high-priced prostitution ring featuring $1,000 a night call girls entrapping politicians, including Governor candidate Donald Hotchkins (Earl Holliman).

Sharky sets up round-the-clock surveillance of an apartment occupied by call girl Dominoe (Rachel Ward), and starts to fall in love with her from a distance. The stakeout identifies the shadowy Victor (Vittorio Gassman) as a master criminal grooming women into prostitution from a young age and using them to manipulate political careers. When assassin Billy Score (Henry Silva) enters the scene and leaves behind a trail of murder victims, the vice investigation turns much more dangerous.

Featuring a plot dripping with sex as a weapon, corrupt politicians, victimized women, bloody murders and a detective itching to rehabilitate his reputation, Sharky's Machine should have been much better than it is. Directed by Reynolds and adapted from a book by William Diehl, the film sputters in fits and starts, with an inconsistent tone and misplaced emphasis.

Distancing himself from the frivolous comedies that made him famous, in this outing Reynolds finds a sturdy character on which to build a thriller. Sharky is serious, determined and thoughtful, a detective capable of uniting a "machine" around him, in this case a collection of capable but dispirited detectives. The film admirably explores an emerging team dynamic and invests the time to demonstrate a group of men (they are all men) gelling into a high functioning group.

The pacing and narrative progression are less impressive. The film is soaked in voyeuristic scenes of Sharky intruding on Dominoe's life and falling in love just by observing her. Worse still is a barely-there plot filled with unanswered questions, the antagonists in the form of criminal mastermind Victor and sleazoid politician Hotchkins stamped as evil by the script but otherwise undefined, their intentions and overall context left to the imagination.

Sharky's Machine is not helped by a wooden Rachel Ward performance. The role demands a muse-like commitment to etherality, but Ward is too stiff to deliver, and her scene of verbal and physical sparring with Sharky is an unmitigated disaster. Henry Silva fares worse, his character initially defined as a stone-faced drug-fuelled assassin before crossing the line to almost mythical indestructible status.

The scenes of tension and action are competently staged, and Reynolds boldly strides towards bloodier representations of violence spiced with a torture showdown to augment some grim back alley aesthetics. Sharky's Machine sometimes rumbles to life, but also occasionally misfires.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Malone (1987)

A modernization of Shane, Malone features a stoic Burt Reynolds performance but is an otherwise mindless low-budget action flick.

CIA-trained assassin Malone (Reynolds) is tired of killing and attempts to disappear into rural Oregon. At a remote gas station operated by Paul Barlow (Scott Wilson) and his daughter Jo (Cynthia Gibb) Malone learns that the entire nearby town is being intimidated by henchmen working for shady political operative Delaney (Cliff Robertson), who wants to buy and control the valley for nefarious reasons.

Malone tangles with Delaney's goons, including Madrid (Alex Diakun) and dim-witted brothers Calvin and Dan Bollard (Tracey Walter and Dennis Burkley). The local Sheriff Hawkins (Kenneth McMillan) is also on Delaney's payroll. Word of Malone's violent interventions reaches Delaney, who orders Malone killed. Meanwhile, the CIA track down Malone's whereabouts and dispatch agent Jamie (Lauren Hutton) to clean up the mess.

Directed by Harley Cokeliss and based on the book Shotgun by William P. Wingate, Malone is an unashamed but uncredited update of the Alan Ladd western classic. The story of a mysterious man trying to walk away from a violent past finding himself in the middle of a land dispute between settlers and profiteers carries sufficient weight to maintain a basic level of interest. Meanwhile, star Burt Reynolds abandons any remaining vestiges of good ol' boy charm and instead generates solid intensity by sticking closely to steely-eyed assassin mannerisms.

Unfortunately, not much else in Malone works, and the film has a strong whiff of being a decade late and a few dollars short. Malone cannot shake a relatively witless script and utterly predictable Chuck Norris-calibre set-pieces previously seen in better movies, including a barber shop showdown lifted straight from High Plains Drifter.

Although definitely older than Shane's Joey, it's never quite clear how old Malone's Jo is supposed to be (Cynthia Gibb was 24 at the time, but portraying a curious teen). This starts to present a problem, as Jo develops a crush on the assassin and the film edges towards icky and borderline exploitive territory (Reynolds was 51).

Other than the dependable Scott Wilson, the rest of the cast is made up of countless hissing villain and doofus redneck types, all responding to the commands of Cliff Robertson's Delaney. His heinous plot, something about establishing white supremacist enclaves across the country, is half-heartedly explained a couple of times, but still does not make much sense. If the intent is to quietly create command centres through strategic land acquisition, running around and killing people in broad daylight is not the way to avoid attention.

Malone at least often looks great, Vancouver and various small-town rural British Columbia locations (standing in for Oregon) giving the film a scenic shine. The story may be old and the budget limited, but the lush northwest mountains and valleys are always spectacular.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: 100 Rifles (1969)

A clumsy western, 100 Rifles boasts some decent star power but is otherwise bereft of style, substance and significance.

The setting is Mexico early in the 20th Century. American police officer Lyedecker (Jim Brown) goes looking for half-breed bandit Yaqui Joe Herrera (Burt Reynolds), who stole $6,000 from a Phoenix bank. But Joe has already used the money to purchase 100 rifles he intends to hand over to peasant revolutionaries. Local woman Sarita (Raquel Welch) witnessed her father's hanging by the brutal General Verdugo (Fernando Lamas), and joins the rebels.

Lyedecker just wants to get on with the business of transporting Joe back across the border to face justice, but he cannot avoid getting caught up in the peasants' struggle. An attraction also develops between him and Sarita. Eventually Lyedecker, Sarita and Joe team up to help the rebels launch audacious attacks against the army in the name of freedom from oppression.

Directed and co-written by Tom Gries, 100 Rifles is busy, noisy, and cheap. Unconcerned with characters or any semblance of coherent plot, the film jolts along from one shoot'em-up set piece to the next, linked together by lots of scenes of lots of people riding lots of horses across the landscape.

The three main characters share no chemistry. Reynolds struggles to convince as a scrappy rogue, Welch radiates her brand of pouty sex appeal but is given nothing else to work with, and Brown is most let-down by a dead-on-arrival script that creates the character of a strong, black stand-up officer of the law and then just allows events to swamp him. Brown and Welch are thrust into some then-daring interracial sex scenes, but the result is more jousting than lovemaking, validating rumours of rampant on-set tensions between the two.

Dan O'Herlihy hangs around the film as a train company executive not quite sure what his role is supposed to be, while Eric Braeden is a German advisor lurking next to General Verdugo. Nothing better than throwing in a random corporate suit and a menacing Nazi predecessor as distractions from a limp story.

The action scenes are mindless but executed with reasonable panache, Gries carving out some individual space between dominant Spaghetti Western sensibilities and the genre's more familiar traditions. And at least nothing in 100 Rifles lasts for too long. With no patience for any sort of meaningful build-up or artistry, the film lines up the scenes of rebel and army extras exchanging gunfire and mows then down with admirable efficiency.

Humourless and witless, 100 Rifles contains plenty of firepower, but most of it is misdirected.

All Ace Black Movie Blog Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Striptease (1996)

An adult-oriented comedy thriller, Striptease attempts to mix salaciousness with humour and some action. It falls short on almost all counts.

In Florida, Erin Grant (Demi Moore), formerly an FBI secretary, loses custody of her young daughter Angela (Rumer Willis) to her sleazeball husband Darrell (Robert Patrick). To make the quick money she needs to launch an appeal, Erin accepts a job stripping at the Eager Beaver nightclub, where the sympathetic bouncer Shad (Ving Rhames) looks after the girls.

One night Erin catches the eye of David Dilbeck (Burt Reynolds), a lecherous Congressman. Dilbeck is photographed getting into an embarrassing altercation at the club, setting off a cycle of blackmail that spirals into murder. Lieutenant Al Garcia (Armand Assante) starts snooping around, and Erin finds herself sucked into a world of big money, political corruption and personal danger as she doggedly pursues custody of Angela.

Directed and written by Andrew Bergman, Striptease is most famous for Demi Moore's record $12.5 million salary, and for perhaps being the first movie where an A-list actress aggressively promotes her nudity almost for its own sake. The film is not good, but also not nearly as awful as its reputation.

After the critical failure of 1995's Showgirls, the marketing and tone of Striptease was thrown into disarray, with attempts to focus more on the comedy and human story while somehow still capitalizing on Moore's bareness. The disconnects are evident in the film. The striptease sequences are longer and more numerous than they need to be for any purpose other than cheap titillation. When she is not gyrating, and despite the lack of meaningful character depth, Moore adopts a serious and dramatic mother-on-a-quest stance, which is generally completely at odds with all that is going on around her.

Burt Reynolds as Congressman Dilbeck and Robert Patrick as the lowlife Darrell are on a different wavelength entirely and play their roles with screwball intentions. The result is quite a few funny moments, but also a film that is mainly stuck in a no man's land as eroticism, drama and comedy walk away from each other.

Despite the disharmony, the film delivers several sharp jabs towards the hypocrisy of seedy politicians like Dilbeck, a man who cannot control his libido, gets off on Erin's laundry lint and slathers himself with Vaseline in search of a cheap thrill, but yet stands up and pontificates about family values at election events. And Reynolds is in fine form, infusing the role with a breathtaking level of selfish yet clueless entitlement.

Ironically Striptease is limp when revealing flesh, but sharp when shredding spurious sanctimony.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

The Movies Of Burt Reynolds

All movies starring Burt Reynolds and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

100 Rifles (1969)

Deliverance (1972)

Shamus (1973)

Smokey And The Bandit (1977)

Sharky's Machine (1981, also Director)

Best Friends (1982)

Malone (1987)

Switching Channels (1988)

Physical Evidence (1989)

Striptease (1996)

Boogie Nights (1997)

Tempted (2001)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Switching Channels (1988)

A lame remake of The Front Page and His Girl Friday, Switching Channels is dull, uninspired, and singularly lacking in wit and chemistry.

Christy Colleran (Kathleen Turner) is the star anchor at the Chicago-based Satellite News Network, where her ex-husband John "Sully" Sullivan (Burt Reynolds) is the station director. When an overworked Christy finally reaches the point of exhaustion, she is packed off on a forced vacation, where she meets and falls in love with smooth businessman Blaine Bingham (Christopher Reeve). Christy returns to Chicago on a high, announcing that she is quitting the news business and marrying Blaine.

Sully does not want to lose his star on-air talent, and he still harbours hopes of winning back Christy. He proceeds to conjure up every possible obstacle to place in the way of Blaine, while tempting Christy back to her career by getting her to interview Ike Roscoe (Henry Gibson), a death-row inmate about to be executed for killing a drug-dealing cop, in the hopes that the exposure will force the Governor to issue a pardon. Meanwhile, Attorney General  Roy Ridnitz (Ned Beatty) is himself running for Governor, and wants to make sure that Roscoe fries to further his own tough-on-crime credentials.

The fourth big screen version of the Broadway comedy The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, Switching Channels is as unnecessary as it is awful. With pedestrian direction by Ted Kotcheff and a juvenile Jonathan Reynolds script, the film attempts to modernize the premise to the world of television, but has a dreadful time trying to find laughs, and fails miserably at every opportunity.

Burt Reynolds' performance is simply annoying, while Kathleen Turner is off the mark, seemingly over-acting in desperation to appear either witty or ditzy, but instead coming across as fatally bland. Reynolds and Turner together never threaten to display any sign of a spark, and indeed are reported to have clashed throughout filming. Christopher Reeve suffers the most, his Blaine Bingham a phantom personality, stood up as an easy cardboard target for Sully's darts.

The film ends with that time-trampled old favourite from the films of yesteryear, herds of men running in groups in and out of rooms and across hallways, lowest common denominator comedy that pre-teens may find funny, but really just serving as an embarrassing confirmation that some comic elements are best left in their own era.

Switching Channels clumsily fumbles with the dials, but only manages to find aggravating static.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Physical Evidence (1989)

A limp courtroom drama with wooden performances and a forgettable story, Physical Evidence lands with an excruciatingly dull thud.

Suspended and quick-tempered police detective Joe Paris (Burt Reynolds) wakes up one morning with a hangover and no recollection of what happened the previous night. When evidence is found in his apartment linking him to the grim murder of hated nightclub owner and mobster Jake Farley, Paris is designated as the prime suspect. Inexperienced public defendant Jenny Hudson (Theresa Russell) is assigned to the case. Grizzled prosecutor James Nicks (Ned Beatty) offers a plea bargain, but Hudson is determined to prove herself by exonerating her client.

As Paris and Hudson try to uncover what happened on the night of the murder, they develop some attraction, much to the chagrin of Hudson's rich fiancé Kyle (Ted McGinley). Meanwhile, the married Deborah Quinn (Kay Lenz) comes forward to offer her lover Paris an alibi, despite threats from her rich and powerful husband. Matt Farley (Tom O'Brien), the victim's son, emerges as another possible suspect, since he inherited his father's evil empire, and there is no shortage of former convicts who harbour a grudge against Paris for putting them behind bars.

Originally intended as a sequel of sorts to Jagged Edge (1985), everyone associated with that project wisely bailed out, leaving Physical Evidence to wallow in its strictly derivative awfulness. The script, the directing and the performances are all just a tiny notch above TV movie tripe. There is simply nothing here that has not already been done repeatedly in other movies.

The story leaves gaping holes at every turn, with underdeveloped and unconvincing characters hissing at each other in forced conniptions, doing their best to act as idiotically as possible while trying to imitate better performances from much better movies. Joe Paris' most convenient memory loss opens the door for all sort of half-baked theories to be dragged from the oven moist with drooping ingredients trying to explain who did what to whom. It never matters, since Paris is an unsympathetic character and Jenny Hudson is more likable but much more annoying.

Theresa Russell delivers her lines in a catatonic monotone that suggests either a locked jaw or a mouthful of cotton, and her contrived pampered-girl-looking-to-do-good character hardly helps. For all her good intentions, Jenny Hudson simply reacts to the initiative of others and does absolutely nothing to help Joe Paris prove his innocence. A rather ridiculous hairdo does not help.

Burt Reynolds is marginally better, but he also walks through the movie with a been-there, done-that resignation, metronomically alternating anger, temper and frustration on a carousel of stock emotions.

It is left to Ned Beatty and Kay Lenz, ironically the two secondary characters who should have been the most predictable, to inject some much needed spice to the proceedings. Both bring welcome relish to their roles, with Lenz overcoming a wedged-in and unconvincing distraction about Deborah carrying on an illicit affair with Paris.

Author and wannabe director Michael Crichton would not direct another movie after this one. He may have had the ambition, but the evidence was against him.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Shamus (1973)

A private detective adventure set in New York, Shamus partially achieves the amiable tone of one bullheaded man in way over his head amongst a scuzzy sea of criminality. But the murder and weapons smuggling plot cascades too quickly into baffling territory, dulling the potential for the movie to shine.

Shamus McCoy (Burt Reynolds), a last-resort private detective, is unexpectedly retained by wealthy diamond magnate E. J. Hume (Ron Weyand) to investigate the brutal murder-by-incineration of a jewel thief. McCoy follows a trail of dangerous scum that leads to retired football star Felix Montaigne (Alex Wilson), who is now running a shady trading company.

Felix lives with his sister Alexis (Dyan Cannon) in a glitzy Manhattan apartment, and while Felix is evasive in answering McCoy's questions, Alexis soon becomes a willing bed partner for the dogged detective. McCoy uncovers an illegal, large-scale weapons smuggling operation being run by Felix and a silent partner, and his investigations prompt a spate of new violence as tough guys move in to silence the detective.

The Barry Beckerman script, based on Ed McBain's "87th Precinct" series of novels, contains a couple of welcome nods to The Big Sleep. McCoy's initial meeting with E. J. Hume turns Philip Marlow's meeting with General Sternwood on its head, Hume keeping his office ice cold while Sternwood lived in a humid swamp. And just like Marlowe, McCoy kills time on a stakeout by seducing, in record time, a busty bookstore clerk.

Director Buzz Kulik gives Shamus an attractive look, stylishly capturing a dynamic New York in all its 1970s earthiness. The action scenes are animated without being jarring, the movie mixing some bone crunching brutality with enough character interaction to bring Shamus' world to life.

Kulik and Beckerman also score points for presenting a terrific contrast between McCoy's austere, barely functional  apartment, and the rich, elegantly furnished pad of Felix Montaigne, the latter representing the latest in 1970s high-end chic.

Reynolds is fine as a gruff detective curious enough to pursue a case much larger than his abilities, but keenly aware that he is more than likely being gamed. McCoy is surrounded by memorable secondary characters representing friends and family, and more than the usual amount of time is invested in humanizing his surroundings. The relationship with Dyan Cannon's Alexis is less than plausible and appears thrown into the script simply to provide relief from the raging manliness.

But Shamus does creak, and eventually the edges fall off, in a plot that spirals into incomprehensible territory all too soon. None of the key criminal relationships or motivations are ever explained. The link between the original murder and the weapons smuggling operation is never revealed, nor is E. J. Hume's shady role in all the wrong-doings clarified. And there simply isn't enough intrigue, mystery or slime built around the malevolent characters to cover the large gaps in logic. Shamus is left flailing against all-comers, unable to tame a conspiracy against common sense, but looking good while trying.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Boogie Nights (1997)

A journey through the heyday of the pornographic film industry, Boogie Nights pays homage and shares a laugh at the expense of an industry transitioning from scummy cinemas to the video players of mainstream America. It is also one of the best films of the 1990s.

It is the late 1970s, and seventeen year old Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg) is a working as a busboy in a San Fernando Valley nightclub. Eager to escape from a dysfunctional home and extremely well endowed where it matters, Adams accepts an invitation from porn film director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) to join the industry. Adopting the screen name of Dirk Diggler, Adams quickly becomes the biggest star in porn films. As the seventies turn into the eighties, the industry is transformed by video, while drug addiction and a falling out with Horner trigger a rapid reversal in Diggler's fortunes.

Paul Thomas Anderson's second feature film elevated him to the front ranks of directors. Working from his own script, Anderson creates in Boogie Nights a character-rich environment, with memorable personalities grappling with the changing times within a burgeoning industry. The rise and fall of Dirk Diggler is just the surface story. Anderson builds a rich, multi-layered universe, with plenty of depth to all the assorted weirdos and misfits that congregate around porn manufacturing.

The veteran performer (Julianne Moore as Amber Wave), the nubile next young thing (Heather Graham as Rollergirl), the grizzled director (Reynolds as Horner) still yearning to make art, the loyal co-star (John C. Reilly as Reed Rothchild), the producer (Robert Ridgley as Colonel James) with more money than sense and a weakness for underage girls, the eager gofer (Philip Seymour Hoffman as Scotty J) too dim to do anything else in life except lust after Diggler, the assistant director (William H. Macy as Little Bill Thompson) married to an aging performer who does not hesitate to have sex with any other man, the porn star (Don Cheadle as Buck Swope) who wants to do something better and different in life, and the financier (Philip Baker Hall as Floyd Gondolli) sharp enough to spot the emergence of video and its huge implications to the industry.

Incredibly, these are only some of the people and stories that Anderson makes time for in Boogie Nights. They all come to life naturally, hustling to make a buck, facing their demons or succumbing to them, adapting or dying, in a business that is unforgiving, awash in drugs, enormously popular and yet almost entirely hidden.

The performances from the stellar cast are uniformly captivating, none more so than Wahlberg. Announcing his arrival as a movie star after an initial career as a rapper, Wahlberg portrays Adams with sensitivity, bravado mixed with fragility, Adams' wide-eyed amazement at the surrounding circus balanced by his natural affinity for the role of male porn star. Julianne Moore also delivers a memorable performance, Amber standing at the cusp of has-been status, transitioning to the role of mentor for Adams and mother figure for Rollergirl, while fighting for custody of her son. Burt Reynolds rejuvenated his career with his turn as Jack Horner, a man too old for the profession and refusing to give up on the dream of creating art, but savvy enough to spot raw talent and move with the times when needed.

The sex scenes are dealt with in the matter-of-fact manner that only the porn industry can conjure, and yet Anderson finds the soft seam where real people meet their on-screen personas: Amber guiding Adams through his first ever scene is a triumph of sex-as-work having to overcome vulnerability with sheer courage and compassion.

Despite a running time of 155 minutes, Boogie Nights is breezy, entertaining and often funny. Although the decline and fall of Diggler is less enjoyable than his spectacular rise, Anderson keeps the narrative brisk and the multiple stories progressing, while a deep soundtrack of era favourites provides a vibrant musical backdrop. Boogie Nights dances up an impressive sweat.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Smokey And The Bandit (1977)

With the real United States grappling with the 1973 oil embargo, high prices at the pump, and lower speed limits on the freeways, and with Detroit down-tuning the power out of previously muscular cars, Hollywood and television hatched a sub-genre of comic highway escapism: a fantasy world where there are no traffic jams, the road is empty, winding and just waiting to be driven at top speed, the hero has no worries about the price of gas, cars and trucks have unlimited power, complete amazing stunts, and are wrecked with wild abandon -- and no one gets hurt.

Gone In 60 Seconds (1974), Smokey And The Bandit plus all its sequels; Convoy (1978); The Blues Brothers (1980); The Cannonball Run (1981) and its sequel all followed the same formula, while on television, the The Dukes of Hazzard and B.J. and the Bear made sure that the car chases continued at home.

The movies made a lot of money and established Burt Reynolds as a star of mindless action fare. Smokey And The Bandit may have been among the better examples of the relatively short-lived trend, but that is definitely not saying much. Reynolds is the Bandit, a legendary driver hired to mastermind an illegal high speed beer run across state lines in the deep South. Bandit elects to pilot a black Pontiac Trans Am with gold trim, as a "blocking" car for the cargo truck to be driven by his friend Snowman (Jerry Reed), which means that Bandit attracts the police cars and distracts them from pulling over and inspecting the illegal cargo of the speeding truck behind him.

All seems to be going well until Bandit picks up the runaway bride Carrie (Sally Field). Unfortunately, her never-to-be father-in-law is the buffoonish Texas Sheriff  Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason), or Smokey as all police officers are called by truckers. The chase is on, with Smokey and his idiot son driving after the Bandit and Carrie for mile after endless mile, not caring about the illegal beer shipment, just wanting to rescue the family's honour from the disgrace brought upon them by Carrie, now nicknamed Frog by Bandit and his pals on CB Radio.

Smokey And The Bandit was directed by Hal Needham, who also helped to create the story. Needham was a former Hollywood stuntman, and all of Smokey And The Bandit is an excuse to engineer and execute a variety of car and truck stunts, including a famous leap by the Trans Am across a destroyed bridge. Pontiac donated the vehicles used for the movie, knowing full well that Trans Am sales would skyrocket if the movie was a success, which it was.

The movie is undoubtedly kinetic and entertaining, and the cinematography featuring photogenic vehicles carving up highways and dirt roads is hypnotically watchable. The real stars of the movie are the cars and trucks rather than humans: Reynolds barely acts, coasting through the movie with a series of bland expressions under his cowboy hat and behind his moustache. Gleason's Sheriff Justice is a spluttering comic book character on par with the sophistication of Elmer Fudd. Sally Field is the only acting bright spot in the movie, bringing to Frog a pleasantly spunky spark that survives the careening steel and squealing tires all around her.

The soundtrack of 1970s country and western music provides immediate reminders about the worst of both the decade and the genre, although the hit song Eastbound and Down, written and performed by Reed, has an undeniable charm to it.

Smokey And The Bandit has its foot on the floor and its brain on idle. As long as that combination is acceptable, entertainment is served.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: Deliverance (1972)

Deliverance is a timeless classic, perhaps because it's a story as old as time: man against nature, and nature always wins, even if nature is man in his natural element.

Four city men head off into the wilds of Georgia for a canoe trip.  The natural habitat is threatened by a nearby dam construction project; the river and its surrounding way of life will soon be flooded. Strangers and city folks are not really welcomed by the locals, especially now.  The macho Lewis (Burt Reynolds), the introvert Ed (Jon Voight), the fearful Bobby (Ned Beatty) and the guitar-playing Drew (Ronny Cox) wade into territory much more hostile and dangerous than they can imagine.

Soon they tangle with in-bred, rifle-wielding hunters. Bobby is victimized, the canoes capsize, another of the men is killed, Lewis is humbled, and Ed has to find his inner strength just to survive the ordeal and get back home in one piece.

John Boorman keeps the tension building in gradual but unfailing increments.  There is tension among the four men, tension when they first meet the locals, tension when the adventurers first take on the river, tension when they tangle with the murderous, violent hunters, tension in the subsequent frantic escape down the river, and tension to explain away the whole ordeal to the local town-folk. The only break comes early with the famous guitar / banjo duel between Drew and a local boy, and even that ends with a creepy breakdown in communications that ominously hints at what is to come.

Burt Reynolds gives a performance that hints at what his career may have achieved had he pursued more serious role opportunities. Voight, Beatty and Cox memorably portray everyday men thrust into foreign territory they are ill-equipped to deal with.  The other star of the movie is mother nature, Boorman and his cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond delivering a masterful job capturing the interface zone where humans closest to the wild reside.

A morality tale on how nature can always fight back, Deliverance puts man back in his place.

All Ace Black Movie Reviews are here.