Movie Review: Cabo Blanco (1980)

A mystery thriller, Cabo Blanco (also presented as Caboblanco) offers decent ideas but never comes close to recreating the coveted Casablanca vibe.

It's 1948 in the coastal Peruvian town of Cabo Blanco. American fugitive Gifford "Giff" Hoyt (Charles Bronson) operates the town's hotel and bar, the local authorities are represented by the corrupt Captain Terredo (Fernando Rey), while reclusive and wealthy Nazi official Gunther Beckdorff (Jason Robards) wields his influence from a hilltop mansion. Off shore, a British intelligence ship encounters sabotage while searching for the wreck of the Brittany, which sank with a cargo of Nazi treasure worth millions.

Mysterious French woman Marie Claire Allesandri (Dominique Sanda) arrives in town to inquire about her lover, a French wartime resistance fighter who may have uncovered the wreck's location. British agent Lewis Clarkson (Simon MacCorkindale) comes ashore to investigate the sabotage. Marie and Gunther start to suspect Giff may know the secret of the coveted coordinates, but he's not telling.

From the title to the setting and the collection of characters, Cabo Blanco does not try to hide it's source of inspiration. The elements may be familiar and promising, but the script by Morton S. Fine and Milton S. Gelman is clunky and often logic-challenged. J. Lee Thompson directs with general disinterest and the production design struggles to convey the 1940s, with Bronson's wardrobe and mannerisms stubbornly holding onto the 1970s.

Some scenes and actions are simply confounding. Mysterious murderous divers appear twice but the killings are never properly explained, since no one appears to have yet discovered the location of the Brittany. Clarkson goes on an ill-advised solo exploration of Beckdorff's compound, a misadventure made more puzzling by Giff's sudden appearance and intervention out of nowhere. Dominique Sanda is asked to either climb or descend the stairs every 15 minutes, an appropriate representation of a character who does not know whether she is coming or going. In fact, it's never clear what leverage Marie has over any of the men she tries to negotiate with. 

A good chunk of the final third is occupied with Bronson making fools out of Captain Terredo's men, doubtless to satisfy the star's action-demanding fans. But after all the cheap running around, the climax is decent, Thompson finally conjuring up a rain-soaked mood as the principals convene for a final showdown. A parrot and a gargoylian jukebox are pressed into service, but alas, without the talent to start a beautiful friendship.



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Movie Review: French Connection II (1975)

A sequel that doubles down on the grit factor and victimizes its abrasive hero, French Connection II is a more intimate crime drama, and features one of Gee Hackman's finest performances.

New York Detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle (Hackman) heads to Marseille to find and capture the elusive drug export king Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey). Doyle's rude and disrespectful attitude gets him off to a bad start with his French counterpart Inspector Henri Barthélémy (Bernard Fresson), and things just get worse when Doyle causes the death of an undercover police agent during a drug lab bust. Meanwhile Charnier is working on his next big deal, involving a massive quantity of drugs hidden within the hull of a large freighter.

Despite not knowing the language or the culture and acting very much like a fish out of water, Doyle decides to make his presence known around the city in the hopes of flushing out Charnier. The plan works, but not as intended. Charnier does spot Doyle and has him kidnapped, held prisoner in a derelict hotel room and shot up full of heroin over several weeks to humiliate him and turn him into a junkie. The nearly dead Doyle is then dumped outside the police station. Barthélémy helps Doyle through a painful cold turkey withdrawal. Once he recovers Doyle sets out yet again to find Charnier, this time driven by personal revenge.

Directed by John Frankenheimer, French Connection II is fully set in Marseille, as Doyle enters the lion's den and goes after Charnier on his own turf. The film wisely does not try to match or outdo the original, and the sequel is more of a slow-burning character study than an action movie.

Doyle is without a partner, has no back-up that he can properly communicate with, and does not know anything about the city. It eventually dawns on him that he is maybe being used as bait, with Barthélémy tasked to tail him and pounce once Charnier makes his move. But all of Barthélémy's resources prove useless, and Doyle has to endure a near-death experience as he is reduced to a quivering addict at the hands of Charnier's henchmen.

The film clocks in at two hours, and there is an argument to be made that trimming ten minutes off the running time would have benefited the pacing. The scenes of Doyle's captivity and subsequent cold turkey withdrawal are long, intense, and disturbing. Frankenheimer makes use of close-ups, sweat, and deglamourized sets to hammer home the dreadful power of heroin, and the ease with which a confident and cocky detective is reduced to begging for the next hit. This is also Doyle's penance, his abject disrespect for the city and culture where he is a guest culminating in the worst possible punishment.

Long as the film is, it provides Hackman with a vehicle to shine. By zooming in on an isolated detective enduring his worst nightmare, Frankenheimer leans heavily on his star, and Hackman delivers with genuine verve. The cold turkey sequence requires Hackman to convey a brain on the painful, hesitant, and agonizing path to something resembling recovery, and Hackman alternates between determination, despair and delusion, Doyle hanging on for dear life to the emotional help provided by Barthélémy (an understated and elegant performance by Fresson). And once Doyle is again able to function, Hackman finds the space where the chastened detective is now driven by his personal demons to seek and destroy, having himself been victimized by Charnier's product.

After the measured build-up, the ending is frantic. Doyle's journey comes to an end first in flames of fury and then at great physical cost, an international chase converging down to two men from different worlds, both refusing to yield.

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Movie Review: The French Connection (1971)

A masterpiece police action thriller, The French Connection sets a new standard in unadulterated grittiness. The story of an international drug deal unfolding on the streets of New York is measured, complex, intense and often explosive.

In Marseille, master drug lord Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey) is planning his next big drug export deal. His henchman Pierre Nicoli (Marcel Bozzuffi) eliminates an undercover detective, and Charnier meets fading movie star Henri Devereaux (Frédéric de Pasquale) who will help conceal the drug shipment. In New York, drug squad detectives Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle (Gene Hackman) and Buddy 'Cloudy' Russo (Roy Scheider) shake down small-time local hoods, and notice a scarcity of product on the street. All the dealers are waiting for the next big shipment.

Doyle and Russo identify store owner Salvatore 'Sal' Boca (Tony Lo Bianco) and his wife Angie (Arlene Faber) as key contacts in the drug trade and place them under surveillance. The Bocas lead the detectives to wealthy lawyer Joel Weinstock (Harold Gary), who may have the resources to buy and distribute the incoming drugs. Soon Charnier, Nicoli and Devereaux arrive in New York by boat and connect with Boca. The detectives have their hands full keeping tabs on Charnier and his crew, waiting for the deal to be made and for the large drug shipment to be found.

Directed by William Friedkin as an adaptation of the Robin Moore book, The French Connection is inspired by real events, and unfolds with a street-level realism that commands immediate attention. There is nothing glamorous, fun or happy about the investigation required to disrupt a major drug deal, and no gadgets or easily available information to crack the case. The French Connection is all about persistent police work, painstaking surveillance, and making sense of the vague connections between poorly defined dots. Friedkin constructs a police procedural with plenty of verve, set against the backdrop of a delapidating New York City.

The French Connection features a prolonged car chase scene that fully earns its legendary status. After Doyle survives an assassination attempt by Nicoli, the hitman tries to make his escape on board an elevated transit train and Doyle gives chase by car at street level. The subsequent tire-burning quest features stunt driving at its finest and expert nose-of-vehicle camera placement by Friedkin and cinematographer Owen Roizman, as Doyle dodges busy urban traffic to keep up with the train. Nicoli plays his part by commandeering the train and bypassing station stops, stretching the chase across numerous blocks. It is a breathless, frantic scene, a punctuation mark in the middle of the cat-and-mouse surveillance game between officers and criminals.

The less than appealing character of Popeye Doyle adds immeasurably to the film. Doyle is no hero, and has no experience busting sophisticated criminals. He is rude, crude, and lives his life chasing low-life drug dealers in run down and dimly lit bars. Other than his partner Cloudy, Doyle does not get along well with others, maybe because a previous hunch cost the life of another officer. Doyle has to work hard to convince his superior that Boca is a criminal worth keeping tabs on, and overall he grabs the threads of the conspiracy through the heroism of sheer doggedness rather than smarts.

And Gene Hackman finds the role of his career in Doyle, in a delicious portrayal that relishes the unkempt aspects of the detective but always hints at a stubborn willingness to dig deeper and outlast the bad guys with pure effort. Hackman happily welcomes the roughness around the edges, and creates a stark contrast with Fernando Rey's smooth, well-dressed suave European criminal. Friedkin perfectly catches the sophistication disparity with a scene featuring Chartier enjoying a multi-course gourmet meal while Doyle is confined to the sidewalk, wolfing down junk pizza.

The French Connection hurtles towards a marvelous mess of showdown, where everything may be resolved to the satisfaction of no one. When the business is the lucrative international drug trade, there are no quick and easy victories, just outcome fragments that prolong the struggle between profit and justice for another day.

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