Movie Review: The Brink's Job (1978)

Genre: Heist Dramedy  

Director: William Friedkin  

Starring: Peter Falk, Peter Boyle, Warren Oates, Paul Sorvino, Gena Rowlands  

Running Time: 104 minutes  

Synopsis: In Boston of the late 1940s, life-long thief Tony Pino (Peter Falk) stumbles onto the headquarters of the Brink's armored car company, and finds it lightly guarded despite a reputation for being impregnable. He plots a heist to infiltrate the building and steal the safe contents. His co-conspirators include his dim brother-in-law Vinnie (Allen Garfield), fence Joe McGinnis (Peter Boyle), unhinged army veteran and self-proclaimed explosives expert Specs O'Keefe (Warren Oates), and daytime accountant Jazz Maffie (Paul Sorvino). The men are hardly competent, but the theft makes history.

What Works Well: Lovingly detailed glistening sets recreate mid-century Boston and breathe life into the true story of what was at the time the largest and most audacious robbery in the history of the United States. The sense of place complements a group of none-too-bright rogues and mavericks stumbling onto the theft of a lifetime, with an engaging Peter Falk as Tony Pino acting as the glue that binds the gang together.

What Does Not Work As Well: Despite the best efforts of a cast filled with sturdy character actors, the Walon Green script fails to build depth and settles for superficial representations. Director William Friedkin never gets the balance right between heist fundamentals, crime drama, and wry humour, and occasionally surrenders to unworthy slapstick. Already compromised by Falk's fading influence, the wayward third act is cluttered by the underdeveloped involvement of the FBI, and finally sunk by basic inattention to timeline clarity and important events. Gena Rowlands as Pino's wife Mary is sadly sidelined.

Key Quote:

Tony (to Mary): The building is asleep, and all that money is in there, and they're being held prisoner. And it's screaming at me through the walls. And it's yelling "Hey Tony, come in and grab me! Get me outta here!"



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Movie Review: Tempest (1982)

A midlife crisis drama, Tempest explores a painful transition from the vigour of youth to the wisdom of experience. The film enjoys a stellar cast and some excellent highlights, but is also both overlong and emotionally truncated.

New York architect Phillip Dimitrius (John Cassavetes) is experiencing a severe middle age crisis. His work designing casinos for his boss Alonzo (Vittorio Gassman), a semi-respectable mobster, is now a boring chore, and Phillip has lost interest in his wife Antonia (Gena Rowlands), a retired actress attempting a comeback. He also finds his teenaged daughter Miranda (Molly Ringwald) irritating.

When he stumbles upon Antonia seeking intimacy outside their marriage, Phillip packs up his life and heads to Greece with Miranda, desperate to rediscover his passion. In Athens they meet nightclub singer Aretha (Susan Sarandon), and she quickly becomes Phillip's lover. In search of a rustic lifestyle Philip, Aretha and Miranda relocate to a rugged and isolated island, where the only other resident is goat farmer Kalibanos (Raul Julia).

Inspired by Shakespeare's play, Tempest is directed, co-written and co-produced by Paul Mazursky. At a meandering 142 minutes, the signs of bloat are obvious, particularly when the third act loses all focus and falls well short of capping the preceding profundity.

Philip's story is presented in two timelines. On the Greek island, he desperately tries to reinvent himself as a happy recluse, satisfied without all of modernity's luxuries. Aretha and Miranda are less impressed and quite tired of the isolation. In  multiple flashbacks, Philip circulates among New York's elites, living in an elegant condominium of his own design, married to Antonia and working for Alonzo. He has all the ingredients for happiness but is imprisoned by the eternal is-this-all-there-is question.

Mazursky plays lightly on many themes. Phillip's tortured state of mind is represented by electric storms, conjured up as bookends to his crisis. His attempt at island celibacy, leaving Aretha quite hot and bothered, is the product of a disoriented psyche still partially loyal to Antonia. Philip's inability to come to terms with Miranda blooming into a young adult is a further demonstration of his creeping shortcomings. And joyous singing interludes punctuate the drama, often helping to boost spirits threatened by the eccentricities of a futile battle with the advancing years.

With Raul Julia unconstrained, Kalibanos' buffoonish pursuit of Miranda occupies too much screen time, although his lecherous quest affords Molly Ringwald plenty of scene-stealing opportunities. The rest of the cast members find depth within their characters, Cassavetes allowing the weight of unmet expectations to etch his face, Rowlands matching him as a resilient wife who will find alternatives to an inattentive, distracted and self-obsessed husband.

Phillip's old and new lives are on an inevitable collision course, but whilst the Tempest build-up is spasmodically turbulent, the resolution is simplistically tepid. 



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Movie Review: The Notebook (2004)

A romantic drama, The Notebook weaves a lyrical spell with an appealing narrative structure bookending a destined love. Excellent performances and rich cinematography enhance the film's allure.

At a nursing home, the elderly Duke (James Garner) cares for a dementia patient (Gena Rowlands) by reading to her the story of a long-ago romance.

The events he recounts are shown in flashback, starting in the summer of 1940 at the resort community of Seabrook Island, South Carolina. At the carnival grounds, young lumberyard worker Noah Calhoun (Ryan Gosling) is attracted to vacationing rich girl Allie Hamilton (Rachel McAdams) and insists on a date. They eventually fall in love, but with summer ending and Allie's mother Anne (Joan Allen) believing Noah is not good enough for her daughter, the young lovers separate after a bad argument.

Noah heads off to war with his best friend Fin (Kevin Connolly), while Allie volunteers as a nurse and falls in love with recuperating soldier Lon (James Marsden), eventually agreeing to marry him. After the war, Noah embarks on a dream home renovation project with the help of his father Frank (Sam Shepard). Allie and Noah appear destined to remain apart, until she spots a newspaper article and sets out to discover if her first love was true.

An adaptation of the Nicholas Sparks book, The Notebook is well-made old-fashioned storytelling. Directed by Nick Cassavetes with an eye for blazing red skies and picturesque sunsets, the film draws strength from irony-free traditional themes of an everlasting love overcoming all obstacles, while late-in-life physical and mental ailments ensure no shortage of tears.

It's obvious early on that the elderly dementia patient is Allie and Duke is Noah, fanning the flames of their love until the very end. Veterans James Garner and Gena Rowlands bring earnest poise to life's twilight, Allie stranded in a lonely fog having forgotten her life, Noah persisting in sharing their eloquently written history, hoping to spark just a daily moment of remembrance. Combined with the tumultuous travails and separations of their young lives, this is a couple who earned their couplehood.

In the flashback scenes Cassavetes hits all the expected beats of courtship, with Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams contributing oodles of young charisma. Noah is from the rougher side of town, she plays hard to get, and they bring refreshing honesty to their feisty bickering. But there is no denying the certainty of their love nor the usual impediments blocking their road to happiness, from disapproving parents to world wars and rival lovers. Despite being apart they never lose sight of each other, in a soulful definition of a union meant to be.

At 124 minutes The Notebook does go on, although writer Jan Sardi has the excuse of delving deep into both the first and final chapters of an enduring bond. Noah and Allie may be two ordinary people, but they also embody the universality of extraordinary love.



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Movie Review: Lonely Are The Brave (1962)

A contemporary western eulogy, Lonely Are The Brave explores the loss of a way of life through the story of a good-natured cowboy playing by the old rules.

In New Mexico, Korean War veteran Jack Burns (Kirk Douglas) and his horse Whiskey still crave the open frontier cowboy lifestyle. Jack laments the fences, property lines and roads infringing on his freedom to move wherever he pleases. When he learns his buddy Paul (Michael Kane) is in prison for helping illegal immigrants, he visits Paul's wife Jerry (Gena Rowlands) and commits to help.

Jack: Have you ever noticed how many fences there're getting to be? And the signs they got on them: no hunting, no hiking, no admission, no trespassing, private property, closed area, start moving, go away, get lost, drop dead!

Jack welcomes a bar fight then instigates a scuffle with police to get himself arrested and thrown into the same cell as Paul. He tangles with prison guard Gutierrez (George Kennedy) before offering Paul an opportunity to escape by sawing through the prison bars. But while Paul has a wife and child to consider, Jack lives for himself and for today, and with Whiskey makes a run for the mountains. Sheriff Morey Johnson (Walter Matthau) organizes a pursuit.

Desk sergeant: Look, cowboy, you can't go around with no identification. It's against the law. How are people going to know who you are?
Jack: I don't need a card to figure out who I am. I already know.

A lyrical western, Lonely Are The Brave carries honest intentions and a clear-eyed distinction between past and present. Dalton Trumbo's script sets out to bid a fond farewell to men like Jack, and despite the bittersweet sense of loss, even Jack is under no illusions. He knows his time has come and gone, and so does everyone else, but nothing will stop him from trying to wind the clock back.

The other men have moved on and are now more circumspect than freewheeling. Jack's good buddy and rival for Jerry's heart Paul is no longer interested in jail break escapades. Sheriff Johnson brings a resigned approach to his job, recognizing men like Jack are capable of disappearing into the wilderness, and maybe that's not a bad outcome. Meanwhile Jerry is exasperated not just with Jack's carefree attitude, but with men's general dense-headed and cavalier disregard towards the benefits of domesticity. 

Jerry: Believe you me, if it didn't take men to make babies I wouldn't have anything to do with any of you!

David Miller directs with a relaxed stance, the black and white cinematography harkening back to an earlier era where only mountain ranges interrupted the landscape. And Kirk Douglas brings his impish smile and an open, approachable demeanour to the fore, convinced every fence can be cut and every problem has a straightforward common-sense solution.

Jerry: Maybe you'd be better off if they caught you.
Jack: Maybe, but I'd like to put it off for as long as possible.

Jack's escape destination is a mountain ridge easiest to cross alone and on foot, but his tradition demands a man look after his horse, despite Whiskey's intransigence. Some of the scenes featuring the horse being forced up the steep terrain make for difficult viewing, but the old west was not for the faint of heart. Of course on the other side of the mountain is another barrier, even more difficult for Jack and Whiskey. No matter, they will carry on, intent on finding a sunset now obscured by the headlights of busy traffic.

Jerry: Jack, I'm going to tell you something. The world that you and Paul live in doesn't exist. Maybe it never did. Out there is a real world. And it's got real borders and real fences, real laws and real trouble. And you either go by the rules or you lose. You lose everything.
Jack: You can always keep something.

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Movie Review: Two-Minute Warning (1976)

A wobbly combination of sniper thriller and big-scale disaster movie, Two-Minute Warning deploys an anonymous villain to dispatch featureless victims in a void of emotions.

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum is hosting the annual football championship game (the NFL's Super Bowl in all but name), and the local Los Angeles team is up against their Baltimore rivals. Police Captain Peter Holly (Charlton Heston) has to stretch his resources to cover the game, while Sergeant Chris Button (John Cassavetes) is the local SWAT team commander. Sam McKeever (Martin Balsam) is in charge of stadium security.

From a hotel room window, a mysterious sniper shoots and kills a cyclist. The sniper then drives across town, enters the Coliseum, infiltrates an off-limits area and sets-up above the scoreboard. The stadium starts to fill with 92,000 spectators, including Mike Ramsey (Beau Bridges) and his family, gambler Stu Sandman (Jack Klugman), quarreling lovers Steve and Janet (David Janssen and Gena Rowlands), and a professional pickpocket (Walter Pidgeon).

The game starts and the television broadcast trailer is a hub of noisy activity with access to multiple camera angles, until an overhead camera from the hovering blimp picks up the sniper, hiding and waiting to unleash death from his vantage point.

For all its big-budget glitz, Two-Minute Warning teeters on the brink of an exceptionally nihilistic vision where innocent people die needlessly, murdered in a mass casualty event by a faceless assassin with no rational cause. But instead, this weird hybrid of Dirty Harry and every 1970s big-budget disaster movie falls on the wrong side of the entertainment fence.

For a full 90 minutes, director Larry Peerce occupies himself with banal details of uninteresting characters getting ready to attend the big game and then taking their seats as spectators, a parade of familiar actors appearing in snippets to reveal how utterly ordinary and unworthy of any screen time their characters are. In the meantime the faceless and nameless sniper occupies his station above the stadium scoreboard, and for all his careful preparations does nothing to safeguard against fans with binoculars and the overhead blimp, stuffed with cameras.

And Two-Minute Warning is then padded with numerous on-field football action scenes of no consequence to the plot, an unwanted sports drama erupting in the middle of a stale disaster thriller.

While the breathtakingly bungled response of the police and SWAT teams may not be unrealistic, Peerce stretches credibility to the limit, Captain Holly, Sergeant Button and security chief McKeever checking every wrong box of inaction and displaying all the urgency of suntanning sea lions as tragedy beckons.

It is the final 30 minutes of carnage that almost save the movie. Once the surprisingly indestructible sniper decides to open fire at the game's two-minute warning mark (again, his reasons for choosing this time are not explained), Peerce kicks the action into gears of utter panic and choreographs good scenes featuring thousands of people stampeding. Acts of tragedy, idiocy and heroism converge, and a decent number of the stars on parade encounter a bloody death moment to justify the paycheque.

Charlton Heston and John Cassavetes just grit their teeth and hide behind macho sunshades, trying hard to act heroic, inject purpose, and look serious, but alas they stand defeated in a stadium occupied by bad scripting.

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Movie Review: Hope Floats (1998)

A drama about the consequences of a shattered marriage and going back home, Hope Floats is a dreary descent into doldrums.

In New York City, Birdee (Sandra Bullock) is embarrassed on a trashy daytime television talk show when her supposed best friend Connie (an uncredited Rosanna Arquette) reveals she is having an affair with Birdee's husband Bill (Michael Paré). Birdee packs up her young daughter Bernice (Mae Whitman) and heads back to her tiny hometown of Smithville, Texas, to live with her mother Ramona (Gena Rowlands).

In her high school days Birdee was the local beauty queen. Now after a period of sulking she gets reacquainted with a town that has barely changed, and faces some backlash for her prior haughtiness. She meets wood craftsman Justin Matisse (Harry Connick Jr.) who has had a crush on her since school days, and he initiates a romantic pursuit. Meanwhile young Bernice encounters school bullying issues and hopes her father Bill will come back.

No amount of small town charm, flashes of humour and movie star glamour can save Hope Floats. In one of his few directing excursions, Forest Whitaker delivers a boring and overlong story of a woman coming to terms with the end of her marriage. The film runs out of things to say about 30 minutes in, and once handsome and available Harry Connick Jr. shows up, the ending is predetermined but the tortured Steven Rogers script has to trudge through plenty of nothingness to get there.

And so Whitaker gets busy with a mundane and ultimately pointless subplot about Bernice tangling with the school bully. Birdee plays hard-to-get with Justin to run down the clock when she is not taking turns shouting then hugging with Ramona and Bernice. Birdee's father, confined to a seniors' home and suffering from Alzheimer's disease, is another narrative dead-end.

Sandra Bullock tries hard to save the movie but to no avail, although Whitaker takes time to occasionally capture his star with the light hitting her perfectly ruffled hair just-so for the full glamour effect. Actually filmed in Smithville, the local charm quotient is lower than it should be.

Hope Floats is mopey bloat.

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The Movies Of Gena Rowlands

All movies starring Gena Rowlands and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Lonely Are The Brave (1962)



Two Minute Warning (1976)



The Brink's Job (1978)

Gloria (1980)



Tempest (1982)

Hope Floats (1998)



Taking Lives (2004)



The Notebook (2004)

Parts Per Billion (2014)



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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Parts Per Billion (2014)

An end-of-the-world drama and romance, Parts Per Billion features three loosely connected storylines but adds up to less than the sum of its parts.

A war in the Middle East results in biological weapons being launched. Winds spread the lethal airborne germs, triggering massive death on a global scale. In Michigan, three couples await the arrival of the end, with flashbacks filling in their backstories.

Anna (Teresa Palmer) is intently following the news and the looming disaster increases the intensity of her jealous attachment to fiancé and musician Erik (Penn Badgley). He is calmer and less interested in world events. Lawyer Mia (Rosario Dawson) has a successful career, while her husband Len (Josh Hartnett) is underemployed but supportive. Their relationship is under stress because she did not discourage the advances of an office colleague. They take refuge in their sealed basement as the germs arrive.

The elderly Andy and Esther (Frank Langella and Gena Rowlands) are at the hospital for medical tests when the airborne contamination strikes. Oxygen masks help them survive. He is struggling with feelings of guilt, as he was paid large sums of money to help develop the biological weapons now destroying humanity. The three couples share some associations: Erik is the grandson of Andy and Esther, Mia successfully defended and acquitted Andy in a legal case, and Len's sister Sarah (Alexis Bledel) is a nurse looking after Esther at the hospital.

Sharing some of the same contaminant properties as 2011's Contagion, Parts Per Billion focuses more on people and less on events. Writer and director Brian Horiuchi is interested in the lives and loves of relatively ordinary people, and leaves the broader response to the crisis, if any, off screen. The six central characters are relatable, but far from profoundly interesting. They are also passive victims and observers rather than protagonists.

From the vantage point of the three couples, people are dying en masse, television reports reveal powerless elected officials fleeing, and opportunities for salvation or rescue are not even mentioned. A sealed basement and stocks of supplies offer hope for Mia and Len, but only if they can tolerate each other in confined surroundings. Oxygen masks extend life for Andy and Esther as long as they can find more canisters at the hospital. Anna and Erik just embrace the end with understandable anxiety but overall ambivalent acceptance.

With the title referring to the measure of contamination but also the miniscule relevance of every individual in a global context, it may be fully Horiuchi's intent to highlight the banal nature of life and predictable appreciation of love as the end comes into focus. But the movie suffers mightily from the absence of momentum. Other than small revelations about the couples, not much of anything actually happens over 98 minutes spread thin across three sub-stories. The repetitive shallow expressions of love, anger, frustration and regret struggle to leave an impression.

Parts Per Billion rides in on an evil wind, but exits in a whimper.

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Movie Review: Taking Lives (2004)

A serial murderer chase thriller that is more curious than effective, Taking Lives has a few interesting ideas but then stumbles into some large and fateful plot holes and execution deficiencies.

Set in Canada, the film opens in the early 1980s when teenager Martin Asher (Paul Dano) kills another young drifter called Matt and takes over his identity. Martin is assumed to be dead. Twenty years later, FBI profiler Illeana Scott (Angelina Jolie) is summoned to Montreal to help the local police force crack a series of unsolved gruesome murders. At the same time Martin's mother Rebecca Asher (Gena Rowlands) steps forward to inform the police that she has spotted her supposedly dead son on a crowded ferry.

Illeana explores Martin's past and eventually identifies him as a serial killer who takes over the lives of his victims because he cannot face who he is. Martin's current identity is not known, but there is a break in the case when the latest murder is witnessed by art dealer James Costa (Ethan Hawke). Illeana and her team work with James to draw a portrait of Martin, now intent on killing James to eliminate the witness. But just when it seems that the police are gaining the upper hand and Illeana start a torrid affair with James, the case takes a strange and even bloodier twist.

Directed by D.J. Caruso, Taking Lives never establishes a consistent tone. An FBI agent in Canada with landmark scenes of Quebec City being misrepresented as Montreal are not good foundations for a thriller. The film is littered with some fundamental unexplained events, including a decomposed body in the attic and a random assailant below the bed that serve as cheap thrills but demand a lot more exposition that never arrives. The narrative is often pushed forward in a rapid rattle of dialogue and jumbled names as Illeana jumps into the car to get to the next scene, leaving behind a bewildered mess. There are two major twists in the film, and both are fairly easy to spot.

Taking Lives does do a few things well. The tension between Illeana and the local detectives (portrayed by Olivier Martinez, Tchéky Karyo and Jean-Hugues Anglade) is healthy. The group works together despite the men never fully welcoming Illeana's intrusion onto their turf. The serial killer's background is viable in cinematic terms, with Illeana uncovering the household secrets that triggered Martin's self-hate and murderous tendencies. And there is a well-mounted highway car chase scene that finds a good balance between carnage and technical thrills.

In the lead roles Angelina Jolie and Ethan Hawke are serviceable without convincingly committing to their characters, and they do enjoy a scorching sex scene. Meanwhile, Kiefer Sutherland receives an inordinately prominent billing, but is hardly in the film. Taking Lives has its moments, but ultimately does not offer nearly enough to stand apart from the myriad other, better serial killer films.

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Movie Review: Gloria (1980)

A character study chase movie, Gloria showcases Gena Rowlands in an Academy Award nominated performance. An unlikely story is secondary to an intriguing character forced relatively late in life to be the difference for someone who needs her.

In a grimy Bronx neighbourhood, a low-life Puerto Rican accountant for the mob is targeted for elimination: he has been skimming off the top and singing to the Feds. A group of Mafia henchmen invade his apartment building and kill him and all his family, except for six-year-old Phil (John Adames), who is stashed along with the tell-all accounting book in the next-door apartment of Gloria (Rowlands).

Gloria is late-fortysomething, single, hates kids, but is tough as nails and has ties to the Mafia: she used to be the mistress of local mob boss Tony Tanzini. Now Tanzini wants the accounting book, and he doesn't care if both Gloria and Phil need to be killed as a consequence. Through a long series of chases and dangerous hide-and-seek episodes with a chasing pack of goons, Gloria would like nothing more than to just look after herself and leave her old life behind, but finds herself compelled to protect the orphaned Phil, who is irritating, vulnerable and hopelessly endearing.

A study of a complex woman told though what is effectively one long pursuit movie, John Cassavetes directs his wife Gena Rowlands to her most memorable screen performance as Gloria, a one-time gangster moll with her best days very much behind her. Forced to confront perhaps her only mission in life, Gloria slowly and reluctantly rises to the challenge, but she herself is never sure if she is helping Phil or just getting back at the men who used her and dumped her. Rowlands dominates the screen, staring down thugs, firing guns down the street, confronting her sordid past life, exuding exaggerated bravado to conceal her fears, all while trying to lead Phil to safety.

The relationship between Gloria and Phil is the other anchor in the movie, and it's a collision between two stubborn lost souls. Gloria was never cut out to be a mother and wastes no time proving it, while Phil, despite his tender age, embodies a lot of the of clueless machismo that Gloria has had to suffer through all her life. Cassavetes, who also wrote the script, makes sure to prolong the question of whether Gloria and Phil will ever warm up to each other.

Cassavetes makes excellent use of New York's more sordid corners, easy to find as the depressing seventies came to a tired end and the new decade was slow to unveil its greedy lustre. But beyond the central character, the film struggles to find a purpose once the premise is set, and it defaults to a mechanical series of interchangeable encounters, with Gloria and Phil on the run and fending off an endless series of incompetent attacks by thick-necked assassins.

Gloria may not be the most memorable of mob movies, but it does feature a most distinguished central performance.

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