Movie Review: The Cape Town Affair (1967)

Genre: Cold War Spy Thriller

Director: Robert D. Webb

Starring: Claire Trevor, Jacqueline Bisset, James Brolin

Running Time: 100 minutes

Synopsis: On a crowded bus in Cape Town, South Africa, pick-pocket Skip McCoy (James Brolin) steals the wallet of courier Candy (Jacqueline Bisset). He is unaware that she is under surveillance by government agents, and that the wallet contains a top secret microfiche coveted by communist spies. The authorities turn to professional snitch Sam (Claire Trevor) to track Skip down, as he pursues a romance with the increasingly desperate Candy.

What Works Well: This remake of 1953's Pickup On South Street benefits from bright Cape Town locations, two attractive stars in Jacqueline Bisset and James Brolin (both in early career performances), and a flamboyant Claire Trevor. The jazzy Joe Kentridge music score is not bad.

What Does Not Work As Well: Although Samuel Fuller is still credited as a writer, director Robert D. Webb strips out all the noir grittiness, and Brolin offers superficial style rather than gnarly substance. The result is artistically bland tedium, the focus on small characters (a pickpocket and a courier) flailing within skimpy plot details. The apartheid-era South African production portrays a whites-only society, and beyond the three stars, the supporting actors are wooden at best.

Conclusion: Adds nothing to the original, but subtracts plenty.

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Movie Review: Airport (1970)

A grand multi-story disaster epic, Airport helped formulate the genre template. A star-studded cast and multiple overlapping emergencies sustain the thrills over one long night.

The setting is Chicago's Lincoln International Airport during a snowstorm. Airport Manager Mel Bakersfeld (Burt Lancaster) is struggling to keep the airport functional, an objective made difficult when a taxiing airplane gets stuck in the snow and blocks the airport's main Runway 29. The alternative Runway 22 is shorter and impacts a surrounding community. Mel calls upon chief maintenance mechanic Patroni (George Kennedy) to help unwedge the Boeing 707.

Mel's brother-in-law is womanizing pilot Vernon Demerest (Dean Martin), who is about to take charge of an overnight flight to Rome. Vernon is having an affair with stewardess Gwen (Jacqueline Bisset), and she reveals her pregnancy just before departure. Mel's marriage to his wife Cindy (Dana Wynter) is falling apart, allowing him to evolve his relationship with airline customer service representative Tanya Livingston (Jean Seberg).

Meanwhile Tanya has to deal with the elderly Ada Quonsett (Helen Hayes), who is apprehended as a serial stowaway but anyway boards Vernon's flight. But most worrisome is depressed businessman D. O. Guerrero (Van Heflin), who plans to kill himself with a briefcase bomb in order for his wife Inez (Maureen Stapleton) to benefit from insurance money. As Vernon deals with in-flight emergencies, Mel and Patroni frantically work to reopen Runway 29, now an urgent matter of life and death.

The adaptation of Arthur Hailey's 1968 book is brought to the screen by director George Seaton, who also wrote the surprisingly taut screenplay. The film created the blueprint for a decade-long cycle of disaster movies, spawned three direct but lesser sequels, and inspired several parodies. Airport also heralded the blockbuster era to come, well-produced but easy-to-digest escapism loved by audiences and generating mass profits on a previously unimaginable scale.

And despite the stiff dialogue, lack of any narrative depth beyond the here and now, and some cringe-worthy corporate boosterism, there is no denying the film's appeal. The cast members are stereotyped but in good form, Lancaster, Martin, Kennedy and Heflin playing to their pre-established strengths, while Seaton fills the screen with activity, inside the terminal, on the tarmac, and on-board the flights, all in gorgeous technicolor. Frequent use of split screens, relatively accurate technical jargon, and a packed agenda of colliding personal and work emergencies easily occupy the 136 minutes of running time.

With action and events moving briskly, the memorable moments are plentiful. Helen Hayes earns many of them, and claimed a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for a delicately funny turn as the unlikely stowaway Ada. Her repertoire of tricks to get past every checkpoint plus a disarming charm and conversational gifts are put to good use on the ground and in the air.

Dean Martin makes the most of the cocky Vernon coming to terms with Gwen's pregnancy, and gets another well-crafted highlight in his attempt to talk down Guerrero.

As the man in the middle of it all, Mel's agitation with bureaucrats and politicians comes to a satisfying boil when a clueless Commissioner chooses the worst possible time to suggest the airport's closure. And after a few rounds of bickering, Mel and Cindy as a husband and wife presiding over a wrecked marriage carve out a surprisingly adult resolution.

And finally George Kennedy creates the Patroni legend with his full-throttled attempt to prod the stranded Boeing 707 into motion, the irresistible force of one man determined to triumph over a mammoth immovable object. The night will not be over until the cigar is well and truly chomped.

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Movie Review: The Life And Times Of Judge Roy Bean (1972)

A semi-biographical western, The Life And Times Of Judge Roy Bean takes a relatively lighthearted look at a legendary character.

Gambler and outlaw Roy Bean (Paul Newman) arrives in lawless Texas territory west of the Pecos River. Roughed up at an isolated whorehouse, he is helped by Mexican girl Maria Elena (Victoria Principal) and single handedly disposes of his aggressors. Reverend LaSalle (Anthony Perkins) is passing through the area and helps bury the bodies. Finding a thick textbook of Texas law, Bean installs himself as the local judge. He converts a group of outlaws including Tector Crites (Ned Beatty) into his team of Marshalls, and runs the local saloon as his own courthouse.

Bean is obsessed with celebrated east-coast singer Lillie Langtry (Ava Gardner), adorning his walls with her images and following her news through the New York Times. Gradually a community grows around the rough law-and-order halo provided by Bean. Over the years Bean and Maria Elena adopt a bear, and he grapples with crazed outlaw Bad Bob (Stacy Keach) and conniving lawyer Frank Gass (Roddy McDowall).

Very loosely based on the antics of the real character (who also featured in such films as The Westerner from 1940), The Life And Times Of Judge Roy Bean is amiable but never quite gets its tone right. Director John Huston steers star Paul Newman towards fluffy Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid territory, complete with a silly romantic musical interlude featuring a frolic with Maria Elena and a pet bear as the prop instead of the bicycle.

The problem is that the John Milius script wants to be somewhere else entirely. According to this screenplay, the only thing notable about Roy Bean is his crusty and caustic character, a self-appointed lawman quick to shoot outlaws in the back and hang others without a second thought. The smooth, suave and charming Newman struggles badly with crusty and caustic, saying the words but unable to overcome his instinctive charm.

Despite the fundamental piece of miscasting, Huston manages to construct a decently enjoyable western. The film is episodic, which in this case helps. Bean's obsession with Langtry and his low-key relationship with Maria Elena are the only constants. Other events and characters come and go in a series of vignettes, some drawn from history and others clearly inflated by legend or totally made up. Huston never dwells for too long in any one place, and the two hours pass swiftly.

The opening sequence is a highlight, with Bean barely surviving a lynching and coming back with a vengeance to clean out the vermin. Later Huston injects sharp humour with a depressed drunk who is allowed to shoot-up the place until he takes aim at the wrong target and suffers the consequences.

The film also carries the requisite look. The setting is remote, dusty and even as a community grows around Bean's courthouse, Huston maintains a desolate frontier aesthetic. Judge Roy Bean may have created his own version of civilization, but it was always rough between the edges.

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Movie Review: Class (1983)

A high school sex comedy, Class boasts a remarkable cast and appears intent on exploring some serious issues before getting lost in a tonal no-man's land.

Jonathan (Andrew McCarthy) is a new senior student at the exclusive all-boys Vernon Academy somewhere in New England. His roommate is the fun-loving "Skip" (Rob Lowe), who comes from a rich and established family. After trading painfully embarrassing pranks, Jonathan and Skip become good friends.

Skip encourages the tentative Jonathan to take a weekend trip to Chicago to gain confidence in his dealings with women. Jonathan does so, and to his surprise meets and starts a torrid sexual affair with the much older Ellen (Jacqueline Bisset). Having a mature woman as a lover changes Jonathan, as he gains immeasurably in confidence and becomes one of the most popular boys at Vernon. But when Christmas break arrives and Jonathan heads off to meet Skip's family, he is in for a huge shock.

Directed by Lewis John Carlino, Class struggles to define itself. The film spends a lot of time on routine campus high-jinx inspired by Animal House and its countless imitators. But gradually the narrative shifts uncomfortably towards the complications stemming from a sex drenched relationship between a younger man and an older woman. Serious themes are suddenly scattered across the screen. Lust is confused with love, troublesome stalking phone calls are introduced, and the loneliness of the emotionally abandoned rich wife emerges as a potential interesting plot line.

But the script by Jim Kouf and David Greenwalt is capable of introducing weighty matters but proves clueless in dealing with them once hatched. Class stumbles into awkward territory where a host of unresolved ideas run headlong into a rudimentary comedy, and the mess ends with an embarrassing fist fight that reveals nothing except the limitation of the writing.

Andrew McCarthy (in his debut) and Rob Lowe do establish a credible rapport of friendship that builds during the film and adds a dose of interest. Jacqueline Bisset plays off her screen persona as a sexpot, here becoming the dream mature woman capable of transforming an adolescent into adulthood in one night.

The three principals are supported by a talented supporting crew, with John Cusack (also in his debut), Alan Ruck, Casey Siemaszko, Virginia Madsen and Joan Cusack appearing as students. Stuart Margolin is the mysterious mustached investigator who descends on the school late in the proceedings to uncover wrong-doings, and Cliff Robertson is Skip's father. It's an unusually deep cast for what is ultimately an underdeveloped and lightweight high school romp, and the surprisingly good acting talent set against the bumpy script adds to the film's identity crisis.

Class is not without its merits, but the curriculum is a most messy muddle.

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Movie Review: Domino (2005)

A case of all style and almost incomprehensible substance, Domino dazzles the senses in a vain attempt to cover up the lack of any meaningful content in the turgid story of a female bounty hunter.

The bloodied but defiant Domino Harvey (Keira Knightley) is being questioned by FBI agent Taryn Mills (Lucy Liu) about a $10 million heist that has gone terribly wrong. Domino recounts her life story. The daughter of actor Laurence Harvey, she was drifting through life until she joined the team of grizzled bounty hunter Ed (Mickey Rourke) and his sidekick Choco (Edgar Ramirez). Domino quickly establishes a reputation as fearless and resourceful and she catches the attention of television producer Mark Heiss (Christopher Walken), who launches a reality show about the bounty hunters despite the objections of Domino's mother Sophie (Jacqueline Bisset).

Ed's main client is bail bondsman Claremont (Delroy Lindo), whose mistress Lateesha (Mo'Nique), an employee of the Department of Motor Vehicles, needs $300,000 for her granddaughter's operation. Claremont concocts a plan to steal $10 million from Las Vegas tycoon Drake Bishop (Dabney Coleman), with the intention of having his squad of bounty hunters "recover" the money in exchange for a $300,000 finders fee. When Lateesha's illicit licensing activities land her in trouble, she unintentionally gets the teenaged children of mob boss Anthony Cigliutti (Stanley Kamel) involved in the heist. Domino and her crew get dropped into a mess of an explosive situation, starting with an armed and bloody standoff at the mobile home of getaway driver Locus Fender and his shotgun-toting mother Edna.

Director Tony Scott starts with the true story of the real Domino Harvey, but uses her only as a loose inspiration. Screenwriter Richard Kelly creates an out of control narrative that tries and fails to emulate Tarantino's intertwining multi-character story construction. Instead Scott allows his worst trickster impulses to take over, resulting in a film that calls attention to its director in every scene. Domino is a land of spaced-out narration, repeated snippets of dialogue, editing that is in turns jarring and dreamy, and vivid green and yellow colours dominating the screen.

The film's visual style is either distractingly overwrought or artistically stunning, but regardless cannot compensate for a story that is a strange mix of ludicrous and vacant. With the cardboard characters offering no wit and eliciting no sympathy, the gory violence and ridiculous shootouts carry no impact. It really does not matter who among the snide collection of lowlifes lives or dies from scene to scene. The entire reality television show sub-plot is a needless exercise in unfunny bloat, and the endlessly hesitant romance between Domino and Choco never gets past the stuttering stage. The complicated heist component of the film then arrives late and starts to veer into unfathomable territory, transforming Domino's 127 minutes of running time into a true endurance test.

Keira Knightley delivers a suitably glum performance, the rich girl who takes up big guns to compensate for an absentee famous daddy. Mickey Rourke is the only cast member trying to inject a human depth to his character, but the script offers him little to work with.

Domino is a jazzy feast for the eyes, but otherwise tumbles with an unseemly clatter.

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The Movies Of Jacqueline Bisset

All movies starring Jacqueline Bisset and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Two For The Road (1967)

The Cape Town Affair (1967)

Bullitt (1968)

Airport (1970)

The Life And Times Of Judge Roy Bean (1972)

Murder On The Orient Express (1974)

St. Ives (1976)

The Deep (1977)

Class (1983)

Domino (2005)

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The Movie Star index is here.

Movie Review: St. Ives (1976)

An attempt to create an ultra-complicated blackmail story in the style of The Big Sleep, St. Ives stumbles early and often, quickly becoming incomprehensible. There is nowhere near enough style or magnetism to rescue the hopelessly convoluted script, and despite some reasonable moments, the film eventually melts into a puddle of irrelevance.

Abner Procane (John Houseman) is old, rich, playful, and in trouble. Someone has stolen some of his important documents, and is demanding $100,000 for their return. Procane hires struggling crime writer Raymond St. Ives (Charles Bronson) as the go-between to handle the pay-out, but what was to be a straightforward swap of cash-for-documents goes immediately wrong, with a dead body twirling inside a laundromat drying machine and police officers Deal (Harry Guardino) and Oller (Harris Yulin) crawling all over St. Ives as their main suspect.

As St. Ives attempts to find the killers and uncover the importance of the missing documents, he delves deeper into Procane's business, and finds the mysterious Janet Whistler (Jacqueline Bisset) and the creepy Doctor Constable (Maximilian Schell) constantly hovering around Procane, seemingly up to no good. From then on, the body count rises, with St. Ives always arriving at the scene of each successive murder in time to be embroiled further into the growing mess.

Although Bronson never looks comfortable trying to portray a man up unwittingly up to his knees in dead bodies and dense conspiracies, he is nevertheless the best thing that St. Ives has going for it. He moves smoothly enough through the carnage while rarely being fully convincing.

Jacqueline Bisset seems fully aware that her role is "the striking beauty with something to hide", and that's all she has to go on. If Janet Whistler's actual relationship to Procane and the missing documents was ever clarified, it came too late in the knotty narrative to matter, mush less register. John Houseman and Maximilian Schell go through St. Ives trying hard to remember which characters from other movies they should be channelling, and generally failing.

Of interest are the brief appearances of Jeff Goldblum and Robert Englund (the future Freddy Kruger) as hoods hired to hunt down and murder St. Ives.

Director J. Lee Thompson, a long way removed from the glory days of The Guns Of Navarone, comes nowhere close to creating the necessary air of mystery or finding a suitable style for the movie. Thompson and Bronson would go on to collaborate eight more times, cranking out increasingly dim-witted and routine action sludge.

St. Ives is left with a few moments of Bronson charm to remind us that he is better than the material, and a reasonable tag line: He's clean. He's mean. He's the go-between. Clever, but it's always dangerous when the poster is better than the film it's trying to promote.

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Movie Review: Bullitt (1968)

Bullitt has quite a few things going for it: the coolness of Steve McQueen, the chic glamour of Jacqueline Bisset, the attractive locations of San Francisco, the muscle of a Ford Mustang, and the thrills of a prolonged, legendary car chase. Yet somehow, all the pieces of the jigsaw do not make a complete picture.

San Francisco Police Lieutenant Frank Bullitt (McQueen) is personally selected by sleazy politician Walter Chalmers (Robert Vaughn) to protect Senate Sub-Committee witness Johnny Ross, who is stashed in a dumpy motel waiting to give testimony that will damage a Chicago criminal syndicate.

But Bullitt and his team are too easily penetrated; Ross and a member of the police protection team are severely wounded. Bullitt soon realizes that all is not what it seems, a larger conspiracy is at play possibly with the aid of inside informers, and he has to reassemble the puzzle pieces to sort out the plot.

Director Peter Yates struggles with a lightweight script that relies too much on style at the expense of any character and dialogue sharpness. Sure, McQueen and Bisset look great, but they say very little of substance and are comprehensively drowned out by the roaring Mustang and the bustling streets of San Francisco.

Not having much character-driven drama to work with, Yates does the next best thing by keeping the camera work and framing interesting and highly kinetic. He delivers the rightfully highly-regarded car chase between McQueen's Mustang and the bad guys in a Dodge Charger. A total of 16 cylinders and more than 700 horsepower roar around - and often fly over - the insanely steep streets of San Francisco, burning rubber and smoking tires in a scene that set the standard for all future serious movie car chases.

And Yates ends the film by taking the action to San Francisco Airport for an elongated and almost dialogue-free climax, including Bullitt and his foe crossing active runways and mingling with giant jets getting ready for take-off.

But even by thriller movie standards, Bullitt has massive plot holes. Why do the assassins not finish-off Ross and his protection detail at the motel? Why do the assassins decide to run from Bullitt to instigate the car chase -- when they were the ones tailing him? How exactly does Bullitt uncover the destination of the phone calls that were made from a phone booth? Just by going to the same phone booth? At the climax, why does the prey give away his location by firing at a very distant Bullitt? And why is there a massive line-up and ticket-check to leave the airport? And can Bisset's character really be that clueless about the life of a police lieutenant? Does she not go to the movies?

Bullitt also suffers from the "unkonwn villain" syndrome, where the focus of the chase continuously shifts and finally lands on barely defined baddies. Since the movie provides very little reason to know or despise the enemy, a lot of the tension steadily seeps out over the final 30 minutes.

Ultimately, Bullitt is all about the visuals, but beneath the admittedly shiny surface, there is little substance.

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Movie Review: Murder On The Orient Express (1974)

With lavish production values, one of the greatest ensemble casts in movie history, an exotic yet confined setting, and a convoluted murder mystery deep enough to capture and captivate all the attention, Agatha Christie's Murder On The Orient Express is a classic, old-fashioned, and timeless whodunnit.

It's 1935, and five years after the high-profile kidnapping and murder of the young child Daisy Armstrong in Long Island, New York. The Orient Express heading west from Istanbul is unusually crowded. Detective Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney), on his way to London and a late addition to the passenger list, is soon getting to know his assorted traveling companions, who generally seem irritated that a detective is in their midst.

The rich and ruthless American traveler Ratchett (Richard Widmark) offers Poirot a job as a bodyguard, after confiding that his life is in danger.  Poirot turns him down, and soon enough Ratchett is dead, stabbed 12 times during the night, despite Poirot's presence in a nearby cabin. The train is stranded due to snow on a mountain pass in Yugoslavia, and Poirot has a limited time window to investigate the murder and identify the killer before the Yugoslav police arrive and apprehend everyone.

Poirot soon discovers that the victim Ratchett was the evil mastermind behind the Armstrong case. Poirot interrogates the passengers, finding plenty of revenge motives and opportunities, and a lot of lying going on. He needs to sort out the complex events during the night of the stabbing, uncover the killer, and determine whether the murder of a vicious murderer can ever be justifiable.

With a long list of suspects conjured up by Christie's imagination and played by the likes of Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Vanessa Redgrave, Sean Connery, Jacqueline Bisset, Michael York, Wendy Hiller, Anthony Perkins, and John Gielgud, director Sidney Lumet's greatest challenge is to quickly establish a persona for each, including a back-story, connection to the victim, and motive for the murder while allowing the stars to shine as they should in the limited screen time available for each. Thanks to a tight screenplay by Paul Dehn and performances that are only slightly exaggerated, Lumet succeeds brilliantly.

Finney, hidden behind layers of make-up, is a memorable Poirot, and by necessity he does push the role to extremes of animation to establish his authority over both the luxurious setting and the assembled stars.

Murder On The Orient Express is a mesmerizing journey, accompanied by a galaxy of stars and engineered by a master director.

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Movie Review: The Deep (1977)

There are two main objectives behind The Deep: the first is to showcase the dramatic advancements in underwater filming that were occurring in the second half of the 1970's. The second is to showcase Jacqueline Bisset in a variety of revealing poses.

Author Peter Benchley had enjoyed huge success with his 1974 debut book Jaws, which was turned into the most successful (at that time) movie ever made by a young Steven Spielberg in 1975. Benchley's next book was going to be a success no matter what, and he released The Deep in 1976. The book is a muddled, unconvincing sunken-treasure adventure, and Benchley co-wrote the script for this muddled, unconvincing movie adaptation released in 1977.

The story follows David Sanders (Nick Nolte) and Gail Berke (Bisset) two amateur divers vacationing in Bermuda where they stumble onto a lost shipwreck with some precious cargo. They seek the help of local shipwreck expert Romer Treece (Robert Shaw), and soon enough they are pursued by spooky local henchmen from Haiti led by Henri Cloche (Louis Gossett Jr.). And emerging into the sunlight in a seemingly drunken stupor is Adam Coffin (Eli Wallach), an easily manipulated shipwreck survivor.

It turns out that David and Gail have uncovered not one but two shipwrecks on top of each other, one carrying enormous amounts of morphine that Cloche wants to get his hands on, and the other carrying an even more precious treasure of ancient jewelry.

The underwater scenes consume more than half the film, and have little to no dialogue as David, Gail and Romer explore the wrecks and irritate a particularly ugly large eel. The underwater cinematography is impressive, and director Peter Yates is able to maintain both tension and comprehension with few spoken words.

The scenes above the water are mostly tiresome discussions as the trio try to research and understand the shipwrecks, their cargo and their history, occasionally interrupted by Cloche and his men seeking to do harm.

Bisset finds reasons to remove her wet T-shirt, remove her bikini top, unbutton her shirt to her navel, and wrap herself in a towel, but always turns her back discreetly to the camera when needed, as Yates and his star focus on the tried and true titillation school of film-making. Nolte plays the angry-young-man with the clever shadings of an angry young man, and Shaw appears unsure whether or not his role as the grizzled expert that everyone turns to for help is actually a reincarnation of Quint from Jaws.

John Barry, of James Bond music fame, and disco queen Donna Summer collaborated on the hypnotic, synth-driven main theme music for the film, appropriately titled Down Deep Inside (Theme From The Deep). It turned into a major chart hit and helped drive the success of the film.

Benchley's next book was The Island, published in 1979, about modern-day pirates, and its failure along with the hideous 1980 movie adaptation starring Michael Caine, officially ended his winning streak. The Deep provided some strong hints that it would turn out all wet.

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