Movie Review: Assignment To Kill (1968)

Genre: Crime Investigation Thriller

Director: Sheldon Reynolds

Starring: Patrick O'Neal, Joan Hackett, John Gielgud, Herbert Lom

Running Time: 102 minutes

Synopsis: Private detective Richard Cutting (Patrick O'Neal) is hired by an insurance company to investigate a fraud case involving shipping tycoon Curt Valayan (John Gielgud). Cutting travels to Zurich in search of Walter Green (Peter van Eyck), who may hold crucial information about the case, and quickly tangles with Valayan's ruthless fixer Matt Wilson (Herbert Lom) and his murderous henchmen. Cutting also starts a relationship with Dominique Laurant (Joan Hackett), who may help him find Green.

What Works Well: The European cobblestones-and-trenchcoats aesthetics are a soothing throwback, and Joan Hackett's feisty presence - somewhere between naïveté and curious connivance - adds welcome animation. Patrick O'Neal is smooth-enough as the lethally cool Bond-wannabe type.

What Does Not Work As Well: A void occupies the space where the plot usually resides, director and writer Sheldon Reynolds all but abandoning the insurance fraud conspiracy and instead allowing good guy Cutting and bad guy Wilson to circle each other for 100 minutes. The action scenes are clunky, and the ending - a random assortment of layered lies - is an embarrassment.

Conclusion: The assignment is botched.

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Movie Review: Only When I Laugh (1981)

Genre: Dramedy

Director: Glenn Jordan

Starring: Marsha Mason, Kristy McNichol, Joan Hackett, James Coco

Running Time: 120 minutes

Synopsis: Divorced Broadway star Georgia Hines (Marsha Mason) completes a three month alcoholism rehabilitation program. As she mulls a stage comeback, her 17-year-old daughter Polly (Kristy McNichol) moves in. Also in Georgia's orbit are beauty-obsessed friend Toby (Joan Hackett), gay struggling actor Jimmy (James Coco), and ex-lover and writer David (Dave Dukes), whose latest play may relaunch Georgia's career.

What Works Well: Neil Simon adapts his play The Gingerbread Lady, and the screen treatment benefits from shared focus among several rounded characters with imperfect lives. Marsha Mason excels as a diva beset by insecurities, her travails most poignant when reflected upon a daughter transitioning into adulthood. While Georgia's alcoholism threatens to derail her life, Toby is a slave to vanity while Jimmy holds onto a dream well past the expiry date. Polly is the sponge absorbing disintegration and not immune to damaging shockwaves. Refreshingly, the characters are honestly conceited and the resolutions deservedly messy.

What Does Not Work As Well: This being Neil Simon, the dialogue is frequently weighed down by eyeroll-inducing literariness, and the two hour running time is unnecessarily excessive. The burdens carried by the occupants of Broadway's ecosystem are very much first world problems.

Conclusion: A character-rich warts-and-all peek behind the stage curtain. 



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Movie Review: The Last Of Sheila (1973)

A mystery thriller, The Last Of Sheila is clumsily mounted and poorly executed.

In Hollywood, gossip columnist Sheila is killed in an unsolved hit-and-run. A year later, her film producer husband Clinton (James Coburn) invites six members of the film world, all potential suspects in Sheila's death, to spend a week on his yacht in the Mediterranean.

The invitees are fading film director Philip (James Mason), starlet Alice (Raquel Welch) and her husband/manger Anthony (Ian McShane), talent agent Christine (Dyan Cannon), struggling writer Tom (Richard Benjamin) and his wife Lee (Joan Hackett).

Clinton introduces them to a mystery game they will play during the week, with each assigned a secret card denoting a transgression, with one to be revealed every night through a treasure hunt style contest at successive ports of call. Mishaps start to beset the yacht, and suspicions emerge that Clinton may have a sinister motive related to Sheila's death.

Directed by Herbert Ross, The Last Of Sheila is co-written by actor Anthony Perkins and musician Stephen Sondheim. The lack of writing discipline is evident in a muddled premise, lack of character development, a midway jarring change in tone, and a tired, highly illogical resolution featuring dozens of late-arriving factoids introduced in inept flashbacks. This was a troubled production beset by on-set tensions betrayed by distracted and incohesive cast performances.

The mystery, once revealed, is far beyond plausible, The Last Of Sheila falling into a trap of trying to justify a murder solely for the pleasure of the script. Along the way, the first half of the film rushes towards an ill-defined game, but only plays two out of six find-the-sinner rounds before abandoning the concept altogether in favour of a stage-bound Agatha Christie whodunnit, absent a clever detective.

The morsels of enjoyment are few and far between, and include Mason digging deep to try and salvage the outcome late in the proceedings, with the grounded Joan Hackett the only other cast member appearing to care. A clever clue appears early in the film and offers a late blip of a pulse upon re-emerging towards the otherwise limp finale.

The Last Of Sheila carries some potential, but is fumbled into the murky Mediterranean waters.

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