Movie Review: Vigilante Force (1976)

Genre: Exploitation Action  

Director: George Armitage  

Starring: Kris Kristofferson, Jan-Michael Vincent, Victoria Principal, Bernadette Peters  
Running Time: 89 minutes  

Synopsis: The small town of Elk Hills, California is experiencing rowdy lawlessness due to an oil boom. At the request of local leaders, respected businessman Ben Arnold (Jan-Michael Vincent) recruits his brother Aaron (Kris Kristofferson), a Vietnam War veteran, to hurriedly join the police force and restore law and order. Aaron and his buddies are initially successful and the locals are pleased, but Aaron then reveals his dark side, turning on the town and unleashing a wave of extortion and violence. A showdown looms between the brothers.

What Works Well: Some of the explosions and stunts are not bad, and Bernadette Peters as an out-of-tune singer adds a lonely touch of victimized humanity.

What Does Not Work As Well: In better hands, this trashy story could have better explored the foxes-invited-to-save-the-henhouse Vietnam War metaphor. And with some investment in character, Aaron's war-damaged soul could have been given expressive space. Instead, director George Armitage resorts to mass brawls and cold-blooded shootings every three minutes, with none of the deaths causing even a momentary pause for shock, reflection, or grief. Sophomoric writing merges with wooden acting to create bottom-of-the-barrel drive-in entertainment focused on ogling Kris Kristofferson's shirtless physique.

Key Quote:

Ben (to Aaron): I'm the one that brought you here, and I'm the one that's gonna run you out.

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Movie Review: Cisco Pike (1971)

Genre: Drama  

Director: Bill L. Norton  

Starring: Kris Kristofferson, Karen Black, Gene Hackman  

Running Time: 95 minutes  

Synopsis: In Los Angeles, former musician Cisco Pike (Kris Kristofferson) is trying to leave drug dealing behind him to rebuild his music career, with the support of his girlfriend Sue (Karen Black). But corrupt cop Holland (Gene Hackman) pressures Cisco into selling $10,000 worth of weed in less than three days. Cisco has to tap into his underworld network to move the product, leaving Sue disappointed as he interacts with dealers, users, musicians, and assorted hangers-on.

What Works Well: In his directorial debut, Bill L. Norton delves into the seedy Venice Beach area and finds desperate characters chasing unlikely dreams. In this deglamorized and downbeat quest to seek a better future, a has-been like Cisco looks for someone - anyone - to listen to his latest music tape, a crooked cop builds a massive stash of marijuana as an auxiliary income source, and Cisco's pathetic ex-bandmate Jesse (a tragic Harry Dean Stanton) confronts the horrors of aging. Kristofferson (in a solid movie debut) provides a few excellent soundtrack songs.

What Does Not Work As Well: Most of the film consists of Cisco desperately crisscrossing town looking for buyers, as energy runs low, padding creeps in (particularly in episodes featuring actresses Viva and Joy Bang), and the premise runs out of ideas. Gene Hackman's antagonist disappears for long stretches, robbing the drama of a counterpoint.

Key Quote:
Cisco Pike (to Jesse): It ain't your goddamned body they're after, man, it's your soul!



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Movie Review: Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid (1973)

A languid pursuit western, Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid celebrates the end of the wild west through the eloquent story of former friends clashing from opposite sides of the law.

In 1909, ex-lawman Pat Garrett (James Coburn) is gunned down in an ambush. In his final moments he flashes back to his quest from years earlier to capture Billy The Kid (Kris Kristofferson).

Back in 1881, Garrett is elected Sheriff of Lincoln County and mandated by powerful cattlemen and business interests to bring his old friend William "Billy The Kid" Bonney to justice. Billy refuses to leave the territory and is soon captured by Garrett and sentenced to death by hanging. But he escapes by killing deputies Bell (Matt Clark) and Olinger (R.G. Armstrong), then meanders his way to Mexico.

Governor Lew Wallace (Jason Robards) and cattleman John Chisum (Barry Sullivan) apply pressure on Garrett to get the job done. He restarts the pursuit and recruits new deputy Alamosa Bill Kermit (Jack Elam). Garrett also seeks help from Sheriff Baker (Slim Pickens) and his wife (Katy Jurado) and is joined by lawman John Poe (John Beck). Meanwhile a mysterious knifeman known only as Alias (Bob Dylan) joins Billy's men, and a showdown at the gang's Fort Sumner hideout looms.

A troubled and chaotic production that suffered from Peckinpah's excessive drinking, under-funding and faulty equipment, Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid culminated in the studio butchering the released version. In 1988, Peckinpah's rough "Preview" version was released, and in 2005 a restored "Special Edition" (the subject of this review) was prepared under the supervision of editor Paul Seydor. The 2005 version salvages a beautiful mess out of the debacle.

The script by Rudy Wurlitzer is based on true events, but Peckinpah clashed with his writer and conjured up a more lyrical western centred on a friendship and rivalry echoing the classic theme of transformation from wilderness to civilization. And while the violence of the transitioning west is still bloody, Peckinpah avoids excess, sprinkling the action scenes in service of the narrative instead of using gore as a frequent shock device.

Ironically, it is the older Garrett who represents business interests and a future dominated by commerce ahead of individual spirit, while the much younger Billy carries the torch for the fearless and arrogant attitudes of the past. And given most of the film's component parts, it's remarkable that Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid gels as well as it does.

Events are intermittently explained or narrated in song by a warbling Bob Dylan, a device that somehow succeeds in the context of the film's dreamy construct. Dylan wrote Knocking On Heaven's Door for a poignant scene capturing the shock of meaningless death leaving life-long love behind. As evidence of the anarchic production, both the original release version and Peckinpah's own rough Preview left the song out, only for Seydor to rescue it in the Special Edition.

In addition to providing the soundtrack, Dylan wanders through the background of the film visibly and understandably unsure about the poorly defined role of his character Alias. Meanwhile, a perpetually smiling Kristofferson, aged 37, captures Billy's cockiness but otherwise struggles to convince as a 21 year old.

Peckinpah's pacing is sometimes erratic. A few scenes are stretched well beyond any added value, Garrett's smug interrogation of one of Billy's men in a canteena while Alias reads bean can labels a prime example. And the film is littered with numerous secondary characters, most of them contributing a single scene before disappearing.

Despite all the film's peculiarities, Peckinpah does get the overall ambiance right. With James Coburn delivering one of his most grizzled and world-weary performances, Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid oozes resignation. Neither Garrett nor Billy are in any hurry to end their chase, both aware the future will arrive soon enough, and once present glories are lost there is no getting them back.

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The Movies Of Kris Kristofferson

All movies starring Kris Kristofferson and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Cisco Pike (1971)

Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid (1973)

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)

Vigilante Force (1976)

A Star Is Born (1976)

Heaven's Gate (1980)

Payback (1999)

He's Just Not That Into You (2009)

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

Movie Review: Heaven's Gate (1980)

An epic and lyrical western, Heaven's Gate is nearly as bad as its catastrophic reputation.

Twenty years after graduating from Harvard, James Averill (Kris Kristofferson) is the Marshal of Johnson County, Wyoming. Poor European immigrants are arriving in large numbers to settle and farm the land, creating tensions with a cattlemen's Association led by Frank Canton (Sam Waterston). James' intellectual classmate from Harvard William Irvine (John Hurt) is part of Canton's entourage, but frequently drunk. In the town of Casper, a large number of men assemble, recruited as hired guns by the Association. A target list of 125 settlers is drawn up and a $50 bounty is offered on each head.

Nathan Champion (Christopher Walken) is one of the gunmen, but he tries to scare off the settlers rather than kill them. He also competes with James for the attention of Ella Watson (Isabelle Huppert), the local whore and James' lover. Local businessman John L. Bridges (Jeff Bridges) allies himself with the settlers. As Canton's men start to hunt down their targets, the immigrants have to find ways to fight back and the situation escalates towards an all-out war.

Written and directed by Michael Cimino and loosely based on the actual events of the Johnson County War, Heaven's Gate is legendary for all the wrong reasons. Four times over budget, one year late, beset by production problems including rampant animal cruelty, ridiculously long at 3 hours and 40 minutes, and ultimately a financial disaster that hastened the demise of studio United Artists, the film comprehensively ended the New Hollywood era, killing off the concept of celebrated directors having unchecked creative control.

Cimino, fresh off the unexpected success of The Deer Hunter, appeared intent on out-doing Francis Ford Coppola. He exhibited ultra-egotistical on-set behaviour and seemed to measure his achievements by length of film, ending the production at 1.3 million feet (220 hours) to exceed Coppola's Apocalypse Now. The Heaven's Gate music is also clearly derived from The Godfather theme.

All of which would be forgiven and excused if the final on-screen product was any good, but it's not. Heaven's Gate has perhaps 90 minutes of story and 130 minutes of insufferable bloat. Countless scenes contribute nothing to the narrative, and every scene, whether relevant or not, runs for many minutes longer than necessary. The Harvard graduation and waltz, the rollerblading dance, the endless scenes of agitated crowds, the cockfight and the epilogue are some of the more famous examples of the bilge suffocating the film.

To add to the misery, despite the mammoth length the film is fundamentally lacking in any character depth or development. Averill, Champion and Ella are the three main characters, and they remain plastic creations throughout, generating no emotion or empathy, stock passengers in their own story. Kristofferson, Walken and Huppert can all be fine actors, but they drown in nothingness where time and space stand still. Plenty of deathly slow scenes come and go with barely any dialogue, the characters part of the scenery or worse, swallowed by the armies of extras.

Filmed entirely on location and mostly in Montana, the film carries a sickly brown-yellow tinge throughout, taking away from the beautiful epic and rustic settings and the elaborate framing. The sound quality is frequently atrocious, with large stretches of dialogue inaudible and incomprehensible. The ill-defined immigrants speak and shout in their own language, sometimes for minutes on end, with no subtitles.

The final hour does pick up as Cimino finally bears down and the conflict erupts into the open, but redemption is out of reach. Heaven's Gate is an arduous ode to unchecked self-admiration.

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Movie Review: A Star Is Born (1976)

A romantic drama musical, A Star Is Born is primarily a Barbra Streisand concert with a bit of plot thrown in around the sides.

Rock star John Norman Howard (Kris Kristofferson) is rapidly burning out, late to his own concerts, addicted to booze and too jaded to care any more. One night he stumbles into a bar where lounge singer Esther Hoffman (Streisand) is performing, and an attraction develops. He subsequently pushes her onto the stage during a show, where her unrehearsed performance draws raves.

John and Esther get married, her career takes off while his fades away. Their marriage suffers from ups and downs, but his impetuous behaviour isn't conducive to a long-term happy union.

The third screen treatment of the story after the 1937 and 1954 versions, the 1976 film is by far the weakest. Although the decision to relocate the story from the world of film studios to the anarchic rock arena is a good one, the pacing, character development, and relationship dynamics are all poorly handled.

Directed by Frank Pierson and co-produced by Streisand, A Star Is Born gets bogged down early and often in prolonged scenes featuring Streisand belting out a succession of songs, and neither the drama nor the romance are provided an opportunity to gain traction. The cinematography and editing lack dynamism, and the film is surprisingly energy deprived. The love theme Evergreen became an international hit, and the film's soundtrack album was a massive seller, but none of that makes for a good movie.

Despite the bloated 140 minutes of running time, the narrative is delivered in plot-challenged shorthand. The few exchanges of intelligible dialogue contain contrived and painfully bad lines that fuel often ridiculous emotional vacillations. The supporting cast is non-existent (Gary Busey and Paul Mazursky fade in and mostly out of the background), and Streisand the actress never comes close to convincing as an undiscovered talent.

A montage sequence features artistic scenes of passionate romance, and Kristofferson is often the best thing on view, delivering a sinewy performance propelled by copious amounts of booze and filled with implied self-hate. But his character doesn't get the opportunity to complete even one song. Instead the screen is filled with Streisand for long periods in a display of unchecked egotism. At the climax, she gets about 10 minutes of uninterrupted close-up time encompassing her final performance and the end credits.

A Star Is Born unabashedly celebrates Streisand as a star chanteuse, but as a movie experience, it offers big hair and precious little else.

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Movie Review: Payback (1999)

A tongue-in-cheek neo-noir film with a throwback 1970s edge, Payback is a rollicking fun time, filled with sharp dialogue, a smooth anti-hero and jarring violence.

A career criminal known only as Porter (Mel Gibson) has been double crossed, shot and left for dead. With his wife Lynn (Deborah Kara Unger) and partner in crime Val Resnick (Gregg Henry), Porter had just stolen $140,000 from a Chinese gang. But Lynn and Val conspire to relieve Porter of his $70,000 share, with Lynn shooting Porter in the back for good measure, upset that he was having an affair with call girl Rosie (Maria Bello). Val uses most of the money to buy his way back into a powerful criminal organization known as The Outfit, run by Carter (William Devane) and Fairfax (an uncredited James Coburn).

Porter recovers and sets about plotting his revenge with violent methods, demanding the return of his $70,000. Lynn overdoses on heroin, and Porter tracks down Val through drug dealer Stegman (David Paymer). But his exploits attract a crowd, and soon the Chinese gang, including S+M dominatrix Pearl (Lucy Liu) are on his tail, as well as two crooked cops. The closer Porter gets to Val, the more he tangles with the leadership of The Outfit, all the way up to kingpin Bronson (Kris Kristofferson).

Porter, narrating: Crooked cops. Do they come in any other way? If I'd been just a little dumber, I could have joined the force myself.

Directed and co-written by Brian Helgeland, Payback is a gritty, aggressive thriller. With a bad-guy hero carrying a kick-ass, dead-already attitude and Mel Gibson at his absolute cool peak, the film oozes danger with extreme prejudice. The story understandably stretches Porter's capabilities beyond rationality, but otherwise the mix of sardonic humour, punchy action and unconstrained ballsiness among bad guys and worse guys is triumphant.

Carter: There's an old expression that's served me well: "Do not shit where you eat."

A big part of the film's appeal is the investment made in Porter as a character. He is humanized both in his sense of honour among thieves, and through his relationship with Rosie, two flawed sinners drifting sideways until they meet each other. The oily Val Resnick is also provided with plenty of latitude to come to life as the antithesis of Porter, a criminal without scruples just looking for his version of the good life.

Carter, to Resnick: Do you understand your value to the organization, Resnick?...You're a sadist. You lack compunction. That comes in handy.

The everything-including-the-kitchen-sink elements work surprisingly well. Lucy Liu has a blast as the dominatrix turned on by violence; her depraved arousal in bed next to Resnick as he is being threatened by Porter summarizes the film's unconstrained wickedness, culminating in Porter's classic let her work quip. The gun-toting Chinese gang, the crooked cops, and the ever mounting layers of sleaze up the ladder of The Outfit all add to Payback's enjoyable insanity. Veterans William Devane, James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson glide in with mounting levels of evil smarminess.

Pearl, seductively: I've got a few minutes.
Porter: So go boil an egg.

The film's colour palette is a mixture of bleached greys, blacks and browns, appropriate for an underworld rife with backstabbing. Payback goes into the sordid corners of criminality, and lands on a pile of misanthropic revelry.

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Movie Reviews: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)

A single-mom drama directed by Martin Scorsese, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore earned Ellen Burstyn a Best Actress Academy Award. The film is a compelling if uneven look at a determined woman tackling life below the poverty line.

In New Mexico, Alice (Burstyn) has to deal with her difficult husband Donald, a delivery driver. Their preteen son Tommy (Alfred Lutter) cannot stand Donald and shows him no respect. But as bad as things are, life gets worse when Donald dies in a car crash. Left with no source of income, Alice packs up Tommy and their meager belongings into the car and heads to Monterey, with a vague plan to relaunch a long abandoned singing career.

Forced to make money along the way they stop in Phoenix, where Alice finds work singing in a decrepit bar and gets involved with the seemingly charming Ben (Harvey Keitel). But he also turns out to be bad news. On to Tucson, where Alice accepts a demeaning job as a waitress at Mel's Diner. She gradually makes friends with fellow servers Flo (Diane Ladd), a sharp-tongued survivor, and Vera (Valerie Curtin), who is meek and clumsy. Meanwhile, the long suffering Tommy falls under the influence of tomboy and trouble-seeker Audrey (Jodie Foster). When Alice meets David (Kris Kristofferson), she has to decide whether she can ever again invest in a relationship with a man.

A relative oddity in Scorsese's portfolio, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore is a woman's perspective on America's oft-forgotten underbelly of poverty, where life is a daily struggle and the trade-offs often reside between domestic strife and starvation. The film mixes road trip drama with some comedy and plenty of humanity. Not all the scenes work, and there are clunky passages with vaguely unconvincing fluctuations in mood and emotions. But overall, this is an emotionally satisfying story fueled by genuine passion.

This is also a quintessential 1970s film, where every scene is given its due, the focus is on the reality of settings, movements and actions. When Alice pounds the sidewalk to find a job, Scorsese pounds the sidewalk with her, and every shady character she meets, every bar she enters, and every door that slams in her face is coloured in. With the Arizona sun bathing the unattractive locales a sickly yellow and orange, the result is a film that burns its way into the memory.

Far from Scorsese's typical world of gangsters and male camaraderie, Alice is underpinned by just the one genuine relationship: Alice and her son. Tommy is forced to grow up in a hurry, and his incessant and perceptive questions challenge Alice to explain her actions, and more poignantly, her feelings. And every decision that Alice makes has an impact on Tommy. When her choices are bad or she stretches herself too thin, it is Tommy who suffers. Audrey's confident audacity becomes Tommy's refuge, and a potential gateway to a world of trouble.

Burstyn initiated the project and brought it to up-and-comer Scorsese, and Alice became his first major studio production. With the success of The Exorcist having confirmed her status among the top echelon of actresses, Burstyn commands the film and funnels the various societal implications of the women's movement into her character. Alice is resourceful, determined and indeed indomitable. But in a society quick to take advantage of the seemingly weak, she is also vulnerable and often forced to decide between unappealing options to stave off loneliness or financial ruin.

At the unlikely destination of Mel's Diner Alice finally starts to find a semblance of the community she is desperately looking for. The crusty Flo, the sympathetic Mel himself, and the intriguing David are not necessarily easy to like. But with the passage of time Alice starts to form the meaningful bonds needed to evolve from individual to society. Alice may still not be sure where she is living, but she at last begins to understand what makes a home.

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