Movie Review: The Salamander (1981)

Genre: Political Thriller  
Director: Peter Zinner  
Starring: Franco Nero, Anthony Quinn, Martin Balsam, Eli Wallach, Christopher Lee, Sybil Danning, Claudia Cardinale  
Running Time: 96 minutes  

Synopsis: In Italy, a military general is murdered, triggering concerns about a potential Fascist takeover plot. Colonel Dante Matucci (Franco Nero) of the internal security services investigates with the help of his mentor Captain Steffanelli (Martin Balsam). The murdered general's mistress Lili Anders (Sybil Danning) is revealed to be a spy for leftist sympathizers, and Dante's further sleuthing leads him to industrialist Bruno Manzini (Anthony Quinn), the scheming General Leporello (Eli Wallach), Director of Counterintelligence Prince Baldasar (Christopher Lee), and a torture specialist known as The Surgeon. Eventually, Dante's life is threatened as he gets close to uncovering a dangerous conspiracy. 

What Works Well: This Lew Grade production adapts the Morris West book with no shortage of ambition and an admirable deep dive into political machinations, Italian style. The entirely-on-location cinematography captures sun-drenched landmarks and lavish interiors without succumbing to travelogue stereotypes. Jerry Goldsmith's music score adds further gloss, but the main attraction is a dream international cast, none of them stretching but all of them competent. 

What Does Not Work As Well: Despite the efficient running time, the pace is plodding, most scenes consisting of stiff individual interactions between Matucci and a lineup of shady suspects. A few bursts of action attempt to punctuate proceedings, but these are more clumsy than effective. Few of the plot details make any sense, with the antagonists suspiciously passive as the investigation unfolds. In a world populated by the villains on display here, Captain Matucci would have disappeared in short order.

Key Quote:

Matucci: Do something Italian, Lili. Change sides.

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Movie Review: Death Wish 3 (1985)

Genre: Vigilante Action  

Director: Michael Winner  

Starring: Charles Bronson, Deborah Raffin, Ed Lauter, Martin Balsam  

Running Time: 90 minutes  

Synopsis: Notorious vigilante Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) returns to New York City to visit a friend, only to find him near death after an assault by violent goons. Police Inspector Richard Shriker (Ed Lauter) coerces Kersey into cleaning up the derelict neighbourhood, where a gang led by Fraker (Gavan O'Herlihy) is terrorizing the remaining residents, including war veteran Bennett (Martin Balsam). Kersey gets to work confronting and killing villains and muggers, but taking down Fraker's gang will require a firepower upgrade.

What Works Well: The second sequel ditches any sense of cerebral internal conflict within Paul Kersey and adopts a less serious, high body count attitude packed with quotable quips. With Stallone and Schwarzenegger upping weaponry expectations, Kersey graduates to machine guns and rocket launchers, and the final 20 minutes transform a plastic set (London subbing for New York) into an explosives-filled war zone. Ed Lauter and Martin Balsam add gloss to the supporting cast, and Gavan O'Herlihy drips venom as the chief bad guy.

What Does Not Work As Well: Now in his mid-60s and showing it, Bronson is too old for this role, and the 32 year age difference with co-star and token love interest Deborah Raffin (as a public defender) just makes things worse. The ridiculous plot joins forces with hapless editing and uninspired directing to barely qualify for B-movie status, and the unrelenting levels of violence and brutality achieve self-defeating numbness.

Key Quote:

Kersey (to Shriker): It's like killing roaches - you have to kill 'em all. Otherwise, what's the use?

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Movie Review: The Carpetbaggers (1964)

A business-and-romance drama, The Carpetbaggers is fueled by a tortuously obsessed personality.

In the 1920s, Jonas Cord Jr. (George Peppard) inherits his father's chemical business, and proceeds to build an audacious empire centred on the burgeoning airline and film industries. His long-term associates include ex-cowboy Nevada Smith (Alan Ladd), who raised Jonas from a young age, level-headed lawyer McAllister (Lew Ayres), and airplane pilot Buzz Dalton (Ralph Taeger).

A driven workaholic, Jonas also has a tumultuous lustful relationship with his father's young widow Rina Marlowe (Carroll Baker), and eventually turns her into a movie star. He marries - then ignores - Monica Winthrop (Elizabeth Ashley), before courting starlet Jennie Denton (Martha Hyer). Along the way Jonas tangles with sleazy agent Dan Pierce (Bob Cummings) and studio boss Bernard Norman (Martin Balsam). 

Inspired by Howard Hughes, The Carpetbaggers adapts Harold Robbins' novel into an effective cinematic experience. John Michael Hayes wrangles a cohesive but still epic 150 minute screenplay out of the book, and Edward Dmytryk hustles the sprawling narrative along, never dawdling or pausing to contemplate. The outcome is a sustained rhythm mixing business compulsion with warped romance, both propelled by voracious character traits.

The film tackles business issues head-on, and presents Jonas as never likeable but nevertheless fascinating, a demanding cut-throat overachiever and impossible boss, but also a willing and constant learner. The emotional underpinnings for his behaviour are only hinted at, until the suitably bombastic final act revelations. George Peppard fits the role well, his stone cold expressions capturing an antipathy only satisfied when exerting control and achieving domination, consequences be damned.

Dmytryk infuses the aesthetics with the gaudy look of greed and lust, and most of the romantic scenes are dripping with undertones of conquest and egomaniacal seduction. With a lot of ground to cover, the editing demonstrates a preference for bold brevity bordering on choppiness, powered by Elmer Bernstein's brass-and-drums dominated music.

The supporting cast is impressive, from the friendly stoicism of Lew Ayres to the scheming of Martin Balsam and Bob Cummings. Carroll Baker (manipulative), Elizabeth Ashley (hopeful), and Martha Hyer (opportunistic) create a triangle of naturally flawed women grappling with Jonas' troubled psyche. Most notable is Alan Ladd in his final screen role, providing the one robust anchor in a stormy life.

Embracing boardroom and bedroom lubriciousness, The Carpetbaggers crackles with connivance.



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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: Seven Days In May (1964)

A Cold War political thriller, Seven Days In May uses a tense military takeover scenario in the United States as an avenue to explore themes of democracy, loyalty and nationalism in the shadow of a global conflict.

It's the early 1970s, and U.S. President Jordan Lyman (Fredric March) is facing severe criticism and protests for pushing ahead with a nuclear disarmament deal with the Soviet Union. He believes the agreement to be the only pathway to peace, but the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force General James Mattoon Scott (Burt Lancaster) believes the President is severely undermining national security.

Scott's right-hand man Colonel "Jiggs" Casey (Kirk Douglas) picks up cryptic clues suggesting Scott is planning a coup d'etat within a few days, using a covert military unit funded without appropriate authority and assembled and trained at a secret base near El Paso, Texas.

Jiggs takes his evidence to Lyman, who believes enough to investigate. He dispatches his chief aid Paul Girard (Martin Balsam) to interrogate a Navy commander stationed in the Mediterranean, trusted Senator Ray Clark (Edmond O'Brien) heads to El Paso, and Jiggs approaches Scott's former mistress Eleanor Holbrook (Ava Gardner) to dig up potentially useful dirt. But with the clock ticking, finding hard evidence against the plotters will prove a challenge.

With the Cold War at its peak after the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, Seven Days In May joined Dr. Strangelove and Fail Safe in a trio of 1964 films exploring various what-ifs of the conflict. Based on a novel by Charles W. Bailey II and Fletcher Knebel with a script by none other than Rod Serling, Seven Days In May delves into the perils of harbouring trust in a peace process, and at least as a starting point comes closest to predicting the actual course of negotiations eventually pursued by the United States and the Soviet Union.

The film uses the Cold War as background stage set. The focus is on the erosion of trust in a President's actions at the highest levels, and the potential for a cabal of generals and politicians to hide in plain sight while plotting a governmental takeover. Serling places intrigue and evidence gathering at the forefront of the story, Seven Days In May not featuring a single act of serious violence despite the threat of massive military and political upheaval. Director John Frankenheimer luxuriates in choreographing deep focus black and white scenes, turning the nation's most secretive boardrooms and offices into cerebral battlegrounds.

Along with star Kirk Douglas, Frankenheimer was instrumental in pulling the project together, and he assembled a dream cast, adding Lancaster, March, Gardner, O'Brien and Balsam, all in good form and tackling grim roles with requisite seriousness. And the film passes the baton around the lead roles at regular intervals, Douglas, Gardner and then March taking turns in the spotlight, with Lancaster a menacing presence throughout.

By the end March rolls back the years and emerges as a dominant presence, his scenes opposite Douglas (revealing the conspiracy threads) and Lancaster (a tense confrontational showdown) both mesmeric. Serling's script may be faulted for underplaying the President's hand and authority as the climax approaches, but also allows for the epic interpersonal clashes to play out.

As the race against time to unmask the conspiracy hurtles towards the designated hour of action, the film grabs opportunities to debate the merits of pursuing peace. General Scott cannot fathom how a powerful ideological foe can ever be trusted to disarm and has the public on his side, while Lyman, with sinking approval ratings, is convinced negotiating a treaty from a position of strength is the only path to a non-ruinous future. It's an eternal warmongers versus peacemakers polemic, and sometimes nothing less than the future of a powerful nation hangs in the balance.

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Movie Review: Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)

A straightforward, fact-based dramatization of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Tora! Tora! Tora! does its job well. But the absence of character depth and individual drama reduces the film to the level of an educational documentary, a valuable piece of history but less than compelling as a cinematic experience.

It's 1941, and Japan is acting on expansionist ambitions in Asia while negotiating with the United States to avert hostilities. The Japanese Navy commanders are not aligned with their warmongering Army counterparts, and within the Navy ranks there are disagreements regarding the role of air power relative to traditional battleships. Admiral Yamamoto (Sō Yamamura) concludes that if a conflict with the United States is inevitable, a preemptive first strike on the US Navy Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor is essential for Japan to stand any chance of success. Popular commander and ace pilot Mitsuo Fuchida (Takahiro Tamura) is tasked with leading the attack.

Meanwhile, the US Navy command and the politicians in Washington are nervously tracking negotiations and reading intercepted Japanese messages. Admiral Kimmel (Martin Balsam) is convinced that an attack is forthcoming, but he finds it difficult to convince others, while his commanders, including Lieutenant Short (Jason Robards) are caught in a cycle of indecisive double talk and botched communications. Blunders and missteps reduce Pearl Harbor's effective state of readiness despite the presence of radar technology and increasingly clear intelligence. As the Japanese preparations and training for the mission continue, the Americans fail to connect the dots and are caught complete unaware as the attack starts.

Co-directed by Richard Fleischer, Toshio Masuda and Kinji Fukasaku, Tora! Tora! Tora! offers a balanced, both-sides-of-the-conflict view leading up to the day of the attack. The final 45 minutes are then purely dedicated to recreating the attack itself. With the Japanese language used in all the scenes involving the Japanese side, and almost every scene capturing a historically accurate meeting or event, the film is a faithful look back at a seminal moment in World War Two.

Two themes emerge during the lead up to the attack. The first is conflict and uncertainty among Japan's military leadership. The Navy and the Army are not on the same page, with the Navy commanders portrayed as more pragmatic. Conflict also resides within the Navy ranks, the shift away from emphasizing battleship superiority to appreciating what aircraft can offer proving difficult. Yamamoto is portrayed as a logical and realistic strategist: knocking the American carriers out at Pearl was the centrepiece of his plan. While the attack was wildly successful, Yamamoto realized that with the carriers out of port, the prized objective was missed.

The second theme is the series of early warnings not heeded by the United States. From early in November until December 7th itself, intelligence intercepts suggested that an attack was imminent, yet a series of fumbles and a general sense of indecisiveness and hand wringing prevented US politicians and the Navy brass from drawing the correct conclusions and taking the threat seriously. The continued lurching in and out of half-hearted states of alert blunted awareness at Pearl Harbor. Tora! Tora! Tora! was the agreed code for the Japanese pilots in the first wave to report a state of complete surprise, and that was what they achieved.

Where Tora! Tora! Tora! suffers as a movie is in abject soullessness. Particularly in the American scenes, the actors rigidly go through the motions, reciting earnest lines with extreme cardboardiness. The decision to not cast any stars to allow the story to dominate backfires: the lack of star power in this instance also means an absence of charisma, empathy and depth, and the film quickly wears the cloak of a stiff documentary project. The Japanese scenes are a bit better, with Yamamura the one actor afforded the opportunity to give his character Yamamoto some introspective layers.

When the attack is finally unleashed, the machines take over completely. There is little dialogue as the harrowing and deadly efficient assault is recreated with plenty of attention to detail. The small Japanese Zeros swarm Pearl Harbor, their torpedoes and bombs wreaking havoc on the US Pacific fleet, and the film drives home both the astonishing success and outright horror of the day that will live in infamy. Tora! Tora! Tora! may be dry as dust, but it's also an admirable portrayal of an extraordinary event.

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Movie Review: Cape Fear (1962)

A psychological family-in-distress thriller, Cape Fear builds momentum through the sheer menace of what may happen. Robert Mitchum's domineering performance as criminal Max Cady towers over the film.

Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck) is a respected lawyer in a small town, where he lives with his wife Peggy (Polly Bergen) and young daughter Nancy (Lori Martin). Sam is suddenly confronted by Max Cady (Mitchum), a criminal released after serving eight years in prison for sexual assault. Sam's testimony was instrumental in convicting Max, and now the felon seems intent on extracting revenge.

Except that Max does nothing to break the law, satisfying himself with simply intimidating Sam, Peggy and Nancy with his sheer presence. Feeling threatened, Sam turns to his friend police chief Mark Dutton (Martin Balsam) and then private detective Charlie Sievers (Telly Savalas) to try and find a reason to either run Max out of town or arrest him. But Max is one step ahead, and he hires lawyer Dave Grafton (Jack Kruschen) to defend his rights. With Sam growing more concerned for the welfare of his family, he decides to stash Peggy and Nancy at a remote Cape Fear houseboat, but all will not go according to plan.

Directed by J. Lee Thompson, Cape Fear is a tight, exquisitely paced film, with a superb Bernard Herrmann score adding to the building sense of dread. The eternal conflict between good and bad is crystallized into the threat posed by one man against a wholesome family, and the James R. Webb script quickly etches out uncomfortable truths: the law can only go so far, and resisting evil intentions can easily drive good men like Sam Bowden into previously unthinkable actions.

The film draws its power from Max Cady's stubbornly patient ability to actually do nothing except hover around Sam and his family, breaking no laws. Max instead takes out his demented sexual aggression on call girl Diane Taylor (Barrie Chase), and does so with such ferocity that he chases her out of town rather than turn her into a witness. Instead it is Sam who starts harbouring thoughts of criminality to put an end to the perceived threat, and suddenly the potential victim turns into a budding aggressor, moving both men closer together into a grey zone of emotional turmoil.

To adhere to the sensibilities of the era Cape Fear avoid mentioning rape and paedophilia, but leaves no room for doubt. Cady is a danger to women, particularly young Nancy. Sam's rising levels of paranoia stem not out of a sense of personal danger, but his heightened awareness that he is helpless to protect his wife and daughter. Cady finds opportunities to ogle Nancy in a racy outfit at the bowling alley and then in a bathing suit; by merely walking on the sidewalk he induces a terrorizing ordeal for the young girl in the bowels of her school. Rarely has a film created such horror out of mere potentiality.

Robert Mitchum delivers one of his career best performances, fully occupying the twisted and intimidating personality of Max Cady. Thompson knows exactly what to do with Mitchum: he just let's him be, such that scenes of Cady sitting and walking near enough to the Bowdens create impeccable tension, the ever present Panama hat a symbol of a laidback approach to violence.

With a memorable psychopath leaving an indelible impression on an idyllic small town landscape, Cape Fear is a magnificently ominous thriller.

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Movie Review: St. Elmo's Fire (1985)

A post-graduation coming-of-age drama and one of the essential Brat Pack movies, St. Elmo's Fire is crowded with stereotypes but nevertheless captures the angst of transitioning from the campus to the real world.

Seven friends in their early twenties are facing life soon after graduating from Georgetown University. Alec (Judd Nelson) and Leslie (Ally Sheedy) are living together, and while he is working as a political aid and ready to get married, she wants to wait. Kevin (Andrew McCarthy) is an aspiring writer and frequently hangs out with Alec and Leslie. Kevin's roommate is Kirby (Emilio Estevez), who has ambitions to study law but currently works as a waiter at St. Elmo's Bar, the group's favourite hang-out.

Billy (Rob Lowe) is the bad boy, a saxophone player with no career path, already estranged from his wife and infant child. Nevertheless, Wendy (Mare Winningham), a social worker, is deeply in love with him. Finally, Jules (Demi Moore) is a party girl and already sucked into a materialistic life she can't afford.

Alec can't help but cheat on Leslie as he waits for her to agree to get married, while Kevin harbours a secret crush on another member of the group. Kirby openly lusts after Dale (Andie MacDowell), a doctor who graduated a few years earlier, and starts stalking her. Billy and Wendy have a falling out, and she comes under pressure from her father (Martin Balsam) to marry a boring man and get into her family's greeting card franchise business. Jules seeks a short-cut to financial stability by starting an affair with her married boss. As the seven struggle to deal with the responsibilities of adulthood, their friendships are stretched to the breaking point.

The seven characters of St. Elmo's Fire are undoubtedly self-centred, over-dramatic, and generally quite irritating. Not one of them appears to have charted a logical emotional or career path, and their behaviour is more suitable to snotty high schoolers than university graduates. Allowing for the film's tilt towards the dysfunctionally exaggerated, St. Elmo's Fire does deliver some succulent drama. There is enough romance, lust, and irresponsibility going on to fill a few seasons' worth of guilty pleasure television, and director Joel Schumacher packages his movie with glossy wrapping paper and the nostalgia of early adulthood, when every little independent decision seemed like a monumental moment.

The script, by Schumacher and Carl Kurlander, creates characters that are vivid and memorable rather than unique. Each of the seven represents a broad societal pie slice, and there is no holding back on the amount of filling. Billy's rebel without a cause is all long haired, ear-ringed, unfocused imprudence, Wendy's goody two-shoes dresses like the Mayflower pilgrims, and Jules' slutty material girl lives life according to a Madonna soundtrack. Kirby's infatuation with Dale would qualify as a crime outside a movie script, but here is played for laughs, Kevin's dreamy-eyed long-haired aspiring writer drips idealistic romanticism, and Alec's out of control libido would condemn him as a sex addict. Leslie just barely qualifies as closest to rational, but even she quickly hops into a bed with a new lover at the first hint of a fight with Alec.

With the subtleties being pummeled, there is no need for textured acting, and no one ever accused the Brat Packers of excellence in the performing arts. Fulfilling the function of pretty faces representing their generation's excesses rather than intense dramatists, the seven actors dive into their strictly defined roles and embody them energetically, without ever moving beyond the obvious. Nelson, Lowe and Moore get to stretch the most, but even they are confined to stock displays of anger generated by hormones adjusting from the campus cocoon to the cold real world. Estevez, as a little boy lost in a horrible role, suffers the most.

The theme song St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion) is quite outstanding. Written by David Foster and performed by John Parr, it is overused throughout the film, but does capture the energetic anguish of responsibility. In St. Elmo's Fire growing up is hard to do, but at least it looks and sounds good.

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Movie Review: Cape Fear (1991)

A tense journey into unyielding terror, Cape Fear is an exceptional drama. Martin Scorsese creates an epic nightmare as one family's life is ravaged by an ex-convict hell bent on revenge.

Max Cady (Robert De Niro) is released from prison after serving 14 years for viciously raping a teenager. He immediately goes to the quaint town of New Essex, North Carolina, where lawyer Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte) lives with his wife Leigh (Jessica Lange) and 15 year old daughter Danielle (Juliette Lewis). Sam was the Georgia public defendant tasked with representing Max. Convinced that Max was guilty, Sam buried an investigative report that could have helped to acquit his client. In prison, Max not only worked on achieving supreme physical fitness, but also educated himself and uncovered Sam's unethical behaviour. He now wants revenge for the lost years of his life.

Sam's marriage to Leigh is already in trouble, with Sam's eyes wandering towards court clerk Lori (Illeana Douglas), while Danielle is in rebellion against her parents. But Sam's troubles multiply when Max starts to stalk the family's every move. Leigh's dog dies suspiciously, and Lori is brutally raped by Max, but refuses to testify for fear that her relationship with Sam may be revealed. Max becomes more brazen, arranging to meet Danielle alone, showering her with flattery and attempting to turn her against her parents. Sam receives no help from the police, and in desperation turns to private investigator Claude Kersek (Joe Don Baker) for help. Kersek arranges for Max to receive a back alley beating, but the attempt at thuggery fails. Sam finds his house under siege, his family threatened, and no way to turn back a man obsessed with his own twisted brand of justice.

A remake of the 1962 film starring Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck, Scorsese infuses his version with psycho-sexual and religious overtones that amplify the creepiness factor. Cady is not only evil and physically indestructible, he is a sexual predator on the hunt for new young victims, with Danielle his ideal target. He is also a philosopher fuelled by deviant religious fervour gained from devouring the Bible while in prison. Scorsese turns Cady into a heinous force of nature rather than a man, De Niro responding with wiry performance filled with barely restrained intensity.

Cape Fear builds tension surely and steadily. The film offers no relief, no humour, and no respite. With every scene, Scorsese nudges Sam Bowden's life closer towards the precipice, Cady's presence nibbling away at any security and comfort not already damaged by the simmering resentment between Sam and Leigh. By the time Sam packs up his family and starts the long drive to Cape Fear, fear is ironically the only thing holding Sam, Leigh and Danielle together.

The film is filled with memorable moments, including the dark alley fight with Cady taking on three goons hired by Kersek to solve Sam's problem, the game of stealth that ends with sheer bloody horror as Kersek attempts to lay a trap for Cady at Sam's house, and Cady's unique method of transportation to Cape Fear.

But the film's most hypnotizing scene is the encounter between Max and Danielle at the empty theatre, a meeting of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf in man's clothing. It's a long scene, filmed by Scorsese with acute patience, as Max psychologically wraps Danielle around his figurative finger by preying on her burgeoning independence, and then literally uses his finger to dominate her by triggering her latent sexuality. It's a terrifying, asymmetrical confrontation, a demonstration of how much damage Max can deliver without even resorting to violence. Both De Niro and Lewis received deserved Academy Award acting nominations.

While Nick Nolte's Sam is more of a passive victim, Jessica Lange gives Leigh a full role in the mounting horror. Lange makes the most of the unresolved issues of betrayal harboured by Leigh towards Sam, and shines when it's time to defend her daughter at all costs, the only time that any character comes close to penetrating Cady's formidable psychological defences. Elsewhere in the cast, small roles for Peck, Mitchum and Martin Balsam provide a strong linkage back to the 1962 original.

With the blunders of the past re-emerging to haunt an imperfect present, Cape Fear is a classy experience in relentless horror.

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Movie Review: The Stone Killer (1973)

A police versus mafia action thriller, The Stone Killer mashes a Dirty Harry derivative attitude with discarded extras from The Godfather and comes up with a messy little film.

New York police detective Lou Torrey (Charles Bronson) uses violent methods to stop criminals. His superiors finally get tired of the bloodshed, and terminate his employment. He accepts a new position in Los Angeles. Some mafia-related bodies start to pile up, while some ex-military types start to create some mayhem. Torrey's investigation takes him back to New York as he suspects that a major inter-family mobster confrontation is about to erupt, but his superiors are unimpressed.

Mafioso Al Vescari (Martin Balsam) is indeed planning a major cull of his rivals, in revenge for mass killings that took place all the way back in 1931. Vescari is planning to use Vietnam veterans to carry out the assassinations, and sets up a desert camp to train and equip the hit teams. After shaking down various low-lifes, Torrey finally locks in on the plot and sets out to disrupt it, but Vescari will not be easily discouraged.

One of six collaborations between Bronson and director Michael Winner, The Stone Killer carries all the typical fingerprints of a Dino De Laurentiis "presentation": ideas ripped off from other recently successful sources, lower-level talent, and cheap production values. The attempts to mimic Dirty Harry are just too obvious, and the under-developed mafia angle is reduced to old mobsters walking through a cemetery commiserating about long-lost colleagues, and other old mobsters being mowed down in a hail of bullets.

The details of the John Gardner script, based on a Gerald Wilson book, are pretty much incomprehensible. Most of the movie has Torrey reacting to, chasing down, or shaking up minor criminal characters intent on killing each other. Somehow from the growing clump of dead bodies Torrey concludes that an army of veterans is being trained in the desert and that many mafiosi are about to die.

None of it really makes sense or actually matters. The Stone Killer methodically builds up to a couple of everyone shooting at everyone climaxes, the first in the desert training compound and the second in a parkade, with police cars always piling into the action sirens wailing. Here, with no need for acting or plot, at last Winner builds up a head of steam and delivers some good mindless action. Bronson moves smoothly through these scenes of carnage, with his relatively small gun somewhat incongruous amidst all the machine gunnery, but he never misses with any of his shots, so at least he has that advantage.

Martin Balsam's role is small and cryptic, while the rest of the cast is filled with television-level luminaries such as Norman Fell, John Ritter and Paul Koslo.

Filmed with little style and even less wit, The Stone Killer fires mostly blanks.

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Movie Review: 12 Angry Men (1957)

One of the most compelling legal dramas to have graced the screen, 12 Angry Men is a dazzling display of bravado acting and intellectual directing. Taking place almost entirely in a single room, the film is a feast of intelligent discourse and a mesmerizing study of interaction among strangers given the responsibility of life and death.

At the end of a murder trial in New York City, 12 jurors, all men, retire to reach a verdict. The defendant is an 18 year old scrawny youth from the wrong side of town, accused of stabbing his father to death. Most of the evidence seems to point to his guilt, and several witnesses testified to having seen or heard the boy commit the murder. A guilty verdict carries an automatic death sentence.

In the cramped and hot jury room, the foreman Juror 1 (Martin Balsam) tries to organize the jury, and most of the jurors appear eager to quickly confirm a guilty verdict and get on with their lives. But Juror 8 (Henry Fonda) is the sole hold out. He believes the defence lawyer was poor, leaving many questions unanswered, and he demands the jury members fulfil their duty by delving into the various aspects of the case in more detail to examine whether or not there is reasonable doubt.

The delay in reaching a unanimous verdict infuriates several of the men: Juror 7 (Jack Warden) is a sports fan and anxious to attend the evening's baseball game. Juror 3 (Lee J. Cobb) is a short-tempered loud-mouth, on bad terms with his son, and he quickly explodes when anyone disagrees with him. Juror 12 (Robert Webber) is an often distracted marketing executive more interested in talking business than focusing on the discussion at hand. And Juror 10 (Ed Begley) is another overbearing bigot. As the suffocating afternoon turns to a rain-drenched evening, the men talk, argue, and deliberate. Gradually, and painfully, some opinions begin to change.

Making his directorial debut, Sidney Lumet immediately makes an impression. 12 Angry Men has one set, and all of the film's dynamism is derived from Lumet's fluid work. His cameras stalk the jurors, rotate around them, take their point of view, or move up close and in their face, in an impressive display of drawing energy from the heat of conversation.

The crisp black and white photography, courtesy of Boris Kaufman, enhances a film that is all about distinguishing black from white, and exploring the grey areas in-between. Most of the men remove their jackets to reveal white shirts and black ties, standing out against the nondescript grey walls of the jury room.

As a study of diverse personalities, 12 Angry Men is a masterpiece. The men represent a mosaic of the white men who made up American society of the day, from professionals to ordinary Joes, from the middle-aged to the elderly, from bigots to immigrants, and from the relatively rich to the relatively poor. The film becomes an examination of the jury's motivation as much as it is a legal drama, the true colours of each juror sequentially emerging as the group delves into the difficult evidence of the case.

Written by Reginald Rose, who also co-produced with Fonda, 12 Angry Men is a study in the power of quiet and persistent leadership. Juror 8 deploys remarkable strength to calmly stick to his convictions in the face of eleven other men holding a contrary opinion, and then extraordinary stamina to embark on a quest to engage the other men in a detailed facts-based debate.

The jurors who change their opinions early to align with Juror 8 demonstrate courage by admitting they may have initially been too hasty in jumping to a guilty verdict. And in strong displays of fortitude and fairness, several jurors jump to the defence of colleagues, regardless of differences of opinion, when the obnoxious Jurors 3 and 10 engage in bullying and insulting behaviour.

The performances from the stalwart cast are uniformly excellent, with Fonda and Cobb leading the way. Fonda gives Juror 8 self-belief combined with powers of conviction, his persona as the man who knows right from wrong perfectly suited to the role. He takes on the challenge of sparring with eleven other well-meaning but possibly misguided men with patience, vigour and just that hint of an edge when needed.

Cobb plays the perfect nemesis, Juror 3 being everything that Juror 8 is not. Calm only on the surface, Cobb masters Juror 3's oscillation between rational and eruptive, revealing a man tortured by repressed inner demons, and the toughest holdout on the path to group reconciliation.

Of the others, Jack Warden makes a strong statement with a nonchalant attitude. For Juror 7 the world revolves around sports, and Warden is fascinatingly slippery as a man who struggles to pretend that he has principles, but who genuinely could not care less what the verdict is as long as he gets to the ballpark on time.

As the mood in the room evolves, the light, the heat and the weather also change. Channeled in the right direction, 12 Angry Men can be a transformational force.

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Movie Review: The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

A tense New York thriller, The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three is an unyielding tension-packed hostage drama accentuated by a veteran cast.

Four densely disguised and heavily armed men seize control of a New York subway car with seventeen passengers on board. Using only pseudonyms to address each other, the leader is ex-mercenary Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw), and the rest of the gang consists of former New York transit employee Mr. Green (Martin Balsam), the trigger happy Mr. Grey (Hector Elizondo), and Mr. Brown (Earl Hindman). With the hostage train held between stations, the New York subway system grinds to a halt.

Over the train's radio system, Mr. Blue opens negotiations with Lieutenant. Zachary Garber (Walter Matthau) of the transit police, demanding one million dollars within an hour, otherwise a hostage will be killed every minute. Garber has to convince the unpopular Mayor (Lee Wallace) and his assistant (Tony Roberts) to pay-up, the money has to be collected and counted, and then sped through New York to the 28th Street station, the closest entrance to where the hostage train is stopped. With time running out, Mr. Blue starts to lose patience and the subway tunnels fill-up with police officers and snipers.

Not every aspect of The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three works well. The characters are given either rudimentary backstories or none at all, a missed opportunity for Mr. Blue, Mr. Green and Garber. The Mayor of New York is laboriously introduced then unceremoniously dumped. And the ending in particular is a bit ragged, the hijackers suddenly becoming error prone in a manner inconsistent with all the intricate prior planning that went into the hijacking.

But otherwise, the film is a transcendent example of 1970s crime dramas set in New York. The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three derives monstrous energy from the City. Whether the transit employees, the police officers, the politicians or the hostages, here everyone is rude, loud-mouthed, sometimes vulgar, and quite irritable. Yet they do what they need to do to make things work and get by for another day. Faced with a bizarre hostage crisis, nothing in the response goes according to any plan, but sheer persistence and jagged cooperation keeps Garber one step ahead of a lot of dead hostages.

Walter Matthau provides a timely reminder of his effectiveness in dramatic roles, his unkempt persona perfectly suited to the transit authority setting. Director Joseph Sargent portrays a transit system that works but only because of the dogged determination of the stubborn, sweaty characters that run it, and Matthau's Lieutenant Garber is a perfect fit.

Robert Shaw as Mr. Blue is a formidable main foe. A cold hearted killer with ice in his veins, Blue plans for events several steps ahead of everyone else, and whiles away the time solving crossword puzzles as a million dollar life and death drama unfolds. With his British accent elevating him above the prevailing New York riff-raff, Blue appears in total control of an audacious hostage plot.


David Shire provides a drop-dead brilliant music score, a driving, brass-heavy tune with an infectious riff that goes exactly nowhere but enjoys every groovy juncture. The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three careens down the tracks, a blast of an entertaining ride.

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The Movies Of Martin Balsam

All movies starring Martin Balsam and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

On The Waterfront (1954, uncredited)

12 Angry Men (1957)

Psycho (1960)

Breakfast At Tiffany's (1961)

Cape Fear (1962)

Seven Days In May (1964)

The Carpetbaggers (1964)

Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)

The Anderson Tapes (1971)

The Stone Killer (1973)

The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

Murder On The Orient Express (1974)

All The President's Men (1976)

Two-Minute Warning (1976)

Cuba (1979)

The Salamander (1981)

St. Elmo's Fire (1985)

Death Wish 3 (1985)

The Delta Force (1986)

Cape Fear (1991)

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