Movie Review: The Secret Invasion (1964)

Genre: World War 2 Action  

Director: Roger Corman  

Starring: Stewart Granger, Raf Vallone, Mickey Rooney, Henry Silva  

Running Time: 95 minutes  

Synopsis: In 1943, British Major Richard Mace (Stewart Ganger) assembles a group of imprisoned convicts for a secret mission to open a new front in the Balkans, as a distraction from the upcoming Allied invasion of Sicily. The recruits include the cerebral Rocca (Raf Vallone), cold-blooded killer Durrell (Henry Silva), explosives expert Scanlon (Mickey Rooney), and forger Fell (Edd Byrnes). They secretly land near Dubrovnik, connect with local Partisans, and attempt to free a key target from Nazi captivity.

What Works Well: This war-mission-on-a-budget borrows ideas from The Guns Of Navarone and The Great Escape, and seeds the inspiration for The Dirty Dozen. Director Roger Corman ensures a base level of competence despite limited resources, and the cast contains enough quality (if not necessarily stellar talent) to maintain interest.

What Does Not Work As Well: The plot gets needlessly complicated, including a prolonged stint within a prison that features endless momentum-defeating skulking. The narrative choices range from bizarre (Rocca's finger clicking) to misguided (handing the stone-faced Henry Silva a half-hearted attempt at romance, complete with a cruel mishap involving a baby). Corman confuses noisy, over-long, poorly-staged, and clumsily-edited battle scenes for excitement, a mess made worse by the inexplicable appearance (and sometimes subsequent disappearance) of hundreds of soldiers, first from one side (the Germans), then the other (the Partisans), and then yet another (the Italians).

Key Quote:

Major Mace: Abandoned?! This mission will be abandoned only when all six of us are dead!

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Movie Review: The Comic (1969)

Genre: Hollywood Dramedy

Director: Carl Reiner

Starring: Dick Van Dyke, Michelle Lee, Mickey Rooney

Running Time: 94 minutes

Synopsis: Upon his death in 1969, former Hollywood star comedian Billy Bright (Dick Van Dyke) narrates his own story. He arrived in Hollywood during the silent era and established himself a star of slapstick comedies. Billy forges a lifelong friendship with fellow comedian Cockeye (Mickey Rooney), marries co-star Mary Gibson (Michelle Lee), and creates a successful production company. The husband-and-wife couple star in a series of hit movies, but infidelity, the arrival of talkies, and changing public taste threaten the good times.

What Works Well: Loosely based on the career trajectories of Buster Keaton-type stars, the second half evolves into a touching drama of loneliness and regret, as the elderly Billy lives out his years as a long-forgotten star. Van Dyke does his best work evoking faded glory hanging on to pride, able to meet the moment when advertisement work offers a flicker of former dignity, but now susceptible to a gold digger's crass ambition.

What Does Not Work As Well: Director and co-writer Carl Reiner struggles to pad the flimsy material, and the first half is oversaturated with black and white reels of juvenile slapstick representing Billy's peak achievements. Here Van Dyke is at his over-cooked worst, aiming no higher than the clumsy clown level. Elsewhere, Billy's adoration of Mary is never provided the oxygen to blossom before he resorts to destructive affairs.

Conclusion: Ironically, this comic is better when he abandons laughs and embraces pathos.



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Movie Review: The Bridges At Toko-Ri (1954)

Genre: War Drama

Director: Mark Robson

Starring: William Holden, Grace Kelly, Fredric March, Mickey Rooney

Running Time: 102 minutes

Synopsis: During the Korean War, Lieutenant Harry Brubaker (William Holden) is a Navy pilot serving on the USS Savo Island aircraft carrier. Returning from a mission, Brubaker has to ditch in the ocean and is rescued by helicopter pilot Mike Forney (Mickey Rooney). While on leave in Tokyo, Brubaker enjoys a reunion with his wife Nancy (Grace Kelly), but his commander Admiral Tarrant (Fredric March) then selects him for a dangerous mission to bomb the strategically important but well-defended Toko-Ri bridges.

What Works Well: James Michener's story is loosely inspired by actual events, and director Mark Robson seeks balance between the mechanics of aircraft carrier operations and fatigue with a far-away war failing to captivate the home front. The military hardware glistens in the sun and the engines roar with satisfying thrust, but the toll on the human psyche and the anti-war message also surface with blunt eloquence. The tone builds on elements of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo and Twelve O'Clock High before delivering a wallop-packing final chapter.

What Does Not Work As Well: The first two thirds are patchy and meander in search of a direction, too many shots invested in aircrafts maneuvering on, off, and around the carrier deck. The performances are perfunctory at best, the humans taking a back seat to the equipment. The mission planning details are hard-boiled and delivered with notable disinterest.

Conclusion: Just as men can plot to damage bridges, war can damage men.



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Movie Review: The Domino Principle (1977)

A conspiracy thriller, The Domino Principle (also known as The Domino Killings) takes forever to get to the point only to realize it does not have one.

Decorated Vietnam War veteran Roy Tucker (Gene Hackman) is serving a long prison sentence at San Quentin for murdering the former husband of his wife Ellie (Candice Bergen). He passes the time enduring the tall tales of his talkative cellmate Spiventa (Mickey Rooney). Tagge (Richard Widmark) and Ross (Eddie Albert) represent mysterious interests and start visiting Tucker in prison, delving into his background with a promise of an early release in exchange for unspecified assignments.

Eventually Tucker and Spiventa gain their freedom in a staged escape. Transported to Costa Rica, Tucker is provided with a fake identity and bank account and reunited with Ellie at a lavish villa. He also meets retired General Reser (Eli Wallach), another of Tagge's associates. Relocated to Long Beach, Tucker balks at the designated assassination assignment, endangering Ellie's life.

Director and producer Stanley Kramer, known for his cerebral socially conscious dramas from decades past, steps way outside his comfort zone and predictably stumbles. The Domino Principle clambers onto the post-Watergate, post-Vietnam pile of films tapping into government mistrust, but the adaptation of Adam Kennedy's book is a vacuous exercise in hinting at something that never happens.

The premise of dark hands manipulating everyone and everything is used as an excuse to explain nothing, and instead the film settles down first as a prolonged prison interview and then a travelogue hopping from San Francisco to Costa Rica then Long Beach. The cinematography by Fred J. Koenekamp and Ernest Laszlo is often spectacular and always bright and colourful, but cannot hide the absence of actual content.

Tagge, Ross and General Reser represent a heavy-hitting trio of mystery men (and talented actors) who never reveal anything beyond shuffling Tucker from one location to another. The assassination assignment is inferred, neither the victim nor the cause ever discussed. And Tucker's insubordination at every turn, attempting with decreasing success to wrangle free from the men now controlling his life, becomes the tired focus of the film.

All of which is a waste of a stellar cast. Gene Hackman, Richard Widmark and Eli Wallach all deserved better, and even Eddie Albert and Mickey Rooney deliver better-than-usual work here, all of it unfortunately misdirected. The biggest victim is Candice Bergen, miscast and struggling mightily in deglamorized role.

The Domino Principle bungles both the set-up and the knock-down.

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Movie Review: Requiem For A Heavyweight (1962)

Once the final fight is lost, boxing lives still need to be lived. Requiem For A Heavyweight is a depressingly clear-eyed story of frequent defeat leading to abject despair.

Long past his glory years, aging boxer Louis "Mountain" Rivera (Anthony Quinn) is being pounded in the ring by a young Cassius Clay (as himself). After losing the lopsided fight, Rivera's boxing career is declared over: any more punches to his eye would cause permanent damage. Rivera takes the news hard, but it's even worse for his manger Maish (Jackie Gleason): he has mounting debts with loan sharks, and Rivera is his only meal ticket. More circumspect is corner man Army (Mickey Rooney), who sees the writing on the wall, but is equally loyal to Maish and Rivera and cannot break from either.

Rivera has no life skills to turn to, but employment office worker Grace Miller (Julie Harris) secures a job interview for Rivera to mentor children at a summer camp. The shrewd Maish has other plans: he needs to push Rivera into the crude world of professional wrestling to try and make enough money to pay off his debts. Rivera's fate hangs in the balance, but having no track record of good decision making, the odds are stacked against him.

Requiem For A Heavyweight is about life immediately after boxing delivers a knock-out punch. Other than the opening pummelling delivered by Cassius Clay, no action takes place in the ring. Instead, the Rod Serling story oozes pessimism. Once Rivera's fists are no longer adequate to provide him with a career, he has nothing else to fall back on: neither the intellect to avoid being duped into getting drunk ahead of his interview, nor the resolve to break free and cut links with his past. Although life opens a window of opportunity and provides a helping hand in the form of Grace, Rivera's slide towards being a freak show performer appears irreversible.

But deprived of everything else, Rivera does retain a deep sense of pride and self-awareness, and a realization that in the past, he had a shot. This will need to sustain the former contender into a future that promises only a downward spiral of increasing humiliation. Anthony Quinn brings Rivera to life in a strong and affecting performance. Director Ralph Nelson makes excellent use of black and white cinematography to portray the grim underbelly of the sport, a world of men uselessly dreaming of championships while living in near-squalor.

Nelson also animates the film with the sweaty presence of desperate characters like Maish and Army who live in boxing's filthy corners, trying to hitch a ride on the back of a dim boxer but neither talented enough to actually guide his career nor smart enough to avoid deep financial crises. Jackie Gleason and Mickey Rooney provide committed support in their uncompromising roles. Julie Harris as Grace is the shining beacon of light bravely cutting through the gloom of Rivera's darkening destiny. The salvation she offers is there for the taking, but Rivera may be heading away from it too fast to hold on.

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Movie Review: Breakfast At Tiffany's (1961)

A cultural and stylistic landmark, Breakfast At Tiffany's is a timeless classic, capturing a society moving into a decade of enormous change, and doing it with panache.

When Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) is depressed, she eats breakfast on the sidewalk looking through the Tiffany's store window in New York. Living with her cat (named Cat) but otherwise very alone in her apartment, Holly's life is a series of encounters with men who seek her company and pay well for it. She classifies them as rats or super-rats, depending on how loathsome they are. Holly is desperately seeking happiness, fulfilment and riches; but she is unwilling to surrender her heart or her life to any true relationship. She even stoops to the level of getting paid to visit a locked-up crime boss, oblivious she is being used to transmit his commands.

Struggling author Paul Varjak (George Peppard) moves into another apartment in the same building. Women find him attractive, particularly Mrs. Failenson (Patricia Neal), a decorator willing to pay Paul for his calculated affection. Holly wants to keep Paul strictly as a friend, and does her best to deny their growing connection. Her former husband Doc (Buddy Ebsen) shows up in New York pleading with her to return to Texas, but Holly prefers a life of independent struggle to the comfort of anonymity. Eventually she reaches a critical decision point: her prospects look grim, unless she lowers the fence around her heart.

Holly Golightly is a representative icon for women rocketing from the predictability of the 1950s into the uncertain 1960s: sexually liberated, seeking love on her terms, forging an independent identity, making new connections in a freedom-obsessed society, and pressured to revert to the old but safe environment. And there are no playbooks to guide her, only instincts and self-belief. 

That Holly grapples with the big decisions in life so stylishly is a big part of Breakfast At Tiffany's appeal. The ridiculously oversized cigarette holder; the Givenchy dresses; the hats, sunglasses, and  jewellery: rarely has a single film had such an indelible impact on fashion. Craving unaffordable luxury also starts here: Holly never has any money, and she nevertheless looks gloriously fashionable wondering where the next dollar is going to come from.

Working from the novella by Truman Capote and a script by George Axelrod, director Blake Edwards assembles all the pieces of Breakfast At Tiffany's into a dazzling tapestry. He augments the visual appeal of his stars and setting with Henri Mancini's music, the spine-tingling theme song Moon River instantly claiming a place among the classic tunes of Hollywood. Edwards elegantly inserts the song throughout the movie without overexposing it. Humour is also judiciously deployed, the party scene in Holly's apartment a chaotic joy. 

Despite being cast against her wholesome image, Audrey Hepburn pulls off the role magnificently while enshrining her quiet grace and beauty, combining Holly's fun-loving innocence with a hard edged determination to keep her heart secure. George Peppard is adequate as Paul, never catching fire but holding his own. Mickey Rooney's portrayal of upstairs comic relief neighbour Mr. Yunioshi is an unfortunate yellowface misfire amplifying Asian stereotypes.

Breakfast At Tiffany's is soulful, hopeful and pragmatic. The prize is on the other side of the window, tantalizingly within reach, but at what cost.

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