Movie Review: Bloodline (1979)

A so-bad-it's-almost-good crime and business drama, Bloodline is a dressed-up pig choking on layers of glossy lipstick.

When her tycoon father dies while mountain climbing, Elizabeth Roffe (Audrey Hepburn) inherits a financially troubled pharmaceutical empire. Corporate lawyer Rhys Williams (Ben Gazzara) appears to be her trusted advisor, while the board of directors is stacked with greedy cousins including British aristocrat Sir Alec Nichols (James Mason), racing driver Hélène Martin (Romy Schneider), and two-timing lothario Ivo Palazzi (Omar Sharif).

The cousins and/or their spouses and lovers all have financial troubles and pressure Elizabeth to float the company to raise funds. She resists, determined to protect her father's family-ownership legacy. Inspector Max Hornung (Gert Fröbe) finds evidence Elizabeth's father was murdered, and her life is soon in danger. Meanwhile, prostitutes are being killed during the filming of snuff porn movies under the watchful eyes of a mystery man.

It's unfortunate one of Audrey Hepburn's final roles landed in a Sidney Sheldon novel adaptation, her presence and expensive gowns consumed by rubbish. A plastic script by Laird Koenig is mishandled by director Terence Young, and any potential for quality is eradicated by botched editing. Even the usually reliable Ennio Morricone flounders, his music score unmemorable and unsuitable. The international cast members (also including Irene Papas, Claudia Mori, Michelle Phillips, Maurice Ronet, and Beatrice Straight) go through the mechanical motions, spouting lines with television-level efficiency and a bewildering lack of conviction, eyes firmly on cashing the cheque.  

Elizabeth invests her time traveling for no purpose between European cities, with one particularly awful detour to Poland, where amateurish flashbacks are supposed to capture key moments (involving a horse and big needle) from her father's formative years. Somehow, Poland of the 1940s here resembles the Middle Ages. When not in jet-set and time-travel mode, Elizabeth is dodging an unseen assassin in repetitive but tension-free close-calls. The rest of the characters personify Eurotrash in action, unhappy women spending money their incompetent and philandering husbands do not have, while everyone tries to keep up appearances.

An irrelevant snuff movie subplot is wedged into the drama, providing Young an excuse for superfluous nudity and titillation. And adding a final bizarre tone, Inspector Hornung spends most of his scenes talking to a computer, which seems to have all the answers but only reveals them at the necessary pace to prolong the movie. 

Hardened by ineptitude, Bloodline is an embarrassing stain.



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Movie Review: Juggernaut (1974)

A terrorism crime thriller, Juggernaut contains standard defuse-the-bomb drama but little else.

With Captain Alex Brunel (Omar Sharif) at the helm and 1,200 passengers and crew on-board, the ocean liner SS Britannic sets sail into the North Atlantic. As the vessel encounters rough seas, a terrorist calling himself Juggernaut informs the ship's owner Nicholas Porter (Ian Holm) that seven sophisticated barrel bombs are on-board. He demands £500,000 within hours in return for information on how to deactivate the devices.

Porter is pressured by British government types to not pay, while a Navy bomb disposal team led by Lieutenant Commander Anthony Fallon (Richard Harris) is airlifted onto the Britannic. Fallon and his men start the dangerous work of attempting to deactivate the bombs, while Superintendent John McLeod (Anthony Hopkins) of the London police, whose wife and children are on the ship, races to uncover Juggernaut's identity.

A British production directed by Richard Lester, Juggernaut is ambitious but unsophisticated. Even allowing for some wacky plot points - such as refusing to consider a passenger evacuation in rough seas (because vessels are only evacuated in calm waters?) - the script by Richard Alan Simmons and Alan Plater is several drafts away from generating genuine thrills. The fault lies in too much emphasis on barrels and not nearly enough attention allocated to people. 

The list of passengers who are supposed to matter is exceptionally short. McLeod's wife (Caroline Mortimer) spends her time rolling her eyes at two unruly kids; a US politician-type (Clifton James) has a couple of gruff what's-going-on-here lines; and Shirley Knight floats around as a barely defined Captain's mistress. Meanwhile the ship's director of entertainment Curtain (Roy Kinnear) is the irritating clown-in-residence and the most prominent character (this is a bad thing). Whether any of them lives or dies is of no consequence, and an increasingly uneasy sense that maybe the entire premise is intended as a shaky satire starts to creep in. 

Back on shore, the investigative elements are also short-changed, Anthony Hopkins caught is his own sea of grey suits pursuing an uninteresting villain.

Richard Harris as bomb expert Anthony Fallon does his usual heavy-drinking I'm the best but dammit all to hell schtick, his audience consisting of a flummoxed Omar Sharif who never appears sure what he is supposed to be doing. Lester finally abandons most human context and focusses ever more tightly on the hardware, mass of wires, and trigger devices within the barrel bombs. The red wire or the blue wire, that is the question.



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Movie Review: The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964)

A star-infused anthology drama, The Yellow Rolls-Royce features three distinct European-set adventures linked by one vehicle. The stories toil towards stodgy adequacy.

The opening segment is set in London of the 1920s. The wealthy Charles, Marquess of Frinton (Rex Harrison) of the British Foreign Office purchases a brand new yellow Rolls-Royce as an anniversary gift for his wife Eloise (Jeanne Moreau). He is looking forward to fielding the favourite horse at Ascot's Gold Cup, but Eloise is having an affair with diplomat John Fane (Edmund Purdom).

The second and longest story is set in Italy's Genoa area in the 1930s. Mafioso Paolo Maltese (George C. Scott) buys the Rolls-Royce when his moll Mae Jenkins (Shirley MacLaine) falls in love with it. She has no appreciation for culture, but gigolo tourist photographer Stefano (Alain Delon) catches her attention. When Paolo is called back to the United States, Mae and Stefano pursue an affair under the watchful eye of Paolo's right-hand man Joey Friedlander (Art Carney).

The final instalment starts in Italy near the border with Yugoslavia in 1941. Wealthy and influential American widow Gerda Millett (Ingrid Bergman) purchases the aging Rolls-Royce to drive into troubled Yugoslavia and meet the newly installed leader. Partisan Yugoslav commander Davich (Omar Sharif) is aware the Nazis are about to invade his country, and spots an opportunity to slip across the border in the vehicle's trunk.

A British MGM studios production, The Yellow Rolls-Royce labours away with plenty of verbiage yielding relatively limited impact. Writer Terence Rattigan demonstrates a propensity for long paragraphs of irrelevant dialogue, and despite the short length of each segment, the film gets bogged down in long scenes digging away at the obvious. To compensate, director Anthony Asquith makes good use of scenic European locations, and when all else fails, the yellow Rolls-Royce itself adds elegance to any frame.

As expected the format reveals interesting ideas beset by insufficient evolution. The third chapter is energized by the World War Two context and carries the most promise as a potential long-form drama. Finally the Rolls-Royce is put to use for something other than discrete love-making, as Ingrid Bergman's Gerda descends from haughty pretensions and helps partisans re-group in the mountains. 

The middle story is the longest, occupying half the two hours of running time, but remains in middling territory. Shirley MacLaine tries hard as the American hat-check girl and a fish out of water in Italy, Alain Delon the only piece of culture she is interested in. George C. Scott over-cooks his mafia boss into a cartoon character. Art Carney is more circumspect as the aging deputy and driver.

The first story is the weakest, all pomp and circumstance with Rex Harrison in his theatrical element. Asquith stages a lavish banquet then enjoys the Ascot surroundings, leaving limited room for the central illicit love affair.

The common themes across the three chapters include secretive love affairs and characters exposed to both stark realities and trajectory-changing revelations. The Yellow Rolls-Royce is gracefully staid, and perhaps unsurprisingly, never moves out of third gear.



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Movie Review: MacKenna's Gold (1969)

A western treasure hunt adventure, MacKenna's Gold harbours ambitions of grandeur but is just plain awful.

In Arizona of 1874, Marshal Sam MacKenna (Gregory Peck) stumbles upon a map locating a canyon full of gold. Local legends have long spoken about such a location, with Apache spirits protecting the treasure from any intruders. Sam burns the map, but is soon captured by his old foe the bandit Colorado (Omar Sharif) who believes Sam must remember the map's details.

Colorado's gang also holds Inga Bergemann (Camilla Sparv) as a hostage to dissuade a chasing cavalry group from attacking. Sergeant Tibbs (Telly Savalas) is a cavalry member with his own ambitions to find the gold. A group of men from the nearby town of Hadleyburg join Colorado's treasure hunt, including Old Adams (Edward G. Robinson), who claims to have once seen the treasure before being blinded by vengeful Apaches. MacKenna does not believe the gold even exists, but has to keep himself alive long enough to escape and rescue Inga. 

Clocking in at an interminable 128 minutes, with horrifying legends of an original three hour cut, MacKenna's Gold is plagued by plastic motivations, bad casting, superfluous folksy narration, and an almost laughably inept script courtesy of producer Carl Foreman. Director J. Lee Thompson does capture majestic scenery and dazzling rock formations in Arizona and Utah, but the visual beauty is quickly trampled by atrocious pacing and unimaginative dynamics.

Within a charisma-free set of characters, the usually reliable Gregory Peck is simply disinterested, while Omar Sharif tries and miserably fails to channel Tuco. Both are not helped by remarkably juvenile dialogue in which characters threaten to kill each other in every scene.

The lowlights arrive early and frequently. The so-bad-it's-really-bad opening song Old Turkey Buzzard, incredibly composed by Quincy Jones with lyrics by Foreman, sets the stage, and the turkey reference soon proves entirely appropriate. An entire sub-cast of veteran actors, including Robinson, Eli Wallach, Lee J. Cobb, Anthony Quayle, Raymond Massey, and Burgess Meredith, is introduced with the theatrical inelegance of a stiff board meeting, before being summarily massacred in the next scene.

Director Thompson and his team of editors clumsily paste the stars into the action scenes with fuzzy and mismatched rear-projection. As part of a limp lust triangle, an entirely silent Julie Newmar as Apache woman Hesh-Ke, a member of Colorado's gang, spends the entire movie trying to kill Camilla Sparv's Inga. One of these women ends up falling to their death off an enormous cliff, but no one seems to remotely care. 

The ending features a rock formation shadow that grows longer as the sun rises, then three characters inexplicably scale an impossible-to-climb vertical cliff; two of them fight on a ledge half-way up; then all three clamber back down. The grand finale of destruction mixes a few impressive shots of collapsing rocks with plenty of atrocious miniature effects unworthy of a film school project.

It's easy to imagine MacKenna's Gold impressing ten year old boys. Everyone else starts to wonder whether Old Adams' poke-your-eyes-out fate is really all that bad.



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The Movies Of Omar Sharif

All movies starring Omar Sharif and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)

The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964)

Doctor Zhivago (1965)

Funny Girl (1968)

MacKenna's Gold (1969)

The Tamarind Seed (1974)

Juggernaut (1974)

Bloodline (1979)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: The Tamarind Seed (1974)

An international espionage romance, The Tamarind Seed attempts to create a personal human drama within the Cold War context but suffers from excessively lackadaisical pacing.

British Home Office assistant Judith Farrow (Julie Andrews) is vacationing in Barbados to recover from a botched love affair with a married Paris-based diplomat, which followed the death of her husband. Soviet military attaché Feodor Sverdlov (Omar Sharif) is vacationing in the adjacent bungalow. Honest about being married, he initiates a friendship that blossoms into a romance, but Judith insists they do not sleep together. They return to Europe, Sverdlov promising to reconnect.

In London, British intelligence officer Jack Loder (Anthony Quayle) and his assistant MacLeod (Bryan Marshall) take a keen interest in the burgeoning relationship between Judith and Sverdlov, sure that the suave Russian is attempting to recruit the naive assistant. Also worried is British minister Fergus Stephenson (Dan O'Herlihy) and his wife Margaret (Sylvia Syms), who hold secrets that may be revealed with any Russian defection. Judith and Sverdlov pursue a romance while both the British and Russian governments are deeply suspicious that something more nefarious is afoot.

A laudable attempt to create a more cerebral and character-centred story about the human cost of the Cold War, The Tamarind Seed falls into the cracks between too much plot and not enough momentum. Director Blake Edwards (Andrews' husband) adapted the Evelyn Anthony book and should have streamlined the narrative and jettisoned more of the clutter. The central romance is often suspended in time and space as marginal characters and events swirl around the lovers, too many conniving agents, officials, diplomats, wives, girlfriends, ex-lovers and henchmen getting in the way.

The Cold War's disruptive impact on the most basic of human pleasures is an intended theme, but the love affair proceeds at a glacial pace and along a ponderous and repetitive path. Both Andrews and Sharif are game for their roles and advance a welcome photogenic maturity into the discourse, but their conversations too often spin in the same cycle of Sverdlov seeking to advance to the lovemaking stage and Judith resisting.

On the margins they veer into unconvincing and muddled compare-and-contrast debates about capitalism versus communism, Sverdlov often tediously pontificating about the essence of the Russian character. The legend of a condemned Barbados slave and the shape of the Tamarind tree seed take on profound symbolism of the eye-rolling variety.

When the discourse evolves to the possibility of an actual defection, the multiple layers of lying and deception render all commitments suspect, undermining any investment in the characters' real motivations. By the time some action sparks to life late in the third act, intelligence officer Loder essentially becomes the most influential character with Judith and Sverdlov reduced to pawns in their own game.

Bond series veterans Maurice Binder and John Barry contribute the classy title sequence design and evocative music score. Both promise more than the film can deliver, as this Russian spy is licenced to merely talk, love, and philosophize.

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Movie Review: Doctor Zhivago (1965)

An epic love story set against the backdrop of the communist revolution in Russia, Doctor Zhivago pits the passionate individual against the oppressive system, but is also too long, and its main protagonist is more a spectator rather than an instigator.

The film is told in flashback, and starts in the Soviet era at a hydroelectric dam with Lieutenant General Yevgraf Zhivago (Alec Guinness) questioning innocent-looking worker Tanya Komarova (Rita Tushingham) to determine whether she is the daughter of his half-brother Dr. Yuri Zhivago (Omar Sharif). Yevgraf recounts Yuri's story, starting when he was orphaned at a young age and taken in by the well-to-do Moscow-based family of the kindly Alexander Gromeko (Ralph Richardson). Yuri grows up to be a doctor and a poet, and eventually marries Gromeko's daughter Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin).

In parallel and also in Moscow, the beautiful 17 year old Lara Antipova (Julie Christie) is from a working class family and the unwilling mistress of Victor Komarovsky (Rod Steiger), a member of the elite classes with shadowy connections to both the Czarist government and the Bolshevik revolutionaries. Lara eventually marries her real love Pasha Antipov (Tom Courtenay), an idealistic young man advocating for workers' rights and actively supporting the revolution.

The Great War erupts, Pasha is lost on the battlefield and Yuri meets Lara at a front-line hospital where they work together for 6 months. The revolution interrupts the war and turns Russia upside down. Yuri returns to Tonya in Moscow, but they soon embark on an arduous train ride beyond the Ural mountains to try and start a new life. With the country gripped by civil war, Yuri will reconnect with Lara under unexpected but dangerous circumstances.

An adaptation of the celebrated Boris Pasternak novel directed by David Lean, Dr. Zhivago is epic in scale and scope. The film clocks in at close to 200 minutes and features a large cast of characters, stunning landscapes, scenes of battle, revolution, and lavish parties, and a gruelling train ride that seems to unfold in real time, complete with a surreal and irrelevant Klaus Kinski appearance. This is an impressive and engrossing experience, but it is also tiresome. It is difficult to justify the turgid running time and the slow pacing, with everything appearing to happen in slow motion.

More troublesome is the rather passive central character. Yuri Zhivago is an ultimately peripheral character who witnesses great events happening around him. On several occasions he is swept up by history, his life trajectory altered by others. Even the central theme of love and infatuation is unfulfilling. Zhivago's dubious feat is trapping himself into a love triangle, Tonya wholly undeserving of his betrayal and Lara gaining his affection through mere presence. Yuri gets a few brief scenes as a doctor, and no meaningful demonstrations of his talents as a poet.

The film succeeds better in depicting the struggle between the individual and the collective. The post-revolution scenes in Moscow are a brilliantly grey portrayal of the all the failures of communism quickly rising to the surface, the rabble believing that their time has come, oblivious that the country's functionality is grinding to a halt and intellectual starvation and physical exhaustion await. Zhivago remains consistent in expressing his doubt about communism's logic before, during and after the revolution, opinions that will force him to leave Moscow when he clearly becomes a misfit.

Omar Sharif almost sleepwalks through the film but finds a few moments of genuine emotion. Christie matches him with a docile, low-key performance that does not convince as muse. Rod Steiger delivers the most energetic role, and on more than one occasion single-handedly pumps sweat, conviction and passion to jump-start the languid proceedings. Victor Komarovsky emerges as potentially the most interesting and complex character in the story, perhaps more deserving of his own book and movie.

The film's weaknesses do not diminish Doctor Zhivago as a grand technical marvel, an ambitious and unconstrained artistic achievement, with an iconic Maurice Jarre music score used in proper doses. But it is also a film with not quite enough happening at its core to justify all the impressive packaging.

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Movie Review: Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)

One of the most majestic achievements in the history of cinema, Lawrence Of Arabia is a captivating historical epic. David Lean creates a multi-sensory feast in the desert and brings to life with artistic grandeur the story of T.E. Lawrence uniting Arab tribes to open a new Great War front.

In Egypt during the First World War, Lawrence (Peter O'Toole) is a nonconformist British Army Lieutenant with an uncanny understanding of the local culture. With Arabian tribes loyal to Prince Faisal (Alec Guinness) conducting low-level raids against Turkish outposts, Lawrence is reassigned to explore opportunities to coordinate and further exploit the rear flank of the Ottoman Empire. Quickly learning the ways of the desert, Lawrence teams up with Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif), a trusted Faisal ally, and after an arduous trek across the desert, unites Faisal's faction with the tribe of grizzled warrior Auda Abu Tayi (Anthony Quinn). In addition to his leadership qualities, Lawrence discovers with some anguish the uncontrollable euphoric rush triggered when he kills a man. 

Lawrence plots an audacious attack on the town of Aqaba, leading the united tribes as they rout the Turkish defenders, providing the Arabs with a resupply port and the British an incentive to pour more resources into the emerging militaristic wave of Arab nationalism. Lawrence is tasked with leading a campaign of supply route disruption against the Ottomans, consisting of punishing raids against rail infrastructure. With his growing reputation beginning to attract international attention thanks to American reporter Jackson Bentley (Arthur Kennedy), Lawrence's worrisome tendency to believe in his own invincibility is punctured by a vicious encounter with a Turkish prison master (Jose Ferrer). But blood lust will overcome self-doubt, and Lawrence will go on to discover the divides between tribalism, governance and political realities.

Lawrence Of Arabia is 3 hours and 40 minutes long, and Lean's exquisite pacing ensures an immersive experience. The film is remarkably engaging, and incredibly, creates a thirst for more. As Lawrence's adventure in Arabia draws to a close, Lean evokes a sadness that an episode of remarkable military adventurism is coming to an end, the eloquent story of one man who made a lasting dent in the tide of history earning epic status.

The film's visual texture is breathtaking. Cinematographer Freddy Young transforms the vast desert into a startling canvass and sets the standard for beauty and brutality baking under the omnipresent sun. Lean and Young painstakingly stage grand tableaux to maximize the impact of light and shadows, and human forms dwarfed by an immense hostile environment. Lawrence Of Arabia is also an ode to the camel, many scenes making use of hundreds of them, the animal remarkably graceful in its natural environment and an essential means of travel, survival and warfare.

Maurice Jarre contributes an evocative music score combining spine tingling individuality with ceremonial magnificence, the music carrying the echoes of wide open spaces hosting defiant human spirits.

In his breakthrough role at 30 years old, O'Toole gives a performance as searing as the incessant desert heat, bringing Lawrence to life with a combination of British haughtiness and clever deference to Arab culture. Making full use of the sharp screenplay by Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson, O'Toole keeps Lawrence intriguingly human by emphasizing his ever shifting focus, an uneasy mix of loyalty to Britain, infatuation with the desert and its people, and a self-serving quest for glory.

Omar Sharif, Alec Guinness and Anthony Quinn create a ring of sturdy desert wisdom around O'Toole. Sharif is the most textured, his Sherif Ali never yielding pride to Lawrence but allowing friendship and mutual respect to flourish after the roughest of initial introductions. Guinness and Quinn are more unidimensional at opposite ends of the scale. Guinness allows Faisal to lead from the back while waiting for the messy business of war to give way to the avaricious game of politics, while Quinn portrays Auda as blood thirsty and treasure hungry, an old fashioned war leader charging from the front with sword held high.

Other war movie stalwarts round out the cast. Jack Hawkins is an animated General Allenby, leading the British forces in the Middle East and recognizing the need to channel and unleash Lawrence's erratic passion in the right direction. Anthony Quayle portrays Colonel Harry Brighton and represents the more traditional, less unpredictable elements of the British military, assisting Lawrence when he can but generally busy with the fussiness of regulations. And Claude Rains is Mr. Dryden, the shadowy political manipulator, directing events without getting directly involved, forecasting the endgame and planning accordingly while all around him are busy with the minutia of a still raging military conflict.

Celebrating a beguiling man carving his destiny in extraordinary circumstances, Lawrence Of Arabia casts a giant shadow.

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Movie Review: Funny Girl (1968)

A grand musical love story, Funny Girl is ambitious in scope and stellar in execution. Barbra Streisand turns in a star-making performance in her movie debut, recreating her Broadway role as Fanny Brice, and Omar Sharif provides able support.

The film starts with Brice established as a New York stage superstar, but all the events take place in one long flashback, with the story starting early in the 20th century. Born and raised in a humble Jewish neighbourhood, Brice never had the looks of a star, but she more than made up for the lack of glamour with talent and sheer gutso. She grabs an opportunity to perform at the local vaudeville theatre, where she immediately attracts the attention of the suave Nicky Arnstein (Sharif), an international gambler.

Brice's burgeoning reputation lands her a deal with the most famous of Broadway musical impresarios, Florenz Ziegfield (Walter Pidgeon). Brice is just as scrappy and outspoken with the revered Ziegfield as she is with everyone else, risking his wrath but earning his respect. She becomes a star; her romance with Arnstein blossoms, and after a night of seduction in Baltimore and a gambling triumph at the poker tables, they marry. But Arnstein soon runs into significant money problems, and he finds himself unable to handle Brice's continued dazzling popularity. Eventually he turns to illegal activities that undermine the marriage.

Loosely based on the real-life romance between Brice and her first husband, William Wyler directs Funny Girl (his first musical) with equal respect for the music and drama, and provides Streisand with every opportunity to seize her destiny as a star actress and singer with impeccable timing. Funny Girl is Streisand's show from beginning to end, her opening line of "Hello, gorgeous", delivered to her mirror image, immediately welcoming a new supernova to the Hollywood galaxy. She makes the role and the movie her own with a powerful mixture of self-depreciation, extroversion, determination and ridiculous talent. It is one of the defining debut performances in the history of the movies.

With a running length of 155 minutes, Wyler does have to work hard to maintain interest in a draggy final third, as the Isobel Lennart script (based on her book) becomes entrenched in strict drama land, the love story turning to a slow-motion wreck. Wyler brings out Streisand's flashes of showmanship to generate forward momentum at critical moments, with the timing never more perfect than when Brice, immediately after a performance, has to face a horde of reporters following the arrest of Arnstein for embezzlement. Streisand plays the scene with perfect doses of superstar bravado and earnest sensitivity.

Opposite Streisand, Omar Sharif brings just enough aristocratic je ne sais quoi to hold his own as Nicky Arnstein. Already a confident and established star after Lawrence Of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, Sharif effortlessly breezes through the dramatic moments but struggles with the musical numbers, and fortunately for him his singing requirements are kept to a minimum.

Given the epic length of the movie, the supporting cast is surprisingly lacklustre, only Walter Pidgeon bringing any sense of scope to his engaging turn as Flo Ziegfield. The set designs and costumes do look gorgeous, although they tip into clean-scrubbed theatre territory where some back-alley locational grime would have occasionally been welcome.

The success of Funny Girl hinged on the single performance of Barbra Streisand in the central role. Her triumph was complete and spectacular, creating an instant legend and a classic, timelessly entertaining movie.

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