Movie Review: Still Of The Night (1982)

Genre: Suspense Thriller  

Director: Robert Benton  

Starring: Meryl Streep, Roy Scheider, Jessica Tandy  

Running Time: 93 minutes  

Synopsis: In Manhattan, psychiatrist Dr. Sam Rice (Roy Scheider) investigates the murder of his long-term client George Bynum (Josef Sommer), an art auction house manager. Sam is intrigued by George's alluring mistress and co-worker Brooke Reynolds (Meryl Streep), who appears distraught but may also be hiding a secret. Sam consults with his mother Grace (Jessica Tandy), also a therapist, and recalls conversations from his sessions with George. He starts to fall in love with Brooke, but also becomes a murder target.

What Works Well: Director and co-writer Robert Benton crafts a passable homage to Alfred Hitchcock, packed with references to classics like Vertigo (a falling death), The Birds (an attack by a bird, and co-starring Jessica Tandy), North By Northwest (a critical auction scene), Spellbound (an elaborate dream sequence), and Rear Window (a voyeuristic view into a neighbouring building). Meryl Streep wraps fragility within mystery as an alluring icy blonde, feeding Sam's doubts on whether Brooke should be embraced or avoided. Scenes of suspense mix with plot revelations to maintain momentum within a brisk running time.

What Does Not Work As Well: The continuous Hitchcock references threaten an outbreak of unintended satire, and the resolution, once revealed, is constipated and less than satisfying. Jessica Tandy is underused, and the 17 year age difference between Scheider and Streep erodes chemistry from their jagged romance. 

Key Quote:

Grace: We're probably dealing with a woman who on the surface seems childlike and innocent, but underneath is capable of extreme violence.



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Movie Review: 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)

Genre: Science Fiction Drama 

Director: Peter Hyams 

Starring: Roy Scheider, Helen Mirren, John Lithgow, Bob Balaban, Keir Dullea 

Running Time: 116 minutes 

Synopsis: Nine years after the spaceship Discovery inexplicably malfunctioned near Jupiter, Dr. Heywood Floyd (Roy Scheider) joins the Leonov Soviet mission to uncover what happened. He is accompanied by American scientists Curnow (John Lithgow) and Chandra (Bob Balaban), while the Leonov is commanded by Tanya Kirbuk (Helen Mirren). Once near Jupiter, they detect organic signals from the moon Europa, and Floyd starts to understand what happened to Discovery's commander David Bowman (Keir Dullea) and its on-board computer system HAL 9000 (voice of Douglas Rain). Back on Earth, a geopolitical conflict threatens to erupt into a catastrophic war.

What Works Well: The adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke's sequel book stands on its own merits, with slick special effects, a strong cast, a sense of purpose, and extrapolated Cold War tensions spilling into space. Director and writer Peter Hyams keeps the sci-fi drama more traditionally approachable and less mystical, and does well in building tension through compact episodes towards an existential final act. Keir Dullea reprises the role of Bowman through brief but essential interventions, and HAL 9000 earns a poignant artificial intelligence arch.

What Does Not Work As Well: The exclamatory final message borders on hokey, and although cerebral, 2010 never threatens to reach the inspirational levels of 2001.

Conclusion: A proficient nuts and bolts underpinning for a space opus.



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Movie Review: All That Jazz (1979)

An autobiographical musical drama from director Bob Fosse, All That Jazz explores the creative tensions and character flaws propelling a visionary artist.

Addicted to cigarettes, prescription drugs and sex, Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) is burning himself out simultaneously conducting auditions and rehearsals for a new Broadway musical (an erotic airline show) while editing his latest film Stand-Up (about a controversial Lenny Bruce-like comedian played by Cliff Gorman). In his imagination, Gideon is also reviewing his life with the mythical Angelique (Jessica Lange, as the Angel of Death).

Ex-wife Audrey Paris (Leland Palmer) is part of the Broadway show and trying to hold on to her fading youth, while Katie Jagger (Ann Reinking) is Gideon's latest girlfriend, although he openly cheats on her. Both Audrey and Katie have a good relationship with his talented and precocious tween daughter Michelle (Erzsébet Földi). With his producers increasingly worried about their financial investments, Joe's health threatens to collapse.

Director Fosse co-wrote the script with Robert Alan Arthur, and uses All That Jazz to bare the soul and insecurities of a man stretched too thin. Motivated by a desire to never be ordinary and terrified by the prospect of failure, Gideon operates in full-speed-ahead mode, pushing past the point of exhaustion and ignoring all the danger signs until death greets him with a smile.

The film's first half is excellent, an exhilarating introduction to Gideon's chaotically creative existence. The auditions, rehearsals and editing scenes crackle with dawn to dusk intensity, Gideon always demanding more from himself and all around him. But his humanity is also revealed through tenderness towards the dancers and women in his orbit. Although unable to ever be faithful, Gideon remains a caring presence in the lives of Audrey and Katie, and is always ready with a shoulder around the arm of struggling performers.

The second half sags badly as one of the longest on-the-way-to-expiration sequences set on film. Gideon is hospitalized and does his best to ignore all medical advice and march towards his finality. This evolves into a series of mostly tepid hallucinatory musical numbers, Gideon's long goodbye playing out as the filming of a musical movie. Fosse's obsession with death quite naturally sucks the life out of the movie.

The highlights arrive in the form of three performance sequences, all packed into the front end. Soon after the opening credits, the on-stage auditions to the sounds of George Benson's On Broadway capture the sweaty desperation of a large group of dancers trying to land a coveted role in a new show. Later, Gideon jolts his Broadway producers into panic by unveiling a powerfully erotic new ensemble dance, an orgy-on-stage in everything but name, opening new possibilities for what a mile-high club may offer. The final focal point is much more personal: girlfriend Katie and daughter Michelle put on a delightful dance for Gideon in his apartment to the tune of Everything Old Is New Again.

In an inspired piece of casting non-dancer Roy Scheider is a lithe presence as Gideon, conveying an exhausted talent running on fumes but running nonetheless. Fosse's real-life partner Anne Reinking essentially plays herself, and although the role demands little, Jessica Lange is unforgettable as the welcoming spectre of death, a floaty spirit in white shrouds.

All That Jazz acknowledges living and dying as an inseparable couple, delivering a stirring if imperfect dance.



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Movie Review: The Seven-Ups (1973)

A gritty crime action film, The Seven-Ups conveys a deglamourized world of enforcement but stumbles on a shallow story full of faceless characters.

In New York City, police detective Buddy Mannuci (Roy Scheider) heads the small "Seven-Ups" undercover unit using controversial tactics to catch criminals in the act and ensure they receive sentences of seven years or more. After busting a currency counterfeiting operation, Buddy connects with his childhood friend and now mob informant Vito Lucia (Tony Lo Bianco) to extract information about mobster Max Kalish (Larry Haines).

But before Buddy can act, Max is kidnapped and held for ransom by goons pretending to be enforcement agents, just the latest in a series of kidnappings targeting the underworld. With the mob on edge, one of Buddy's team members gets caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and is killed, shining an unwanted spotlight on the Seven-Ups and enraging Buddy. He leans on Vito and all available sources to finger the killers, but few people can be trusted.

After producing Bullitt and The French Connection, Philip D'Antoni takes over directing duties and recruits Roy Scheider to portray a character inspired by real-life detective Sonny Grosso. The results are patchy. The Seven-Ups does feature a quite magnificent all-Pontiac central car chase sequence, as Buddy's Ventura pursues a Grand Ville driven by a murderous duo, but the plot surrounding the tire screeching action is less than engaging.

The work of the Seven-Ups unit gets quickly marginalized by a rather bewildering and sketched-in bad guys targeting bad guys kidnapping plot, crowded with barely introduced and interchangeable goons being nasty to each other. Buddy Mannuci has to wait on the sidelines for a long time before springing into action, and by the time he gets going D'Antoni has lost momentum and focus.

The second half of the film improves, but Buddy's revenge-driven agenda and predisposition to questionable interrogation tactics leaves the film floundering in a moral void where the real cops, pretend cops and mobsters are all just about equal on the reprehensible scale.

The settings in grim corners of New York are depressingly suitable, D'Antoni finding the necessary wrong side of the tracks, puddle-afflicted streets and ramshackle graffiti-tagged buildings in forgotten industrial zones to host the action, all bathed in gloomy greys and dingy browns.

Roy Scheider wears a stern expression throughout but like the rest of the underpowered cast, has no opportunity to create a man behind the purposeful cop. The Seven Ups occasionally revs its engine, but often forgets to kick into gear.

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Movie Review: Jaws 2 (1978)

A sequel that was always going to be inevitable, Jaws 2 nevertheless lacks any reason to exist other than cashing in on the success of the original.

On Amity Island, Sheriff Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) is still emotionally scarred by his previous experience battling a great white shark. The community under Mayor Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) wants to move on, and Brody's wife Ellen (Lorraine Gary) has a job at the brand new Holiday Inn resort hotel. Brody's sense of unease is heightened when two scuba divers mysteriously disappear, and then an unexplained explosion destroys a small boat, killing two more people including a water skier.

Brody tries to convince the Mayor and the town council that another large shark may be feeding in the waters of Amity, but they ignore him. Brody's two boys also circumvent his pleas to stay out of the water, and they join other teenagers on a multi-boat sailing trip. The shark first attacks a group of student scuba divers and then turns its attention to the sailing boats, and Brody has to swing into action to try and save his kids and their friends.

With Steven Spielberg, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw steering clear, only Roy Scheider returned for the first sequel, and then only because he had contractual obligations to fulfill. First John D. Hancock and then Jeannot Szwarc were brought in to direct, but the production was beset by infighting, a lame script, and more troubles with mechanical sharks.

Jaws had toyed with the audience before revealing the enormity of the monster, and added an existential men-against-nature layer of depth. With no new ideas to offer, Jaws 2 resorts to lining up interchangeable teenaged victims as food offerings to a clunky shark. The film is devoid of any elements of tension or drama, and already resorts to some wild contrivances of the shark-versus-helicopter variety.

Back on shore Brody battles the Mayor and other men in suits who refuse to believe another large shark is on the loose. Scheider and Hamilton lose the fight against a witless script boxing them into the same emotions for close to two hours.

The final 30 minutes finally build up a head of steam. Not that anyone can care about a group of barely defined teens being targeted by the shark, but at least the film defines a mission, Brody sets out to sea in another boat that may not be big enough, and Szwarc finds a gritty-enough final showdown. But thrash as it might, Jaws 2 is best remembered for the Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water... tagline, a near perfect example of a poster being much better than the film it promotes.

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Movie Review: The French Connection (1971)

A masterpiece police action thriller, The French Connection sets a new standard in unadulterated grittiness. The story of an international drug deal unfolding on the streets of New York is measured, complex, intense and often explosive.

In Marseille, master drug lord Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey) is planning his next big drug export deal. His henchman Pierre Nicoli (Marcel Bozzuffi) eliminates an undercover detective, and Charnier meets fading movie star Henri Devereaux (Frédéric de Pasquale) who will help conceal the drug shipment. In New York, drug squad detectives Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle (Gene Hackman) and Buddy 'Cloudy' Russo (Roy Scheider) shake down small-time local hoods, and notice a scarcity of product on the street. All the dealers are waiting for the next big shipment.

Doyle and Russo identify store owner Salvatore 'Sal' Boca (Tony Lo Bianco) and his wife Angie (Arlene Faber) as key contacts in the drug trade and place them under surveillance. The Bocas lead the detectives to wealthy lawyer Joel Weinstock (Harold Gary), who may have the resources to buy and distribute the incoming drugs. Soon Charnier, Nicoli and Devereaux arrive in New York by boat and connect with Boca. The detectives have their hands full keeping tabs on Charnier and his crew, waiting for the deal to be made and for the large drug shipment to be found.

Directed by William Friedkin as an adaptation of the Robin Moore book, The French Connection is inspired by real events, and unfolds with a street-level realism that commands immediate attention. There is nothing glamorous, fun or happy about the investigation required to disrupt a major drug deal, and no gadgets or easily available information to crack the case. The French Connection is all about persistent police work, painstaking surveillance, and making sense of the vague connections between poorly defined dots. Friedkin constructs a police procedural with plenty of verve, set against the backdrop of a delapidating New York City.

The French Connection features a prolonged car chase scene that fully earns its legendary status. After Doyle survives an assassination attempt by Nicoli, the hitman tries to make his escape on board an elevated transit train and Doyle gives chase by car at street level. The subsequent tire-burning quest features stunt driving at its finest and expert nose-of-vehicle camera placement by Friedkin and cinematographer Owen Roizman, as Doyle dodges busy urban traffic to keep up with the train. Nicoli plays his part by commandeering the train and bypassing station stops, stretching the chase across numerous blocks. It is a breathless, frantic scene, a punctuation mark in the middle of the cat-and-mouse surveillance game between officers and criminals.

The less than appealing character of Popeye Doyle adds immeasurably to the film. Doyle is no hero, and has no experience busting sophisticated criminals. He is rude, crude, and lives his life chasing low-life drug dealers in run down and dimly lit bars. Other than his partner Cloudy, Doyle does not get along well with others, maybe because a previous hunch cost the life of another officer. Doyle has to work hard to convince his superior that Boca is a criminal worth keeping tabs on, and overall he grabs the threads of the conspiracy through the heroism of sheer doggedness rather than smarts.

And Gene Hackman finds the role of his career in Doyle, in a delicious portrayal that relishes the unkempt aspects of the detective but always hints at a stubborn willingness to dig deeper and outlast the bad guys with pure effort. Hackman happily welcomes the roughness around the edges, and creates a stark contrast with Fernando Rey's smooth, well-dressed suave European criminal. Friedkin perfectly catches the sophistication disparity with a scene featuring Chartier enjoying a multi-course gourmet meal while Doyle is confined to the sidewalk, wolfing down junk pizza.

The French Connection hurtles towards a marvelous mess of showdown, where everything may be resolved to the satisfaction of no one. When the business is the lucrative international drug trade, there are no quick and easy victories, just outcome fragments that prolong the struggle between profit and justice for another day.

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The Movies Of Roy Scheider

All movies starring Roy Scheider and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Klute (1971)

The French Connection (1971)

The Seven-Ups (1973)

Jaws (1975)

Marathon Man (1976)

Jaws 2 (1978)

All That Jazz (1979)

Still Of The Night (1982)

Blue Thunder (1983)

2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)

The Russia House (1990)

The Rainmaker (1997)

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Movie Review: The Rainmaker (1997)

A David versus Goliath courtroom drama with plenty of appeal, The Rainmaker enjoys a stellar cast in fine form and hits all the right notes, but never quite reaches the emotional heights that it strives for.

Rudy Baylor (Matt Damon) graduates from law school in Memphis, and the only job he can land is with the office of ambulance-chaser "Bruiser" Stone (Mickey Rourke) and his crony Deck Shifflet (Danny DeVito), who has never been able to pass the bar exam. Shifflet takes Baylor under his wing and teaches him the ropes. Soon Rudy has three clients: the elderly Miss Birdsong (Teresa Wright) wants to rewrite her will; low-income mother Dot Black (Mary Kay Place) wants to sue the Great Benefit insurance company for denying coverage for her leukemia-afflicted son Donny Ray (Johnny Whitworth); and Kelly Riker (Claire Danes) is being regularly physically abused by her husband.

Bruiser runs into some serious trouble with the law, prompting Rudy and Deck to establish their own business, as the insurance company lawsuit starts to occupy most of their time. Great Benefit hires a crack team of lawyers headed by the slick Leo F. Drummond (Jon Voight) to defend the case, and Rudy finds himself out of his depth in terms of experience and resources. But Dot refuses to settle, and the case lands in court, with Judge Tyrone Kipler (Danny Glover, in an uncredited performance) presiding. As Kelly's confrontations with her husband grow ever more dangerous, Rudy has to uncover Great Benefit's unethical practices to convince the jury that Donny Ray never received the medical treatment that he deserved.

By the time The Rainmaker arrived in movie theatres as a big-budget, high-quality adaptation of a John Grisham novel, the 1990s alone had already offered a multitude of quality courtroom dramas including three Grisham adaptations. A Few Good Men (1992), The Firm (1993), In The Name Of The Father (1993), The Client (1994), Sleepers (1996), and A Time To Kill (1996) featured big name stars, big name directors and some seminal courtroom moments, and The Rainmaker unfortunately suffers from the nagging feeling that Hollywood was perhaps going to the same well one time too many. There was little new that the genre was able to offer by 1997, and while The Rainmaker does everything right, it doesn't do much that is particularly memorable.

Director Francis Ford Coppola wrote the screenplay, and in one of his more traditional outings, steers the film safely through all the tight corners. The 135 minutes of running time pass by smoothly, and the Memphis setting, mostly in the grungier parts of town, enriches the context. Rudy Baylor is a likable if somewhat bland protagonist, and Matt Damon applies his boyish charm in the right doses to make the rookie lawyer a scrappy hero worth investing in. The narration provided by Baylor, is, for the most part, unnecessary.

The three stories compete for attention in the first half of the movie, but the insurance lawsuit dominates the second half, and the movie evolves as expected into a satisfying high-stakes courtroom showdown to influence the jury. Jon Voight does his part and creates in Drummond a worthwhile adversary who justifies his high fees by shredding witnesses just when Rudy starts to believe that he might gain an unlikely upper hand.

The other two legal cases, involving Miss Birdsong's will and Kelly's domestic abuse, do get short changed, and ultimately get in the way of the main narrative thrust and are almost all but discarded. Miss Birdsong's ordeal with the will is a great excuse to see Teresa Wright on the screen one last time. Kelly's wife abuse story takes a turn towards mayhem that has all the appearances of a desperate attempt to occupy Rudy with something other than the insurance firm lawsuit.

Danny DeVito, Mickey Rourke and Danny Glover add plenty of animation and some moments of humour, while late in the case Virginia Madsen and Roy Scheider make telling contributions in the courtroom.

Despite having its heart in the right place and working the big bad corporation theme to perfection, The Rainmaker lacks a killer moment of impact to differentiate it from other legal dramas. This does not make it a lesser film, just a lower profile but still enjoyable adventure in the jungles of the law.

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Movie Review: Marathon Man (1976)

A dark action thriller with an old Nazi unleashing new evil, Marathon Man unspools a tale of conspiracy laced with torture, brought to life by a phenomenal cast in top form.

A fatal traffic accident forces the notorious Nazi Dr. Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier) to come out of his hiding place in a South American jungle. In New York, Thomas "Babe" Levy (Dustin Hoffman) is a university graduate student of history, and also a long-distance runner training for the marathon. His brother Henry "Doc" Levy (Roy Scheider) pretends to be an oil company businessman but actually works for a secretive government "Division" headed by Peter Janeway (William Devane), responsible for collaborating with surviving Nazis. The father of Babe and Doc, a distinguished historian, killed himself when his sons were children after being hounded by Senator McCarthy's communist witch hunt.

Szell travels to New York to try and retrieve a fortune in diamonds. Meanwhile, Babe starts a relationship with foreign student Elsa (Marthe Keller), while Doc runs into a series of strange murders and finds himself the target of assassination. Szell is paranoid about his safety, and attempts to eliminate everyone who may threaten him and his hidden treasure. This sets him on a collision course with Doc, and ultimately Szell kidnaps Babe to try and uncover Doc's intentions. Thrust into a world he knows nothing about, Babe can only rely on himself, and unexpectedly calls on his running skills to survive a one-man wave of Nazi terror in the heart of New York City.

While on close examination the plot of Marathon Man is full of some rather large holes, director John Schlesinger assembles a bleak film filled with a growing sense of purely corrupted villainy. The William Goldman script, based on his own book, maintains a strong focus on the characters of Babe, Doc and Szell. The scenes of violence and confrontation, when they arrive, carry a high potency factor due to the elevated blood and gore quotient, but also thanks to the hard investment in character development.

Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman elevate Marathon Man from a potentially hokey thriller to a superior, engrossing experience. Olivier is eerie as Dr. Szell, a surviving Nazi with expertise in dental torture. Olivier's performance is cold, emotionless and mechanical in its intensity, an old man incongruously conveying single-minded determination to get his hands on his treasure. Everything that made the holocaust a terrifying travesty is packed into his eyes, including the callous disregard for any amount of human suffering.

Hoffman, in his last performance as a student-type, is all about the fragility that resides in a scarred soul. Babe (the nickname an obvious reference to a man-child) has never really moved past his father's suicide, and Hoffman's performance is a complex condensation of a growing up process that now has to catch up with history. Hoffman tentatively unleashes Babe to chase his first romance, and he will soon have to deal with learning the true identity of his brother and just how much evil lurks out in the real, non-academic world.

Roy Scheider rounds out the principal cast, and he gets a James Bond-type role, an agent in the shadowy world of obscure government departments but here toiling on unglamourous and distasteful files. Doc has dealt with his father's death by embroiling himself into a world of subterfuge, and Scheider exudes a world weariness emanating from a life of too much lying to himself. William Devane is perfect as the distastefully oily head of the "Division", Janeway thoroughly committed to his job, having long since lost the edge between right and wrong.

Marathon Man is most famous for elevating the dentists chair to a full-on torture experience, Dr. Szell repeatedly asking the cabalistic question "Is it safe?" as he readies his dainty dentist tools to inflict unimaginable pain. The unspoken horror is that no city with a rampaging and tenacious Dr. Szell can possibly be safe.

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Movie Review: Jaws (1975)

A men-versus-shark thriller and the original modern high-budget, high-publicity summer blockbuster film, Jaws is a wild ride straight into the razor-sharp teeth of entertainment. Director Steven Spielberg's first massive hit is a gripping, suspense-filled battle between one small community and one mammoth killing machine.

At the New England summer resort town of Amity Island, a giant white shark starts a reign of terror. A skinny-dipping woman is the first to be killed, followed by the young Alex Kintner. Police Chief Brody (Roy Scheider), who has just moved to the community with his wife Ellen (Lorraine Gary) and young son, is afraid of the water and wants the beaches closed to safeguard the public from further attacks. But with the July 4th weekend fast approaching and the town's economic viability at stake, the town's Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) would hear none of it, especially when a large tiger shark is jubilantly caught and the threat hastily proclaimed to be over.

When the great white makes an audacious attack against Brody's young son and his friends in a supposedly sheltered  inner pool, Brody teams up with grizzled shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw) and marine biologist Hooper (Richard Dreyfus), and they head out in Quint's boat to hunt down the predator on the open water. With tension mounting between the gruff Quint and the college-educated Hooper, they soon make contact with the seemingly indestructible and incredibly powerful shark, and the determined hunters become susceptible prey.

Drawing on eternal themes of man versus monster and the need to confront existential fears in order to survive, Jaws is a simple story of a large shark terrorizing a small community. But the movie adaptation of the Peter Benchley novel started shooting without a script, with an inexperienced director, and with a mechanical shark that rarely functioned. Over budget and way over schedule, producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown demonstrated remarkable faith in a 28-year-old Spielberg, and through talent and serendipity, he delivered a classic. Jaws went on to become the highest grossing film in history (until Star Wars came along).

The malfunctioning mechanical shark meant that Spielberg had to suggest the presence of the beast much more than show it. Jaws was therefore transformed from a horror film to a suspense thriller, the lethal predator lurking but unseen, its presence mostly suggested through point-of-view shots, and confirmed with the agony of churning water turning red with the gushing blood of mangled victims.

The imagination always creates the most powerful of visions, and the shark became the most menacing threat that every viewer could individually imagine. When the shark finally does appear it causes a jolt, never more so than the startling over-Brody's-shoulder shot, leading to the classic and prophetic "You're gonna need a bigger boat" line, ad-libbed by Scheider to Shaw.

The brilliantly minimalistic soundtrack by John Williams became as much a part of the film as the shark itself. Built on an astonishingly simple but incredibly sinister tuba two tone, the chilling music ignited Williams' career and started and long-lasting association with Spielberg.

Among the actors, Robert Shaw makes the strongest impression. Enjoying Quint as a larger than life and naturally abrasive hunter, Shaw lets loose with the dry laugh, the bad jokes, the long stories and the abuse directed mostly at Hooper. But he also gets the most deadly serious monologue in the film, recounting his background as a crew member of the USS Indianapolis, torpedoed by the Japanese at the end of World War Two with the survivors mercilessly attacked by sharks as they awaited rescue. It's a riveting island of quiet personal terror in the wide open seas of Jaws.

Roy Scheider plays Brody as a stoic man trying to do what is right, an outsider to the community objectively assessing the risks much to the consternation of the locals. He is finally forced to confront his fear of the water, although how a man with water phobia ever landed the position as Chief of Police at a seaside resort remains to be explained. Dreyfuss is slightly annoying as the academic shark expert Hooper, a know-it-all almost deserving of the abuse dished out by Quint.

Murray Hamilton brings delicious smarminess to Mayor Vaughn, and he gets the second best line of the movie when confronting the idea that the dead tiger shark may not be the killer terrorizing his community: "This is not the time or the place to perform some kind of half-assed autopsy on a fish. And I'm not going to stand here and see that thing cut open and have that little Kintner boy spill out all over the dock."

Jaws delivers extraordinary suspense in the water, an unforgettable story of evil lurking beneath the surface, a killing machine operating with beady-eyed efficiency.

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Movie Review: Klute (1971)

Jane Fonda's Academy Award winning performance as call girl Bree Daniels is the life blood of the grim detective drama Klute. Otherwise, the Alan J. Pakula film is dour, dense and a little disoriented.

Pennsylvania businessman Tom Gruneman is missing, and one of the few clues to the events surrounding his disappearance is a salacious letter found among his belongings addressed to Bree Daniels (Fonda), a New York prostitute. When the police investigation gets nowhere, Gruneman's business partner Peter Cable (Charles Cioffi) hires police officer John Klute (Donald Sutherland) to investigate.

In New York, Klute connects with Bree, who is trying to carve out a career as an actress or a model, but doors only ever slam in her face. She is embarrassed by her profession, but is nevertheless drawn to the life of a call girl, enjoying the sense of empowerment she derives from men craving her. Bree regularly sees a psychiatrist, but no amount of therapy is helping to straighten out her life. Bree guides Klute into the dark corners of the New York sex trade, and they track down characters possibly related to Gruneman's disappearance, including her former pimp Frank (Roy Scheider), two other hookers (one a drug addict), and a mysterious violent customer. As they delve deeper and uncover a series of seemingly related murders, Klute and Bree start an uneven relationship as their lives are placed in danger by a merciless killer.

The Klute plot does not stand up to much scrutiny, nor is it ever engaging. The Gruneman character is not made to matter to anyone, and his disappearance is more of a MacGuffin than a source of tension. The mild horror elements are contrived and unconvincing, the repetitive piano tinkling on the soundtrack more tiresome than effective.

The real objective is to explore the psyche of Bree Daniels, and this is where Klute shines. Fonda, with that unforgettable haircut, delivers the performance of her career. Bree is a layered, complex and conflicted woman, both attracted and repelled by her chosen career, unable to connect with men except when she senses their desperate submission to her sexuality.

For Bree, John Klute becomes both a danger and a lover, a man she begins to care about and who can demonstrate a different type of attachment, and Bree finds the potential both thrilling and terrifying. Fonda breaks down into quiet, powerful tears near the movie's climax in a moment of despairing raw emotion, Bree confronting the stark reality about a customer but more importantly confronting her overall life's losses.

If there are reasons why Donald Sutherland is more famous as an engaging supporting actor than a leading star, they are found here. Given the opportunity to star, Sutherland goes through Klute with a single expression of low-key determination mixed with recognition that he is wading in waters much murkier than he is used to. It is an effective but subdued performance, very much leaving centre stage clear for Fonda to shine. Roy Scheider hints at an interesting character as Frank the sleazy pimp, but the role is more truncated than it needed to be.

Alan J. Pakula directs with an eye for unrelenting darkness, Klute drenched in shadows, blacks, browns and dim yellows. There is no glamour in Bree's world, there is no humour in the script, and Klute's journey has discovery but no satisfaction. The New York locations are suitably downbeat, with dank apartments, the dishes always left unwashed.

Bree Daniels is a more interesting character than the movie that she is in, and Jane Fonda's performance of uncommon quality is the one real reason to take a journey to New York City with Klute.

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Movie Review: Blue Thunder (1983)

A movie that exists for the primary purpose of showcasing helicopter acrobatics, Blue Thunder provides only a bit of fun as it plunders through the usual macho-cliches and government conspiracy puddles.

In the skies of Los Angeles, a police unit uses helicopters to support ground officers and help keep the peace. Veteran pilot Frank Murphy (Roy Scheider) is the local maverick, capable of exceptional flying tricks but haunted by his combat experiences flying in Vietnam. A sinister new chopper is brought in for testing: unlike the regular police helicopters, Blue Thunder is tricked out with a massive amount of weapons, technology and armor.

Murphy's old adversary, the slimy Colonel Cochrane (Malcolm McDowell), seems keen to bring the military-style Blue Thunder into police service, and soon there are hints at a conspiracy to manufacture civil strife in order to justify pushing the heavy-handed chopper into service. After his partner (Daniel Stern) is killed, Murphy gets help from his girlfriend (Candy Clark) and takes matters into his own hands, stealing Blue Thunder to expose the evil plot. 

The storyline of Blue Thunder is crass and conspiratorial, with basic performances to match from cast members who are capable of better, including Warren Oates in one of his last roles as Murphy's long suffering Captain. Director John Badham chooses efficiency over style, and is a lot more interested in the machinery than the people. The agitation by technology is enabled by high-tech and futuristic gizmos packed into Blue Thunder, in a triumph of impressive hardware over good storytelling. 

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