Movie Review: Charley Varrick (1973)

Genre: Heist Thriller

Director: Don Siegel

Starring: Walter Matthau, Joe Don Baker, Andy Robinson, John Vernon

Running Time: 111 minutes

Synopsis: In New Mexico, Charley Varrick (Walter Matthau) is a crop duster and ex-stunt pilot who robs remote rural banks for small amounts. But his latest job results in multiple casualties, including Charley's wife Nadine. Accomplice Harman (Andy Robinson) escapes with Charley and they are both shocked that their haul included $750,000 in Mafia money. Charley has to elude the authorities and manage the excitable Harman, while corrupt bank boss Maynard Boyle (John Vernon) hires ruthless fixer Molly (Joe Don Baker) to track down the thieves and recover the money. 

What Works Well: The adaptation of John H. Reese's book The Looters is a compact and clever crime drama with a sparkling sheen and a twinkle in the eye. Bad guys attempt to outsmart worse guys in a deadly game of cat and mouse, and in one of his career-best performances, Walter Matthau enjoys keeping Charley just one step ahead of everyone else. He is ably supported by Andy Robinson's intensity and Joe Don Baker's persistence. Pointed small roles also make a big difference, including intriguing contributions by Charley's wife, an expert forger, and an old geezer in a wheel chair. The wide open landscapes under blazing skies add an expansive aesthetic.

What Does Not Work As Well: The police investigation (represented by Norman Fell as Garfinkle) unrealistically never gets going.

Conclusion: A taut thriller with a confident attitude.



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Movie Review: California Suite (1978)

A tactless comedy with dashes of drama, California Suite oscillates between pompous and cretinous.

Four unrelated stories take place over one weekend at the same Beverly Hills hotel. Divorced couple Hannah (Jane Fonda) and Bill (Alan Alda) meet to discuss the future of their 17 year old daughter Jenny. New Yorker Hannah is a highly-strung news editor who thrives on prickly insults and sharp retorts, while Bill has become much more laid back since he relocated to Los Angeles. The couple bicker endlessly.

Veteran English stage actress Diana Barrie (Maggie Smith) is nominated for her first Academy Award for an unworthy role in the frivolous comedy No Left Turns. Her husband Sidney Cochran (Michael Caine), an antique dealer, is her companion for the Oscar ceremony. Diana is nervous about the evening and leans on Sidney for emotional support, but all is not well in their relationship.

Marvin (Walter Matthau) is in town for his nephew's bar mitzvah. His brother Harry (Herb Edelman) is a lecherous womanizer, and arranges for a prostitute (Denise Galik) to entertain Marvin in his hotel room. The situation gets messier when Marvin's wife Millie (Elaine May) arrives the next morning.

Doctors Chauncey Gump (Richards Pryor) and Willis Panama (Bill Cosby) and their wives are on a joint vacation and getting testy. The hotel messes up their booking, with the Gumps confined to a faulty closet-sized room while the Panamas enjoy a luxury suite. The vacation goes rapidly downhill from there.

Writer Neil Simon adapted his own play, and in the hands of director Herbert Ross what may have worked on the stage flops badly on the screen. Essentially four separate 25 minute sketches populated by distinctly unlikable people, California Suite generates a couple of chuckles but otherwise curls up into a small ball and dies. 

Worst of all is the segment featuring the Black doctors played by Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby. Their misadventures descend into low-brow slapstick of the pathetic kind, a miserable and painful waste of talent.

Two of the other sketches are not much better. Jane Fonda and Alan Alda are forced to spout Simon's artificially agitated hyper-intellectual theatrical prose, and their incessant sniping is quickly insufferable. Walter Matthau wrings some humour from the hapless middle-aged man trying to hide a passed-out hooker from his wife, but is ultimately defeated by material stretched too thin.

Maggie Smith and Michael Caine almost save the day with the one reasonably compelling and well-written story. Actress Diana and antique dealer Sidney's marriage is complex, and made more intricate by her propensity for drama and his caustic street-smarts. They both clearly benefit from the union, but barely concealed secrets and frustrations are nibbling away at their contentment. While far from perfect and still saddled with loquacity, this episode at least creates a memorable pair. 

Maggie Smith nabbed a real Oscar for a forgettable movie in which she is Oscar nominated for a silly comedy. From the few snippets shown No Left Turns is indeed dire, but also potentially still better than California Suite.



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Movie Review: Hopscotch (1980)

A lighthearted spy adventure, Hopscotch travels around the world with a disgruntled ex-CIA agent extracting literary revenge on his former employers. The premise is flimsy, and the humour sparse.

In Munich, veteran CIA field agent and Mozart lover Miles Kendig (Walter Matthau) completes a successful mission, but adheres to gentlemanly rules and allows his KGB counterpart and old foe Yaskov (Herbert Lom) to get away. Back at CIA headquarters, excitable section boss Myerson (Ned Beatty) is furious and demotes Miles to a filing job until retirement, promoting agent Joe Cutter (Sam Waterston) in the process.

Miles decides to immediately disappear on his own terms, destroying his file and travelling to Salzburg, where he reconnects with retired agent Isobel von Schonenberg (Glenda Jackson). He starts to write his memoirs containing information damaging to the CIA, and mails chapters to intelligence agencies around the world. Myerson tasks Cutter with leading a manhunt to capture Miles before more revelations leak out, but the savvy ex-agent stays one step ahead by hopscotching across the globe.

A loyal agent with years of dedicated field service and a strong code of conduct suddenly embarking on a selfish campaign to leak damaging secrets because of one boorish boss is already improbable. The screenplay, co-written by Brian Garfield as an adaptation of his own book, then crumples the rickety story with bland execution, most of Hopscotch featuring Kendig travelling from location A to location B with inept CIA agents trailing in his wake.

Even the travelogue elements are underplayed, Kendig rarely staying in one place long enough for director Ronald Neame to build a sense of place. Character development is conspicuously absent, and after their initial encounter, the tepid romance between Kendig and Isobel is relegated to a series of long-distance phone calls, Glenda Jackson literally phoning-in her involvement.

Matthau tries his best to enliven proceedings, but is defeated early by the weak material. For fans of Mozart, Hopscotch features frequent scenes of Matthau air-conducting classical works as the one superficial representation of his character. The strong supporting cast is wasted, Ned Beatty, Sam Waterston and Herbert Lom reduced to Keystone Cops competence levels, their characters often shepherded by Kendig to gathering places for the sole purpose of inflicting embarrassment.

Neither funny nor smart, Hopscotch fades like chalk marks in the rain.



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Movie Review: Lonely Are The Brave (1962)

A contemporary western eulogy, Lonely Are The Brave explores the loss of a way of life through the story of a good-natured cowboy playing by the old rules.

In New Mexico, Korean War veteran Jack Burns (Kirk Douglas) and his horse Whiskey still crave the open frontier cowboy lifestyle. Jack laments the fences, property lines and roads infringing on his freedom to move wherever he pleases. When he learns his buddy Paul (Michael Kane) is in prison for helping illegal immigrants, he visits Paul's wife Jerry (Gena Rowlands) and commits to help.

Jack: Have you ever noticed how many fences there're getting to be? And the signs they got on them: no hunting, no hiking, no admission, no trespassing, private property, closed area, start moving, go away, get lost, drop dead!

Jack welcomes a bar fight then instigates a scuffle with police to get himself arrested and thrown into the same cell as Paul. He tangles with prison guard Gutierrez (George Kennedy) before offering Paul an opportunity to escape by sawing through the prison bars. But while Paul has a wife and child to consider, Jack lives for himself and for today, and with Whiskey makes a run for the mountains. Sheriff Morey Johnson (Walter Matthau) organizes a pursuit.

Desk sergeant: Look, cowboy, you can't go around with no identification. It's against the law. How are people going to know who you are?
Jack: I don't need a card to figure out who I am. I already know.

A lyrical western, Lonely Are The Brave carries honest intentions and a clear-eyed distinction between past and present. Dalton Trumbo's script sets out to bid a fond farewell to men like Jack, and despite the bittersweet sense of loss, even Jack is under no illusions. He knows his time has come and gone, and so does everyone else, but nothing will stop him from trying to wind the clock back.

The other men have moved on and are now more circumspect than freewheeling. Jack's good buddy and rival for Jerry's heart Paul is no longer interested in jail break escapades. Sheriff Johnson brings a resigned approach to his job, recognizing men like Jack are capable of disappearing into the wilderness, and maybe that's not a bad outcome. Meanwhile Jerry is exasperated not just with Jack's carefree attitude, but with men's general dense-headed and cavalier disregard towards the benefits of domesticity. 

Jerry: Believe you me, if it didn't take men to make babies I wouldn't have anything to do with any of you!

David Miller directs with a relaxed stance, the black and white cinematography harkening back to an earlier era where only mountain ranges interrupted the landscape. And Kirk Douglas brings his impish smile and an open, approachable demeanour to the fore, convinced every fence can be cut and every problem has a straightforward common-sense solution.

Jerry: Maybe you'd be better off if they caught you.
Jack: Maybe, but I'd like to put it off for as long as possible.

Jack's escape destination is a mountain ridge easiest to cross alone and on foot, but his tradition demands a man look after his horse, despite Whiskey's intransigence. Some of the scenes featuring the horse being forced up the steep terrain make for difficult viewing, but the old west was not for the faint of heart. Of course on the other side of the mountain is another barrier, even more difficult for Jack and Whiskey. No matter, they will carry on, intent on finding a sunset now obscured by the headlights of busy traffic.

Jerry: Jack, I'm going to tell you something. The world that you and Paul live in doesn't exist. Maybe it never did. Out there is a real world. And it's got real borders and real fences, real laws and real trouble. And you either go by the rules or you lose. You lose everything.
Jack: You can always keep something.

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Movie Review: The Odd Couple (1968)

A comedy about a friendship tested at close quarters, The Odd Couple sparkles with witty dialogue and two excellent performances.

In New York City, writer Felix Ungar (Jack Lemmon) is thrown out of the house by his wife after 12 years of marriage. Despondent and contemplating suicide, he eventually makes his way to the home of his best friend Oscar Madison (Walter Matthau), a sports reporter who has also experienced divorce. 

Oscar invites Felix to live with him, but the two men are very different: Felix is a cleanliness and tidiness freak and a proud chef. Oscar is a slob living on rotting food and proud of it. They soon start irritating each other, but the living arrangement is most severely tested when Oscar invites a couple of ladies over for a fun evening and Felix ruins the jovial mood with excessive sentimentality.

With Neil Simon adapting his own play and Gene Saks directing, The Odd Couple is a playful exploration of a friendship under pressure. How far the bond between the two men will bend before it breaks becomes a battle of wills, patience and empathy caught in the crossfire between diametrically opposed domestic expectations. While the film is mostly confined to Oscar's apartment and does not stray far from the stage origins, the humour is sustained, and Lemmon and Matthau bounce off each other to great effect. 

The tension and laughs are derived from two endearing characters. Felix is vulnerable and still absorbing the shock of his marriage coming to an abrupt end. He takes refuge in obsessive compulsive behaviour, driving Oscar and their poker buddies to distraction with exquisite housekeeping. Felix wants to be accommodating, but starts to suffer under Oscar's increasingly regimented expectations. Two men on divergent wavelengths under the same roof are soon mimicking the behaviour of a married couple in crisis.

Simon's dialogue is razor sharp, the repartee between the two men filled with barbs, sarcasm and throwaway remarks. Saks keeps his cameras moving within the confines of the apartment, and the catchy Neal Hefti theme music is deployed in good doses.

But the film's success resides with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, and they bring to life two unforgettable men. Lemmon delivers Felix's nervous mannerisms with perfectly annoying accuracy, while Matthau's slouch and grumpy exasperated expression define the prototypical divorced slob.

The supporting cast members add plenty of brio. The loud and sweaty poker group includes Herb Edelman and John Fiedler arguing about chips, snacks, and humidity. Monica Evans and Carole Shelley are the sisters Cecily and Gwendolyn Pigeon (or is it the other way around), a brilliantly giggly transplanted English pair looking for a good time but unknowingly landing in the ever widening crevasse between Felix and Oscar.

Cranky and candid, The Odd Couple celebrates complicated cohabitation.



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Movie Review: A Face In The Crowd (1957)

A hard hitting drama, A Face In The Crowd examines the ruinous trend of celebrity culture propelled by television.

In a small rural Arkansas town, radio show producer Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal) features hard drinking drifter Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes (Andy Griffith) on her "A Face In The Crowd" radio show. Rhodes has no talent but his rambling, honest and animated monologues capture the public's imagination. He is offered a regular radio slot, and soon attracts the attention of television producers and sponsors in Memphis. Marcia relocates with him, and teams up with acerbic writer Mel Miller (Walter Matthau) to help grow Lonesome's popularity.

Ambitious office worker Joey DePalma (Anthony Franciosa) recognizes Rhodes appeal, and finagles a national television deal resulting in a big contract and another relocation, this time to New York City. Now wealthy and influential beyond his dreams, Rhodes relies on Marcia to keep him somewhat grounded, but is otherwise obsessed with his celebrity status and growing influence. He starts to dabble in politics and is smitten by young cheerleader Betty Lou Fleckum (Lee Remick).

Directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg, A Face In The Crowd is a prescient rags-to-riches and lust-for-power story examining the emerging influence of broadcast media. In two hours Kazan traces the trajectory of Rhodes, starting from a dank prison cell where he is passed out in the corner, all the way to a New York City penthouse with Rhodes as the nation's most prominent television personality and a political kingmaker influencing election campaigns.

A Face In The Crowd predicts the era of talentless celebrities and influencers, capable of grabbing attention and dominating the media landscape based on little more than hot air. Rhodes' only talent is to "tell it like it is", spouting home truths with apparent blue collar honesty, poking fun at corporate sponsors and speaking in language that appeals to the less educated masses huddled around their radios and televisions.

And there is plenty of money to be made on the back of an unlikely superstar, and wealth creates greedy enablers. His corporate sponsors learn to love him, and men like Joey DePalma get rich by creating business empires around him. Even Marcia, who found and unleashed the genie from the bottle, insists on getting a financial cut once she starts to doubt that Rhodes will ever be able to truly commit to her.

In his film debut, Andy Griffith is a revelation, dominating almost every scene and creating a memorable character as Rhodes rides his country boy appeal to the top, always smart enough to adapt his zeal to suit ever changing circumstances. Kazan also cajoles moments of poignancy out of Griffith, often in the company of Neal's Marcia, as it becomes apparent to Rhodes that no amount of fame can fill the void inside.

Every man has every right to pursue his dreams. A Face In The Crowd accompanies Lonesome Rhoades on his wild ride, and exposes the ease with which a nation can be entranced and manipulated by simplistic platitudes.

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Movie Review: I Ought To Be In Pictures (1982)

A comedy-drama stage adaptation, I Ought To Be In Pictures tackles father-daughter issues and comes up empty.

19 year old Libby Tucker (Dinah Manoff) travels from New York to Los Angeles to reconnect with her father Herbert (Walter Matthau), a writer who abandoned the family when Libby was three. Libby dreams of a career in acting and imagines Herbert to be a powerful Hollywood big shot, but instead finds him to be a washed-up gambling addict, unemployed and suffering from writer's block. His girlfriend is movie studio hairdresser Steffy (Ann-Margaret), who tolerates Walter but is growing weary of his lack of ambition.

Libby and Walter immediately clash, as he finds it difficult to connect with his headstrong and talkative daughter and she is unable to forgive his past sins. But gradually they warm up to each other, she moves into his apartment, and they construct a functional relationship. But Libby will not find it easy to carve out a new life.

An adaptation of the Neil Simon play directed by Herbert Ross, I Ought To Be In Pictures is smothered by over-embroidered prose dancing between cringe-worthy, needlessly profound and just plain embarrassing. Ross also directed the Broadway show and does not try too hard to transform it into a film experience. As is often the case, what works well on the stage appears ridiculously ceremonial on the screen, and the phrases coming out of the mouth of Libby and Herbert rarely carry a genuine warmth.

The movie is very much a two character study, and scene after scene feature Libby and Herbert carrying on long conversations, typically at his apartment. Ross throws in perfunctory excursions to the baseball park and the racetrack in half-hearted attempts to ventilate the claustrophobic setting. The topics of conversation range from her improbable career aspirations to his unforgivable abandonment of the family, and finally no less than the most awkward father-daughter non-talk about the emotions of sexual experiences. Simon's writing is undoubtedly clever, but when every other line has to be a zinger, the unrealistic quantity competes unfavourably with quality.

Dinah Manoff was the one stage performer allowed to recreate her character for the film, and she receives no help from Ross in modulating. The character of Libby is borderline irritating at the best of times as the talk-non-stop Quixotic daughter on a quest to conquer her father and the acting world, and Manoff's shout-it-to-the-rafters delivery does not help. Matthau is much better, and carries the film as the stooped writer long past caring in a town run by younger men. Ann-Margret is fine in a supporting role, although she is never able to properly explain why the seemingly smart Steffy is hanging out with an indebted has-been like Herbert.

Despite the many weaknesses the film does find a few highlights, and most of these arrive in the final act. Once father and daughter make the adjustments to accommodate each other, Ross finally finds a few poignant scenes. The shouting and recriminations are replaced by hushed, tender, and cinematic conversations, and finally emotions seep through. It's all too little and too late, the film having been well and truly pulverized by all the theatrical antics.

Despite the title, I Ought To Be In Pictures ought to stay on the stage.

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Movie Review: Earthquake (1974)

A big scale disaster movie, Earthquake has some effective moments of destruction but is an otherwise sloppily constructed and cheese-filled exercise in tolerating aggravating stock characters spouting horrible lines of dialogue.

In Los Angeles, building engineer Stewart Graff (Charlton Heston) is having marital problems with his depressed wife Remy (Ava Gardner). A series of minor tremors create concern at the Mulholland Dam overlooking the city. At the California Seismological Institute a young staffer crunches the numbers and concludes that a major quake will likely strike the city within 48 hours, but his methodology is unproven. Meanwhile Stewart's boss and father-in-law Sam Royce (Lorne Green) promotes Stewart to President of their engineering company, but Stewart is more interested in pursuing young widow Denise Marshall (Geneviève Bujold).

The big quake does hit, effectively destroying Los Angeles. Stewart has to help Sam save employees from their partially destroyed office tower. Remy, Denise and Denise's injured young son Corry are evacuated to the basement of a supposedly quake-proof highrise. Others caught up in the mayhem are wannabe motorcycle daredevil Miles Quade (Richard Roundtree), short-tempered police officer Lou Slade (George Kennedy) and the financially strapped Rosa Amici (Victoria Principal). But just when it appears that the worst is over, there is more shaking to come.

Produced and directed by Mark Robson, Earthquake arrived at the peak of the epic disaster movie cycle of the early 1970s, with The Towering Inferno and Airport '75 released in the same year. Unfortunately gimmickry was already creeping into the genre as productions competed for viewers' attention. Unable to secure any relevant current stars to boost the box office, Earthquake resorted to something called Sensurround, a mammoth sound system designed to literally shake theatre seats with sub-audible "infra bass" sound waves.

Which is just as well, because what is on the screen is pretty awful. Earthquake underwent extensive post-production editing to tighten up the narrative, and the outcome is notably choppy. Other than the few minutes of special effects depicting the earthquake itself, the rest of the movie is two hours of badly-acted television-level drama. Despite a script co-written by Mario Puzo, the dialogue is cringe-worthy, the characters are stiff, and the attempts at drama and conflict border perilously near laughable.

The marital strife between Stewart and Remy plays like a particularly bad daytime soap episode, while Stewart's lusting after Denise is tawdry. Miles Quade disappears entirely from the ending of the movie, after wasting plenty of set-up time with a useless story about his ambition to be the next Evel Knievel. Walter Matthau appears under a pseudonym as an oblivious barfly, while George Kennedy plays a stock angry but good-hearted cop. Victoria Principal wages battle on two fronts: she fights against a frizzy hairdo that occupies half the screen, and fends off a deranged homicidal national guardsman (Marjoe Gortner) who stumbled in from another movie.

The only bits worth watching are the prolonged earthquake strike scenes, and the special effects range from reasonably impressive to amateurish. When an elevator crash ends with cartoon blood drops childishly superimposed on the image of mangled bodies, the splatter is literally on the screen for a genre that had nowhere to go but down.

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Movie review: Charade (1963)

A stylish spy thriller with a dash of humour, Charade thrives on a hip vibe generated by a crackling mystery, a stellar cast, and a cool Parisian setting.

Regina "Reggie" Lampert (Audrey Hepburn) is trapped in a loveless marriage with a husband she barely knows. While she is on vacation, suave stranger Peter Joshua (Cary Grant) seems to make it a point to meet her. Reggie returns to her Paris apartment and is startled to learn her husband Charles is dead, having been thrown from a train, and has left her next to nothing. At Charles' funeral service, three grim strangers show up: Tex (James Coburn), Scobie (George Kennedy) and Gideon (Ned Glass). They all seem eager to confirm that Charles is indeed dead.

Joshua reappears and befriends Reggie, while in the following few days Tex, Scobie and Gideon start to make their menacing presence felt with veiled and obvious threats. American Embassy official Hamilton Bartholomew (Walter Matthau) connects with Reggie to warn her that Charles was illegally in possession of $250,000 that belonged to the United States government, and that the three henchmen are his former crime accomplices and likely won't stop at anything to find the missing money. Reggie has no idea where her ex-husband has stashed the loot, but soon realizes that even with Joshua's help her life is in grave danger, she can trust no one, and nothing is at it seems.

The premise is simple: a plucky damsel in distress is surrounded by a throng of potentially dangerous men. The bad guys are chasing a classic MacGuffin in the form of a missing cache of World War Two money stolen by four soldiers while on a mission behind enemy lines. Elegantly directed by Stanley Donen, Charade is an engaging Hitchcockian thriller handled with a light touch, the Peter Stone screenplay (based on the 1961 short story The Unsuspecting Wife) featuring a romp through Paris with romance and humour injected in just the right amounts to brighten the mood.

The Henry Mancini music score and title song, as well as the animated opening credit sequence by Maurice Binder, announce Charade as a slick example of 1960s film making. Donen aims for chic smoothness, and achieves it through personality and pacing. Even during the more serious action and danger scenes Donen leaves no doubt Reggie will emerge unscathed, and numerous hints wink at the many plot twists. Charade unfolds like a fun trip through a handsomely-trimmed maze; there are a few surprises around some corners, but never any doubt about the final destination.

On closer examination there are plot holes to be sure, as well as some incongruous character reactions as Reggie demonstrates remarkable composure and reaches for clever quips in the face of sudden danger. The flame of romance between Joshua and Reggie also has the potential to flounder on the jagged rocks of a 25 year age difference between Grant and Hepburn. That hurdle is mostly cleared by making Reggie the romantic instigator, a stance that fits in with her relief and liberation at the end of a loveless marriage. Hepburn and Grant develop an easy chemistry and glide over the rough patches on a large dose of star charisma.

The supporting cast is deep in talent. George Kennedy waves a steel claw to good effect, James Coburn does the same with a Texan accent, and Walter Matthau adds bureaucratic oiliness. Filled with unscrupulous villains chasing a cheeky heroine, Charade wins on charm.

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The Movies Of Walter Matthau

All movies starring Walter Matthau and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

The Indian Fighter (1956)

A Face In The Crowd (1957)

Lonely Are The Brave (1962)

Charade (1963)

Fail-Safe (1964)

Mirage (1965)

The Fortune Cookie (1966)

The Odd Couple (1968)

Charley Varrick (1973)

The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

Earthquake (1974)

California Suite (1978)

Hopscotch (1980)

I Ought To Be In Pictures (1982)

JFK (1991)

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Movie Review: Mirage (1965)

A psychological thriller that demonstrates some promise, Mirage proceeds to overcomplicate itself to the point of silliness. The meek resolution, when it arrives, buckles and snaps under the weight of lofty expectations.

As he evacuates a New York high-rise during a power outage, David Stillwell (Gregory Peck) meets the mysterious Shela (Diane Baker). She seems to know him but he does no know who she is. Indeed, David is severely disoriented. On the same day, noted humanitarian and global peace activist Charles Calvin (Walter Abel) appears to jump to his death from the same high-rise in an unexplained suicide.

After encountering two threatening goons named Lester and Willard (Jack Weston and George Kennedy), who refer to a man known only as The Major, David visits psychiatrist Dr. Broden (Robert H. Harris) for help, and begins to realize he is suffering from severe memory loss, with possibly the last two years of his life now a blank. With Shela drifting in and out of his days, seemingly either trying to help or trap him, David finds himself on the run, and hires wise-cracking private detective Caselle (Walter Matthau) to try and piece his life back together again.

Beware thrillers built on the fragile premise of memory loss. Mirage attempts to overcome one of the weakest of plot devices by layering on mysterious events, interesting characters and some action, but ultimately the film disappoints. The complexity loops back onto itself and demands an exceptional explanation. Instead, the screenplay by Peter Stone and Howard Fast can only deliver a flimsy struggle over a most unconvincing MacGuffin, a literally paper-thin climax that crumples into a small ball of overwhelming disappointment. Worse still, the resolution undermines plenty of what went on before.

While the bedraggled final 20 minutes cause a lot of damage, Mirage is not a total loss. Under director Edward Dmytryk's steady hands, and making full use of Joseph MacDonald's slick black and white cinematography, the film offers a dense enigma, with plenty of hard boiled crime elements, including goons full of guns, a lady full of lies and lust, and a droll detective full of dry discernment.

David does not know what is going on or who these people are, but with no memory of anything better to do, he plays along, avoiding the bad guys and seeking help where it can be found, as he tries to assemble the scattered puzzle of his life. It's all a bit of Hitchcock meeting Sam Spade's world, and it only starts to fall apart when the cake caves in with too much dark cream.

Gregory Peck cruises through Mirage with a pre-set I'm Determined To Get To The Bottom Of This expression, and he is less than convincing on the few occasions when he loses his temper or has to get physical. Diane Baker flutters in and out of the movie at the whim of the script, the character of Shela being the most intriguing role, except that she remains intriguing well past the time when mystery should have been replaced by cohesion.

Walter Matthau and Robert H. Harris chew their roles with a conviction that hints at unintended comedy, as they both creep over a line into a whole other movie. Harris' Dr. Broden auditions for a Carry On Psychiatry farce, while Matthau's detective Caselle wisecracks his way out of incompetence and into Cousin of the Pink Panther.

Mirage shimmers with the promise of quality, but disappears into mediocrity just when anticipation peaks.

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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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