Movie Review: Flight From Ashiya (1964)

Genre: Rescue Adventure  

Director: Michael Anderson  

Starring: Yul Brynner, Richard Widmark, George Chakiris, Shirley Knight  

Running Time: 100 minutes  

Synopsis: A cargo vessel breaks up in rough seas off the coast of Japan, and the US Air Force Rescue Service is dispatched to pluck survivors out of the ocean. The rescuers include Major Sergeant Mike Takashima (Yul Brynner), Lieutenant Colonel Glenn Stevenson (Richard Widmark), and 2nd Lieutenant John Gregg (George Chakiris). Flashbacks reveal stories that shaped the men: Gregg was traumatized by a rescue-gone-wrong in the German mountains; Stevenson found his great love (Shirley Knight) and learned to hate during World War Two in Manila; and in the North Africa campaign, Takashima romantically pursued a Tunisian girl (Danièle Gaubert).

What Works Well: The cast is rich in talent, and the plot's ambition is not in doubt: co-writer Elliott Arnold (adapting his novel) traverses snowy mountains, raging oceans, the North Africa desert, and wartime Manila to cover distinct dramas. The bookend ocean rescue is a straightforward story of heroism, sacrifice, and overcoming psychological barriers, while the flashbacks coalesce around the theme of loss. 

What Does Not Work As Well: With no one story to focus on, the four episodes stumble on hokey improbabilities, and none are sharp enough to stand on their own merits. Sappy romantic interludes dominate for long stretches, and while both Stevenson and Takashima fall madly in love based on momentary infatuations, at least Takashima's lusty pursuit ends in a non-recoverable tragic (and unintended) comedy. The writing is rudimentary, the emotions superficially one-dimensional, and the recruitment propaganda is of the in-your-face variety.

Conclusion: The rescuers need rescuing from dangerous contrivances.



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Movie Review: Escape From Zahrain (1962)

Genre: Action Adventure  

Director: Ronald Neame  

Starring: Yul Brynner, Jack Warden, Sal Mineo, James Mason, Madlyn Rhue  

Running Time: 93 minutes  

Synopsis: American companies are exploiting the oil wealth of the (fictional) Arab country Zahrain. Imprisoned inspirational revolutionary leader Sharif (Yul Brynner) is freed in a daring rescue mission led by idealistic university student Ahmed (Sal Mineo). American embezzler Huston (Jack Warden) and maniacal murderer Tahar (Anthony Caruso) are accidental beneficiaries of the breakout. To escape across the desert, the group steals an ambulance and take nurse Laila (Madlyn Rhue) hostage, but army troops are in hot pursuit.

What Works Well: This B-movie ambulance desert trek carries echoes of Ice Cold In Alex and Sahara, while the Robin Estridge script, adapting a Michael Barnett book, offers basic but still perceptive commentary about foreign power resource exploitation in the Middle East. Director Ronald Neame pauses only briefly for conversations, preferring to keep the ambulance on the move and pointed towards trouble, including skirmishes with ground and air enemy forces, dwindling water and fuel supplies, unforgiving terrain, and internal group tensions. The talent-rich cast is allowed to dwindle in size as the hazards multiply, with James Mason stealing his one scene in an uncredited appearance.

What Does Not Work As Well: Character depth is lacking, some of the locales are painfully studio-set, and after a promising prologue, Sharif's enemies dissolve into a mirage of hardware operated by tactless troops.

Conclusion: Dusty, gritty, and a bit sunburnt.

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Movie Review: The King And I (1956)

A musical drama and romance, The King And I enjoys a larger-than-life Yul Brynner performance and a couple of good musical numbers, but otherwise sags under the weight of a turgid production.

It's the 1860s, and British teacher Anna Leonowens (Deborah Kerr) and her young son arrive in Siam. She has accepted the position of educator to the children of King Mongkut (Yul Brynner), but is disappointed to learn from Prime Minister Kralahome (Martin Benson) that the King has reneged on a promise to provide her with a private house outside the castle.

Anna finds the King a stern but intriguing man, the arrogant father of numerous children but keenly interested in expanding his knowledge of science and international politics. She establishes a good rapport with her students and also meets Tuptim (Rita Moreno), the Burmese slave wife of the King who is still secretly in love with her beau Lun Tha (Carlos Rivas). Anna gradually establishes herself as a capable advisor to the King, but their relationship remains complex.

Based on the 1951 Broadway musical which in turn was an adaptation of the 1944 book Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon, The King And I features the music of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II and Yul Brynner's career defining performance. Recreating the role he made his own on the stage, Brynner dominates the screen with a restless, authoritative fists-on-hips display of power.

While Kerr (with her singing dubbed by Marni Nixon) adequately grounds Anna in predictable British mannerisms, most of the rest of the film does not live up to Brynner's energy level. Getting To Know You and Shall We Dance? are superlative set-pieces, but the rest of the musical numbers are eminently forgettable. And for a film drawn out to 133 minutes, the supporting characters are close to nonexistent. Anna's son Louis appears at the start and end and otherwise disappears entirely, while Prime Minister Kralahome is equally underutilized. The lingering romance between Tuptim and Lun Tha is reduced to the simplest of fallow sketches.

The King And I features a bewildering play-within-a-play, an artistically staged eastern version of Uncle Tom's Cabin, converted by Tuptim into a condemnation of the King's attachment to wife enslavement. The sequence is both enchanting and distracting, a misfit in the overall narrative arc but nevertheless captivating in its simplistic beauty.

Director Walter Lang confines the action to a few studio-created sets representing various mammoth rooms within the King's castle. Captured in CinemaScope, the set design is impressive and colourful, but the film never threatens to escape its stage origins. Meanwhile the core story suffers from a tired west-is-best mentality, and is further hindered by a hideous make-up job to unconvincingly transform white and Hispanic cast members into Asians.

The King And I enshrines Brynner's forceful screen persona, but is an otherwise confounding royal encounter.

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Movie Review: Anastasia (1956)

A historical drama, Anastasia is the lavish but stodgy story of the mysterious woman who may have been Russian royalty.

After the Russian Bolshevik revolution, rumours persist that Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, survived the 1918 killing of the imperial Romanov family. In Paris of 1928, Russian General Bounine (Yul Brynner) is under pressure by the exiled Russian community to produce the survivor after years of making promises. A $10 million inheritance account is at stake.

Bounine pursues a disoriented ex-mental patient (Ingrid Bergman) with a resemblance to Anastasia and prevents her from jumping into the Seine. Within eight days he polishes up her image, feeds her basic historical information and introduces her as the long-promised royal heir. She is met with a mixture of reverence, skepticism and opportunism, and displays sparks of knowledge adding intrigue to the possibility that she may, indeed, be who Bounine claims her to be.

Much to the General's disgust, she is also romantically pursued by Prince Paul (Ivan Desny), who may be more interested in her inheritance. But the big test resides in securing a meeting with the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna (Helen Hayes), Anastasia's Copenhagen-based grandmother.

Inspired by real events, Anastasia is an adaptation of the play by Marcelle Maurette. The story of young woman who may have survived a firing squad and re-emerged to revive hopes of a Russian imperial future carries all the necessary ingredients for a captivating film. But director Anatole Litvak is only partially successful. While a trace of wistfulness emerges from Anastasia's transformation from bedraggled street person to glamorous but possibly fake princess, the film never emotionally connects.

For long stretches Anastasia unfolds like an over-talkative and static filmed play, and some scenes drag on forever. The camera work is often uninspired, the CinemaScope format not helpful other than for incidental throwaway ballroom scenes. Other than Anastasia, who is more a victim than protagonist, none of the characters carry even the semblance of an arc worth investing in.

On the positive side, the theme of a haughty power-deprived community willing itself to believe in a fairytale princess carries appeal, and some of the settings and costumes are a feast for the eyes. Bounine runs a raucous Russian-themed nightclub with music, exotic performers, and flaming skewers. The exiled elite Russian community maintain a palatial if displaced lifestyle full of colour and grandeur. The scenes of Bounine training his ingenue to behave like royalty are a beguiling precursor to the Professor Higgins/Eliza Doolittle My Fair Lady dynamic.

Anastasia served as Ingrid Bergman's grand Hollywood comeback, and she is by far the standout performer, mixing the hesitancy of a lost and unstable soul with the emerging steely glint of a woman who may start to believe and enjoy the role being crafted for her. Brynner is mostly confined to monotonal rat-a-tat delivery complemented by beady-eyed determination to fool everyone all the time. Helen Hayes as the elderly Empress is content to maintain a fully theatrical mode. Akim Tamiroff is the most prominent member of the noisy Russian community surrounding Bounine's salesmanship.

A briefly captivating footnote of history, Anastasia is more curious than compelling.

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Movie Review: The Ten Commandments (1956)

A religious epic, The Ten Commandments is the story of Moses recounted on an impressively massive scale.

In ancient Egypt, the Hebrews are enslaved people, used primarily for the arduous task of constructing massive monuments and new cities. The Pharaoh hears of prophecies that a newborn will grow up to lead the slaves to freedom, and orders the death of all male Hebrew babies. Slave Yochabel (Martha Scott) packs her infant son in a basket and sets him adrift on the Nile to spare him from death. He is picked up and adopted by the Pharaoh's daughter Bithiah (Nina Foch), and she names the baby Moses. Only Bithiah's servant Memnet (Judith Anderson) knows that the baby is the son of Hebrew slaves.

Moses (Charlton Heston) grows up vying with Rameses (Yul Brynner) for the right to succeed Pharoah Sethi (Cedric Hardwicke) to the throne, a prize that comes with marriage to the ambitious Nefretiri (Anne Baxter). Rameses recruits the services of Hebrew collaborator Dathan (Edward G. Robinson) to try and uncover the identity of the Deliverer who will free the slaves.

Moses is more capable and more resourceful than Rameses, and also more empathetic to the plight of the Hebrews. He demonstrates mercy to stonecutter Joshua (John Derek) and Joshua's love interest and water carrier Lilia (Debra Paget). But before Moses ascends to the throne, Memnet intervenes, forcing Moses to face his true destiny. Spared from death, he marries Bedouin shepherd's daughter Sephora (Yvonne De Carlo) before embarking on a monumental battle of wills with Rameses.

Producer and director Cecil B. DeMille's crowning achievement (and his second crack at the story after a 1923 silent version), The Ten Commandments is three hours and 40 minutes of grand storytelling, old-fashioned Hollywood at its extravagant best. The cast features a galaxy of stars, the extras in some scenes number in the thousands, the sets are numerous and impressively crafted, and the film bursts with the colours of abundant and imaginative costumes.

The popular Moses and Exodus stories are probably amalgams of people and events composed from legends, fractured oral histories and religious texts. To his credit DeMille cites several books as sources for the film, and benefits by steering away from Bible-in-pictures territory. The long story unfolds in four manageable parts: Moses' rise to prominence as a military leader, city builder and potential future Pharoah; his awakening to his true origins and acceptance of his destiny; the struggle to free the Hebrews; and finally the arduous Exodus out of Egypt and towards the new challenges beyond.

The narrative is punctuated by several memorable setpieces. The scenes of mass motion and human activity feature outstanding choreographed artistry, and DeMille always maintains a strong hold on what his cameras are capturing. The city-building, rock-making and Exodus sequences make use of extras in every corner of the VistaVision screen, conveying a profound sense of open space, ongoing industry and masses on the move.

The latter parts of the film scale some unforgettable heights. Moses and his close allies sheltering during the haunting passover night is a quiet but immensely powerful moment in the shadow of creeping horror. The pillar of fire halting an army, the extraordinary parting of the Red Sea, and the Ten Commandments being carved in stone by mystical flames are innovative visual achievements representing the era's state of the art.

And despite all the theatricality on display, The Ten Commandments generally avoids the pitfall of overstated reverence. This is a movie that tries hard to represent real people displaying naked ambition, conspiracy, sensuality, doubt, mixed emotions, and fallibilities. The script does not try to sound as if every spoken word needs to be enshrined on a hallowed wall.

A story this big needs sturdy acting shoulders to stand on, and DeMille assembled an impressive cast, with the luxurious length affording substantive screen time for several performers. Charlton Heston rises to the challenge of portraying Moses with plenty of authoritative presence, whether as a strapping young man earning his way towards the Pharoah's chair or as the grizzled prophet leading his people to freedom with supernatural winds in his sails.

Heston needed a robust foil to shine, and Yul Brynner delivers as Rameses, Moses' rival for leadership and subsequently his existential foe in the struggle to free the Hebrews. Until late in the film Brynner remains a strong presence representing the Egyptian viewpoint. Edward G. Robinson, Anne Baxter, John Derek, Nina Foch, Martha Scott, Yvonne DeCarlo, Debra Paget and Cedric Hardwicke all provide sustained and animated support, DeMille wisely introducing most of the key characters early in the story and then coming back to them repeatedly in different contexts as Moses' life evolves.

Bold and grandiose in breadth and scope, The Ten Commandments is a domineering and engrossing cinematic achievement.

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Movie Review: Adiós, Sabata (1970)

A basic Spaghetti Western, Adiós, Sabata (also known as Indio Black and The Bounty Hunters) throws together all the typical ingredients and produces a most predictable rehash. Yul Brynner's presence helps to generate a few precious highlights amidst the prevailing dross.

Mexico is being oppressed by foreign Austrian rulers commanded by the ruthless Colonel Skimmel (Gerard Herter). A peasant revolution is about to be crushed, but a last-ditch attempt is organized by the rebel leaders to steal a gold shipment and use it to trade for weapons to turn the tide of the revolution. Rebel leader Escudo (Ignazio Spalla) forms an unlikely alliance with bounty hunter and expert shot Sabata (Brynner) and smooth-talking aristocrat artist Ballantine (Dean Reed) to try and pull off the mission, but the scrappy outlaws have to guard against personal greed and each other as much as the Austrian army.

Directed by Gianfranco Parolini, Adiós, Sabata tramples around familiar territory, feeding from scraps of Spaghetti Western plot points seen many times before, and creating a generally poor smorgasbord. The film moves from one set-piece to another, never pausing to invest in plot and character. It's all noisy, frantic and mindless, and none of it resonates.

Faceless, undefined Austrians in suits and top hats engage in firefights with faceless, undefined peasants. Bodies drop dead by the hundreds. A wagon purportedly carrying gold is the target of a wild shoot out, a bridge is targeted for destruction by dynamite, a garrison is stormed. Numerous Gattling guns are brought into numerous battles only to be summarily destroyed by the heroes. The outcome is a disjointed, almost superfluous plot that borders on unintentionally comical. The typical below-average production values and hit-and-miss editing don't help.

The better elements, and there are a few, are brought together by a confident Yul Brynner performance. He does not say much and breezes through the movie in a fetching black outfit revealing too much chest. He also carries a cool tricked-out shotgun with a harmonica-style side-loading magazine. Sabata of course never misses a shot no matter what the distance, and is never even as much as grazed by any bullets either. The main theme music by Bruno Nicolai is borrowed from various Morricone gems, but is anyway above average.

But Brynner and his shotgun alone cannot save the film. Adiós, Sabata is predictable, mechanical and quite unnecessary.

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Movie Review: Westworld (1973)

A low budget science-gone-wrong thriller, Westworld is engaging enough but runs out of steam in its final act.

The Delos amusement park features three "worlds" to serve as vacation resorts for the rich traveler. Western World provides a taste of the wild west, Medieval World recreates the dark ages, and Roman World offers the sinful opulence of a corrupt empire. The resort is populated by highly sophisticated robots in human form, programmed to offer the human vacationers excitement, adventure, thrills and sex. The robots are supposed to never harm the humans.

Peter (Richard Benjamin) and John (James Brolin) are friends who travel together for a vacation at Western World. It's Peter's first trip, and he has many questions, while John has been at the resort before and is back for another make-believe dose of the western frontier. Once the vacation starts all seems to go well, with Peter and John enjoying interactions with The Gunslinger robot (Yul Brynner), the company of prostitutes, a confrontation with the Sheriff robot, and a wild bar fight. But the technicians running the resort start to notice that the robots at all three worlds are going off script, and guests are starting to suffer injuries. Peter and John's adventure will turn from carefree fun to deadly serious.

Writer and director Michael Crichton would go on and evolve most of his concepts about scientific inventions turning on their human creators in the wildly successful Jurassic Park. Westworld is more an incubator of ideas rather than a stellar film. There is plenty to enjoy and ponder, but ultimately the film boils down to two thirds seen-it-before western set-pieces and one third routine chase action, all hampered by stiff acting, wooden dialogue, and a pervasive sense of a cheap production trying to look more expensive than it can get away with.

While Crichton takes his time to set up the premise and sell the lure of resorts offering make-believe adventures for adults, the film offers little to explain what is going wrong and why. Faceless technicians scurry around with worried expressions when the robots start to misbehave, but other than some quick one-sentence theories about a contagion, not much else is presented to explain why the robots may have transformed into murderers. And the absence of a kill switch in such technologically advanced robots is a critical oversight that receives no attention.

Ironically, once the robots turn to killers, the film loses most of its thrust. The final third is a slow moving and relatively uninvolving chase between The Gunslinger and Peter. Crichton does offer a few ideas that would be picked up and developed in future and better film, including the robot's stubborn indestructibility and his pixilated point-of-view. And once the violence starts, the blood and gore visuals are not spared. But the climax is hampered by the absence of a credible threat: Peter always seems to be faster, smarter and more resourceful than the cumbersome Gunslinger.

Yul Brynner, packing a few too many pounds and barely saying 10 words in the entire film, nails the beady eyed look of a robot gone bad. James Brolin and Richard Benjamin are perfectly suited to the grade B production values.

Westworld is worth a visit, but it could have delivered more: what makes science veer off in the wrong direction is more interesting than a slow chase with a six-shooter.

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The Movies Of Yul Brynner

All movies starring Yul Brynner and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

The King And I (1956)

The Ten Commandments (1956)

Anastasia (1956)

The Brothers Karamazov (1958)

The Buccaneer (1958)

The Magnificent Seven (1960)

Escape From Zahrain (1962)

Flight From Ashiya (1964)

Morituri (1965)

Adiós, Sabata (1970)

Westworld (1973)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: The Brothers Karamazov (1958)

A loose adaptation of the Dostoevsky classic novel about a Russian family in turmoil, The Brothers Karamazov throbs with a willingness to conquer but never quite locks into a suitable narrative arc.

In the village of Ryevsk in Russia of 1870, aging patriarch Fyodor Karamazov (Lee J. Cobb) is enjoying life to the fullest but losing control of his four sons. The eldest Dmitiri (Yul Brynner) is always in need of money to feed a gambling habit, and always one step away from trouble. But Dmitri is also quick to help others and shares his father's passion for life, attributes that attract the refined Katya (Claire Bloom). Fyodor's other sons are the educated Ivan (Richard Basehart), the monk Alexi (William Shatner), and Smerdyakov (Albert Salmi), who hangs around pretending to be family but may be more of a bastard.

With Fyodor keeping a tight fist around the family finances, the sons start plotting against their own father and against each other. Things get more complicated when Dmitri does not respond to Katya's love and instead passionately pursues the wispy Grushenka (Maria Schell), who also happens to be his father's lover.

The Brothers Karamazov boasts one majestic scene, one of those enchanted moments when the screen is consumed by the perfect balance of emotion, music and milieu. Maria Schell as Grushenka dances in an ever tightening circle as if in a trance, Yul Brynner as Dmitri Karamazov observes her, transfixed, a family of gypsies provide the music, and slowly but surely the warmly lit tavern is transformed into a cradle of passion. It lasts all of 2 minutes, but director Richard Brooks captures an eternal moment, and the scene rises up to define the film.

The rest of the experience, all 145 minutes of it, rarely touches the same heights. Yes, there is plenty of passion, tension, vigour, characters lustily imbibing life and scheming to get ahead at the expense of one and all. The drinking, womanizing and back-stabbing are rampant. But with brooding intensity and against the grim rural Russian backdrop, the narrative works its way to several dramatic dead ends where stubbornness trumps any form of logic, fistfuls of money becomes an obsession, lust and hope collide into a wreck, and not much of anything is achieved or resolved. The brothers end up in unseemly squabbles, their large spirits wasted on petty disputes.

It does not help that the supporting cast is feeble. Yul Brynner and Lee J. Cobb predictably radiate machismo, decadence and powerful personalities. But the likes of Richard Basehart, William Shatner and Albert Salmi are in a much lower league when it comes to the big screen, and they melt away into insignificance. Maria Schell and Claire Bloom do better as the blonde and the brunette in Dmitri's life. But whether the scene calls for it or not Schell goes through the entire film with a mischievous smile on her face, as if to emphasize her dual seduction of father and son.

Dripping with symbolic representations of their country, The Brothers Karamazov are hefty characters in search of befitting drama, and they don't quite find it here.

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Movie Review: Morituri (1965)

A World War Two marine espionage thriller, Morituri (also known as The Saboteur and Code Name Morituri) offers an initially engaging plot, but the film eventually loses focus, and despite the presence of stars Marlon Brando and Yul Brynner, drifts into muddled waters.

Robert Crain (Brando) is an anti-war German hoping to quietly wait out the conflict in India. British intelligence agent Colonel Statter (Trevor Howard) presses him into service, to infiltrate a German freighter under the command of Captain Mueller (Brynner), sailing from Japan to Europe and carrying a load of precious rubber for the Nazi war machine. Crain's mission is to disable the ship's self-destruct explosive charges, to allow the Allies to intercept Mueller at sea and seize the cargo intact.

Crain is provided with a fake identity as an SS commander. He boards the ship as a guest passenger and sets about his mission to find and disable the charges. He clashes with the ill-tempered and patriotic Mueller, who has a chequered past and is having troubles of his own maintaining control of his men. Also on-board are political prisoners being transported back to Europe. When Mueller accidentally stumbles into the middle of an Allied convoy and changes course, Crain's plans are disrupted and he has to improvise a new mission. Events are further complicated when actual SS agents board the ship to deposit another batch of detainees, including Jewish female prisoner Esther (Janet Margolin).

Filmed in crisp black and white, Morituri is mostly confined to the narrow passageways of the freighter chugging its way across the ocean. Although the thriller elements are initially present as Crain stealthily explores the ship to try and find and disable the explosives, the film is more of an intellectual chess game between a spy risking everything and a suspicious and determined captain.

Apart from its unmarketable name (which is Latin for "about to die"), Morituri starts to stumble about one third of the way through, when the plot is knocked off-course and never recovers. A straightforward story of sabotage on the high seas morphs into an ill-defined plot about mutiny and abandoning ship. Yet another change in direction finds the back end of the film unexpectedly dominated by Esther's story of tragic sexual abuse. Although an anti-war theme is maintained, Morituri loses its identity and devolves into fragmented arcs.

Austrian director Bernhard Wicki does his best with the Daniel Taradash adaptation of the Werner Jörg Lüddecke novel, and clearly there are competing ideas and sub-plots here that may have worked better on the page than on the screen. Morituri would have benefited from streamlining and better sequencing. Esther's story, in particular, sails in late to seize centre stage, throwing the tone of the film into the turmoil of the Holocaust and the politics of gang rape.

Marlon Brando excels in a relatively unfamiliar action-oriented role, his take on a pacifist forced to participate in a war that he despises filled with barbed commentary about the futility of violence. Both Brando and Brynner navigate the film with reasonable German accents, and Brynner has the longer character journey, traveling from proud warrior and father to a more circumspect man who learns to doubt.

Well-intentioned but overloaded, Morituri is a capable but clunky vessel.

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Movie Review: The Magnificent Seven (1960)

A highlight in the long history of the western genre, The Magnificent Seven opened the new decade with a marked departure from some long standing traditions. With heroic characters now aware of their deeply flawed heroism, a path was created for much more nuanced examinations of the men of the west.

A peaceful Mexican village is being harassed by the bandit Calvera (Eli Wallach) and his band of rowdy men. Calvera rides into town at regular intervals, stealing what he needs but leaving the local farmers just enough to survive and tend their crops for another season, in readiness for his next raid. Fed up, the farmers decide to hire the mercenary Chris (Yul Brynner) to collect a group of gunfighters who can act as village guards.

Chris teams up with another fast-draw Vin (Steve McQueen), knife expert Britt (James Coburn), the resilient Bernardo (Charles Bronson), old pal Harry (Brad Dexter) and the supposedly dependable Lee (Robert Vaughn). The young and over-eager Mexican Chico (Horst Buchholz) insists on joining them, despite Chris not believing him to be good enough. The seven men provide the farmers with weapons and training, and fortify the village with traps and defences. But the wily Calvera has a few tricks up his sleeve, and scaring him off will be no easy task.

In adapting Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954), director and producer John Sturges composes the heart of The Magnificent Seven as an exploration of the gunman's psyche. The story is a stout frame deployed to carry an unusually lucid trial of life through the barrel of the gun, and Sturges allows his seven men the opportunity to introspectively question their purpose. The dialogue between the men, and the interaction with the villagers, gradually shifts the narrative of heroism from gunman to farmer, the former riding out their days with little purpose except to kill, the latter laying the foundations for a better future.

Chico: Your gun has gotten you everything you have. Isn't that true? Hmm? Well, isn't it true?
Vin: Sure. Everything. After a while, you can call bartenders and Faro dealers by their first names. Maybe two hundred of 'em. Rented rooms you live in, five hundred. Meals eaten in hash-houses, a thousand. Home, none. Wife, none. Kids... none. Prospects, zero. Suppose I left anything out?
Chris: Yeah. Places you're tied down to, none. People with a hold on you, none. Men you step aside for, none.
Lee: Insults swallowed, none. Enemies, none.
Chris: No enemies?
Lee: Alive.
Chico: Now that's the kind of arithmetic I like!
Chris: Yeah. I did too, at your age.

The mercenaries accept their assignment for next to no money. They all arrive at their separate reasons to help impoverished Mexican villagers when there are plenty of better-paying work opportunities. It's the one, thin difference between men like Chris and the Calveras of the world: Chris convinces a bunch of gunslingers to fight for a cause, while Calvera's only cause appears to be living off others and causing mayhem.

Chris, Bernardo, and Lee emerge as the most interesting characters. As Chris, Yul Brynner, all in black, is the good guy keenly aware of the limitations of his chosen life, wandering from one adventure to the next with no further expectations of a docile existence. The intelligence behind Brynner's eyes makes it easy to imagine that Chris could have been a doctor or sheriff had he chosen different paths, but that he is now content making positive contributions using the wrong methods.

Bernardo is adopted by the children of the village, and unusually for a Bronson role, Bernardo is the most articulate in communicating life's rights and wrongs, peeling away the fake glory of the gunman and pointing the kids in the direction of their parents to find real heroes. It is an affecting role of muscular ability masking uncommon wisdom.

Bernardo (to the three children from the village): You think I'm brave because I carry a gun? Well, your fathers are much braver, because they carry responsibility — for you, your brothers, your sisters, and your mothers. And this responsibility is like a-a big rock that weighs a ton. It bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground.

Robert Vaughn's Lee is not as well developed, but probably the most interesting of the seven men. It emerges that Lee's life of killing has caught up with him, and unbeknownst to Chris, he has lost his nerve. Whether he will regain his ability to fire a gun again remains an open question, and as he ponders his purpose in life Vaughn provides Lee with a haunted presence, a gunfighter not killed by the enemy but dead from the inside, all the same.

Steve McQueen is all cocky smiles and wise-cracks as Vin, a star-making role packed with charisma, but absent the depth of some of the other men. Vin is where Chris was ten years ago, still enjoying the benefits of a life without responsibilities, and not yet aware of all the costs. On the wrong side of banditry Eli Wallach allows Calvera to be a somewhat reluctant gangster, brutal enough to steal from defenceless farmers but never heartless enough to close the deal on pure evil.

The magic of the movie lies in the mixing of the cerebral elements with excellent set-pieces. Sturges works from a diverse palette, finding tension in an early set-piece as Chris and Vin have a meeting of the minds to counter some racism around a cemetery, passing through a euphoric initial battle between the emboldened farmers and the bandits, and ending with a spectacular few-against-many raid by the seven to finish the job or die trying. The action scenes are crisply edited, cohesively assembled, and noisy with the sounds of multiple guns and frantically galloping horses.

To complete the movie's enchantment, Elmer Bernstein composed a legendary western music score unlike any before or since, a rousing, dauntless theme of chivalrous heroism. When seven men come face to face with their moment of destiny, they will gallop to a rousing tune of masculine gallantry.

Chris: The Old Man was right. Only the farmers won. We lost. We'll always lose.

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Movie Review: The Buccaneer (1958)

A fictionalized account of the Battle Of New Orleans, the final major encounter of the War Of 1812, The Buccaneer is a mix of piracy and politics, with a focus on pirate leader Jean Lafitte.

The British have sacked Washington, and the strategic port of New Orleans is their next target. United States General Andrew Jackson (Charlton Heston) is dispatched to organize the defences of a disorganized city. Jackson finds little to work with, the local troops lacking training and supplies. Both the British and Americans recognize the strategic importance of a large swath of sea-side territory on the outskirts of the city, controlled by the charismatic pirate Jean Lafitte (Yul Brynner) and his well-armed, battle-hardened band of merry men including second-in-command Dominique You (Charles Boyer).

Lafitte is allied with no one, and has problems of his own with insubordination from Captain Brown, one of his key lieutenants. Brown's scrappy daughter Bonnie (Claire Bloom) harbours a secret crush on Lafitte, but he is only interested in winning the heart of Annette Claiborne (Inger Stevens), the daughter of the New Orleans Governor. With the battle for New Orleans drawing ever closer, Lafitte has to decide which warring army he wants to align with.

Overseen by Cecil B. DeMille, whose failing health prevented him from taking a more active role, The Buccaneer aims for an epic-like scope but is limited by the confines of indoor sets and artificial-looking backdrops. Even the brief scenes of naval combat are constrained by the walls of a rather small sound stage. The film has the look and feel of ambitious theatre exceeding available resources, rather than the relaxed breadth of grand location-based story telling.

DeMille's son-in-law (at the time) Anthony Quinn took over directing duties, the first and only time that Quinn went behind the camera. His work here is best described as perfunctory, as apart from some good use of fog, there is little visual flair to speak of.

But despite reaching for and missing the requisite grandeur, The Buccaneer is still a boisterous adventure, mostly thanks to the charismatic Yul Brynner as Jean Lafitte. Brynner exudes the relaxed confidence of a man comfortable in his own skin, sure of his leadership capabilities and sharply focused on getting what he wants. In a rather small role Charlton Heston adds his hefty, serious presence as Andrew Jackson, and together Brynner and Heston provide The Buccaneer with formidable star power.

In support, Charles Boyer thrives in the well-written role of Dominique You, purportedly a former soldier in Napoleon's army, his pockets filled with dubious medals, his soul darkened by disappointment to the point where a life of piracy appears to be a genuinely fun, an alcohol-drenched opportunity to dispense jaundiced wisdom.

Of course historical accuracy is sacrificed for the sake of enhanced drama. Nevertheless, The Buccaneer sets a brisk sail in its final 45 minutes and enjoys two back to back peaks: the Battle Of New Orleans itself is recreated, with Lafitte's pirates playing a prominent role in a literal fog of war, and then a lavish celebration of unexpected victory turns dour when the past catches up with the present. Even a buccaneer, it seems, can't escape the winds of reputation.

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