Reviews

Clearly a product of the Corman School, Sayles's first major screenplay shows that he already knew how to tell a great story from an interesting angle, something he has never forgotten how to do.

Director Teague keeps the pace rattling along, and hammers the message home fast (he was an occasional assistant to Sam Fuller, of course).

The plot's quite straightforward, and all the better so - this packs something of the punch of the 30's classic gangster films, but with distinctly 70's sensibilities to violence.

Where the film becomes more interesting than your average low-budget 'gangster-exploiter', however, is in the telling of the story through her eyes, rather than his (a distinctly 70's approach). Yet it's wonderfully ambiguous, on reflection, as to whether the film champions her willingness to break away and start acting for herself (she's a great strong character), or whether she just goes from one woman in peril situation to the other (which is the plot, basically).

I've probably over-analyzed it already, but if you've got a spare hour and a half on your hands, give it a chance. A classic of its kind.

Enfield and Baker, who were later to form their own production company, team up here with a divinely hammy Patrick McGoohan, and a cast of virtual unknowns who would later rise to fame, for a great ripping yarn that doesn't fail to excite.

It's strong on action and character, and keeps you guessing to how they're gonna' sort it all out. And Enfield, who had interesting political statements to make through his movies, leaves it until very near the end to ram his point home with uncompromising directness.

They don't make British films like they used to, and that's for sure. A golden gem.

Great premise of a movie - owes an awful lot to Altman, and Short Cuts in particular (attempted suicide in garage, lecherous cop, reunion of relatives in face of imminent death, supernatural occurance etc being the narrative similarities; multiple stories of everyday confused folk being the subject matter; 'aren't folk messed-up' being the common theme...) [If only they'd kept it in the style of the three opening stories (of stuff that just happened) throughout the movie...?]

Yet somehow Altman is a better storyteller - P.T. Anderson is a master of issue avoidance - how many times did he dodge the crux of a scene, having a character say "The thing about my problem/idea is..." at the crucial dramatic peak, before cutting away to the next person. We got to see who these people were, and how they were different from each other, but very little about what made these well delineated individuals actually tick.

Similarly, inter-cutting several different stories as they reach their little climaxes is no substitute for making any one climax moving/dramatic. A cop struggling around in the rain for his gun is not made any more or less involving for the intercutting with a kid not answering questions on a TV show because he needs the bathroom. And with Tom Cruise sitting out an interview in silence, and a nurse on perpetual hold on a telephone being thrown into the mix, it's more a case of anti-climaxes than climaxes - so why the histrionic, tension building crescendos on the sound-track?!?

Only the 'plague of frogs' ending really elevated it onto something wholly original, but it did keep going... and going... (again, anti-climaxes).

The performances - well, most of the praise has been given, and the majority has been justified. Cruise got an Oscar nomination, and Philip Seymour Hoffman is flavour of the month with the independent cinema crowd; Julianne Moore has done her best work for both Altman and Anderson. Yet watch how all three have key scenes with Jason Robards, the real pro in the film as far as I am concerned. He demonstrates a sureness of touch with underplaying his scenes to just the right degree, not flinching as the others spit out the sawdust from chewing the scenery by comparison. Alright, it's a difficult role to go wrong with by compared to them, but notice that he neither responds melodramatically when they interact with him, nor lies there completely silently and still like so many other movie-patients - a really well judged physical and emotional performance.

Overall, I really liked the detail - so much of it. But what I worried about was that detail had been included at the expense of clarity. It was lovely to finally notice that it was Robards' Earl Partridge that had produced the kids TV show that Philip Baker Hall had been presenting, but wouldn't it have been a tiny bit better if I had noticed that a little earlier on (and how many people were there in the cinema with me who missed it?)

A really great film that didn't quite get there, (but continually kept me absorbed), or perhaps two not really spectacular movies mixed together in the hope that they would create a greater impression than the individual parts (which they didn't - two wrongs don't make a right).

Brandauer again shows why reviews of his work often include the word 'magnetic' - You just don't take your eyes off him. His range is remarkable, his control of the minutest gesture superb, the subtlety of his physical screen presence majestic.

Szabo's direction is again precise but not heavy handed. If this doesn't have quite the sweep or sting in the tail of their previous collaboration, Mephisto, it is still one of the finest European films of its time.

The story is superbly crafted; to leave Muller-Stahl's Archduke Franz Ferdinand out until the last hour or so is an outstanding narrative technique, and if Muller-Stahl's performance is a trifle one-note, that's as much due to narrative constraint as actor ability - he's still pretty effective, and its one of his best roles.

Szabo has an ability to investigate history in a curiously personal and touching sense of the individual, but leaving that individual dispassionately, and gazing at him objectively; thus what comes across is a really detailed and involving character struggling against an incredible force of inevitability. Like Visconti, broad strokes, but painted in the minutest of details - only unlike Visconti, full blooded and direct.

It's at times witty, literate and touching, but always beautiful.

You don't necessarily need to have seen Lang's earlier Mabuse films to be able to love this one. Like in his silent spy film 'Spione', Lang creates everything that would go on to be a genre cliche - but they all had to be original once. Here we have the stolen prototype weapon - a gun that fires needle shaped bullets that travel through glass and leave very little trace of assassination; and then there's the villain's car, with its revolving number-plates. Lang was certainly a few quick steps ahead of the makers of the Bond films, and certainly on a level with Hitchcock, Powell et al when it came to commenting on voyeurism.

The plot's labyrinthine, of course, but it rattles along at such a pace and with such striking visuals that you hardly have time or the inclination to stop and worry - and it all comes clear at the end, with one or two fantastic revelations in addition to the few you expect.

If one part doesn't quite please as much as you like, it's the context it fails to reference properly. Made at such a crucial time in History by a man who had seen so much, one only wishes it had more commentary to make. Lang's career swung like a pendulum between social commentary and serial escapades - if only he'd been able to pull the two together for his final film.

Top notch performances from the leads single this out among gangster films of its day as a classic. Howard had to lobby hard to keep Bogart his stage role, for which we should be grateful. While the film still shows its stage origins, it works for the claustrophobic atmosphere to keep locations to a minimum. Furthermore, it was stage dramas like this and Dead End which helped the gangster film bounce back from the censorship that followed Scarface, Public Enemy and Little Caesar. Without films like this, we'd have had no Angels With Dirty Faces or Roaring Twenties.

Bogarts' arrival on scene is a killer, especially considering he's been so well hyped throughout - all we've heard about is how dangerous Duke Mantee is. And the theme of the 'artist' or sensitive type holed up with gangsters is now legendary - reworked in films as diverse as Performance, but perhaps best with Bogart (again) as the good-guy in Key Largo.

Theodore J Flicker seems to have struck gold with this one, with one of James Coburn's very best roles. As tongue-in-cheek satire, it's a spot-on representation of how the late sixties may have appeared. The social commentary is spot on, the cold war parody bettered only by Dr Strangelove, and the psychoanalysis send-up far more accurate than anything Woody Allen has ever offered. A product of its time that will probably only get funnier the further away we watch it from.

Rightly a cult classic!