Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

Last Man Standing (1996, directed by Walter Hill)

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During the 1920s, at the height of prohibition, a mysterious man named John Smith (Bruce Willis) arrives in the dusty town of Jericho.  Jericho sits on the border, between Texas and Mexico, and it is the site of a gang war.  The Italian mob, led by Fred Strozzi (Ned Eisenberg) and Giorgio Carmote (Michael Imperioli), is trying to move in on the Irish mob, led by Doyle (David Patrick Kelly) and his fearsome gunman, Hickey (Christopher Walken).  After the members of the Irish mob destroy his car and leave him stranded in town, Smith offers his services as a gunman to the Italians.  Strozzi hires him but it turns out that Smith has his own agenda and soon, he is manipulating both gangs against each other.

Last Man Standing was Walter Hill’s remake of Yojimbo, with Bruce Willis playing an Americanized version of Toshiro Minfune’s wandering ronin.  (Hill does the right thing and gives Kurosawa credit for the film’s story.)  Now, it should be understood that this is in no way a realistic film.  It makes no sense for two Chicago-style gangs to be fighting over a ghost town in Texas.  Even when it came to smuggling in liquor during the prohibition era, most of it came over the Canadian border rather than the Texas border.  But Walter Hill has always been more about filming the legend than worrying about realism.  He’s the ultimate stylist, creating movies the come together to create an American mythology.  Last Man Standing is a work of pure style, a combination western/gangster movie that pays tribute to the ultimate samurai film.  Gangsters meeting in the desert while tumbleweed rolls past may not make sense but Hill knows a good visual when he sees one and he makes it work.  The plot is taken from Yojimbo.  The western setting is taken from A Fistful of Dollars.  And the gangsters are pure Americana.

Willis, back in his action star heyday, is quick with a gun and a quip and he gets a few scenes that show that, while he may be bad, he’s not as bad as the gangsters in charge of the town.  Hill surrounds Willis with a cast of great character actors, including Bruce Dern as the cowardly sheriff and William Sanderson as the owner of the hotel.  Though he might not be as well-known as some members of the cast, I especially liked Ken Jenkins as the Texas Ranger who informs Willis that he has ten days to finish up his business before the Rangers come to town and kill whoever is still standing.  And then you’ve got Walken, in one of his best villainous roles.  Hickey doesn’t show up until pretty late in the movie but we’ve spent so much time hearing about him that we already know he’s the most dangerous man in Texas and Walken gives a performance that lives up to the hype.

Unappreciated when it was first released, Last Man Standing has stood the test of time as one of Walter Hill’s best.

One-Eyed Jacks (1961, directed by Marlon Brando)

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Rio (Marlon Brando), a young outlaw in the Old West, is betrayed by his partner and mentor Dad Longworth (Karl Malden) and ends up spending five years in a Mexican prison.  When Rio escapes, he gets together a new gang and heads for Monterey, California.  He wants to both get his revenge on Longworth and also rob the local bank.  Things get complicated when Rio actually confronts Longworth and suddenly realizes that he can’t bring himself just to gun the man down in cold blood.  Rio is not as ruthless of an outlaw as he thought he was.

However, Rio then meets and falls in love with Louisa (Pina Pellicer), Longworth’s stepdaughter  Longworth is willing to do whatever he has to keep Rio away from Louisa and, when Rio starts to think about going straight in an effort to win Louisa’s love, his new gang turn out to be even less trustworthy than his old partners.

A teenage rebellion film disguised as a western (and it’s not a coincidence that the main bad guy is named Dad), One-Eyed Jacks was Marlon Brando’s only film as a director.  The film was originally meant to be directed by Stanley Kubrick, who was working from a script written by a once-in-a-lifetime combination of Rod Serling and Sam Peckinpah.  Kubrick and Brando worked together to develop the film, with Brando insisting on Karl Malden as Dad.  (Kubrick wanted to cast Spencer Tracy.)  Ultimately realizing that working on One-Eyed Jacks would mean essentially taking orders from his star, Kubrick stepped down from directing so he could focus on Lolita and Brando took over as director.  The film finally went into production in 1958 and would not be released until 1961.  Brando’s perfectionism was blamed for the film going massively overbudget and, when it was finally released, One-Eyed Jacks was the first of Brando’s films to lose money.  The combined box office failures of One-Eyed Jacks and the remake of Mutiny on the Bounty left Brando in the cinematic wilderness for much of the 60s.

As for the film itself, One-Eyed Jacks takes what should have been a simple story and attempts to turn into an epic.  Rio spends a good deal of time brooding and the film seems to brood right along with him.  What starts out as a western becomes a forbidden love story as Rio and Louisa fall for each other.  Dad Longworth may be an outlaw-turned-sheriff but Malden plays him more as a possessive father who can’t handle that his two stepchildren — Rio and Louisa — are both turning against him and his strict rules.  Brando obviously viewed the film as being something bigger than a standard western.  Sometimes, his direction works and he does manage to get the epic feel that he was going for.  Other times, the film itself seems to be unsure what direction it wants to go in telling its story.  This is method directing.

Ultimately, One-Eyed Jacks is an interesting experiment, one that doesn’t really work but which still features Charles Lang’s outstanding cinematography and one of Karl Malden’s best performances.  As Brando’s only directorial effort, the film is a curiosity piece, one that will be best enjoyed by western fans who have the patience for something a little different.  And, for what it’s worth, based on the film’s visual beauty and the performances that he gets from the cat, I think Brando could have developed into a fine director with a little more experience.  However, it was not to be.

 

Real Genius (1985, directed by Martha Coolidge)

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Mitch Taylor (Gabriel Jarrett) is a teenage genius who is recruited by Prof. Jerry Hathaway (William Atherton) to study at Pacific Tech University.  The real reason why Hathaway has recruited Mitch is because Chris Knight (Val Kilmer), another genius, has been slacking on developing the power source for an experimental laser called “crossbow.”  Hathaway hopes that Mitch can get Chris to take his work seriously and to focus on the project.  Instead, Chris teaches Mitch that he has to learn how to enjoy life or his great intelligence will become a burden and he’ll end up burned out and living in the tunnel underneath the university.  That’s what happened to Laszlo Holyfield (Jon Gries).  That’s what nearly happened to Chris.  Chris is determined not to let it happen to Mitch.

Real Genius combines college hijinks with a serious examination of the pressures of being a “real genius.”  Mitch knows everything about laser physics but he still misses his parents and cries after getting yelled at by Prof. Hathaway.  He’s just a kid, no matter how smart he is.  Chris proves himself to be a good friend, encouraging Mitch to relax and enjoy life.  Just because you’re a genius doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun.  As played by Val Kilmer, Chris Knight is the best friend that everyone wishes they could have, whether they’re a genius or not.  Even when the film gets sophomoric, Kilmer plays his role seriously and never loses sight of Chris’s humanity or why it’s so important to Chris that Mitch not become consumed by the pressure of being smarter than almost everyone else in the room.  This is one of the early Val Kilmer performances that showed just how good an actor he truly was.  With Chris’s encouragement, Mitch pursues a romance with Jordan Cochran (Michelle Meyrink) and gets revenge (more than once) on the arrogant Kent (Robert Prescott).

Eventually, Chris and Mitch realize that their research is being used to construct a weapon for the CIA and this leads to the film’s famous ending.  Ever since this movie came out, there’s been a debate over whether or not a laser could be used to make popcorn and, even more importantly, whether or not a gigantic amount of popcorn could actually destroy someone’s house.  I don’t know the answers to those questions but I’d like to think that Real Genius got it right and I have no interest in any evidence that suggests otherwise.  Sometimes, you owe it yourself to believe in the power of lasers and popcorn.  The next person who takes advantage of your hard work, destroy his house with popcorn and then sing Everybody Wants To Rule The World.  Learn the lessons of Real Genius.

Finally, when I was growing up, Real Genius was one of those films that seemed to be on HBO all the time.  Somehow, I always turned it on right when the popcorn started popping.  That popcorn-filled house, followed by Everybody Want To Rule The World, was a huge part of my childhood.  Real Genius will always bring back good memories for me.

Dick Tracy (1990, directed by Warren Beatty)

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The year is 1937 and “Big Boy” Caprice (Al Pacino) and his gang of flamboyant and often disfigured criminals are trying to take over the rackets.  Standing in their way is ace detective Dick Tracy (Warren Beatty), the yellow trench-wearing defender of the law.  Tracy is not only looking to take down Caprice but he and Tess Trueheart (Glenne Headly) are currently the guardians of The Kid (Charlie Korsmo), a young street kid who witnessed one of Caprice’s worst crimes.  Tracy’s investigation leads him through a rogue’s gallery of criminals and also involves Breathless Mahoney (Madonna), who has witnessed many of Caprice’s crimes but who also wants to steal Tracy’s heart from Tess.

Based on the long-running comic strip, Dick Tracy was a labor of love on the part of Warren Beatty.  Not only starring but also directing, Tracy made a film that stayed true to the look and the feel of the original comic strip (the film’s visual palette was limited to just seven colors) while also including an all-star cast the featured Madonna is an attempt to appeal to a younger audience who had probably never even heard of Dick Tracy.  When Dick Tracy was released, the majority of the publicity centered around Madonna’s participation in the film and the fact that she was dating Beatty at the time.  Madonna is actually probably the weakest element of the film.  More of a personality than an actress, Madonna is always Madonna no matter who she is playing and, in a film full of famous actors managing to be convincing as the members of Dick Tracy’s rogue gallery, Madonna feels out of place.  Michelle Pfeiffer would have been the ideal Breathless Mahoney.

It doesn’t matter, though, because the rest of the film is great.  It’s one of the few comic book films of the 90s to really hold up, mostly due to Beatty’s obvious enthusiasm for the material and the performances of everyone in the supporting cast who was not named Madonna.  Al Pacino received an Oscar nomination for playing Big Boy Caprice but equally good are Dustin Hoffman as Mumbles, William Forsythe as Flaptop, R.G. Armstong as Pruneface, and Henry Silva as Influence.  These actors all create memorable characters, even while acting under a ton of very convincing makeup.  I also liked Dick Van Dyke as the corrupt District Attorney.  Beatty knew audience would be shocked to see Van Dyke not playing a hero and both he and Van Dyke play it up for all its worth.  Beatty embraces the comic strip’s campiness while still remaining respectful to its style and the combination of Danny Elfman’s music and Stephen Sondheim’s songs provide just the right score for Dick Tracy’s adventures.  The film can be surprisingly violent at times but the same was often said about the Dick Tracy comic strip.  It wasn’t two-way wrist radios and trips to the Moon.  Dick Tracy also dealt with the most ruthless and bloodthirsty gangsters his city had to offer.

Dick Tracy was considered to be a box office disappointment when it was originally released.  (Again, you have to wonder if Beatty overestimated how many fans Dick Tracy had in 1990.)  But it holds up well and is still more entertaining than several of the more recent comic book movies that have been released.

At Close Range (1986, directed by James Foley)

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Brad Whitewood, Sr. (Christopher Walken) is known as Big Brad, a rural crime lord who rules the backwoods of Pennsylvania.  When his son, Little Brad (Sean Penn, trying too hard to be James Dean), comes to live with him, Big Brad goes out of his way to try to bring the teenager into his criminal lifestyle.  At first, Little Brad loves being a part of the family business but witnessing a murder and falling in love with Terry (Mary Stuart Masterson) caused Little Brad to start to move away from his father.  With the FBI closing in on the Whitewood family, Brad Sr. starts to eliminate everyone who he considers to be a threat, including the members of his own family.

Based on a true story, this neo-noir features a great cast, including Chris Penn, Millie Perkins, Kiefer Sutherland, Crispin Glover, David Strathairn, Tracey Walter, and Mary Stuart Masterson.  Unfortunately, the movie itself moves at a plodding pace.  There are some good and disturbing scenes, like the montage where Big Brad starts to eliminate the members of his gang.  The film does a good job of showing how seductive Big Brad’s criminal lifestyle can be to a bunch of kids who have basically been written-off by society.  But the story itself is so bleak that most people will end up tuning out long before Little Brad finally turns against his father.

Whatever other flaws it may have, At Close Range does feature one of Christopher Walken’s best performances.  Walken is chillingly evil as Big Brad.  He’s got enough charisma to be believable as someone who could bring a gang together but he’s also frightening as he starts killing anyone who he thinks might talk to the police or the FBI.  Big Brad is a remorseless killer and Walken plays him as being a classic sociopath, someone who cannot understand why the members of his gang and family would get upset when he starts killing some of them.  To Big Brad, that just goes with the territory.  It’s a part of doing business.  With his distinct way of speaking and his trademark tics, Walken is someone who has inspired many impersonators and it can be easy to forget that he’s also a damn good actor.  Films like At Close Range remind us of just how talented Walken actually is.

The Only Game In Town (1970, directed by George Stevens)

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Fran Walker (Elizabeth Taylor) is an aging Vegas showgirl who has been abandoned by her married lover (Charles Braswell).  A trip to a piano bar leads to her meeting pianist and gambling addict Joe Grady (Warren Beatty).  Frank brings Joe home with her.  Joe is trying to win $5,000 so he can leave Las Vegas and go to New York.  Fran needs someone to keep her from going to back to her go-nowhere relationship.  The two talk and talk.  And talk.

Based on a play that closed after 16 performances, The Only Game In Town is memorable for being one of the most expensive theatrical adaptations ever produced.  That’s because Taylor insisted on filming in Paris instead of Las Vegas.  A set representing Fran’s tiny apartment (which is supposed to look cheap) was built on a Paris soundstage and the budget ballooned to a then unheard of $11,000,000.  (By today’s standards, that would be a $90,461,391 budget for a film with two stars and only a handful of locations.)   The Only Game In Town is also memorable for being the only film to feature both Elizabeth Taylor and Warren Beatty.  Taylor and Beatty were actually close in age but Fran still seems to be several decades older than Joe.  It was not the script’s intention but, due to the age difference, Joe comes across as being a gigolo.  (Originally, Frank Sinatra was cast as Joe but he left while the sets were being made in France.)  Finally, this was the final film to be directed by George Stevens, one of the great Golden Age directors who found himself struggling to keep up in a changing Hollywood.  With its stagey set-up and it’s dialogue-heavy script, this film does not features Stevens’s best work.

The Only Game In Town was a huge flop when released, damaging Taylor’s already floundering career and making Beatty even more determined to eventually direct his own films.  Seen today, Warren Beatty is actually pretty good in his role, even if he does come across as being too young.  Elizabeth Taylor is not served well by any element of the film, from her matronly (but expensive) costumes or a script the encourages her to be shrill.  The Only Game In Town was not one that anyone won.

The Life of Jimmy Dolan (1933, directed by Archie Mayo)

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Jimmy Dolan (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.), the light heavyweight champion of the world, goes out of his way to present himself as being a wholesome boxer who loves his mom and is as saintly outside the ring as he’s fearsome inside.  Instead, in private, Jimmy is a hard-drinking cynic with a corrupt manager (Lyle Talbot) and a wild girlfriend (Shirley Grey).  When a reporter (George Meeker) threatens to reveal the truth, Jimmy’s manager punches him and accidentally kill him.  The manager frames Jimmy for the crime and then flees with Jimmy’s girlfriend, just to suffer a fiery end in a car accident.

Everyone except for weary Inspector Phalanxer (Guy Kibbee) thinks that Jimmy is dead.  Jimmy goes on the run, hitching rides on freight trains and nearly starving to death before he stumbles over a home for orphans.  Peggy (Loretta Young) takes Jimmy in and gives him food and a place to live.  Jimmy helps with the kids (including Mickey Rooney).  When Jimmy learns that the orphanage might be shut down, he agrees to fight in a charity boxing match against the fearsome King Cobra (Sammy Stein).  King Cobra is so tough that even John Wayne (playing a boxer named Smith) is scared to get in the ring with him.  Jimmy risks his life and his freedom for the orphanage.

This is a good pre-code melodrama.  Because this was a pre-code film, it doesn’t have to shy away from portraying Jimmy’s decadent lifestyle outside of the ring.  Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. was a likable actor and easy to root for.  He was athletic enough to be convincing as someone who could handle himself in a fight.  When he finds himself down-and-out, he’s standing in for everyone who was struggling during the Depression.  The great character actor Guy Kibbee also has some great moments as the inspector, especially towards the end of the film.  Fans of John Wayne won’t see much of him here but it’s still interesting to see Wayne play a character who is frightened of something.

All in all, The Life of Jimmy Dolan is a good, pre-code boxing movie.

The Oklahoma City Dolls (1981, directed by E.W. Swackhamer)

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At an Oklahoma manufacturing plant, the women are always expected to put in extra hours while their male co-workers practice as a part of the company’s football team.  Shop steward Sally Jo (Susan Blakely) files a complaint with the EEOC.  John Miller (Robert Hooks) pays a visit to the plant and says that the women have to be given the same opportunities and benefits as the man, including recreation time.  The plant’s foreman, J.D. Hines (David Huddleston), agrees.  The woman can have recreation time as long as they’re doing what the men are doing and that’s playing football.  Determined to show up Hines and all of her sexist co-workers (and her boyfriend, played by Waylon Jennings), Sally Jo puts together a football team and even gets a broken-down former NFL coach (Eddie Albert) to serve as their trainer.

There actually was a woman’s football team called The Oklahoma City Dolls.  They played in the National Women’s Football League and they won the league’s championship three times.  However, they don’t appear to have anything to do with this movie, which is as much about Sally Jo trying to get a fair treatment for the workers as it is about hitting the field and running it in for a touchdown.  There are some parts of the movie that work.  I liked Eddie Albert’s performance as the alcoholic coach and the scene where he discovered that his community service would include coaching a group of women who had never played football before.  Folk singer Ronee Blakley was good as the team’s emotionally fragile wide receiver.  I even liked that the women didn’t all automatically become the world’s best football players.  The movie’s main weakness was that Susan Blakely just wasn’t believable as someone who lived in a trailer park, used “ain’t” in every sentence, and spent her time organizing a union.  She was too glamorous for the role and her scenes with Waylon Jennings all felt overwritten and overacted.  The story couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a drama about working in a factory or a football comedy and it was pretty uneven as a result.  The good thing is that the movie’s heart was in the right place, even if it didn’t always score a touchdown.

As for the real life Oklahoma City Dolls, they were active from 1976 to 1979.  An attempt to revive the team in 1982 failed when their financial backers pulled out at the last seconds.  The National Women’s Football League folded in 1988.

Lady and Gent (1932, directed by Stephen Roberts)

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When veteran prize fighter Stag Bailey (George Bancroft) gets cocky and doesn’t bother to properly train for the big fight, he is knocked out by a young up-and-comer named Buzz Kinney (John Wayne).  Stag’s manager, Pin (James Gleason), had all of his money riding on Stag winning.  Now broke and with the mob after him, Pin tries to steal the cash from the boxing arena and ends up getting shot by a security guard.  Stag and his girlfriend, Puff (Wynne Gibson), take in Pin’s young son, Ted, and they devote themselves to raising him.  Years later, Ted (Charles Starrett) wants to become a prizefighter but Stag and Puff, who know what years of getting punched in the head can do to someone, try to convince him to go to college instead.

This boxing film is of interest to western fans because of some of the faces in the cast.  This was an early John Wayne role and he’s only seen in the ring and then in one brief scene where he confronts Stag and Puff in a bar.  Wayne still plays an important role, though, because Buzz’s transformation from being a fresh-faced boxer to being a bitter, punch-drunk bully serves as a warning for what waits for Ted if his adoptive parents can’t keep him out of the fight game.  Charles Starrett, of course, would go on to find greater fame as the Durango Kid.

Otherwise, Lady and Gent is a standard pre-code melodrama.  It’s a little more realistic than some of the other boxing films that came out in the 30s.  Boxing is portrayed as a dirty business that leaves its participants with struggles that all of the prize money in the world can’t make up for.  Puff sacrifices her carefree life to raise Ted but it’s worth it in the end.  You can tell this was a pre-code film because Stag and Puff are a couple but they only decide to get married so they can adopt Ted.

George Bancroft was a star in the late 20s and early 30s but eventually, he transitioned to character parts.  He retired from acting 1942 and became a full-time rancher.  One of his final films was 1939’s Stagecoach, starring his Lady and Gent co-star, John Wayne.

 

Destiny Turns On The Radio (1995, directed by Jack Baran)

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Today, it can be easy to forget what an impact Quentin Tarantino had on pop culture in the 90s.  The one-two punch of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction inspired a generation of young and aspiring filmmakers to believe that anyone could make their own film.  Suddenly, you didn’t have to be a film school graduate to call yourself a filmmaker.  You could just be someone who loved movies and who was willing to keep hustling until you had something you could slip into Sundance.  That was the feeling, anyway.  The 90s were full of films about eccentric criminals who talked a lot and who loved pop culture, only three of which were directed by Quentin Tarantino.  Some of them were good.  Most of them were not.

Destiny Turns On The Radio was one of the first films to rip-off Pulp Fiction and it felt more cynical than most because it was directed by Jack Baran, who wasn’t even a video store clerk.  He was a producer of films like The Big Easy and Barfly, an industry veteran ripping off two films directed by someone who was, at that time, still an outsider.  The film tells a story that had plenty of Tarantino elements, including Quentin Tarantino himself.  Tarantino signed to play Johnny Destiny right after Pulp Fiction won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

Johnny Destiny is a gambler who is apparently also a God.  He emerges from a lightning-filled pool and his dialogue is full of pseudo-philosophy.  He is driving through the desert when he picks up Julian (Dylan McDermott) and gives Julian a lift to Las Vegas.  Johnny Destiny is taking prison escapee Julian on a ride so that Julian can face his destiny.  Julian wants to recover some money from a bank job that he pulled off with Thoreau (James Le Gros) but it turns out that, when Johnny Destiny emerged from that pool, he also stole all the money.  (There’s no specific reason for Thoreau to be named after the famous philosopher, beyond the film trying to make itself seem deep by drawing in everyone who read Walden in AP English.)  Julian wants to get back together with Lucille (Nancy Travis), a singer who performs songs more appropriate for a 20s speakeasy than a Las Vegas lounge.  Lucille is involved with a gangster (Jim Belushi).  Belushi sings Vivia Las Vegas but otherwise, this is one of his more boring performances.

Like so many of the Pulp Fiction rip-offs of the 90s, Destiny Turns On The Radio is all self-conscious attitude and cool style, full of references to pop culture that fall flat because there’s no real thought behind them.  Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction were full of style but they also told compelling stories.  Destiny Turns On The Radio is all style and little else and the cast never comes together the way that the actors in Tarantino’s first two movies did.  Watching this film, I realized why Dylan McDermott and Nancy Travis both found more success on television than in feature films.  The film posits Tarantino (as Johnny Destiny) as the epitome of cool but it then burdens him with the type of dialogue that he would have cut by the time he started a second draft.

Coming hot on the heels of the success of Pulp Fiction, Destiny Turns On The Radio actually led to a few years where many critics assumed Tarantino would be a two-trick wonder.  It was thought lightning struck twice but it would never strike a third time and Tarantino would spend the rest of his career as almost a parody of his earlier success.  Luckily, Tarantino proved them wrong and Destiny Turned On The Radio turned out to be not his career’s destination but instead just a detour.