Category Archives: Film Review

Twice In A Lifetime (1985, dir by Bud Yorkin)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Today, for obvious and tragic reasons, people everywhere have been thinking about their favorite Gene Hackman performances.  Hackman was an actor who always brought his all, even when he was appearing in a lesser film.  I think you could ask five different people for their five favorite Hackman performances and they would all give five different answers.  His performance as Lex Luthor in Superman and Superman II has always been one of my favorites.  Others will undoubtedly cite his award-winning performance as Popeye Doyle in The French Connection or his great work as Norman Dale in Hoosiers or his work in classic neo-noirs like The Conversation and Night Moves.  Let’s not forget his most unexpectedly great turn, as the blind man in Young Frankenstein.  Hackman gave so many great performances that some of them were for films that are not even remembered today.

Twice In A Lifetime is one of those forgotten films but I think it features one of Hackman’s best performances.  He plays Harry Mackenzie, a steelworker who is married to Kate (Ellen Burstyn, made up to look frumpy) and who has two daughters (Amy Madigan and Ally Sheedy).  Harry is the type of everyman that Hackman excelled at playing.  He’s a hard worker, a good family man, and a good friend.  What no one, not even Harry realizes, is that he’s also having a midlife crisis.  On his 50th birthday, he goes out to the neighborhood bar with his buddies and falls for the new barmaid, Audrey (Ann-Margaret).  Harry ends up leaving his wife for Audrey, pursuing the spark that his marriage no longer gives him.  The movie follows Harry and Kate and their daughters as they adjust to their new lives and they plan for the younger daughter’s wedding.

Twice In A Lifetime was one of many 80s films that dealt with divorce and it has the same flaws that afflicted many of them.  These films, which were often made by middle-aged directors who had just gone through their own divorces, rarely played fair when it came to depicting why the marriage failed.  Twice In A Lifetime stacks the odds in Harry’s favor just by suggesting that Ann-Margaret would end up working at a bar frequented by steelworkers.  Harry has to choose between his plain and boring wife and Ann-Margaret.  That’s going to be a difficult choice!  The twist that Harry’s decision was ultimately the right thing for Kate doesn’t feel earned.

But damn if Gene Hackman isn’t great in this film.  Even though he was one of the most recognizable actors in the movie, Hackman is totally believable as both a steelworker and a man who worries that he’s destroyed his family.  It’s not just one moment or scene that makes this a great performance.  It’s the entire performance as a whole, with Hackman portraying all of Harry’s conflicted emotions both before and after leaving his family.  Hackman gives a performance that is more honest than the film’s script or direction.  The movie believes Harry did the right thing but Hackman shows us that Harry himself isn’t so sure.  Hackman captures the middle-aged malaise of a man wondering if his life is as good as it gets.  When the movie works, it is almost totally due to the emotional authenticity of Hackman’s performance.  Twice in a Lifetime may be a forgotten film but it’s also proof of how great an actor Gene Hackman really was.  There will never be another one like him.

Boothill Brigade (1937, directed by Sam Newfield)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Rancher Jeff Reynolds (Frank LaRue) used to be one of the good guys on the frontier but he’s recently changed.  He fired all of his loyal ranch hands and instead hired a motely crew of outlaws.  He’s buying up land and evicting the squatters who have been living there.  About the only good thing he does is hire Lon Cardigan (Johnny Mack Brown) to be his new herd boss.  Lon is engaged to Reynolds’s daughter, Bobbie (Claire Rochelle).  With the help of Bobbie and comic relief cook Calico Haynes (Horace Murphy), Lon tries to figure out why Reynolds is now doing the bidding of the evil John Porter (Ed Cassidy).

The title is the most exciting thing about this movie, which is one of those old B-movies that puts the “creak” in creaky.  There’s surprisingly little gunplay but there is a lot of horse riding.  For a film that runs less than an hour, a surprising amount of it is just shots of people riding from one location to another.  The horses’ hooves sound impressive on the soundtrack but it’s not exactly exciting.  As always, Johnny Mack Brown is a convincing cowboy.  It’s a good thing he looks like he knows what he’s doing when he’s riding a horse!  The plot was standard B-western fluff.  Johnny Mack Brown appeared in a ton of westerns and almost all of them seemed to feature the same range war.  There are better Johnny Mack Brown movies out there.  This one is for completists only.

Emilia Pérez (dir by Jacques Audiard)

Posted on by Leonard Wilson

The Best Picture Winner at the Oscars usually is a film that either soared above the rest or had enough power in it’s story that you couldn’t help but be moved. James Cameron’s Titanic may not have had the tightest story in the world (I still argue that L.A. Confidential was worthy enough), but it was impressive for the time. We all know The Shawshank Redemption could have easily won Best Picture, but Forrest Gump did so some amazing things that year as well. I love All That Jazz, but can understand how Kramer vs. Kramer scooped Best Picture. Everything, Everywhere, All at Once may have been a strange winner, but it was moving enough (at least for me, anyway) to enjoy it and feel it was deserving. Then, of course, you get Crash, which still makes me scratch my head to this day.

Netflix’s Emilia Perez was a surprise hit at the Golden Globes. It’s also managed to pick up 13 Academy Award Nominations. As we’re covering the Oscar Nominated films, I decided to give it a run and went in blind. The most I knew about the film was Zoe Zaldana sang and danced, and that it was a something of a musical. It’s a mixed bag, though. On the one hand, you have great performances from Zaldana (who I’ve enjoyed since Drumline) and Karla Sofia Gascon, along with a solid tale. On the other hand, the musical elements of it are awkward. I think of all the songs featured, there may have been 2 or three that struck a chord for me (“Lady” – I loved how the Doctor and Rita share a counterpoint verse and “Papa”, left me misty eyed). I really felt like this could be a stronger film if they took the music out of it, but I also have to wonder if the decision to make this a musical was director Jacques Audiard’s way of dipping a hard to swallow pill for some – a sex change – in chocolate to make it taste better. If that’s the case, they should have hired better musicians, really. The music wasn’t helping, despite how well everyone’s participation was. 

Rita (Zaldana) is a lawyer in Mexico, unhappy with a system that forces her to defend people who are clearly breaking the law (if not slightly bending it). She is kidnapped and introduced to an extremely wealthy cartel boss named Manitas (Gascon), who has undergone the hormone prerequisites for gender transition surgery. Manitas hires Rita to find a doctor who will perform the surgery, while at the same time, secures a safe place and new life for Manitas’ wife, Jessi (Selena Gomez, Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building) and their two children. Rita’s reluctant at first, but does the due diligence, securing a doctor and brushing up on medical terms. She meets the goals and is paid incredibly well for it. 

Moving ahead roughly 4 to 5 years later, Rita finds herself in familiar circles when she meets Emilia Perez. After some introductions, Emilia has another job for Rita – to help reunite Emilia with her children. This seems easy at first, with Perez’s near limitless funds, but some complications arise in the form of Jessi’s new boyfriend, Gustavo (Edgar Ramirez, Bright). Can Emilia find a way to live her new life while still holding on to elements of the past? How far will Rita go to keep things running smoothly?

Historically, transexual characters in cinema isn’t anything new. We’ve had Chris Sarandon’s Leon in 1975’s Dog Day Afternoon, Hillary Swank in 1999’s Boys Don’t Cry, Jaye Davidson in 1992’s The Crying Game. Emilia Perez is a bit different in having a transgender actor play a transgender character. Was it any more effective to cast the film this way? I’d argue that it was. In some ways, it’s like watching Joel Grey’s Chiun in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins or Peter Sellers’ Sidney Wang in 1976’s Murder by Death. Were their performances bad? I don’t think so. Could someone Mongolian or Chinese have done a better job? Possibly, but Hollywood just didn’t cast that way back then. Between Manitas’ darkness and Emilia’s kindness (and the moments in between that showcase that darkness when Emilia gets angry), Karla Sofía Gascon gives a great performance. Her chances of winning an Oscar may be damaged by some recently discovered tweets that show her going on a racially fueled tirade. Had that not happened, there’s a chance she could’ve plucked the Oscar right out of Demi Moore’s, Mickey Madison’s or maybe even Cynthia Erivo’s hands.

Zaldana is equally as good here, putting both her dancing and singing chops to work. It’s a very different role, compared to what she’s done in the Guardians of the Galaxy and Avatar films. Again, while the music isn’t particularly great or memorable, she does her best with what she’d given and her character moves through a number of emotional states. I think the only person who might have made an impact (for me, anyway) was Selena Gomez. She was okay, but I’ve seen her do better in Only Murders in the Building. The role of Jessi is also different from other ones she’s played, but it felt awkward. Not terrible, just a bit different. I could see a few actresses easily handling that role. 

From a filming standpoint, there’s a lot of nice lighting effects, particularly when the film moves into the various dance numbers. Cinematographer Paul Guilhaume makes some cool magic in various scenes. If Emilia Pérez does win a number of awards, it’ll be for the acting and the production. While I don’t really see myself running back to it, it’s worth a watch at least for the Awards curiosity. 

Return of the Lash (1947, directed by Ray Taylor)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

There’s another range war brewing on the frontier.  Big Jim Kirby (George Chesebro) knows there’s plans for a new railroad so he wants to steal the land from the ranchers so he can make a fortune off a selling it.  Kirby calls in everyone’s mortgage, knowing they’ll never be able to pay.  Rancher Tom Grant (Buster Slaven) reaches out to Cheyenne Davis (Lash LaRue, a look alike for Humphrey Bogart)) and Fuzzy Q. Jones (Al St. John) for help.  Cheyenne raises the money but then he makes the mistake of trusting Fuzzy to deliver it.  Fuzzy takes a knock to the noggin and now, he’s got amnesia.  Where’s the money?

This is a standard B-western and you know the drill.  Big Jim’s henchmen don’t want that money to get paid.  Cheyenne is on the side of the angels.  Fuzzy provides comic relief.  Lash LaRue appeared in several B-westerns.  He never became as big a star as some of his contemporaries but he did have a gimmick that made him memorable.  Most westerns stars used guns.  LaRue had a bullwhip.  When LaRue was first offered the role of Cheyenne, he lied and said he could crack a whip.  After he struggled to teach himself, tiny production company PRC hired a professional trainer.  That was a huge expense for a poverty row studio but it paid off because LaRue became proficient with the whip and he had a surprisingly long career.  He was born Alfred LaRue.  The studio came up with the Lash nickname.  Many western stars, like Johnny Mack Brown, played characters who shared their name.  Lash almost always played Cheyenne Davis.

Lash LaRue’s movies were cheap and never that memorable.  In this one, Lash barely appears and most of the action is carried out by Al St. John as Fuzzy.  But Lash LaRue did play an important part in Hollywood history when he briefly came out of retirement to teach Harrison Ford how to crack a whip for a little film called Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Billy The Kid (1930, directed by King Vidor)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In a frontier town, land baron William P. Donavon (James A. Marcus) finds his control challenged by the arrival of a English cattleman named John W. Tunston (Wyndham Standing).  Donavon orders his henchmen to gun down Tunston on the same day that Tunston was to marry the lovely Claire (Kay Johnson).  Tunston’s employee, an earnest young man named Billy The Kid (Johnny Mack Brown), sets out to avenge Tunston’s murder.  When Billy starts killing Donavon’s henchmen, it falls to Deputy Sheriff Pat Garrett (Wallace Beery) to arrest him.  When Billy escape from jail and rides off to be with Claire, Garrett pursues him.  Garrett is a friend of Billy’s and he knows that Billy’s killings were justified.  But he’s also a man of the law.  Will he be able to arrest or, if he has to be, even kill Billy?  Or will Garrett let his friend escape?

There were two silent biopics made about Billy the Kid but neither of them are around anymore.  This sound movie, directed by King Vidor, appears to the earliest surviving Billy the Kid film.  It’s a loose retelling of Billy’s life and his friendship with Pat Garrett and it doesn’t bother with sticking close to the established facts but that’s to be expected.  It’s an early sound film and, seen today, the action and some of the acting feels creaky.  Wallace Beery was miscast as Pat Garrett but I did like Johnny Mack Brown’s performance as the callow Billy.  The movie goes out of its way to justify Billy’s murders and it helps that Billy is played by the fresh-faced Brown.  King Vidor shows a good eye for western landscapes, a skill that would come in handy when he directed Duel In The Sun seventeen years later.

There are better westerns but, for fans of the genre, this film is important as the earliest surviving film  about one of the most iconic outlaws not named Jesse James.  It’s interesting to see Brown, usually cast as the clean-cut hero, playing a killer here.  The film’s ending is pure fantasy but I bet audiences loved it.

#MondayMuggers presents THE SEVEN-UPS (1973) starring Roy Scheider!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

Every Monday night at 9:00 Central Time, my wife Sierra and I host a “Live Movie Tweet” event on X using the hashtag #MondayMuggers. We rotate movie picks each week, and our tastes are quite different. Tonight, Monday February 24th, we’re watching THE SEVEN-UPS starring Roy Scheider, Tony Lo Bianco, Ken Kercheval, Richard Lynch, and Bill Hickman.

THE SEVEN-UPS is about an elite New York City police unit, led by detective Buddy Manucci (Roy Scheider). The unit is nicknamed the “seven-ups” based on their ability to secure convictions and jail sentences of 7 years and up. While working a job, one of his fellow seven-ups is killed, and Buddy will do anything to find the men who did it.

I wrote a full review of THE SEVEN-UPS just last week because it’s truly a great movie and features one of the best car chase sequences ever put on film. Rather than repeat a lot of those same facts, I’m including a link to my review below, which also includes the trailer for the film:

THE SEVEN-UPS (1973) – Roy Scheider in a gritty 70’s cop thriller!

So, join us tonight for #MondayMuggers and watch THE SEVEN-UPS! It’s on Amazon Prime.

Guns In The Dark (1937, directed by Sam Newfield)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In Mexico, two American cowboys, Johnny Darrel (Johnny Mack Brown) and Dick Martin (Julian Madison) join a poker game to try to win some money and help out their buddy, Oscar (Sid Saylor).  When they discover that cantina owner Manuel Mendez (Ted Adams) has rigged the game, a fight breaks out.  The lights turn off.  In the darkness, several guns are fired.  When the lights come back up, Dick is dead.  Mendez convinces Johnny that he accidentally shot his friend in the fight.  Guilt-stricken, Johnny tosses aside his guns and returns to Texas.

Johnny has sworn that he will never shoot another gun but when he’s hired to work at a ranch owned by Joan Williams (Claire Rochelle), he finds himself in the middle of a range war between Joan and Brace Stevens (Dick Curtis), with Mendez also making an unwelcome return to Johnny’s life.  Even after Johnny discovers the truth about what happened that night at the cantina, he doesn’t pick up a gun.  Instead, Johnny fights the bad guys with lassos and plates.

Guns In The Dark is only 54 minutes long and it features actors who will be familiar to any fan of the old B-westerns.  Sidekcick Sid Saylor’s stuttering schtick gets old quickly but Johnny Mack Brown is as likable as always in Guns In The Dark and he comes across as being an authentic cowboy even when he’s not carrying a gun  Given that this film features even more horse chases than the typical Johnny Mack Brown b-western, it’s good that Brown is so convincing.  What isn’t convincing is how stupid Johnny Darrel is required to be in order for him to fall for Mendez’s lie in the first place.  I appreciated the change of pace from Brown just using a gun to stop the bad guys but I wish the reason behind it had been more convincing.  This isn’t one of Johnny Mack Brown’s more memorable westerns though, as always, it’s easy to see why he was one of the early stars of the genre.

 

THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND (1983) – Rutger Hauer teams up with Sam Peckinpah!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

I’ve been having the best time reviewing Rutger Hauer films every Sunday. Today, I revisit THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND from 1983. Hauer made this film the year after BLADE RUNNER, so he was in the prime of his career. It also teams him up with an all-star supporting cast and master director Sam Peckinpah. 

THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND opens with CIA Director Maxwell Danforth (Burt Lancaster) watching a recording of agent Laurence Fassett (John Hurt) making love to his wife. When Fassett hits the shower, two KGB assassins come in and kill her. Consumed by grief, Fassett hunts down the assassins and uncovers a Soviet spy network known as Omega. Fassett has identified three American men as top Omega agents… television producer Bernard Osterman (Craig T. Nelson with an awful, glued-on mustache), plastic surgeon Richard Tremayne (Dennis Hopper) and stock trader Joseph Cardone (Chris Sarandon). Rather than arrest the men and risk alarming the KGB, Fassett proposes to director Danforth that they try to turn one of the three men to the side of the West in hopes that this person will provide the information needed to bring down the Omega network. 

Enter controversial television journalist John Tanner (Rutger Hauer). Fassett knows that Tanner has been close friends with Osterman, Tremayne, and Cardone since all four attended Berkeley together, and he believes that Tanner can successfully turn one of them. Although initially highly skeptical, the super patriotic Tanner begins to change his mind when Fassett shows him videotaped evidence of his old friends talking with a Russian agent in various capacities. Tanner reluctantly agrees to try turn one of his friends at their annual “Osterman Weekend” reunion which is coming up that week at Tanner’s house. He does have one condition… that Danforth, the CIA director will appear as a guest on his show. Danforth agrees to this condition. So that weekend, Tanner and his wife Ali (Meg Foster) welcome their old friends and their wives into their home, while Fassett has video camera equipment installed and hangs out in a van spying on the festivities. There’s no doubt it will turn out to be an awkward weekend, and you can’t help but wonder if Fassett may have more sinister motives than he’s letting on. 

I’ll go ahead and say that I had a great time watching THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND for the first time in thirty-plus years. I’ve often read a criticism that the plot of this film is “incomprehensible.” Based on a book by Robert Ludlum, the story is purposely designed to keep you guessing up until its big reveal, but I didn’t have any trouble following it all. I’d say the biggest issue is that it doesn’t really stand up under close scrutiny. Some of the actions of the various characters don’t always make a lot of sense in light of the movie’s big twist near the end, but that didn’t take away from my personal enjoyment of the film. I just went along with the plot wherever it took me, and that was easy for me to do based on the cast that we have assembled. Any movie that includes Rutger Hauer, Burt Lancaster, John Hurt, Craig T. Nelson, Dennis Hopper, Chris Sarandon, Meg Foster, Helen Shaver, and Candy Yates will get a watch from me. Heck, Tim Thomerson even shows up as a motorcycle cop at one point. It’s a who’s who of excellent actors who always make their films watchable. In my opinion, it’s Hauer, Hurt, Foster and Nelson who do the most with their characters and take home the acting honors for their work here. Burt Lancaster is one of the all-time greats, and he does a good job, but it’s a one note character so there isn’t much he can do. Hopper and Sarandon are also fine, but their characters don’t really stand out. Their screen wives, Shaver and Yates, seem to be here mostly for eye candy because their tops are off for an abnormally large amount of their screen time! Speaking of eyes, the Hauer / Foster team up has to be on the list of the most striking combo pair of eyes in the history of cinema. Foster has the most noticeable eyes of any actress I’ve ever seen. 

This is the great Sam Peckinpah’s final film, and I don’t agree with the people who complain that his career ended with a whimper. THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND is not in the same league as THE WILD BUNCH, RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, THE STRAW DOGS, or THE GETAWAY, but not many films are, including most of his own. And this movie is certainly visionary in one area, and that is found in its main theme about the damage that can be done with the manipulation of the media, including physical media, like videotape and audiotape. The primary driver of the film from the very beginning to the very end is the danger of false information that looks and sounds true. I can promise you that as I type this, and as you read it, there are people all over this world trying to make lies sound or appear true so they can share them on the news and on social media. I invite you to question everything you read, watch or hear on any outlet where you receive your news. Peckinpah’s final film beats this into our heads, just 40 years earlier. 

Sam Peckinpah was known for his stylish and violent action sequences. THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND is more of a paranoid thriller, but it does feature some good action. There’s a chase sequence early in the film where Hauer’s wife and son are kidnapped, and he’s forced to commandeer the truck of honeymooners John Bryson (a Peckinpah regular) and Anne Haney (Greta from LIAR LIAR) to take off in hot pursuit. The scene features Peckinpah’s signature stunts, slow motion, and a myriad of cool tracking shots. There’s another fun scene where Hauer is using a baseball bat to defend himself against his pal Craig T. Nelson, who’s been shown to be a martial arts expert. It’s an exciting scene even if Hauer does get his ass kicked, in slow motion no less. And I always appreciate a movie with some good crossbow action, especially when it’s being wielded by a lady. The poster of the film prominently features a lady with a crossbow and we get to see Meg Foster step into that role in the actual film. She gets one especially gruesome, blood gurgling kill. 

Overall, I think THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND is a good film. It is not nearly as bad as the critics of the time labeled it, and it’s not as good as Peckinpah’s best work, but you can certainly do a lot worse. It has a great cast, a timely message, a lot more sex and nudity than I remembered, and some cool action sequences. It’s definitely worth a watch!

Bar-Z Bad Men (1937, directed by Sam Newfield)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

After getting kicked out of town for shooting the place up during a night of friendly fun, cowboy Jim Waters (Johnny Mack Brown) drops in on his old friend, rancher Ed Parks (Jack Rothwell).  Ed has got a strange problem.  There are cattle rustlers about but instead of stealing Ed’s cattle, they’re adding cattle to Ed’s herd.  It’s an obvious scheme to try to create a feud between Ed and his neighbor, rancher Hamp Harvey (Frank LaRue).  Before Jim and Ed can solve the problem, Ed is gunned down.  Harvey is the number one suspect but Jim figures out the truth, that Harvey has been betrayed by one of his own employees and that all of this is a part of a scheme by Sig Bostell (Tom London) to take control of both ranches.

Bar-Z Bad Man is a B-western with a notably twisty plot as Bostell plays both sides against each other for his own benefit.  As usual, Johnny Mack Brown makes for a good and convincing western hero.  Whether he’s chasing someone on his horse or drawing his guns, Brown is always a convincing cowboy.  What makes this film interesting is that it opens with Johnny Mack Brown engaging in the type of behavior that most B-western heroes would never think of doing.  Shooting up the town and then getting exiled for his actions adds an element of redemption to Jim’s efforts to get to the bottom of Bostell’s schemes.  Or it would if Jim ever really seemed to feel bad about shooting the town up.  His excuse is that he was just having a good time.  Try to get away with that in the real old west, Jim!

Bar-Z Bad Men is a good B-western for those who like the genre.  The story is solid and Johnny Mack Brown is as convincing saving the west as he was shooting it up.

 

The Getaway (1972, directed by Sam Peckinpah)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Doc McCoy (Steve McQueen) is doing a ten-year sentence in a Texas state prison when he’s offered a chance at parole.  The only condition that Jack Benyon (Ben Johnson) gives Doc is that, once out of prison, Doc is going to have to plan and carry out a bank robbery with two other criminals, Frank (Bo Hopkins) and Rudy (Al Lettieri).  Desperate for his freedom and to be reunited with his wife, Carol (Ali MacGraw), Doc agrees.  On the outside, Doc carries out the robbery but it turns out that no one can be trusted.  With everyone double-crossing everyone else, Doc and Carol head for the border, pursued by the police, Rudy, and Benyon’s brother, Cully (Roy Jenson).

Based on a novel by Jim Thompson, The Getaway is a fast-paced and violent heist film.  It was on this film that Ali MacGraw and Steve McQueen first met and famously fell for each other.  Married to producer Robert Evans, Ali MacGraw left him for McQueen.  Their very real chemistry gives the film its forward momentum and it is so palpable that it doesn’t matter that the stunningly beautiful Ali MacGraw couldn’t really act.  Steve McQueen, on the other hand, is at his coolest in The Getaway.  McQueen was an actor who didn’t need much dialogue to say a lot and The Getaway features him at his tough and ruthless best.  Doc is not one of the good guys.  He’s a bad guy but not as bad as Rudy, Frank, Jack, and Cully.

As was typical of Peckinpah, The Getaway is full of small moments and details that make the movie’s world come to life.  While Doc and Carol flee across Texas, Rudy has a twisted loves story of his own with Fran (Sally Struthers, in a role that will surprise anyone who only knows her as Gloria Stivic).  Jack Dodson plays Fran’s kindly husband and gives a performance that reminds us of the human cost of crime.  Slim Pickens has a wonderful cameo as an old cowboy whose truck is hijakced by Jack and Carol.  Those who thought of Peckinpah as just being a director of violent thrillers often overlooked the moments of humanity that regularly emerged amongst all the bloodshed.

The Getaway was not given the critical acclaim it deserved when it was released but today, it’s regularly recognized as a career best for both Sam Peckinpah and Steve McQueen.