Category Archives: Film Review

Film Review: Operation Mincemeat (dir by John Madden)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Based on a true story, Operation Mincemeat takes place in 1943, during the second World War.  The British are planning an invasion of Sicily, both to break Hitler’s hold on Europe and to also knock Italy out of the war.  The problem is that the attack on Sicily makes so much strategic sense that the Germans have spent months preparing for it and, even if successful, the invasion will cost an untold number of British lives.  Somehow, British intelligence must trick the Germans into thinking that the British are planning to invade Greece instead.

With the help of Lt. Commander Ian Fleming (Johnny Flynn), Ewen Montagu (Colin Firth) and Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew McFayden) come up with the plan to fool the Germans.  A dead body will be disguised as a British officer.  The body will be transported, via submarine, to Spain, which was technically neutral during the war.  The body will wash up on shore and, when the body is examined, a note detailing Britain’s invasion of Greece will be discovered and passed along to the Germans.  Because the Germans have been fooled by a similar trick in the past, Montagu and Cholmondeley create a fake backstory for “Maj. William Martin” and soon start to think of him as being a someone who truly did live.  Joining them to create a life for Major Martin is Jean Leslie (Kelly MacDonald), a secretary in the office who volunteers a photo of herself to be placed in Martin’s wallet.

Of course, things get complicated.  While plotting out the operation, Jean starts to fall in love with Montagu, whose marriage is currently strained by Montagu’s obsession with his work.  (Because he knows what will happen to a Jewish family in the UK if Germany invades, Montagu has sent his wife and his children to the U.S.)  Cholomondeley is in love with Jean and soon finds himself growing jealous of the man that he’s been assigned to work with.  Meanwhile, the head of British Intelligence (Jason Isaacs) wants to investigate Montagu’s brother for being a communist.  As for Ian Fleming, he keeps himself busy by writing a book.  In fact, so many members of British Intelligence are identified as being aspiring novelists that it becomes a bit of a running joke.

I have always appreciated a good World War II film and I enjoyed Operation Mincemeat.  It’s a bit of an old-fashioned film, of course.  The F-word is used exactly once (which makes this a rarity amongst modern British films) and there’s one scene in which a member of British intelligence discreetly gives an informant a handjob in return for information.  Otherwise, this is pretty much a film that you could safely show your grandma without having to worry about her getting depressed over how much movies have changed since her day.  Old-fashioned or not, it’s a well-made film, full of good performances and sharp dialogue.  It’s not a flashy film but it’s very nicely put together and it’s hard not to admire the craftsmanship responsible for it.  Operation Mincemeat is all the more interesting for being, more or less, true.  While the love triangle was invented for the film, it is true that Ian Fleming was a part of Operation Mincemeat and the film’s use of him as a character works surprisingly well.  The scene where a young Fleming tours the World War II version of Q Branch provides some nice comic relief, particularly when Flemings comes across a wristwatch that doubles as a mini-saw.

What elevates Operation Mincemeat is its theme of loss.  Almost all of the major characters have lost someone or something to the war.  Jean Leslie is a widow.  Cholomendely’s brother was killed in action and his body is still in Europe.  Montagu has had to send his family away for their own safety.  For them, the Major Martin becomes a stand-in for all of the people that they’ve lost.  The effort to make Martin into a real person allows all of them one final chance to honor their loved ones.  Major Martin becomes a stand-in for all British soldiers and civilians who sacrificed their lives to battle Hitler’s war machine.  Operation Mincemeat becomes about more than just fooling the Germans.  It becomes about being worthy of the sacrifice that it took to defeat them.

As is shown in the film, the real Major Martin was a vagrant named Glyndwr Michael, who died after eating rat poison.  The film suggests that Michael deliberately killed himself but no one will ever know for sure what led to him eating that poison.  After his death, he was given the uniform of a British officer and his pockets were filled with things that would identify him as being Major William Martin.  Though he never knew it, Glyndwr Michael become one of the greatest heroes of World War II.  Operation Mincemeat serves a worthy tribute to both Glyndwr Michael and Major William Martin.

In the Line of Duty: Street War (1992, directed by Dick Lowry)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Street War, the fifth In The Line of Duty movie to be produced by NBC, takes place in Brooklyn.  Raymond Williams (Mario Van Peebles) and Robert Dayton (Michael Boatman) are two uniformed officers trying to keep the peace in the projects.  When Raymond is shot and killed in a stairwell, everyone knows that drug dealer Justice Butler (Courtney B. Vance) was responsible but no one can prove it.

The case is assigned to two detectives, Dan Reilly (Peter Boyle) and Victor Tomasino (Ray Sharkey).  Reilly is a veteran cop who is just a few months away from retirement.  Tomasino is the son of a “made man” who can’t understand why the drug lords in Brooklyn aren’t as interested in keeping the peace as the old Mafiosos were.

When Justice leaves Brooklyn so that he can hide out with his family in South Carolina, Reilly and Dayton follow him down there and discover that people in South Carolina distrust the cops just as much as people in Brooklyn.  Meanwhile, back in Brooklyn, Justice’s second-in-command, Prince (Morris Chestnut), tries to keep an all-out war from breaking out.

Prince and Tomasino take turns narrating the movie.  Prince talks about the reality of trying to restart your life after doing time in prison while Tomasino complains that “the animals” have taken over the city.  (Because this was made for television, “Animals” is Tomasino’s go-to label for anyone he dislikes.  Anyone with any experience with the police will know what word he is actually thinking.)  While Chestnut gives a restrained and thoughtful performance, Ray Sharkey shouts his lines and snarls whenever he’s onscreen.  Though it’s not always evident in this movie, Sharkey started out as a talented actor who played small roles in several independent films before starring in The Idolmaker.  Unfortunately, Sharkey was also a heroin addict whose once promising career was derailed by a series of arrests and jail sentences.  He looks thin and tired in Street Wars and, one year after the film aired, he would die of complications from AIDS.

With Sharkey yelling his lines, it falls on Peter Boyle to play the voice of reason in Street War.  Dan Reilly is a cliché, the weary cop who still wants to make the world a better place and who is just a few days away from retirement.  But Boyle does a good job playing him and brings his own natural gravitas to the movie.

Dick Lowry, who directed the first three In The Line of Duty movies, returns for this one and he keeps the action moving.  Street War is significantly more violent than the previous movies, with even two children getting shot onscreen.  The story itself is a predictable and Tomasino’s casual racism can be hard to take (even if he does eventually called out about it) but, thanks to the performances of Boyle, Boatman, Chestnut, and Vance, Street War is an improvement on Mob Justice and an adequate entry in the series.

Street War would be followed by two movies about FBI sieges, The Siege at Marion and Ambush in Waco.  Since I’ve already reviewed both of those, I will be moving onto In the Line of Duty: The Price of Vengeance tomorrow.

A Blast From The Past: Lucy (dir by Paul Glickman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the picture above, you can see Lucy (played by Olga Soler), the title character of the 1975 educational short, Lucy.  Lucy is 15 years old and she spends almost all of her time with her boyfriend, Joe (Michael D’Emidio).  As Lucy herself explains her narration (which is provided by an actress named Marilyn Gold), her entire life revolved around Joe.  Since Joe dropped out of school, Lucy dropped out of school too.  Since Joe wanted to spend all of his time walking around New York City, Lucy did the same.  They thought they were in love.  One discreet sex scene later and Lucy’s pregnant!

Lucy is a bit different from some of the other educational films that I’ve seen about teenage pregnancy.  Though initially shocked and angered, Lucy’s parents are eventually supportive.  Joe doesn’t run away but instead promises to do whatever he can to help, though Lucy ruefully acknowledges that it won’t be much as Joe doesn’t even have a high school diploma.  Though a friend offers to help Lucy get an abortion, Lucy decides to have her baby and social services shows up to help her.  At the end of the film, Lucy is still not sure whether she’s going to keep her baby or give it up for adoption.  She just knows that her life will never be the same.  Compared to just about every other educational film that I’ve seen about this subject, Lucy takes a rather low-key and matter-of-fact approach to its story.  It’s well-made but rather depressing.

It’s also a rather obscure film.  I couldn’t find much about the film on the IMDb.  Is the Paul Glickman who is credited as the film’s director the same Paul Glickman who edited some of Larry Cohen’s best films?  Who knows?

Now, I know I’ve probably made this film sound really depressing to sit through but there is a dance scene towards the start of the film.  That helps.

Film Review: The Stranger (dir by Fritz Kiersch)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the desert of Arizona, there sits a town.

That town is named Lakeview, despite the fact that there is no lake nearby.  There aren’t many buildings in the town.  There’s a service station.  There’s a diner.  There’s a sheriff’s office.  There’s a general store.  There are a few houses.  Lakeview is a place that people rarely visit and which no one can escape.

There is a sheriff.  His name is Cole (Eric Pierpoint) and he spends most of his days in an alcoholic stupor.  He’s been depressed ever since his girlfriend, Bridget, was murdered.  Now, Bridget’s younger sister, Gordet (Robin Lyn Heath), is living like a feral animal while the local shopkeeper, Sally (Ginger Lynn Allen), is determined to have Cole for herself.  Cole’s deputy (Ash Adams) is in love with Sally and wants Cole’s job for his own.  That’s a lot of drama for a small town.

Of course, the real drama in Lakeview comes from the fact that the town is run by a group of bikers!  The head biker is named Angel (Andrew Divoff).  By terrorizing the citizens, Angel and his gang make their own wishes come true without ever asking anyone else if that’s something they would be interested in.  Cole is too drunk and depressed to stand up to them.  The other townspeople are …. well, I don’t know what their problem is.  One assumes that they have to be tough, as they’re living in a harsh and inhospitable desert.  But none of them them are willing to stand up for themselves.  Maybe they’ve recently moved to Arizona from California and they’re not used to the idea of self-defense.  But, for whatever reason, Angel controls Lakeview.

But then the Stranger (Kathy Long) rides up on her motorcycle.  Dressed in black leather and wearing a corset that looks like it would actually be really uncomfortable in the desert heat, The Stranger has no name but she does know how to kick ass.  She has come to kill all the members of Angel’s gang.  Unfortunately, the majority of the gang is out-of-town when The Stranger arrives.  So, the Stranger waits in Lakeview and kills who she can.  The townspeople, led by Sally, want her to leave before things get too violent.  Meanwhile, Cole comes out of his drunken stupor just long enough to notice that the Stranger looks a lot like his dead girlfriend….

1995’s The Stranger was an attempt to a modern-day spaghetti western, with a woman playing the type of mysterious figure who would traditionally have been played by Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson.  That, in itself, is a pretty good idea.  Unfortunately, The Stranger itself is abysmally paced and the filmmakers seem to have overlooked that, in the best spaghetti westerns, the silent, nameless heroes were usually paired with a more talkative (and often much more amusing) partner.  The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly had Eli Wallach.  Once Upon A Time In The West had Jason Robards.  In The Stranger, there’s not really anyone around to fill that role.  (Cole is too full of self-pity to be amusing.  Gordet spends most of the movie running from one abandoned car to another.)  As such, The Stranger becomes fairly grim and slow.  Things are only livened up when The Stranger beats people up.  Kathy Long was a kickboxing champion and she’s strong enough in the action scenes that it makes up for the fact that she doesn’t have a particularly compelling screen presence.  She and Eric Pierpoint also have next to no romantic chemistry, making the whole question of whether or not she’s Bridget’s ghost seem a bit moot.

The best reason to see the film is to watch Andrew Divoff play Angel.  Divoff is always a good villain and he’s memorably unhinged in The Stranger.  Unfortunately, he’s not in the film as much as the viewer might hope.  Watching the film, I half expected the Wishmaster to ask if I wanted Andrew Divoff’s role to be larger.  I would have said no while thinking yes.  You know how that Wishmaster is.

In The Line of Duty: Mob Justice (1991, directed by Peter Markle)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

The fourth of NBC’s In The Line of Duty movies, Mob Justice opens with the murder of an undercover DEA agent by a low-level gangster who has just been released from prison.  While the gangster goes into hiding, the DEA mobilizes and starts to make life so difficult for all of the other mobsters in New York that soon, the Mafia is as determined to get justice as law enforcement.

This was the first In The Line Of Duty film not be directed by Dick Lowry.  Lowry’s fast-paced style is missed as Mob Justice takes forever to get going and regularly gets bogged down with scenes lifted from other mafia movies.  The old mobsters talk about the importance of family, play cards in the backroom, and eat big dinners.  Opera blares on the soundtrack when the DEA starts to harass them.  For a movie that is supposed to honor the work and the sacrifice of federal law enforcement, the DEA actually comes across as being thoroughly incompetent in Mob Justice.  A dumb mistake leads to the first murder.  A series of other misjudgments lead to the Mafia dispensing the own type of violent justice before the DEA can arrest their man.

The most interesting thing about Mob Justice is the cast.

The trigger-happy gangster is played by Tony Danza, who I guess was trying to prove himself as a dramatic actor after spending years on Taxi and Who’s The Boss but who still comes across like Tony Micelli having a bad day.  His best friend is played Nicholas Turturro, who later played a straight arrow detective on NYPD Blue.  Frank Vincent and Leonardo Cimino plays the mob bosses who knows that murdering a federal agent is bad for business.

The head of the investigation is played by Ted Levine, who has had a long career but will always be remembered as the killer from The Silence of the Lambs.  Working under him is Dan Lauria, who a generation will instantly recognize as being the long-suffering and frequently angry father from The Wonder Years.  You know that this is a big case is Buffalo Bill and Jack Arnold are working together.  (Dan Lauria actually appeared in several In The Line of Duty films, always playing different characters.)

And finally, the murdered DEA agent is played by none other than Samuel L. Jackson.  It’s never a good thing when the best actor in a movie is killed off after the first fifteen minutes.

The cast is great but Mob Justice is forgettable.  The main problem is that, after Jackson is taken out of the picture, the rest of the movie is just Danza hiding in different apartments while Levine and Lauria annoy Frank Vincent.  Danza’s murderer is never smart nor interesting enough to be a compelling antagonist and there’s never any doubt that, one way or another, he will pay for his stupidity.  There is one memorable scene where Danza freaks out while wearing a blonde wig but otherwise, Mob Justice doesn’t leave much of an impression.

Film Review: Running Red (dir by Jerry P. Jacobs)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I have to admit that I feel a little bit cheated by the 1999 film, Running Red.

I figured that, with a name like Running Red, the film would be about a redhead who did a lot of running.  Since I am a redhead that does a lot of running, I figured that I would be able to relate to this film.  Unfortunately, while it’s true that the film does feature a redhead, she doesn’t get to do much running.  In fact, she doesn’t really get to do much of anything.  Katherine (Angie Everhart) is mostly just there to support her husband, except for those moments that she thinks he’s cheating on him because he’s lied to her about being a former mercenary.

Her husband, who is played by Jeff Speakman, goes by the name of Greg.  He’s got a beard and he sells real estate and he has to go on a lot of business trips.  However, before he grew the beard, Greg’s name was Grigori and he was apparently a Russian even though, even in the flashbacks that open the film, he never had a Russian accent.  Grigori was a part of some sort of weird Russian military unit but he grew disgusted with the ruthlessness of the unit’s leader, Alexi (Stanley Kamel).  After one particularly brutal mission, Grigori dropped his submachine gun to the ground.  In the movie, this is shown to us in slow motion so we know what that this isn’t just a standard shot of a soldier carelessly dropping a loaded weapon.  No, this shot is significant.  This is the …. SLO MO OF DISILLUSIONMENT!

Anyway, a few years pass and Grigori is now Greg and he’s married to Katherine and they have a daughter.  When two meth addicts steal Greg’s SUV (with his daughter in the backseat), Greg promptly steals an ambulance and chases them down.  Using his Russian combat training, Greg beats up the two men.  He thinks that no one has seen him but it just so happens that some old busy body was outside with a video camera.  Greg makes the news!

Unfortunately, the news report is seen by Alexi.  Alexi tracks Greg down and demands that Greg help him out with a few more missions.  Wishing to protect his family, Greg agrees.  He winds up not only lying to his wife about why he suddenly has to go to Detroit but he also misses her high school reunion!  (She even had her old cheerleading outfit cleaned for the special occasion.)  Greg really should know better than to lie to a redhead.  He also should have known better than to think Alexi was ever going to leave him alone.  Greg soon discovers that Alexi isn’t going to be satisfied with just a few missions.  In fact, Alexi wants Greg to assassinate a city councilman who either supports or opposed the construction of a stadium.  To be honest, I kind of had a hard time keeping straight how everyone felt about the stadium.

It may seem as if the filmmakers weren’t that concerned with coming up with a coherent plot and that’s because they weren’t.  The entire film has a make-it-up-as-you-along feel to it.  That makes the plot impossible to follow but it also leads to a few moments that are so over-the-top and weird that you can’t help but kind of love then.  At one point, Jeff Speakman steals a bus and uses it for a high-speed chase.  A little later, he ends up getting into multiple fights on a luxury yacht.  I’m not sure who he was fighting or why they were fighting but it really didn’t matter.  All that matters is that most of the fights were well-choreographed and the action was quick-paced and didn’t have too many slow spots.  Jeff Speakman was a professional martial artist.  Judging by this film, he couldn’t act worth a damn but he could throw a convincing punch and he looked good hitting people.  It’s best not to demand too much from a film like this.  After all, Running Red never said it was going to be anything other than a silly action movie.

That said, I’m a bit disappointed that Katherine didn’t get to do more because, as played by Angie Everhart, she had the potential to be an interesting character and, like me, she was lucky enough to be one of the 2% of the population that has naturally red hair.  That said, Running Red is both frequently dumb and often entertaining.  It delivers what the majority of viewers will be watching it for (i.e., mindless action) and there’s something to be said for a film that is at peace with what it is.

On a personal note (and yes, I’m aware that it’s kind of silly for me to say that when all of my reviews are, more or less, personal notes), I watched Running Red on YouTube as a part of this week’s #MondayActionMovie live tweet.  The version that I saw featured French opening credits and the first few minutes of dialogue were also in French before abruptly switching over to English.  I have to admit that I was a little disappointed when everyone suddenly started speaking English.  I was looking forward to tweeting along in French!  Oh well!

In The Line of Duty: Manhunt in the Dakotas (1991, directed by Dick Lowry)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

On February 13th, 1983, a group of U.S. Marshals attempted to arrest a man named Gordon Kahl in North Dakota.  Kahl was an outspoken tax resistor.  He had already served time in Leavenworth for refusing to pay his taxes.  When he was released, he continued to refuse to pay and, in violation of his parole, started to attend meetings of the Posse Comitatus, an organization that refused to recognize the authority of any government above the county level.  Because Kahl was so prominent in anti-government circles, the plan was to make an example out of him by arresting him as he left a Posse Comitatus meeting.  Instead, Kahl,  his son, and an associate opened fire on the U.S. Marshals, killing two of them.  Kahl escaped and, for several months, was the subject of an FBI manhunt.

To make clear, Gordon Kahl was not a good man.  Gordon Kahl was a white supremacist and an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist who was a follower of the Christian Identity movement.  While Kahl’s supporters claimed that Kahl originally fired on the marshals in self-defense, eyewitnesses testified that Kahl personally executed one marshal after he had already been wounded and was no longer a threat.  Gordon Kahl was no hero but, at a time when many farmers were struggling financially and felt helpless as they watched the banks and the government seize their land, many locals did sympathize with him.  The government’s attempt to publicly arrest Kahl and make an example out of him was seen as a classic example of government overreach.  The government was so eager to catch Kahl and Kahl was initially so successful in eluding them that Gordon Kahl became a folk hero.  When Kahl was discovered hiding out in an Arkansas farmhouse, it led to Kahl killing another deputy and the the government firing over a thousand rounds into the house before eventually setting it on fire.  In their effort to capture Gordon Kahl, the government behaved just as destructively as Kahl always said they would.

The hunt for Gordon Kahl served as the basis for the third of NBC’s In The Line of Duty films, Manhunt in the Dakotas.  Rod Steiger played Gordon Kahl.  Michael Gross, fresh off of playing a tax resistor in Tremors, played the FBI agent who headed up the manhunt.  Dick Lowry, director of the previous two installments of In The Line of Duty, returned to direct.

Manhunt in the Dakotas is a fair and even-handed look at the search for Gordon Kahl.  The film doesn’t shy away from Kahl’s racism and his paranoia but, at the same time, it also shows why many people instinctively distrust anyone who says that he’s from the government.  The film shows why so many supported Kahl without supporting Kahl itself.  Gross’s FBI agent may start out as rigid and by-the-book but he quickly learns that’s not the best way to get people to answer his questions.  Having come to understand why the people of the Dakotas don’t trust the government, he can only helplessly watch as the government does everything in its power to make Kahl’s paranoid claims seem plausible.  The FBI agent is determined to bring Gordon Kahl in alive but Kahl would rather be a martyr and it seems that the rest of law enforcement is all too happy to help Kahl achieve that.  Other than a few scenes were he indulges in his tendency to overact, Steiger gives a convincing performance as Kahl and he is well-matched by Michael Gross as the agent who comes to realize that there’s more to enforcing the law than giving orders and threatening to send people to prison.

Manhunt in the Dakotas would be followed by In The Line of Duty: Mob Justice, which I will review tomorrow.

Film Review: Fortress: Sniper’s Eye (dir by Josh Sternfeld)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Fortress: Sniper’s Eye is a sequel to the 2021 film, Fortress.

If you haven’t seen Fortress, the plot goes something like this.  A group of mercenaries take over a resort that is populated by retired spies.  Robert Michaels (Bruce Willis) and his son, Paul (Jesse Metcalfe), have to set aside their difference and work together to defeat Frederick Balzary (Chad Michael Murray).

Meanwhile, the plot of Fortress: Sniper’s Eye goes something like this.  A group of mercenaries take over a now-closed resort that was once populated by retired spies.  Robert Michaels (Bruce Willis) and his son, Paul (Jesse Metcalfe), have to continue to set aside their difference and work together to defeat Frederick Balzary (Chad Michael Murray).

Now, to the film’s credit, Sniper’s Eye does admit that it’s largely recycling the plot of the first film.  When Balzary and his henchmen show up for a second time, Paul exclaims, “Didn’t any of you die!?”  It’s a funny line and one that shows that Sniper’s Eye is aware that it’s all a bit ludicrous.  Whatever other faults the film may have, you can’t complain that it’s not self-aware.

Unfortunately, when Balzary and his people invade for the second time, Paul is hosting a gathering with his fiancée and his future mother-in-law.  They’re all taken hostage.  Because Robert was wounded while rescuing Balzary’s wife from some killer Russians, he spends most of the the movie providing encouragement from a hospital bed.  Fortunately, towards the end of the movie, he is able to get out of bed and help out his son.  Paul is obviously happy to see his father and the viewers are happy to see Bruce Willis actually doing some action stuff.

Needless to say, Willis is going to be the main attraction for most viewers.  (I imagine a few One Tree Hill fans will be watching for Chad Michael Murray.)  Sniper’s Eye was one of the film that Willis completed before announcing his retirement from acting.  Knowing what we now know about Willis’s health and the conditions under which he made his final films, watching something like Fortress: Sniper’s Eye can feel awkward.  I cringed when I saw Willis in the hospital bed, looking tired and talking about how he was getting too old to play the hero.  At that moment, it felt as if the character and the actor became the same and it was a bit difficult to watch.

That said, Bruce Willis gives a convincing performance in Fortress: Sniper’s Eye.  He may not have the same charismatic swagger that he had when he was healthy but Willis does still look credible sneaking down a hallway while carrying a gun.  Even though the action scenes all use a rather obvious stunt double, Willis is still convincing in his role.

As for the rest of the film, the pacing is abysmal and the performances are uneven, with Jesse Metcalde making a bland hero and Chad Michael Murray going overboard as the main villain.  This is another film with a jumbled timeline so I feel sorry for anyone who is looking away from the screen whenever the “Two weeks later” title card flashes by.  On the plus side, the resort scenery was nice to look at and Natali Yura gave a convincing performance as Balzary’s wife.  As far as Bruce Willis’s later films are concerned, Fortress: Sniper’s Eye is superior to American Siege but comes in far below both Gasoline Alley and A Day To Die.

In the Line of Duty: A Cop For The Killing (1990, directed by Dick Lowry)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

When an undercover narcotics operation goes wrong, a veteran cop (Charles Haid) is killed.  While the cop’s killer goes on trial, the members of the undercover squad struggle to deal with their feelings about what has happened.  The head of the squad (James Farentino) struggles with how much emotion he can show while still remaining a leader.  As his ex-wife puts it, he’s so busy staying strong for everyone else that he hasn’t been able to deal with his emotions.  Meanwhile, the dead cop’s partner (Steve Weber) has the opposite problem and starts to take dangerous risks on the job.  When it looks like the killer might get a plea deal from the district attorney, both Farentino and Weber are forced to come to terms with Haid’s death and their own feelings of anger and guilt.

In the early 90s, there was several “In the Line of Duty” films made for NBC.  They were all based (often loosely) on true stories and they dealt with members of the law enforcement who died while on the job.  The best known of these was probably Ambush in Waco, which went into production while the Branch Davidian siege was still ongoing.

A Cop For The Killing was the second of the In The Line of Duty films.  Unlike the later films in the series, it didn’t deal with a nationally-known case.  Instead, it just focused on one squad of cops and how the death of a member of the squad effected them.  With its ensemble of familiar television actors and Dick Lowry’s efficient but not particularly splashy direction, it feels more like a pilot than an actual movie.  Even though this film features the cops opening up about their feelings, there’s not much to distinguish it from other cop shows of the period.  If someone digitally replaced Steven Weber with Fred Dryer, it would be easy to mistake A Cop For The Killing for a two-hour episode of Hunter.  As with all of the In The Line of Duty films, there are a few scenes designed to show the comradery of the members of the squad but it again all feels too familiar to be effective.  Before Charles Haid dies, he and Steven Weber hang out at a bar and wrestle.  After Haid dies, Weber hangs out at a strip club that’s safe for prime time.  Judging from 90s television cop shows, undercover detectives were solely responsible for keeping most strip clubs profitable.

The cast is adequate.  Farentino is believable as the emotionally withdrawn commander.  Charles Haid makes the most of his limited screen time.  Tony Plana plays a smug drug lord who smiles even when he’s being booked.  It takes a while to adjust to Steven Weber playing a serious role but his courtroom meltdown is the movie’s highlight.  In The Line of Duty: A Cop For The Killing may not have led to a television series featuring Farentino and Weber taking down the bad guys but it did lead to another In The Line of Duty movie that I will take a look at tomorrow.

Film Review: Minamata (dir by Andrew Levitas)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In Minamata, Johnny Depp plays Eugene Smith, a real-life photographer who found fame taking pictures for Life Magazine.  Taking place in 1971, the film opens with Smith famous but burned out.  He spends most of his time in his run-down apartment or walking the streets of New York.  His camera is always with him, a tool of both his art and a symbol of his detachment.  Smith can capture the world in a photograph but he’s still not sure that he wants to be a part of it.  Smith is outspoken, eccentric, and ultimately a bit of an idealist who hides behind a cloak of cynicism.

When Smith is asked to come to the Japanese city of Minamata so that he can photograph the effects of Mercury poisoning on the citizens, he agrees to do so.  Armed with only his camera and aided only by his translator, Aileen (Minami), Smith discovers a community that has been ravaged by environmental pollution.  Smith tries to bring the story of Minamata to the world, despite the efforts of one of Japan’s largest corporations to silence him.

As far as films go, Minamata isn’t bad.  It feels a lot like a throwback to the old social problem films of the late 70s and the early 80s.  Watching the film, it was easy to draw comparisons to similar films like The China Syndrome, Silkwood, A Civil Action, Erin Brockovich, and even Promised Land.  Like the characters at the heart of those films, Eugene Smith is an unlikely crusader but when he sees a heartless corporation destroying lives, he feels that he has no choice but to act.  The film’s narrative momentum occasionally sputters and there are a few too many scenes of Smith haranguing his editor but the film’s heart is in the right place.  Johnny Depp gives a surprisingly sincere performance as Eugene Smith, playing him as someone who is a bit of a natural screw-up but who still wants to make the world a better place.  The film’s best scenes are the ones in which Smith tries to convince the camera-shy villagers to allow him to document what’s happening to them.  Minamata is at its best when it just allows Depp (as Smith) to interact with other people.

Of course, by this point, Minamata is probably best known for the drama that went on behind-the-scenes.  Minamata was filmed in 2019 and made its debut at the Berlin International Film Festival in February of 2020.  Distribution rights were eventually purchased by MGM and it was originally slated to be released in 2021.  However, after Amber Heard accused Depp of domestic abuse, MGM took the film off of its schedule.  Due to the bad publicity surrounding Depp, it appeared that the film would be buried.  Depp’s fans reacted by voting for Minamata to win the Oscars Fan Favorite contest.  Though Minamata ultimately came in third place, that’s a good showing for a film that hardly anyone had seen and which hadn’t even been distributed in the United States.  The victory of the Snyder Cut may have gotten all the attention but Minamata‘s strong showing served to remind Hollywood that, despite the accusations, Johnny Depp still had a strong fanbase.

It’s tempting to say that Minamata got its release due to the outcome of the Depp/Heard libel trial.  It was actually released on Hulu while the trial was still going on.  Though Minamata is probably destined to be mostly remembered as a footnote in Oscar history, it is a film that shows that Johnny Depp can still give a good performance when he has the right material.