Tag: review

Dune, Part 1; A Very Short Discussion of the Movie – A Science Fiction Movie Review

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In November of 2021 Neil Dunn wrote an excellent review of Dune part 1.  Now that I’ve finally seen the movie, I can definitively say that his review was wholly accurate.  Let me qualify my comments by stating up front that I have inexplicably avoided reading the Dune books most of my life.  And now I am ready to amend that situation.

As I said this will be short.  The movie is a stylish and well-made science fiction film that uses the current state of the art in computer-generated imagery to great effect.  The battle scenes, the space ships and the creatures such as the sand worms are all impressively realistic.

The actors are very good.  With only a couple of familiar faces I was still highly impressed by the cast.  The plot was kept moving and the tension between the family dynamics and the political struggle was well done.

Read Neil’s review for a more in-depth and authoritative look at the story.   But as a new comer to the Dune universe I will gladly recommend this film to all fans of science fiction and more generally, to anyone who likes a good adventure film.

How the West Was Won (1962) – A Movie Review

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“How the West Was Won” is a Western extravaganza with enough Hollywood stars for five films.  It consists of five vignettes that are strung together out of the fortunes of a family from the East caught up in the settling of the western frontier.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Karl Malden is Zebulon Prescott, a farmer in New York State who becomes disgusted with his rocky unproductive land and sells it to go west with his wife Rebecca, (Agnes Moorehead) and two daughters Eve (Caroll Baker) and Lilith (Debbie Reynolds).  Along the way they meet fur trapper Linus Rawlings (Jimmy Stewart) who saves them from some nefarious river pirates led by Col. Jeb Hawkins (Walter Brennan) but finally Zebulon and Rebecca are killed going over the rapids on their raft and Rawlings reluctantly gives up his wandering ways to marry Eve and start a farm by the river.

In the next vignette, Lilith has become a show girl and does a song and dance act in St. Louis.  A messenger informs her that a former admirer has left her a gold mine in California.  She joins another woman Agatha Clegg (Thelma Ritter) in a wagon train headed west.

When gambler/fortune hunter Cleve Van Valen (Gregory Peck) overhears her good fortune, he follows her to California.  At first reluctantly and then gratefully, after he saves her life during an Indian attack, Lilith partners with Cleve.

But when they get to California, they discover that Lilith’s gold mine is played out.  Cleve leaves Lilith in the lurch to pursue his gambler’s life.  She receives a proposal of marriage from wealthy rancher Roger Morgan (Robert Preston) but rejects him because she doesn’t want a conventional life as a wife and mother.  But when Cleve overhears Lilith singing on a river boat, he realizes that they will both be happiest if they marry and combine their two adventurous lives together into a partnership.  And they do.

In the next story the Civil War has begun.  To dramatize this we even have a brief look at Raymond Massey portraying Abraham Lincoln.  Eve’s son, Zeb Rawlings (George Peppard) wants to follow his father into battle on the side of the Union.  Eve tearfully says goodbye and Zeb is swept along by the tides of war.

During this episode he manages to save General Grant (Harry Morgan) and General Sherman (John Wayne) from a Confederate soldier who was trying to convince Zeb to desert.  After the war Zeb returns home to find that both his parents are dead.  He leaves the farm to his brother and heads west as a cavalry soldier.

In the next vignette Zeb is a cavalry officer tasked with helping the Union Pacific Railroad cross the Great Plains.  The ruthless railroad boss Mike King (Richard Widmark) is angering the Indian tribes by laying down the track through the Indian hunting grounds.  Zeb has help from buffalo hunter Jethro Stuart (Henry Fonda), an old friend of his father.

They convince the Indians to accept the latest route but finally when settlers start filling up the area the Indians revolt and we watch as they stampede a herd of buffalo through the railroad worksite.  Disgusted with the railroad’ treachery, Zeb and Jethro leave for happier circumstances farther west.

In the last episode, we see Lilith as an old woman in San Francisco.  Cleve has died and an auction is proceeding to liquidate their estate to pay off debts.  All that will remain will be a ranch in Arizona that she hopes to retire to with her nephew Zeb Rawlings and his wife Julie (Carolyn Jones) and children.

Zeb was a sheriff and while meeting his aunt at the train in Arizona he catches sight of an outlaw Charlie Grant (Eli Wallach) that Zeb put in prison years ago.  He figures out that Grant means to rob the train when the next gold shipment is aboard.  Zeb recruits his old friend Marshal Lou Ramsey (Lee J. Cobb) to go with him to guard the train.

The train robbery scene involves Grant and eight or ten of his men boarding the train and battling Zeb and Lou as they fight them off with rifles and hand guns.  In the ensuing violence the train is battered to pieces and finally derails in catastrophic fashion but Zeb puts a final bullet in Charlie Grant.  Then he returns to take up a peaceful life as rancher with his family.

The movie ends with a panoramic view of California including Los Angeles freeways and the golden Gate Bridge with a stirring speech by the narrator (Spencer Tracy) about the epic adventure that was the taming of the west.

So, you get the picture.  This is an extravaganza.  They put every actor they had into it.  I’ve even left out a few other for the sake of brevity.  So, what do I think?  As far as spectacle, the scene of the raft on the rapids and the buffalo stampede are exciting and in the wide screen of a theater must have been fun for the audience.  Some of the landscapes are truly beautiful.  The plot is very straightforward.  It covers the various stages of the westward expansion of the United States with a personal story.  The performances vary from competent to perfunctory.  This isn’t high drama.  I would restrict my recommendation to saying if you’re in the mood for an epic western movie (and you have three hours to spare) this movie would be fine.

The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941) – An OCF Classic Movie Review

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Okay this one is an oddball.  What we have here is a sort of morality play mixed into a fantasy.  In the first half of the nineteenth century in the southwest corner of New Hampshire there lived a farmer named Jabez Stone.  He has a wife and a widowed mother and not much else.  Bad luck follows him and prevents him from ever catching up on his debts.  One day when disaster strikes, again, he cries out that he’d sell his soul for some good luck.  And the Devil (played amusingly by Walter Huston) shows up and talks him into the deal.  He provides him with a pot of “Hessian” gold and seven years of guaranteed good luck for the price of his soul.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

And indeed, Jabez gets all the good luck for which he could ask.  When his neighbors’ crops are destroyed by hail, his are spared.  He loans money to his neighbors and when they can’t pay him back, he makes them sharecroppers working his fields.  He builds a huge mansion on the hill and alienates his wife and mother and all his old friends.

Jabez’s wife Mary is a good friend of the famous American statesman, Daniel Webster (played by Edward Arnold) and she finally calls Webster in when she decides that something terrible has happened to her husband.  Jabez has changed from an honest friendly religious man into a greedy, hateful sinner.  He’s driven away all of their friends and taken up with a Jezebel named “Belle” whom the Devil has sent to keep Jabez from repenting.

On the seventh anniversary of his contract Old Scratch (as the Devil is called in that neighborhood of New England) comes to claim Jabez Stone’s soul.  By this point Jabez realizes the wrong he’s committed and is repentant but he knows his contract is binding.  But at this point Daniel Webster confronts the Devil and demands a jury trial.  Webster will represent the defense and the Devil gets to pick the judge, and jury.  The jury is made up of notorious criminals of the early American era including Gen. Benedict Arnold the infamous traitor of the Revolutionary War.  But the Devil stipulates that if Jabez is found guilty Daniel Webster’s soul will also be collected.

Webster uses all his gifts as an orator and appeals to the jury’s remorse for not fulfilling their birthrights as free Americans and lovers of life.  He reminds them of the simple joys of living a virtuous life and how each of them regrets the road he has taken.

Finally, the jury asks the Devil to see the contract and when he hands it over Benedict Arnold tears it up and throws it away.  The judge and jury disappear into smoke and Daniel Webster gives the Devil the bum’s rush out of Jabez’s barn.  The two victors return to the farmhouse in time to enjoy a homecooked breakfast with Jabez’s wife and mother and young son.

His neighbors arrive to alert Jabez to the fact that his mansion on the hill is in flames.  He smiles at them and tells them he’s glad and that all their debts to him are cancelled and to prove it he tears up his promissory notes and invites them to breakfast.  The movie ends on a comical note with Old Scratch sitting on a country fence, finishing up a pie he stole from Ma Stone and looking into his little book of prospects and then peering out into the audience and smiling and pointing at you!

As I said this is an oddball film.  The bulk of the film is a melodrama about a good man going bad through greed and pride.  I suppose the supernatural story is meant to be a metaphor for how circumstances can make even good people lose perspective on the what’s really valuable in life and let the pursuit of money destroy the good things they have.  I don’t know if I can recommend this movie unless I compare it to something like the movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life.”  That movie also shares a supernatural framing of the dangers of losing perspective on what makes life worth living.  If you didn’t like that better movie then you probably won’t like this lesser tale.  That won’t guarantee you’ll like this one but it gives you an idea of what kind of movie this is.

Marty (1955) – A Movie Review

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Ernest Borgnine stars as Marty Piletti an Italian American living in the Bronx.  He’s a 34-year-old who works as a butcher in a small shop and supports his widowed mother in the house where he grew up with his brothers and sisters.  But all of them, even the younger ones have gotten married and only Marty is left hanging out with his friends who talk about women all night long but mostly can’t get a date.  None of them are matinee idols and Marty is probably the homeliest of the bunch.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

When his mother, who worries that Marty will never marry, harangues him to go out to the Stardust Ballroom to find a girl, he laments that he’s been rejected countless times and is tired of it.  But he agrees to go and initially things go as usual.  Girls he asks to dance brush him off.  But a man comes by and asks a favor.  The other man is on a blind date and is unhappy about his date’s looks.  He wants to tell the girl that he has to leave but then have Marty take her home so she won’t feel abandoned at the dance.  Marty objects to the idea so the man finds someone else willing to escort the girl home for a five-dollar fee.

Marty follows the two men and witnesses the girl being callously rejected.  She refuses the offer to be brought home and the two men leave.  The girl is visibly devastated and leaves the dance floor and heads for an outdoor space to be alone.  Marty follows her and sees that she is crying.  Trying to cheer her up he approaches her and asks if she’d like to dance.  Overwhelmed by emotion she sinks her face in his shoulder and cries while Marty nervously pats her shoulder to comfort her.

In the next scene the couple are dancing and we meet Clara Snyder.  She is a twenty-nine-year-old school teacher.  Her relatively plain face has meant that like Marty she has never been in love.  The two hit it off tremendously.  Normally shy and tongue-tied Marty talks garrulously and exuberantly to this stranger.  And Clara is charmed that a man is so genuinely enthusiastic to be in her company.  They spend several hours talking while eating pie in a local diner.  At the end of the night Marty asks Clara to go to the movies the next night and they agree that he will call her next afternoon to decide on the details.  They both end the night deliriously happy to be in love.

But next morning his mother has had a change of heart and fears that if Marty gets married, she will be cast aside.  She tells Marty that she dislikes Clara even though she barely met her.  She tells Marty that Clara is old, unattractive and probably of loose morals because of her college education.  Also, Marty’s friends that saw Clara tell him that she’s a dog and not worth his time.  Now Marty allows himself to be persuaded by the people around him and fails to call Clara in the afternoon.  We see Clara at home that evening watching television with her parents and quietly crying.

But spending the night with his loser friends snaps Marty out of their spell.  He mocks their endless vacillation about what to do and their loveless lives.  He declares that he had a good time with Clara and if he has enough good nights with her, he’ll get down on his knee and beg her to marry him.  He then leaves them and heads to a phone booth to call Clara and change his life.

Marty is a straight forward story of two lonely people and the marvelous accident that brings them together and changes their lives for the better.  The movie has heart and even with the changes in social behavior between 1955 and today the humanity of the two main characters shines through and provides a timeless message, that there is beauty within.  Highly recommended as a date movie for couples.

The Westerner (1940) – An OCF Classic Movie Review

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In this western story Gary Cooper is Cole Harden a drifter passing through Vinegarroon, Texas on his way to California.  But Vinegarroon is the home of “Judge” Roy Bean, the only law west of the Pecos River.  Bean (played by Walter Brennan) is a hanging judge who hands out rough justice based on being an advocate for the cattlemen.  If the cattlemen stampede a herd of cattle through a corn field and the farmer shoots one of the steers he’ll be hanged by Bean for the offense.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

When Harden appears in the movie, he’s being led to Bean’s court house (saloon) because one of the locals recognized Harden’s horse as one that was stolen from a local.  Naturally the jury will declare him guilty but Harden manages to convince Bean that he is a friend of the famous actress Lily Langtry whom Bean greatly admires.  Claiming that he has a lock of her hair Harden gets Bean to “suspend” his sentence while evidence of his innocence can be found.  While Harden and Bean cement their friendship over bogus tales of Langtry and Bean’s rotgut whiskey the real horse thief walks into the saloon and Harden punches him out and retrieves the purchase price of the horse from his pockets.  When the thief attempts to shoot Harden, Bean beats him to the draw and thus reinforces the bond between the drifter and the hangin’ judge.

After this the movie drifts off into other directions.  Harden leaves town and while travelling through the area ends up working as a field hand for the Mathew family on their farm.  A romance blossoms between and Harden and the daughter Jane.  But we find out that Judge Bean has been persecuting the farmers and intends to drive them off their land through harassment and judicial malfeasance.  The farmers organize and decide to go en masse and shoot Bean to end their problem.  When Harden hears this, he gallops to Bean’s saloon and warns Bean.  Harden and Bean stop the plot and send the farmers away.  But Harden convinces Bean to remove all the cattle from the valley where the farmers live in exchange for Lily Langtry’s lock of hair that Harden claims to have.  Harden manages to get a lock of Jane Mathew’s hair for the purpose and when Bean fulfills his promise to move the cattle, he ceremoniously hands over the hair.

Now the farmers are triumphant and have a celebratory feast.  But while it is going on the cattlemen set fire to the fields and homesteads of the farmers and destroy the whole valley.  Jane’s father is murdered by the cattlemen and she blames Harden for the deeds she attributes to his friend Bean.

Harden forces Bean to admit that he was responsible for the fire and Harden leaves town to get a warrant for the arrest of Bean for murder and arson.  Coincidentally Lily Langtry is in the area for a concert and Judge Bean buys up all the tickets so that he can enjoy a private audience with Miss Langtry.  And the performance becomes the site of a shootout between Harden and Bean.  Eventually Harden fatally wounds Bean but before Bean dies Harden carries him backstage so Bean can see Langtry before he dies.

In the final scene Harden and Jane are a married couple on a rebuilt farm celebrating the return of the other settlers that had been driven out by Bean.

By the description, you can tell this is a very strange western.  The way I can describe it is a comedy for the first half of the movie that switches over into a more conventional melodrama.  From my point of view the comedic portions of the movie are the better parts.  Cooper and Brennan have a weird funny chemistry that makes the movie interesting and enjoyable.  The later romance and drama are okay but clash with the comedic elements.  I’ll recommend the movie based on the scenes with Cooper and Brennan even though as whole the movie is sort of a mess.

Galaxy’s Edge – Legacies – A Science Fiction Book Review

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Before I proceed to the review a quick note.  It’s been over a year since the last review in this series.  The explanation is a puzzling fact.  I buy the paperback version of books and for some reason Legacies never came out in paperback.  I’ve checked and the subsequent books in the series are now available in paperback but Legacies never was.  So recently I gave up and bought the hardcover version.  What can I say, I’m a creature of habit.  Anyway, welcome back.

Legacies rejoins the story with Aeson Ford, aka Aeson Keel, aka Wraith and now aka Tyrus Rechs in search of Prisma, the young woman who has found herself embedded in the conflict between a confusing array of sides.  From the previous volumes in the series, she has seen Goth Sullus destroy her family in his quest to convert the Galactic Republic into a personal weapon against lurking threats and she has been swept along by Tyrus Rechs and Aeson Keel and discovered that she has mysterious powers that somehow make her important in the conflicts still to come.

In this book we will follow separate stories involving Prisma and Keel as they struggle to survive in a galaxy filled with confusing threats.  Prisma is aboard a war machine left over from the Savage Wars, a device that replays historic battles to evaluate alternate strategies to some mysterious end.  Keel goes under cover as Tyrus Rechs to find out who has put a price on his head and why.  And these two seemingly unrelated threads are slowly woven into one fabric.  Truths are revealed about Aeson Ford’s father and Tyrus Rechs and Goth Sullus that go back to the beginning of the Savage Wars and maybe beyond.

The book shifts back and forth between the two main narratives and then adds another plot line from the past.  This leads to some whiplash for the reader from time to time but the writing is quite well done and it kept my interest throughout.  Anspach and Cole have a very complex world-building project going on in this series.  In this volume, they provide origin information on the Cybar, Aeson Ford and links with the Savage Wars plot lines that expand a great deal on what I knew about the story previously.  And any hope of finishing this series in less than a million volumes has flown out the window.  But I’m happily resigned to my fate.

Highly recommended for all fans of the series.  Year two of the series is barreling along on hyperdrive.

Battle of the Bulge (1965) – A Movie Review

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This movie purports to be a dramatic portrayal of the pivotal WW II battle of the same name.  But the liberties that have been taken with respect to plot and characters make it almost unrecognizable when compared with the historical event.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

The beginning of the movie interweaves scenes from the American perspective and the German view.  We start out meeting Lt. Col. Daniel Kiley, played by Henry Fonda.  He is an American Army intelligence officer stationed on the supposedly quiet section of the front line near the Ardennes Forest.  But he suspects that the Germans are planning an offensive in the area.  He makes a surveillance flight in a small aircraft over the forest and manages to get photos of hidden German tanks and also a high-ranking German officer arriving at the German headquarters in the area.  He passes this intelligence to his superiors, Gen. Grey, played by Robert Ryan and Col. Pritchard, played by Dana Andrews at their headquarters in the town of Ambleve.  Pritchard rejects Kiley’s suspicions about a German offensive while General Grey demands more proof.

Next, we meet the German officer that Kiley photographed.  It is Col. Martin Hessler, played by Robert Shaw with an outrageously over the top German accent, who is being given command of a large force of Tiger II tanks with the goal of breaking through the American lines and capturing Antwerp thus crippling the Allied offensive in Europe.  The Germans are sending out a party of their soldiers who have lived in the United States dressed as American GI’s. They will sabotage communication lines and road signs and try to hold the bridge over the Our river to allow the Tiger Tanks to advance.

Kiley manages to get some intelligence on the tank attack back to HQ just as the attack begins.  We see the Tiger tanks destroy the American tanks while sustaining almost no damage from direct hits.  And we are shown the Germans machine gunning large numbers of American prisoners.  But one other thing that Kiley learns during his surveillance of the German advance is that they are gravely short of fuel for their tanks.  They have only enough fuel to reach a large American fuel depot that is along the route to Antwerp.  Even taking a few extra hours to destroy the town of Ambleve where the American HQ is located is sorely argued against by Hessler’s commanding officer General Kohler.

When General Grey receives this intelligence about the fuel, he decides on a plan to attack the tank force with his tanks before the Germans can reach the fuel depot.  He wants to use the attack to delay the tanks long enough for them to run out of fuel.  When Hessler realizes the delay tactic he heads for the depot with a force of his tanks to obtain the fuel.  But the Americans at the depot spill thousands of gallons of fuel and set fire to it just as Hessler’s tanks arrive.  Hessler’s tanks are engulfed in flames and he dies when his tank explodes.  Without fuel the rest of Hessler’s force have to abandon their tanks and the last scene shows a long line of men walking back to Germany.

I’ve left out a lot of details.  This movie is three hours long!  Charles Bronson plays an American major who fights a rearguard action against the Germans until he is captured at Ambleve.  Telly Savalas is an American sergeant tank crewman who also runs a black-market store in booze, stockings and chicken eggs out of his girl friend’s apartment.  Savalas ends up finally saving the day when he machine-guns the disguised Germans who have taken control of the fuel depot at the end of the movie.

My thoughts on this movie are mixed.  Some of the action is interesting to watch.  Shaw as Hessler gives a compelling performance.  I enjoy his style.  Other than Shaw a lot of the acting is competent but not memorable.  The tank footage looks pretty good.  But the thing that I hold against this movie is that it misrepresents the events of a very important battle for which the details are very well known.  There was no race to get to a fuel depot in the actual battle.  The movie doesn’t show the fact that the battle took place during an horrendous frigid snow storm where the weather was as awful as the fighting.  The real battle was fought hand to hand in towns, forests and trenches.  If you are interested in what it really was like watch the episodes in “Band of Brothers” that chronicles the Battle of Bastogne.  So, my recommendation is unless you really like war movies and don’t care about accuracy don’t watch this movie.

Midway (2019) – A Movie Review

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This 2019 film attempts to provide an accurate modern version of the story of the pivotal WW II naval battle at Midway.   The only actors whose names I recognized were Woody Harrelson as Admiral Nimitz, Dennis Quaid as Admiral Halsey and Mandy Moore as Ann Best, the wife of the hero of the movie Dick Best. Since this is an historical drama, I won’t add a spoiler warning but if you actually don’t know what happened at Midway then go to the last paragraph for my recommendation.

The movie begins with a scene in pre-war Japan where Edwin Layton is an American naval attaché and intelligence officer.  His Japanese counterpart Isoroku Yamamoto warns him that Japan will eventually attack America as part of its plan to dominate East Asia.

In December 1941 we meet Lieutenant Dick Best a naval aviator on the aircraft carrier, USS Enterprise.  He is a hotshot dive bomber and he is being sent on leave to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.  But when his plane nears Pearl Harbor, he comes under attack from the Japanese aircraft that have just destroyed the US naval fleet.  Best’s plane is shot down but he escapes alive.

This devastating attack leaves Japan with an enormous advantage over the American fleet.  Specifically, the Japanese have six aircraft carriers to America’s two.  The War Department assigns Admiral Nimitz to do whatever is necessary to prosecute the war against the Japanese until replacement aircraft carriers can be built.  The plan they fix on is to surprise the Japanese at Midway and destroy as many of their aircraft carriers as possible.

Layton is put in charge of the effort to decode Japanese messages and use them to locate the Japanese fleet and lay the trap.  On the day of the battle the Enterprise sends out its planes along with bombers from Midway but they have trouble locating the fleet.  And they lose a number of planes to the Japanese aircraft.  But eventually they find the fleet and attack.  Most of the American flyers are shot down but the Japanese fleet is only damaged but not destroyed.  Best and his squadron return to the Enterprise and head out again for a last desperate attempt to finish off the carriers.  And they succeed.  Best sinks two of the carriers himself.  By the end of the day all four of the Japanese carriers have been sunk and Admiral Yamamoto orders the rest of his fleet to retreat.  The defeat gives the Americans the time they need to rebuild their fleet.

The makers of this movie made an effort to make it historically accurate.  The names of the protagonists are real.  Obviously, some license was taken for dramatic purposes but the story has not been made politically correct or overly propagandistic.  I enjoyed watching it.  The acting was decent, the special effects are very good and it maintains a pro-American viewpoint throughout.  One touch I especially liked was the quote by Admiral Yamamoto after hearing Roosevelt’s speech after Pearl Harbor, “”I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”  I recommend this movie to patriotic Americans.  Everybody else can fend for himself.

Bullitt (1968) – A Movie Review

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Bullitt is a 1968 crime drama starring Steve McQueen as San Francisco Police Lt. Frank Bullitt.  He is assigned to a case where he will be responsible for keeping a Chicago mobster, Johnny Ross, safe while he awaits testimony in front of a US Senate panel on organized crime.   The politician who has set up Ross’s testimony is Walter Chalmers, played by Robert Vaughn.  He is an unpleasant manipulative political operative who rubs Bullitt the wrong way.  When Ross is critically wounded during a late-night mob hit, Chalmers blames Bullitt even though the attack occurs while Bullitt is off-duty.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

The remainder of the movie is the aftermath of this attack.  Ross dies shortly after the hit and Bullitt keeps his death a secret in order to lure the killers back in order to catch them.  The two hit men escape Bullitt at the hospital but he finally finds them while they are staking him out.  What follows is one of the most famous and still one of the best car chase scenes in American film history.  Bullitt chases the killers through the streets of San Francisco and onto an expressway.  The finale is a fiery crash and explosion when the gangsters plow into a gas station.  The fire burns both of their bodies beyond recognition.

When Ross’s girl friend is found strangled Chalmers demands that Bullitt be held responsible for the ongoing disaster and be punished by his superiors.  But Bullitt has found very strange evidence in Ross’s girlfriend’s luggage that proves that the man they thought was Ross was a plant named Albert Renick who was working for Ross but whose death was the work of Ross to fake his own death to escape from mob retribution.  And now it is believed that Ross will be leaving San Francisco by jet to Europe using Renick’s name.  Eventually Ross is found to be on a plane taxiing down the runway.  The airliner is recalled and Bullitt and his partner are waiting as the passengers disembark.  But Ross forces his way out of the rear door of the plane and jumps to the tarmac and runs off into the night with Bullitt in hot pursuit.  Ross takes several shots at Bullitt with a pistol but eventually after a long chase Bullitt corners Ross as he attempts to escape the airport by shooting an airport security guard.  Bullitt finishes off Ross with a couple of bullets to the chest and Ross crashes through a glass door and dies.  Chalmers sees his plans in ruins and departs in disappointment.  Bullitt returns home to find his girlfriend Cathy, played by Jacqueline Bisset, sleeping in his bed, apparently having forgiven him for the sin of being a policeman.  The final image is Bullitt staring in a mirror at his own reflection as if to say, “What kind of life is this?”

I left some stuff out of the summary because it wasn’t that important.  Bullitt’s girlfriend Cathy is upset with him because she barges into a crime scene and sees a woman who has been brutally murdered.  She feels that if Bullitt can deal with this type of violence, he can’t be the cool laid-back character who listens to jazz music with her that she thinks he is.  This seems moronic to me so I always ignore it when I watch this movie.  I hope you will too.

I recommend this movie on the strength of the car chase scene.  Sure, the police drama is pretty good and the conflict with Chalmers is okay, I guess, but the car chase is worth the cost of watching the rest of the movie and then some.  It’s two late sixties American muscle cars running amok on crowded roads at high speed.  If you’re an American male you’ll enjoy it.

 

12 Angry Men (1957) – A Movie Review

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12 Angry Men is a courtroom drama, or more accurately a jury room drama.  It almost entirely takes place in the jury deliberation room in a downtown Manhattan court building.  The star of the movie is Henry Fonda as Juror 8.  The setup (and it is a setup) has Fonda as the only juror unwilling to vote not guilty in a murder trial.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last two paragraphs to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

The eleven other jurors to a greater or lesser extent are convinced that the trial has proven the guilt of the young man accused of stabbing his father to death with a switch blade knife.  There was an eye witness to the killing and another witness heard the defendant threaten to kill his father and saw him running away from the murder scene just after the killing.  Another witness saw the defendant in possession of a switch blade knife the day of the murder.  The defendant’s alibi was that he was at a movie theater at the time of the killing but no one remembers him there and he could not remember the name of the movies playing or even the actors in the movie.  When questioned about the whereabouts of the switch blade he had been seen with, he claimed it had fallen out of his pocket without his knowing it and wasn’t the one found plunged into his father’s chest.

When the deliberations begin the foreman (played by Martin Balsam) asks them to start with a preliminary vote to see how many want to vote not guilty.  Fonda says he has doubts.  He is verbally challenged by Juror 3 (Lee J. Cobb) who is portrayed as a belligerent, irascible man who is determined that the verdict be guilty.  His behavior is so extreme that you can see he is being set up as the bad guy.  And what we are shown is that the other jurors are so annoyed by Juror 3’s behavior that regardless of the logic of the case they find themselves more sympathetic to Juror 8’s arguments.

Step by step Juror 8 attacks the details of the case against the defendant.  With regard to the witness who heard the fight and saw the defendant running from the building, Juror 8 uses the fact that a nearby elevated train was passing at the time of the murder to cast doubt on what the witness could have heard.  And then based on the disabled status of this old man he contradicts the idea that he could have reached the staircase in time to see the defendant running out of the building.  Next he shows that the switchblade knife that killed the defendant’s father was of a common design easily available by producing one he bought the day before in the neighborhood where the murder took place.  With the help of Juror 9 he makes a plausible case that the eye witness to the murder might have been unable to see the murder clearly due to poor vision.  To the question of the defendant not remembering the movies he’d seen that night Juror 9 questions Juror 4 about his memory of two movies he had gone to a week before.  And although he remembered the movies’ titles, he was incorrect on one of the actresses in the second feature.

As each of these questions was raised by Juror 8 one by one the other jurors changed their votes until finally it’s only Juror 3 who claims to have no reasonable doubts and still wants to declare the defendant guilty.  At this point we witness Juror 3 rant about the character of the young defendant and we realize from his speech that he has a grudge against his own son who has turned against his father because of his brutal strictness.  And finally relenting Juror 3 declares not guilty and the jury leaves the room to announce their decision, not guilty, in the court room.

This film is a leftist propaganda film.  The intent is to try and prove that no matter how much evidence there is against a defendant in a case there can always be enough doubt generated by clever obfuscation to justify a not guilty verdict.  The characters are defined so that the audience will obviously admire Juror 8 and despise Juror 3.  The first is presented as an educated, white collar, intelligent, polished speaker and the latter is a working class, obnoxious bully who can’t help but alienate all around him.  The defendant is portrayed as non-white, poor and coming from a criminal family background.  All these things are used as points against him by Juror 3 and by others of the jury.  This ethnic and class bias is highlighted as another factor in the unfairness of the opinions of the jurors.

Obviously I’m not a fan of the message that the film is meant to make.  However, I think the film is well made.  The cast is for the most part, very good.  I’ll list the below for your perusal but I’ll say that they are all pretty with Martin Balsam and E.G. Marshall providing particularly strong supporting roles.  Fonda and Cobb have the lion’s share of the camera and even though Cobb provides the strawman for Fonda’s attack I thought they both were pretty good.

As I’ve said this is propaganda and propaganda for the Left.  But the topic of the importance of the jury in our society is something that should be thought about and dramatized.  I served on a jury that tried to ignore its duty and decide against a defendant without any actual evidence.  I was forced to hang the jury.  Seeing how Americans were willing to abandon their duty and instead declare a verdict based on personal animus was shocking and enraging for me at the time.  I think a movie about the jury process is a worthy thing to make.  I would prefer a better one but I will admit I think watching this movie is worthwhile.  Intelligent people will know they’re being patronized and judge accordingly.  But it will still be an interesting experience.  I guardedly recommend this movie on those terms.

Martin Balsam                                 …            Juror 1

John Fiedler                                        …            Juror 2

Lee J. Cobb                                         …            Juror 3

E.G. Marshall                                      …            Juror 4

Jack Klugman                                     …            Juror 5

Edward Binns                                     …            Juror 6

Jack Warden                                      …            Juror 7

Henry Fonda                                      …            Juror 8

Joseph Sweeney                              …            Juror 9

Ed Begley                                            …            Juror 10

George Voskovec                             …            Juror 11

Robert Webber                                 …            Juror 12