The Price of Power

Like every other art form, Spaghetti Westerns became swept up in the late '60s political ferment. This took most obvious form in the Zapata Westerns, flicks like A Bullet for the General (1967) analogizing the 1910 Mexican Revolution with Che Guevara and the Vietcong. Others took more subtle tracts: Sergio Sollima's The Big Gundown (1966) began as a contemporary story about a crooked strikebreaker, then was retooled for a "safer" genre. Who searches Westerns for political messages?

The Price of Power (1969) stands out, even among such distinguished company. Four years before Executive Action, Tonino Valerii fictionalizes John F. Kennedy's assassination - in the Old West. The result is frustratingly uneven. Valerii mashes a political thriller with familiar Western tropes, resulting in an awkward experience.

Dallas, 1881 seethes with racial bigotry and resentment over the Civil War. President James Garfield (Van Johnson) visits Dallas hoping to heal old wounds, but a cabal of politicians, businessmen and bandits plots his death. Bill Willer (Giuliano Gemma), his father (Antonio Casas) murdered by the same conspirators, foils one assassination attempt and becomes a hero. When Garfield is killed, the local Sheriff (Benito Stefanelli) pins the crime on Jack Donovan (Ray Saunders), an innocent black man. Bill joins the President's assistant McDonald (Warren Vanders) and a newspaper man (Manuel Zarzo) to unravel the conspiracy.

Let's address the obvious first: The Price of Power portrays history as accurately as The Flintstones recalls Neanderthal man. Garfield was shot in a DC railroad station by Charles Guiteau, a lunatic who thought Garfield owed him a diplomatic post. Garfield died after a long, debilitating illness caused by unsanitary medical care. This, along with the backstage rivalry of Garfield's liberal Republicans and Roscoe Conkling's crooked Stalwarts, deserves a film in its own right. But Valerii's interested in evoking a more recent assassination.

The allegory isn't subtle. Garfield's wife (Maria Caudra) wears a pink dress when arriving in Dallas. Roughnecks post "wanted for treason" posters with Garfield's visage throughout the city. The President quotes Kennedy directly, saying "I look at things as they could be and ask, ‘Why not?’” The Texan Vice President (Jose Suarez) meets with the conspirators the night before the assassination. There's a Warren Commission-style judicial panel covering up the murder. Valerii even stages the shooting Zapruder-style, with concealed killers firing from an overpass. Price is surprisingly thorough in its compilation of conspiracy lore.

But Price is more interesting in theory than execution. Valerii and writer Massimo Patrizi show Garfield done in by a cabal of unreconstructed Confederates, angry at his policies of racial reform. Here's where Price breaks down. If evoking Kennedy, the comparison doesn't wash: Lyndon Johnson almost immediately passed the Civil Rights Act, legally abolishing segregation. By contrast, in 1881 Reconstruction was essentially finished; Garfield's liberalism extended more to civil service reform than racial equality. The film doesn't work either as analogy or history.

Price isn't entirely satisfying as a Western either. Valerii's direction mixes expected Almerian vistas with Stelvio Massi's expressive deep focus photography. He stages some good action scenes, as when Bill foils an ambush of the President's train, or how the crippled journalist outwits the Sheriff. Valerii's best trick has Bill duel with the Sheriff in the dark, using a lighted cigar to mark their targets. Spaghetti fans will immediately note the Sweetwater and Flagstone sets from Once Upon a Time in the West. Luis Bacalov also contributes a moody score.

But the second half bogs down in excessive exposition that kills narrative momentum. The conspirators argue and negotiate interminably with the Vice President and McDonald, never putting their threats into action. For that matter, the characters don't really gel. McDonald's role is unnecessarily murky; he goes from loyal bodyguard to possible conspirator to trial prosecutor within a few scenes. The most interesting villain is Wallace (Michael Harvey), a Confederate renegade hoping to restart the Civil War. Yet he's relegated to expendable henchman status.

Giuliano Gemma is well-cast as the straight-arrow Bill, though the material stresses his limitations. When Bill finds his slain father, his reaction's like someone spotting spilled coffee on the kitchen floor. Van Johnson spouts badly dubbed platitudes but Warren Vanders handles his inscrutable character well. Fernando Rey (The French Connection) plays the chief conspirator. Benito Stefanelli, familiar from 100 Spaghetti bit parts, gets an unusually meaty role as the two-timing Sheriff. Other recognizable faces - Antonio Casas, Jose Calvo, Michael Harvey, Lorenzo Robledo, Frank Brana - also appear.

The Price of Power is an interesting failure. As a Western it's slow and pretentious; as a political expose it's minor league compared to Z or All the President's Men. Ultimately it's an awkward attempt to graft contemporary American politics onto the past, by someone evincing little grasp on either.

The Conversation

"I'm not afraid of death, but I am afraid of murder."

The unsung masterpiece of '70s cinema, Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974) is every bit as accomplished as The Godfather. Coppola seamlessly blends paranoid thriller with incisive character study, anchored by Gene Hackman's incomparable performance.

Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) heads a crack audio surveillance team. They're contracted by the director (Robert Duvall) of a major corporation to spy on a young couple (Cindy Williams and Frederic Forrest). Harry's habitual distance from his work disintegrates after listening to the tapes: it sounds like his subjects fear being murdered. Harry gets no answers from his contractor and no support from his partners; against his better judgment he starts investigating the case.

At first glance, The Conversation fits neatly alongside Nixon-era thrillers like All the President's Men. But Coppola makes few references to contemporary events: one character mentions bugging presidential candidates, while Harry watches a news report on Watergate. Coppola's concerned with paranoia of a more visceral sort: individuals using technology to pry into others' lives. Let's face it: Web cams, Facebook and data mining make privacy obsolete. Who cares about NSA info gathering when anyone with a laptop can access your personal history?

The Conversation closely resembles Blowup with shades of Rear Window: the protagonist thinks he witnesses a murder, but can never prove his suspicions. Like David Hemmings in the Antonioni film, Harry's limited by both the technology employed and his own perception. He plays the tapes endlessly until he deciphers a cryptic message. The suspicious actions of the Director's assistant (Harrison Ford) fuel rather than dissuade his interest. Yet is he really hearing what he thinks? Harry only places himself in danger by prying.

Coppola delivers a film comfortably experimental in a way modern Hollywood scarcely tolerates. The opening long shot of San Francisco's Union Square accompanied by electronic buzzing sets the tone; when we first see Harry's crew they're arranged like snipers. Coppola films mostly in long and medium shot, allowing the viewer to share Harry's uncertainty. And how about that ghoulish shot of blood gushing from a toilet? Walter Murch's sound design plays an integral role, whether Harry's rewinding tapes and focused noise or letting his nightmares bleed into reality. It's hauntingly accompanied by David Shire's minimalist piano score.

But The Conversation also shows a palpable portrait of loneliness. Unattractive, poorly dressed and introverted, Harry lives in a tiny apartment, finding solace only in jazz and Catholicism. His unwillingness to connect with people drives away his partner Stan (John Cazale). There's no Grace Kelly to spur his quest, only a sad girlfriend (Teri Garr) who doesn't know his birthday. He's thoroughly uncomfortable at a buggers' convention and its pathetic after-party. Nor does he enjoy his work: he's hounded by competitors like Bernie (Allen Garfield) and guilt-ridden over a job resulting in murder. He's not content to remain a voyeur, but his imperfect understanding seems to make things worse.

Gene Hackman never had the attractive charisma of contemporaries like Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino, yet his gruff, low-key style landed him diverse roles: Bonnie & Clyde, The French Connection, even Young Frankenstein. He portrays Harry Caul masterfully, hiding the character's isolation and self-loathing beneath an impassive exterior, revealing his backstory only in a dream sequence. Anyone who habitually spends their Saturday nights alone (raises hand) can empathize with Harry's plight, even in its extreme incarnations. This isn't only Hackman's best work, but among the finest performances in screen history.

John Cazale adds another pitiable sad sack to his resume. Stan worships Harry, endlessly talking him up to strangers, yet even he grows tired of his partner's coldness. Young Harrison Ford makes a strong impression as a shifty villain. Allen Garfield (The Stunt Man) steals his scenes as Harry's snotty competitor; Teri Garr and Elizabeth McRae provide a sympathetic female presence. Frederic Forrest's small but pivotal role presages appearances in Coppola's Apocalypse Now and One from the Heart. Robert Duvall appears unbilled.

If The Conversation lacks the commercial hook of The Godfather or the wild surrealism of Apocalypse Now, it's still one of Francis Ford Coppola's greatest achievements. It culminates in Harry destroying his apartment looking for a bug, then collapsing, exhausted, playing his sax amidst the wreckage. Never has isolation felt so poignant, paranoia so frightfully raw.

Salvatore Giuliano

Salvatore Giuliano (1962) stands between Italian neo-realism and the gritty political dramas of the late '60s/early '70s (The Battle of Algiers, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion). Francesco Rosi's remarkable film treats the sordid demise of a Sicilian bandit as a touchstone of postwar Italian politics, revealing corruption and deceit at the highest levels.

In 1950, authorities find partisan Salvatore Giuliano dead at his compound in Castelventrano, Sicily. Giuliano (only seen as a corpse) was a notorious bandit who joined the Sicilian separatist movement after World War II, launching guerrilla attacks on Italian police and carabinieri. After Sicily gains autonomy in 1947, Giuliano continues his activities, culminating in the May Day massacre of Communists at Portella della Ginestra. After Giuliano's death his lieutenant Gaspare Pisciotta (Frank Wolff) threatens to connect Giuliano with local police, Italian officials and organized crime.

Shot on location in Sicily, Salvatore Giuliano is a riveting true-life tale. Encouraged by the Allies during WWII to undermine Fascist control (alongside the Mafia), separatist groups like MIS and EVIS wage low-level insurrection against the Italian government. This coincided with the rise of the Italian Communist Party, whose victory in 1946 elections helped trigger the Portella della Ginestra massacre. The movie suggests Italy's government uses Giuliano to suppress opposition, maintaining "plausible deniability" as they persecute the killers.

Rosi maintains impartial distance better than Gillo Pontecorvo, even with Algiers screenwriter Franco Solinas on board. Michael Cimino's wretched The Sicilian (1987) romanticizes Giuliano as a modern-day Robin Hood. Rosi instead shows him as a violent strongman, kidnapping officials and machine gunning policemen, who's nonetheless worshiped by an illiterate peasantry sick of Italian overlords. Rosi skips some of the case's more bizarre aspects: Giuliano apparently wanted Sicily to join the United States! The question isn't whether Giuliano was guilty but whether he was a pawn for conservative interests.

Salvatore Giuliano directs its anger at the officials who used and discarded Giuliano. As Giuliano's lieutenants are rounded up following his death, the conspiracy quickly unravels. Pisciotta claims he's been in touch with authorities for three years; police convince Pisciotta his boss is plotting against him, precipitating Giuliano's death. Crime bosses offer police Giuliano's lieutenants in exchange for immunity. The omerta code serves both Mafia "honor" and complicit officials well. When all else fails, witnesses are silenced. It's as incisive a cinematic portrait of official perfidy as can be found. Hollywood conspiracy thrillers like JFK are sensationalized nonsense in comparison.

Rosi uses local non-actors in approved neo-realist style. One of only two professionals is Frank Wolff, the American expatriate famous for Spaghetti Westerns like Once Upon a Time in the West and The Great Silence. Wolff gives a riveting turn as a sleazy crook who holds all the cards. The other is Salvo Randone, playing a government prosecutor. The cross section of pompous attorneys, shell-shocked soldiers and angry peasants registers strongly; many of them participated in the events depicted.

Salvatore Giuliano is another excellent '60s Italian film. When it comes to "politically aware" cinema Italy remains at the top of the heap.

Hanna

Beware genre films helmed by a prestige director. When filmmakers retool their style for the material, you get films like Tim Burton's Batman or the Coens' True Grit. More often a self-professed auteur thinks he's too good for a mere spy flick/horror film/superhero movie, injecting it instead with muddled "meaning" and irritating artistry. Witness John Frankenheimer's Prophecy passing off homicidal bear jerky as a profound ecological statement.

Joe Wright's Hanna (2011) is Exhibit B. What highfalutin nogginhead thought attaching the director of high-toned Oscar bait Pride and Prejudice and Atonement to a violent spy thriller was a good idea? The movie received modest acclaim but this blogger found it insufferable, a half-digested mixture of stomach-turning style, facile story and misused actors.

In the Finnish wilderness, teenager Hanna (Saorise Ronan) is raised by Erik Heller (Eric Bana) to be a self-reliant killing machine. Hanna's decision to see more of the outside world brings fateful consequences. CIA Agent Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett) knows Erik has damaging information on the agency and enlists freelance thug Isaacs (Tom Hollander) to kill him. But Hanna proves an even bigger threat, especially when she learns of her twisted origins.

Hanna contains all the careful, considered craftsmanship of a bad music video. Wright crams the film with circling camera angles, hard dissolves, dizzying colors, international locations (Morocco, Finland, Germany) and strange imagery (headless dinosaur statues, Isaacs' gauche nightclub) but it's all ostentatious, empty preening. Long, pointless scenes and annoying dialogue proliferate. Coupled with the Chemical Brothers' roiling techno-score, the overall effect is nausea.

The story is even worse. The "fairy tale structure" (informed I guess by Hanna reading a Brothers Grimm book) seems a convenient excuse for endless clichés, plot holes and one-note characters. Hanna's baffled by light switches and kitchen appliances yet quickly masters a laptop? Hanna skipping from continent to continent without notice or interference is equally hard to swallow. Similarly, the last-act revelations about CIA genetic experiments come out of a screenwriter's handbook.

Wright and writers David Farr and Seth Lockhead fail further handling Hanna. She's a blank slate lacking the self-awareness of Hit Girl or Katniss Everdeen's rounded characterization, all meaningful glances and fancy gun tricks without substance. Wright pointlessly adds a family of hippie tourists for cringe-worthy character non-development. Then again, even a better-realized character couldn't overcome the twee disconnect between Hanna's self-discovery and barehanded neck breaking.

Saorise Ronan struggles to wring any humanity from an ill-conceived part. Eric Bana is merely bland, but the bad guys are pathetic. Cate Blanchett mixes cartoon villainy with a laughable Texas drawl, while Tom Hollander sporting frost blond hair and a Hogan's Heroes accent is terrifying in the wrong way. And these are actors I ordinarily like.

Hanna is just a gloppy mess. Joe Wright's attempts to transcend the pulp story merely inspire incredulity. No matter how many close-ups of Cate Blanchett's bleeding gums you insert Joe, it's still a teenaged assassin flick.

The Insider

For this blog's 500th review, we'll revisit The Insider (1999). Michael Mann is best-known as an action director but this superlative thriller is his finest hour. Raising questions of corporate malfeasance and journalistic integrity, it's a gripping watch.

Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe) is fired as chief researcher for the tobacco company Brown and Williamson. 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) approaches Wigand, who's reluctant to violate his confidentiality agreements. But the cajoling of his boss (Michael Gambon) and a series of anonymous threats convince Wigand to turn whistleblower over the company's use of nicotine additives, only to find Brown and Williamson checkmating his every move. They institute a gag order to interdict his deposition by Mississippi prosecutors and threaten to sue CBS for interviewing him. As Wigand's life falls apart, Bergman stands up to his bosses Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer) and Don Hewitt (Philip Baker Hall) for selling out their source.

The Insider paints a chilling picture of corporate power. Brown and Williamson's denial of nicotine addiction and chemical tampering shows naked contempt for their customers, putting profit ahead of smokers' lives. Yet the company is so big that it's virtually untouchable, with armies of lawyers, private investigators and a multibillion-dollar war chest. An individual like Wigand scarcely has a chance, when he has so many vulnerabilities (a family, his reputation). Even whistleblowing only achieves so much against a resourceful corporation.

More interesting still is the portrayal of CBS, a far cry from All the President's Men's reporter-worship. Reporters see themselves as public watchdogs, and certainly 60 Minutes can claim that title. But journalism is also a business, and CBS News proves no less susceptible to corporate pressure and litigation. The network attorney (Gina Gershon) points out that once Brown and Williamson finish suing them, they'll be well-placed to buy CBS out. Mike Wallace and Don Hewitt objected to their portrayal but it's hard to think the compromise between integrity and business is far off.

Those apt to bash "the liberal media" may quibble with Mann's view of journalistic integrity. Certainly Bergman goes to extreme lengths in helping Wigand, even hiring private security and arranging for his deposition. Five years after the movie's release, CBS was rocked by the Rathergate scandal, which damaged their reputation far more than any tobacco company. On the other hand, why shouldn't journalists expose corporate corruption or protect their sources? With their media budgets and PR firms tobacco companies don't need mollycoddling.

Mann provides suitably tense direction. He goes for some showy montage work and a brief fantasy sequence which doesn't break the oppressive atmosphere. Elements of the story feel familiar (no points for guessing how Wigand's wife [Diane Venora] reacts to the pressure) but Eric Roth's screenplay is slickly packaged and never less than compelling. There's also a wonderfully moody soundtrack, with standout tracks by Lisa Gerrard and Massive Attack.

Al Pacino gives a fine performance but Russell Crowe steals the show. Besides radically changing his appearance, Crowe gives a subdued turn as a man nearly broken by guilt, uncertainty and paranoia. Somehow he won an Oscar for his far less demanding work in Gladiator instead. Christopher Plummer makes a joyfully catty Mike Wallace, a prima donna with a heart. Mann assembles a dynamite supporting cast: Diane Venora, Colm Feore, Michael Gambon, Philip Baker Hall and Debi Mazar. Bruce McGill (W.) has a standout bit as a fiery prosecutor.

The Insider makes an excellent thriller with some disquieting food for thought.

Anonymous

Anonymous (2011) is a truly wretched film. It's bad history, which might be forgivable if it weren't a really, really bad movie as well. Thar be spoilers in this review, but I feel ruining certain twists something akin to a public service.

Turn-of-the-17th Century Tudor England is a hotbed of intrigue. Elizabeth I (Vanessa Redgrave) nears her deathbed, and her minister Robert Cecil (Edward Hogg) schemes to put Scotland's James VI on the English throne. Unfortunately for Cecil, Elizabeth has several bastards, including Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex (Sebastian Reid), with a more direct claim. Through this we're introduced to Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford (Rhys Ifans), who as a young man (Jamie Campbell Bower) romanced Elizabeth (Joely Richardson) and impregnated her. De Vere is also a brilliant playwright, but afraid to publish his own work, he delegates credit to actor Will Shakespeare (Rafe Spall). The two strands intersect when De Vere pens a subversive play (Richard III) that helps inspire the Essex Rebellion, where Essex and his followers attempt to assert their "rightful" claim on the throne.

I don't give the Oxford theory of Shakespeare authorship any credence, since it's based on snobbery (no way a country boy like Shakespeare wrote such great plays) and dot-connecting (hey, Oxford spent time in Italy, ergo he's Shakespeare!) of a JFK conspiracy/9/11 Truther sort rather than actual evidence. That certainly doesn't mean the topic lacks dramatic potential, but it deserves a better shake than Anonymous. I wouldn't worry about the film's possible impact, because it's so outlandish that it discredits itself.

Anonymous is utterly laughable. John Orloff's terrible script juggles lurid melodrama with obtuse characterization, adding a pointless flashback structure on top. The movie strains credulity in too many ways to count; a hilarious scene shows Oxford with Shakespeare's complete works lying around in his office! Characters come and go without explanation: Christopher Marlowe (Trystan Gravelle) only gets a post-mortem identification, and Oxford's mistress isn't even afforded that. Emmerich drags in the Essex Rebellion to muddle things further, but bafflingly makes the Earl a bit player in his own plot. This is Bad Screenwriting 101, folks.

Anonymous will surely drive history buffs into an apopleptic rage. It dredges up the hoary Prince Tudor theory, that Elizabeth pupped out numerous bastards and somehow kept this a secret. But that's mere sensationalism worthy of The Tudors. Emmerich also (major spoiler) posits that Elizabeth slept with her own son and had a child by him. This grotesque distortion requires so much suspension of disbelief that one might as well argue Shakespeare was a Reptilian space alien.

Unfortunately, Anonymous isn't content with being speculative fiction but purports to be a shocking secret history. Emmerich has given several interviews defending the film's premise and amusingly called out historians for criticising him. Unlike Shakespeare in Love, which puts dramatic license at the service of a comedy, Anonymous is in deadly earnest with its nonsense. Fortunately, the movie's disastrous box office take deflated Emmerich's Oliver Stone pretensions.

Emmerich helms a handsome production. The movie certainly looks good in spots, with a mixture of impeccable sets, costumes and well-incorporated CGI. A few set pieces, including several spirited stagings of Shakespeare and Essex's abortive uprising, are competently handled. Then again, a corpse still decomposes no matter how many flowers you place on it.

Surprisingly, Rafe Spall's goofball Shakespeare is the least offensive performance. Rhys Ifans is a boring brooder without a flicker of emotion. Vanessa Redgrave (previously Anne Boleyn and Mary Stuart in other Tudor flicks) seems an ideal Elizabeth but has nothing to work with. Joely Richardson's (The Patriot) awful performance is nothing so much as a bad Cate Blanchett impersonation. David Thewlis and Edward Hogg play the Cecils as one-note turds. Derek Jacobi (Day of the Jackal) disgraces himself with a brief cameo.

Anonymous is a tragic waste of time. Even disregarding its myriad inaccuracies and promotion of specious nonsense, it's just plain trash - a bad film on any level, literary, cinematic or historical.

P.S.: On the off-chance you're inclined to take the film seriously, this site provides a comprehensive debunking of the "controversy." Ron Rosenbaum's Slate piece addresses it more succinctly.

Three Days of the Condor

I first saw Three Days of the Condor (1975) freshman year of college on a Friday night TCM triple-bill with The Day of the Jackal and Marathon Man. Watching so many thrillers so late probably turned my brain to mush, as I found Condor murky and hard to follow.

On a second go-around, I enjoyed Condor a lot more. Sydney Pollack's spy extravaganza is one of the smarter '70s thrillers, mixing its anti-government paranoia with a coherent plot, great cast and ace direction.

CIA analyst John Turner (Robert Redford) takes an early lunch break and returns to find his co-workers murdered. After getting ambushed during an agency "pick-up," Turner goes on the lam, enlisting the reluctant help of Kathy (Faye Dunaway) to evade his superiors. Spymaster Higgins (Cliff Robertson) initially thinks Turner killed his colleagues, but discovers the hit team came from inside the Company. The key to the mystery is Joubert (Max Von Sydow), a French contract killer with inscrutable allegiances.

Three Days of the Condor shrewdly tapped into then-contemporary angst. In 1975 Congress convened the Church Committee, which showed that CIA skullduggery extended far beyond Watergate. Testimony confirmed long-standing rumors about agency involvement in overseas coups and assassinations, domestic surveillance and infiltration of media and student groups. Suddenly no government conspiracy seemed too outlandish or paranoid. Condor's depiction of an Everyman taking on the CIA served as powerful wish fulfillment for disillusioned Americans.

Condor is certainly a fantasy. Pollack takes the Oliver Stone view that the CIA generates its own policy, an awkward dodge that shields policymakers from criticism or responsibility. I'd also think it easier (and less risky) to quietly destroy an intelligence memo than to kill everyone who might have seen it. But the portrayal of a CIA whose leaders lie to and deceive each other is more interesting and believable than the monolithic fever dreams of The Parallax View. Nor has the film especially dated: the covert cornering of natural resources, even at the risk of war, certainly tacks with post-9/11 concerns.

Pollack and writers Lorenzo Semple Jr. and David Rayfield craft a thriller that flows smoothly, even if its plot threads get a bit tangled. Pollack makes great use of silence and ambient noise in his set pieces: the opening hit, Turner's slugfest with a Company goon and a tense elevator ride with Joubert. The biggest detriment is Kathy, a useless character clearly shoehorned in as a token love interest. On the other hand, Pollack and Co. can't be blamed for covering all their bases.

Robert Redford is perfect: handsome, a brainy whiz kid and a scrappy fighter, he's more than a match for his perfidious bosses. Faye Dunaway gets a lousy character, developing an acute case of Stockholm Syndrome that makes her jump into bed with Turner within hours of her kidnapping! Cliff Robertson (The Best Man) gets one of his best roles as the reptilian spymaster, and Max Von Sydow's (Shutter Island) amusingly detached hit man makes a delicious villain. John Houseman (Seven Days in May) turns up briefly as a CIA bigwig.

Three Days of the Condor is among the best of the '70s spy thrillers. It maintains the government skepticism of its peers while remaining at least internally plausible, and is plenty entertaining to boot.

Stay tuned for a special Valentine's Day post!

Big Jim McLain

One of John Wayne's most egregious vehicles, Big Jim McLain (1952) is hard to take seriously. A mediocre police procedural with a right-wing edge, it rivals Red Nightmare as one of Hollywood's most overwrought Red-baiting efforts.

The House Un-American Activities Committee dispatches Agents Jim McLain (John Wayne) and Mal Baxter (James Arness) to unravel a ring of Communist spies operating out of Hawaii. McLain discovers that psychiatrist Dr. Gelster (Gayne Whitman) heads the group, who have infiltrated labor unions, Navy bases and medical institutions, hoping to sabotage Hawaii in the event of war. When Gelster's thugs kill Mal, McLain makes things personal.

Made at the height of McCarthyism and the Korean War, Big Jim McLain bluntly embraces right-wing paranoia. The movie is racially tolerant, with respectful portrayals of Hawaiians good and bad, but finds other ways to promote bellicose conservatism. Many of the loathsome Commies are simpering eggheads, but the worst is a self-proclaimed "country club" type, a well-heeled thug who gets Wayne's goat by comparing him to a nigger. These "intellectual" Bolshies are none-too-bright, discussing their nefarious plans in excrutiating detail for the benefit of the authorities. Of course, the Red weasels escape prosecution by hiding behind the Fifth Amendment. Just like those Commies to abuse our Constitution!

It's hard to ignore its ideology, but Big Jim McLain isn't much even as a straight thriller. The film garners bad laughs through McLain's pompous narration: "Frankly, I'm scared of leprosy!" he proclaims as he follows a lead to a leper colony. Director Edward Ludwig shoots some beautiful Hawaiian locations, but the plot is by-the-numbers, there's not enough action for most Wayne fans, and the Duke's romance with a pretty secretary (Nancy Olson) is underdeveloped. The film primarily exists to promote its fossilized Cold War politics, not to entertain.

John Wayne is in two-fisted hero mode, kicking Commie butt, romancing the pretty Nancy Olson (Sunset Blvd.) and upholding the American Way in inimitable fashion. Duke protege James Arness (Them!) plays his ill-fated sidekick. Veda Ann Borg's fiesty blonde informant steals her scenes, but the villains are a boring collection of stereotypes.

Big Jim McLain is a ridiculous curio, and one of John Wayne's worst pre-1970s films. Unless you still think Red-baiting is a swell idea, you're not likely to enjoy it.

Marathon Man

Marathon Man (1976) is easily the best of the '70s ex-Nazi thrillers (The Boys from Brazil, The Odessa File). Best-remembered for doing to the dentist's chair what Psycho did to the shower, John Schlesinger and William Goldman craft a stylish, exciting film, combining a gripping story with a top-notch cast.

Thomas "Babe" Levy (Dustin Hoffman) is a New York grad student who gets unwittingly mixed up in a case of international intrigue. Turns out his brother Doc (Roy Scheider) is a government agent with ties to Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier), a Nazi war criminal hiding in South America. A car accident in New York City brings Szell out of hiding, fearing his cache of diamonds is at risk. Because of Doc's unsavory associations, Babe becomes a target of Szell's scheming.

Marathon Man is a cleverly-plotted thrill ride, with Schlesinger's assured direction and Goldman's well-crafted script. The assured plotting and detailed characterizations make the requisite twists and revelations organic and clever. The film never lacks for creative set-pieces: the random car accident that sets the plot in motion, Doc's fight with a hulking assassin, Szell's paranoid walk through Manhattan's East Side ("Der Weise Engel!"). My favorite scene has Babe paying a gang of street thugs to rob his apartment (and distract his pursuers). And of course there's Szell's impromptu surgery on Babe, a scene that still inspires cringes.

A lot of recent movies try and put an "Everyman" protagonist in harm's way, leading to gaping credibility problems: is Transformers anything but a teenaged nerd's fantasy? In comparison, Babe Levy is extremely credible: he's athletic, smart and competent with a gun, but his heroics remain within the realm of plausibility. Coupled with his trouble past (his father was blacklisted by McCarthy) and a deceptively sweet romance with Ilse (Marthe Keller), he becomes a well-rounded and sympathetic hero. It helps that he's not facing impossible odds, his adversaries a grandfatherly old man and a few garden-variety thugs, and that their motive isn't world domination but simple greed.

Dustin Hoffman is in full-on Method mode, playing a particularly intense yet believable hero. Laurence Olivier gives his best late-career performance, making Szell a paragon of quiet, understated menace. Roy Scheider (Jaws) is excellent, though he exits the film way too early. William Devane's (Family Plot) duplicity is never in doubt but the lovely Marthe Keller makes an unlikely traitor. Reliable thugs Marc Lawrence (The Ox-Bow Incident) and Richard Bright (The Godfather) play Szell's henchmen, Fritz Weaver cameos as a professor and Jacques Marin (Charade) turns up as a Paris jeweler.

Marathon Man stands tall as another fine thriller from the '70s. Coupling a smart script with excellent performances and assured direction, it's a highpoint of its genre.

Executive Action

With all the mistrust, paranoia and insanity raging through our body politic, it might help to recall a simpler, more innocent time. Or we could look at the 1970s, when conspiracy theories actually had a basis in fact.

Nineteen years before Oliver Stone's JFK came Executive Action (1973). Loosely based on Mark Lane's book Rush to Judgment, this is the first Hollywood film to address the John F. Kennedy Assassination. It's far more measured and down-to-earth in its depiction of a plot to kill Kennedy, and it's easier to swallow than Stone's outlandish pronouncements. But it also lacks Stone's artistry and dramatic sense, and the movie plays more as a curio than a compelling drama.

A cabal of right-wing Americans - businessmen and intelligence agents - are disgusted with John F. Kennedy's liberal policies. After he announces a planned withdrawal from Vietnam, endorses the Civil Rights Movement and signs a Test Ban Treaty with Russia, Robert Foster (Robert Ryan) and Ferguson (Will Geer) enlist ex-CIA man James Farrington (Burt Lancaster) to orchestrate Kennedy's assassination. Enlisting a complex scheme involving multiple assassins, forged documents and a "phony" Lee Harvey Oswald (James MacColl), the plot goes off without a hitch.

Executive Action makes a ridiculous theory palatable. Dalton Trumbo's script plays on Kennedy's "liberal martyr" image to an obnoxious degree: modern viewers will snicker at Farrington's proclamation that he couldn't unearth any "dirt" on Kennedy's private life. The film never sells a skeptical viewer on the scheme's plausibility: I guess for '70s audiences it was self-evident that big businessmen wielded infinite power to hire assassins, fake evidence and cover up crimes indefinitely. On the other hand, the conspiracy remains consistent, avoiding the messy self-contradiction and incredulity of JFK's theories. Its clipped, straightforward style is pleasantly reminiscent of (if less refined than) the same year's The Day of the Jackal, and Executive Action provides acceptable fiction, if not believable speculation.

David Miller was a competent director with an interesting resume (including Flying Tigers, Lonely are the Brave), but here his direction is flat and perfunctory. Despite using real Dallas locations and a few name stars, the movie looks cheap, and long exposition scenes render the film dramatically inert. George Grenville's editing is top-notch, especially a montage intercutting a lecture on historical assassinations and snipers target-shooting. Miller's mixing real footage with recreations definitely presages Stone's frenetic tactics, but with more restraint.

The acting is functional rather than flashy. Stars Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan and Will Geer (In Cold Blood) do little more than spout exposition at the audience. John Anderson (Ride the High Country) plays a government official involved in the plot. Walter Brooke (The Graduate), Ed Lauter (The Longest Yard) and Dick Miller (The Terminator) can be spotted among the assassins.

Executive Action isn't bad, achieving respectability through restraint. But it lacks dramatic punch and finesse, and mostly serves as a crude rough drafts for one of the masterpieces of paranoid cinema.

The Parallax View

This flaky piece of paranoia is a time capsule glimpse at the uber-paranoid '70s, when no conspiracy theory seemed too outlandish. In simplest terms, The Parallax View (1974) is a well-crafted thriller that's impossible to take seriously. To think it came from the man who made the sober, fact-based All the President's Men (1977) is disheartening.

Joe Frady (Warren Beatty) is a newspaper reporter who witnesses the assassination of liberal Senator Charles Carroll (Billy Joyce). A fellow reporter, Lee Carter (Paula Prentiss), approaches Frady several years later, claiming that despite the official ruling of a lone gunman, she believes there was a conspiracy to kill Carroll - and that the conspirators are bumping off witnesses. Frady brushes Lee off, but she soon turns up dead under questionable circumstances. Soon Frady is on the trail of the assassins, a mysterious corporation called Parallax, and infiltrates the group to save another politician (Jim Davis) from termination.

Among the most traumatic aspects of the '60s was the wave of assassinations (the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X). Refusing to believe that nobodies with guns could kill great men, a great many believed that vast conspiracies involving some combination of the Government, Big Business, the CIA, the Mob, right-wing nuts and space aliens did away with Kennedy and King. This trauma proved potent enough to spawn an entire subgenre of films - the conspiracy thriller - that still crops up, albeit less frequently, to this day (The X-Files, The International).

Oddly enough, the interesting Spaghetti Western The Price of Power (1969) may be the first film to tackle the Kennedy Assassination, albeit allegorically. The year before Parallax View saw Executive Action, a cheapjack "docu-drama" that plays like a rough draft of Oliver Stone's JFK. The best of these films (Z, All the President's Men) benefit from remaining grounded in reality, however angry their message and tone. None of these films, however, has the full-bore insanity of The Parallax View, perhaps the most cartoonish example of Watergate-era paranoia.

To say The Parallax View strains credulity is like calling the sun hot. This film assumes the conspirators have an infinite capacity to cover up and "silence" witnesses, able to simulate heart attacks and sneak assassins into the most isolated hick town. That's not even the biggest problem: there's no real motive presented for these assassinations. At least JFK posited a (inaccurate and silly) reason why the Powers That Be wanted Kennedy dead. Vaguely-liberal politicians everywhere are fair game in this universe, I guess. I'm sure others can stomach this nonsense, but I find it hard to accept Parallax even on its own wacky terms.

Then there's the celebrated montage halfway through the film. It defines pretentious: mashing idyllic photographs with images of '60s violence, it exists merely to call attention to itself, doing nothing to advance the plot and bogging down an already-draggy narrative. It's easy to "shock" viewers by cutting between a portrait of George Washington and a still from Triumph of the Will ("Washington! Hitler!"), but what does it actually mean? American culture is violent and the government lies? Stop the presses.

Alan J. Pakula does a fine job directing the film. Aside from the above montage, Pakula is a solid craftsman, even if his docudrama stylings occasionally clash with the commercial need for sensational action. The movie is beautifully filmed by Gordon Willis, especially the climactic assassination, which makes fine use of wide-angle shots and Dutch angles. And the opening scene is superb, its chaotic staging closely echoing Bobby Kennedy's shooting. There's nothing much wrong Parallax aside from its story, but sadly the story matters a great deal.

Warren Beatty makes a perfect Liberal Hero, the long-haired handsome journalist who single-handedly takes on the System and (almost) brings it down. Hume Cronyn (Shadow of a Doubt) gets a thankless role as Beatty's long-suffering editor. Bill McKinney (The Shootist) is creepy as a nameless assassin and Paula Prentiss (The Stepford Wives) makes a strong impression with minimal screen time. Walter McGinn (Three Days of the Condor), Kenneth Mars (Young Frankenstein), Jim Davis (El Dorado) and William Daniels (The Graduate) are fine in supporting roles.

The Parallax View is laughable, badly dated junk. It may well have been "provocative" at the time, and certainly has technical merits, but it comes off as juvenile today, a scary bedtime story for '70s liberals.

The Truth is Out There

Back in high school, I was an obsessive fan of The X-Files. Though too young to catch the series on its initial run, I watched re-runs on Sci-Fi, TNT and FX religiously, and for a time it was an all-consuming passion. Watching Mulder and Scully investigate the paranormal, run afoul of the Cigarette-Smoking Man and his international conspiracy, and uncover the truth about extraterrestrial life, was the most thrilling thing in the world for me until I moved on to slightly more mature fare like The West Wing. Think a paranoid '70s conspiracy thriller - say, All the President's Men - with aliens thrown in, add two likeable, attractive and intriguingly mismatched leads, and you've got one heckuva show.

Thanks to Netflix, I've recently gone through the series again, and remembered that the series spawned two feature films. I'd seen The X-Files (1998) a few times already, but like all sentient beings I completely ignored I Want to Believe (2008). Until now. In lieu of reviewing a drippy romance for Valentine's Day, I present a dual review of the X-Files films.

The X-Files (1998, Rob Bowman)



Released at the height of the TV series's popularity (if not quality), The X-Files (aka Fight the Future) was a major blockbuster event in 1998. Series creator Chris Carter and Co. engage in the Herculean labor of making the show's labrynthine, inscrutible "Mythology" comprehensible to lay viewers and newbies, resulting in a mixed bag of a film.

With the X-Files shut down, FBI Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) have been reassigned to an anti-terrorist unit. They uncover a bomb at a federal building in Dallas, but are unable to prevent it from going off. As they face censure and reassignment from the FBI, Mulder runs into Alvin Kurtzweil (Martin Landau), who claims to be an old friend of his father. Kurtzweil tells Mulder that the bombing was a government cover-up, intended to hide the appearance of the alien "Black Oil" in rural Texas. The Oil has mutated, not only controlling human minds but using their bodies to gestate aliens, and the shadowy Syndicate led by Strughold (Armin Mueller-Stahl) and the Cigarette-Smoking Man (William B. Davis) is at a loss how to combat it. Mulder and Scully are soon on the case, with Scully placed in imminent danger and Mulder forced to track her to, literally, the ends of the Earth.

The X-Files hits on all cylinders as entertainment. The modest, story- and character-driven show flees the gloomy woods of British Columbia for epic locations in America, North Africa and elsewhere, going from a creepy thriller to a full-bore blockbuster. Pumped full of action, effects and intrigue, it's designed to keep most viewers engaged even if they're confused as hell about what's going on. Until the overwrought (and overlong) conclusion in Antarctica, the film remains solidly entertaining throughout.

X-Philes will find much to like, and much to quibble with. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are in top form, bringing their incomparable wit and chemistry to the big screen intact. Exchanges like Mulder's "panic face" warm the cockles of this fan's heart. Mulder and Scully still hadn't hooked up yet, so we're treated to the usual smoldering, unresolved tension capped with a "near-miss kiss." On this score, no real complaints.

Not surprisingly, though, the movie stumbles in trying to make sense of the Mythology. The Black Oil already underwent mutations on the show, from a mind-controlling substance to some sort of toxic pathogen, and now it undergoes another transformation into Alien-like ET beasts. The virus-transmitting bees from earlier seasons are present in a different form as well. We should note that, though the film was shot between the fourth and fifth seasons, it wasn't released until after the fifth, leading to inevitable plot holes and inconsistencies with the series. Nothing we learned in Season 5 (save Scully's remission from cancer) is really relevant here, and the plot directions the film takes are conveniently ignored in later seasons.

Rob Bowman was the series's most prolific director, whose TV work never translated into big screen success (Reign of Fire, Elektra). A pity, as he shows a real flair for the cinematic here, handling a massive production very well. There is extensive location shooting, lots of creative action scenes and some gobsmacking set design (especially the Antarctic alien base). The sheer scope of the thing allows it to be more than just a two-hour episode of the series. Mark Snow gets to expand on his usual moody stylings with an appropriately epic score.

The other series regulars get the short end of the stick: the villainous Smoking Man, Mulder and Scully's testy boss Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) and the goofy Lone Gunmen (Tom Braidwood, Dean Haglund and Bruce Harwood) show up long enough for X-Philes to recognize them and then bow out. The exception is John Neville (Billy Budd), whose change of heart is genuinely affecting and his sacrifice quite poignant.

The film's "guest stars" are ill-used. Martin Landau (North by Northwest) gets a solid character, his Kurtzweil a shadowy informer in the mould of Jerry Hardin's Deep Throat and Steven Williams' X. Armin Mueller-Stahl's (The International) Syndicate leader isn't around long enough to register, and Blythe Danner (Meet the Parents) plays a one-note FBI bureaucrat. 1013 regular Terry O'Quinn (The Stepfather) shows up just long enough to die.

The X-Files is a flawed but admirable attempt at bringing the show to the big screen. It's certainly miles better than...

The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008, Chris Carter)



Fast-forward ten years. The X-Files has been off the air for six years, long after the show "jumped the shark" via three hideous final seasons. Dip in quality aside, the show's viewership had dissipated by the finale, and certainly by 2008 interest in The X-Files was slim-to-none. The question arises: Who exactly demanded this film be made? Not the audiences who flocked to see The Dark Knight instead. Not the critics who excoriated it. Not the X-Philes who largely shunned it.

I Want to Believe's cold reception is, sadly, well-deserved. It offers precious few treats for X-Philes, and offers little but a routine and convoluted thriller for the lay viewer. The weak story, boring characters and virtual absence of anything really weird doom I Want to Believe to failure, a belated rehash of a long-cancelled show that few cared to revisit.

A number of women in West Virginia, including an FBI Agent, have gone missing without a trace. FBI Special Agents Whitney (Amanda Peet) and Drummy (rapper Xzibit) call on Mulder, still for the crimes alleged in the series finale, and Scully, now a practicing medical doctor, call on them for expertise. Seems a pedophile priest Father Joe (Billy Connolly) claims a psychic connection to the victims, and Mulder and Scully try and determine his credibility - and find the victims - while becoming increasingly attached to the case.

The main pleasure I Want to Believe offers is seeing what Mulder and Scully are up to post-X-Files. Duchovny sports an Al Gore beard for much of the film, Anderson wears her hair long and Mitch Pileggi's still bald. More to the point, Mulder and Scully seem to have an off-and-on relationship, and "shippers" get to see the couple cuddling in bed. Their lost child, William, is mentioned only in passing and it seems that, despite mutual attraction and love, their relationship remains frustratingly complicated. On its own terms, however, the film is pretty shoddy.

I don't object to the film's jettisoning the "mythology" for a standalone story, which was so ridiculous by the final season (the Terminator-like "Super Soldiers"? Scully's part-alien baby? Gag) that a film would probably be Ed Wood quality. But Carter just can't make this story interesting. The Russian surgeons' transplantation experiments (shades of Sergei Bryuhonenko?) are creepy but not really X-Files material, and their completely one-note characterization doesn't help. Similarly, Father Joseph's psychic abilities are sketchy at best and make the paranormal claim highly dubious. Too much time is spent on Scully's efforts to save terminally ill boy Christian, a hopelessly maudlin and cloying subplot that adds nothing to the film. Ultimately, the film is a failure as both an X-File and a thriller.

Duchovny and Anderson are in fine form, rekindling their old chemistry and passion. As before, the supporting cast is poorly used. Mitch Pileggi reprises his role as Skinner only briefly, but at least he plays a key role in the story. Billy Connolly's psychic priest is an underdeveloped character hedging this side of stereotype (Catholic, Irish and a pedophile? Saints preserve us!). Amanda Peet and Xzibit are one-note and terrible, respectively, as the agents who bring Mulder and Scully in.

All the President's Men

Easily the best of the '70s anti-government thrillers, All the President's Men (1976) is a gripping take on the Watergate scandal and the reporters who helped bring it to light. Drawing on Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's explosive best-seller, it provides a chilling account of government malfeasance, and a glowing portrait of investigative journalism.

June 1972. Five men are caught burglarizing the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) do a routine investigation, only to find things not adding up: the burglars have their own attorney, and possible ties to the CIA and Richard Nixon's re-election campaign, and interviewees seem to be clamming up. Despite government pressure, skeptical managers and uncooperative witnesses, Woodward and Bernstein receive the blessing of editor Ben Bradlee (Jason Robards) to pursue the story, which threatens to implicate not only Nixon's advisors but the President himself.

All the President's Men unquestionably launched a thousand journalism careers, revising Hollywood stereotypes about reporters. Our heroes are vaguely anti-Establishment as embodied by Redford and Hoffman, but come off as hard-working, honest and dedicated to "getting it right," a counter to the cynical scribes of The Front Page and His Girl Friday. Bradlee lays out the importance of their effort, not to scoop the other guys but to get the truth: the stakes are free press and the rule of law. This may come off as naive and self-important in the era of Fox News, MSNBC and the blogosphere, but it's hard to deny Woodward and Bernstein their place in history.

As bleak as Watergate's messy fall-out was, the Woodward and Bernstein story provided something positive: the "fourth estate" doing its job of checking government excess. With President Nixon rotten to the core, and the subversives and protestors providing little more than incoherent noise, Americans needed somebody to trust. The post-Watergate compulsion for newspapers to uncover major scandals has had mixed reprecussions, but All the President's Men shows that an obsequieous press can be far worse.

Alan J. Pakula previously directed the ultimate paranoid conspiracy thriller, The Parallax View (1974), a lurid, feverish fairy tale that now plays like a bad X-Files episode. His telling of the Watergate story, however, sticks very close to the facts, with William Goldman getting the right mixture of subtle characterization, and telling details. Nixon's low-level thuggery, intimidation and surveillance is more chilling than an improbably-omnipotent conspiracy, as the truth generally is. Pakula provides relatively restrained direction, aside from a few stylish elements: the famous overhead zoom-out in the Library of Congress, the shadowy meetings with Deep Throat, deep-focus use of TV cameras contrasting Nixon with his antagonists, Robert Wolfe's rousing montage of cannons booming while typewriters spell out Nixon's doom.

Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman are pitch-perfect, giving low-key but compelling performances. They're backed up by an equally good supporting cast: Jason Robards (Once Upon a Time in the West) won an Oscar for his portrayal of the crusty Ben Bradlee, Hal Holbrook (Magnum Force) walks away with his scenes as the inscrutable Deep Throat, and dependable hands Martin Balsam (Hombre) and Jack Warden (12 Angry Men) are equally fine.

All the President's Men has stood the test of time, easily besting most of its peers. This isn't a deranged radical fantasy but a very real, gripping testiment to government corruption and the need for a vigilant press.

Missing

Costa-Gavras strikes gold again, here tackling Augusto Pinochet's brutal dictatorship in Chile. A more conventional and accessible film than his earlier Z, Missing (1982) is no less angry or pointed, though it's arguably better as a character study than a polemic.

Chile, 1973 sees General Augusto Pinochet taking power in a bloody coup d'etat. American journalist Charlie Horman (John Shea) goes missing in Santiago, apparently arrested by police. His father Charlie (Jack Lemmon), a well-connected businessman, and radical wife Beth (Sissy Spacek), seek to find Charlie, but the local authorities - and the American consulate - seem reluctant to help. Ed and Beth discover that Charlie may have known too much about American involvement in the coup, and that the State Department may have sanctioned his murder.

Like Z, Missing retains a sense of down-to-earth realism lacking from most Hollywood conspiracy dramas: Costa-Gavras may stretch some facts here and there, but it retains essential credibility, helped by his restrained, documentary-style direction. Santiago is a chaotic battleground where government troops massacre dissidents willy-nilly, and where police need no cause to arrest or search people. Just going to the grocery store can be fatal in this "state of emergency." The day-to-day terror of Pinochet's dictatorship is graphically portrayed.

Of course, not only Pinochet but the US government comes off badly. American spies and officials gloat about their involvement in the coup to Charlie, assuming he'll be on their side. The embassy officials lead Ed and Beth around in circles until they discover the truth, brushing them off in a remarkably cold-blooded denouement: it's Charlie's fault for sticking his nose where it doesn't belong. Omnipresent portraits of Richard Nixon quietly remind us that yes, the US government *is* capable of such fiendish behavior. There's no attempt at balance, but Costa-Gavras's palpable moral outrage is a powerful statement on its own, and it's hard to argue with most of his conclusions.

The movie is a top-notch thriller, but Missing also succeeds as a character drama. The interaction between the conservative Ed and left-wing Beth is beautifully portrayed: they engage in some schematic political sparring early on, but believably bond as their hope for Charlie deteroriates. Ed is under the naive assumption that Chile operates under American rules, not realizing until too late that a military dictatorship has its own way of doing things, and needless to say his complacent love of country are resolutely dashed. His disillusionment leads not to a political revelation per se, but to righteous anger, and more productively a closer bond with his daughter-in-law: the one ray of hope in a resolutely grim film.

Jack Lemmon is in top form: I've never especially cared for his comedy work, but he's a really fine dramatic actor and he nails his big scenes. Sissy Spacek (JFK) is equally impressive, and John Shea makes an endearing impression in his small role. The supporting cast is full of fine character actors: David Clennon (The Thing) and Richard Venture (The Onion Field) as American officials, Richard Bradford (The Chase), Charles Cioffi (Shaft) and Jerry Hardin (The X-Files) as spooks, and Janice Rule as a helpful journalist.

Missing is a compelling, eye-opening film. It speaks truth to power about one of our government's most shameful overseas interventions, and remains compelling as a character-driven thriller regardless of politics.

Z

Constantin Costa-Gavras crafts a masterpiece of political cinema with Z (1969). Based on Vassilis Vassilikos's fictionalized account of a right-wing assassination in 1960s Greece, it's a starkly realistic, disturbing look at a country's descent into dictatorship.

Greece, 1963. (The location is never explicitly stated but it's rather obvious.) The leader of the Parliamentary opposition (Yves Montand) holds a rally to protest the right-wing government's hardline militarism and repression of demonstrators. The Deputy is mortally wounded in a strange incident involving a speeding three-wheeler driven by a pair of losers (Renato Salvatori and Marcel Bozzuffi). At first it seems like an accident, but as the local magistrate (Jean-Louis Trintigant) sifts through the evidence, he realizes the evidence doesn't add up. It soon becomes apparent that the Deputy's death was a murder, and that it involves a conspiracy reaching into the highest levels of government.

In the bitter aftermath of Watergate, Vietnam and a decade of assassinations, Hollywood churned out tons of conspiracy movies, replete with an all-seeing, perfidious government coldly murdering citizens who challenged the status quo and searched for its secrets. Aside from All the President's Men, few achieved anything like realism, viewing Richard Nixon's low-level thuggery as emblematic of a corrupt, repressive, improbably-efficient fascist state. Films like The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor are cartoonish fantasies, no more realistic than The X-Files, capturing the paranoid zeitgeist rather than reality of their time. Post-9/11 fears of globalization, terrorism, warrantless wiretapping and corporate perfidy and have made the genre "relevant" again, with the same tricks and tropes trotted out (Michael Clayton, The International).

Based on a true incident, Z stands head-and-shoulders above its Hollywood counterparts. While American liberals imagined a repressive police state, Greeks were actually living it. As a small country on the front lines of the Cold War, Greece could hardly afford to remain ideological neutral in the struggle against Communism. Aided and abetted by our government, the Greek military took power in 1967, establishing one of the most repressive regimes this side of the Iron Curtain.

The portrait of government conspiracy here is chillingly plausible. The opening sets the tone: an agricultural briefing on mildew is directly compared to "insidious" Communist influences, and one individual blames hippies and leftists for an increase in solar flares! The government claims to be "neutral" and above politics but their vitriol and apocalyptic rhetoric are directed at the Left, accompanied on occasion by active repression. The police doesn't hire super-efficient assassins to silence dissent, but low-level street thugs with a high failure rate. The overall sloppiness of the government most striking; the conspiracy is really transparent and obvious, and yet it seems unstoppable.

Costa-Gavras doesn't obtain the documentary objectivity of Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers: it's obvious where his sympathies lie, and he stacks the dramatic deck against his antagonists, who are delusional blowhards ("Dreyfus was guilty!") or, presaging Oliver Stone's JFK, a scummy homosexual. But lack of objectivity is hardly a flaw in this case, especially with the message made so forcefully. It's a remarkably angry film, undercutting its triumphant climax with a chillingly subversive coda, showing justice coming to naught. In a cruel irony, bringing down one oppressive government merely serves to bring a far worse one to power.

Costa-Gavras's direction is modest but effective, making excellent use of imagery and Francoise Bonnot's editing. There are a few action scenes but they're well-integrated into the story. The film's atmosphere isn't so much dark and sinister as uncertain and foreboding; it obtains an admirable degree of clinical realism. Mikis Theodorakis's score is another highlight.

Yves Montand and Irene Pappas (The Guns of Navarone) get top-billing for what amount to extended cameos. Montand makes a strong impression, but Pappas is reduced to meaningful glances and ambiguous flashbacks. Jean-Lous Trintigant (Is Paris Burning?) gets the best role, as the impartial investigator driven to find the truth. Jacques Perrin gets a nice role as an inquisitive journalist. An interesting collection of actors plays government officials and thugs, with Francois Perrier, Pierre Dux and Renato Salvatori (Burn!) among them.

Z is one of the best films of the 1960's, and a truly remarkable example of political cinema. Forceful, angry and powerful, it retains its power when many of its peers and imitators have faded into anachronism.

Oliver Stone's Clown College

(This is semi-OT and may express political views. If you just read this blog for the movie reviews, come back this afternoon.)

Oliver Stone hasn't made a good movie in fifteen years, so it's not surprising he's desperate for attention. He has an upcoming documentary series in which he condescends to tell us about "the secret history of America," in which he posits his feverishly-paranoid, conspiracy-tinged worldview as an objective truth that has incredibly eluded trained historians.

It's not surprising that the thrust of Stone's documentary appears to be regurgitated Howard Zinn: that American history is an easily-decoded series of evils perpetrated by corporate America and the political elite on lower classes and other countries.

More disgusting than that is his comments on the likes of Hitler and Stalin, pretty much the only two people you'll get 95% of people to agree are evil.

"You cannot approach history unless you have empathy for the person youmay hate," Stone said during the show's trailer, which promised to put historical villains "in context."

Stone apparently knows nothing about how historians actually operate. The whole idea behind writing history is "putting things in context." You haven't stumbled across some mind-blowing secret, Oliver.

Of course, there's the question of what context he wishes to put them in, but we'll return to that.

Stone's comments regarding Hitler, the Holocaust and the "Jewish-controlled media" have drawn the most attention, earning the ire of people both left and right. I have little to say about this: it fits in perfectly with his plethora of other paranoid ramblings about corporate America and what he calls in Nixon "The Beast."

Stone tells us that:

"Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and its been used cheaply. He's the product of a series of actions. It's cause and effect."

You're right! The thousands of books on World War II and the Third Reich make no effort to explore the context of Hitler, why he came to power, why he launched the most destructive war in history and the world's largest genocide.

"He's not saying we're going to come out with a more positive view of Hitler," emphasized professor Peter Kuznick, the lead writer on the project. "But we're going to describe him as a historical phenomenon and not just somebody who appeared out of nowhere."

And who is this revelation going to startle? Certainly not William Shirer, Richard J. Evans, Ian Kershaw, Martin Gilbert, Allan Bullock, Joachim Fest and the many other reputable historians of the Second World War. Heck, anyone who's read a fair amount of Nazi and WWII-related literature is unlikely to find this shocking.

This is rank condescension. Nazi Germany is probably the most written-about phenomenon of the 20th Century, analyzed from pretty much all angles possible and scrutinized to death. That doesn't mean, of course a fresh perspective of it can't be found, but it is rather obnoxious, boneheaded and self-serving to claim that you are the first to look at the Nazis "in context." What else have historians been doing for the past seventy years?

Of course, Stone shows where his true interests lie with this JFK-flavored commentary on Barack Obama:

Stone also warned that the same military industrial complex forces that he's explored in movies such as "JFK" and in "Secret History," are now corrupting Barack Obama.

"You can understand why Obama is following in Bush's footsteps in Afghanistan," Stone said."Obama is very much trapped, we believe, in that system. And so that's what we're going to try and show you — the way it works."

More directly, consider:

We want to move beyond opinions … Go into the funding of the Nazi party. How many American corporations were involved, from GM through IBM.

So putting Hitler and Stalin "in context" means putting them in the context of a worldview that reflexively blames America for everything bad that has ever happened.

There is a grain of truth to this observation, but it's a gross, ideologically-driven oversimplification. It ignores the political and economic situation within Germany which enabled Hitler's rise to power, and effectively absolves Hitler of blame for his actions, not unlike Pat Buchanan. It's "The Beast," the American bogeyman, and perhaps even those pesky Jews who put Hitler in power, amirite?

"Hitler is just a man who could have easily been assassinated."

What an ingenious observation. Someone ought to make a movie about that subject.

I'm not even sure what this means, anyway. "Just a man"? In the strictest definition, yes, but most men do not rise to control of a large nation-state and wage a genocidal war. "Could easily have been assassinated"? So could anyone.

It's not only Hitler who Stone feels gets an unfairly bad rap, but (less surprisingly) Joseph Stalin, who Stone calls

the man who “fought the German war machine” and hence as an individual who cannot be judged as “only ‘bad’ or ‘good.’”

Of course Stalin fought the Nazis, albeit after signing an alliance with Hitler and carving up Poland and Eastern Europe with him. Unless you're Luxembourg, that's what you do when a foreign army invades your country. He also instituted a horrendously tyrannical regime that ruthlessly slaughtered political dissidents, crushed all dissent, assassinated opponents perceived and real, subjugated Eastern Europe to Communist rule, and generally served the interests of Joseph Stalin.

His current apologists in Russia notwithstanding, it's hard to see how anyone could view Stalin in a good light.

Parenthetically, he also seems to claim that "Truman's decision to drop the Atomic bomb" is an "overlooked" part of American history, too - ignoring the ongoing, quite intense debate over its justification and righteousness among historians. But this is simple idiocy, not horribly offensive in and of itself.

Stone's comments don't compare favorably to right-wing nutjobs either. His comments about putting Hitler "in context" seem uncomfortably close to David Irving's coda to Hitler's War, in which he promises

to clean away the "years of grime and discoloration from the facade of a silent and forbidding monument" to reveal the real Hitler

Not to mention Pat Buchanan's recent book which blamed Churchill and Great Britain for the war and the Holocaust, more or less absolving Hitler of guilt - a book that I found myself dissecting in excrutiating depth for a class project.

Funny how the extremes converge on issues like this.

I'll make one final point before moving on:

Stone may have something resembling a point that the popular discouse of history, as opposed to its academic practice, is fairly simplified. Not everyone is a historian or even a history buff; pervasive, one-dimensional views of events and people exist anywhere someone doesn't care to look further into an issue.

The conclusion, however, is not that Hitler and Stalin have been unfairly portrayed; it is no fault of historians that Hitler and Stalin are demonized. These men were as close to objective evil as is possible. "Putting them in context" is what every historian seeks to do. Their approach may be flawed, faulty or biased, but this is a flaw inherent in human beings. Context can help explain why something happens, but it does not change essential facts. And taking things out of one context and putting them in another (as Stone is hinting he's done) is something else entirely.

And, dare I suggest, Stone is about the last person to lecture any historians on bias, honesty or "putting things in context." I would certainly trust a Richard Evans or Edvard Razinskii over a nutjob film director. And certainly you lose any high-ground by ranting about the "Jewish media."

Stone's films, or at least some of them, are great as historical fiction, but anyone taking them remotely seriously is doing themselves a disservice. And his posturing as an actual, real-life historian, instead of a purveyor of paranoia-charged cinematic phantasmagorias, is insulting.

Shutter Island

Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island (2010) is probably the best film I've seen in theaters since Slumdog Millionaire (which admittedly isn't saying a whole lot). It's a mature thriller that mixes a straightforward mystery with a phantasmagoric horror film, creating an engrossing, disturbing cinematic experience. The twist (which surely everyone knows by now) isn't a problem per se - the way it's handled, however, is the film's one major flaw.

1954. A pair of US Marshals - hard-bitten, guilt-ridden Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and affable Chuck Auele (Mark Ruffalo) - arrive on the titular island to visit Ashecliffe Mental Institution, a hospital for the criminally insane. Seems that a female prisoner (Emily Mortimer) broke out of jail, seemingly vanishing into thin air. Teddy immediately clashes with the too-nice Doctor Cawley (Ben Kingsley), who believes in engaging patients rather than putting them away - and who seems to be hiding something. The Marshals are trapped on the island by a storm, and Teddy comes to think that he and his partner are being set up - especially when word of a 67th inmate leaks out.

Shutter Island could easily have been a mess, but Scorsese deftly navigates the waters of its treacherous plot. The nightmarish dreams and are perfectly integrated into the main plot, a well-done paranoid police procedural. The movie plays up sinister expectations - the ex-Nazi Doctor (Max Von Sydow), mentions of HUAC and the Cold War - wonderfully, so we're almost let down when they're deflated. The contrast to the Holocaust is disturbing, moreso if we know about Operation Paper Clip and the MKULTRA program; the paranoid fantasies of the inmates have a palpable basis in reality. Teddy's apparent moral stand against these experiments, mixed with revenge, creates a wonderfully complex protagonist, and the film's palpable atmosphere of dread and quick pacing helps as well.

If there's a complaint about the film, it's the final 15 minutes or so. The twist itself is reasonable, if not overly original, and it does a fine job of frustrating plot expectations. However, after the secret is revealed, we're treated to an overlong explanatory scene, which seems like a retread of Hitchcock's expository excesses (Psycho, anyone?). Quite frankly, I would have preferred ambiguity to this deadeningly literal denouement. There may be more than meets the eye to the final scene, but the ship has already sailed by that point.

Scorsese eschews his usual quick-cutting, hard-hitting directoral style for a more measured approach. Scorsese does allow himself moments of showmanship - the gothic nightmare scenes, the storm sequence, the execution of Nazi guards at Dachau - but his direction is mostly focused, intense and gripping, allowing the images to speak for themselves. Robert Richardson's cinematography is alternately sweeping and claustrophobic, and there's a fine use of instrumental music, particularly tracks by John Adams, Gustav Mahler and John Cage.

Leonardo DiCaprio nails a difficult role. Shaky accent aside, DiCaprio is completely convincing as the haunted, hard-bitten Teddy, making his later scenes particularly poignant. Ben Kingsley (Gandhi) gives his best performance in years; it's nice to see him in something other than an Uwe Boll film. Max Von Sydow (Conan the Barbarian) shines in a small part. The supporting cast is excellent: Mark Ruffalo (Zodiac), Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain), Jackie Earle Haley (Watchmen), Patricia Clarkson (The Untouchables), John Carroll Lynch (Gran Torino), Ted Levine (Silence of the Lambs), Elias Koteas (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button).

I can't quite give Shutter Island a "Great Movies" rating because of the ending, but everything else about it is near-perfect.

Seven Days in May

Seven Days in May (1964) is another fine thriller from John Frankenheimer. Compared to the dark satire of The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and rousing action of The Train (1964), it's subdued, sober and serious, highlighting liberal fears in the shadow of the Kennedy Assassination.

President Jordan Lyman (Frederic March) sees his popularity nose-dive after hammering a nuclear disarmanent treaty through the Senate. The opposition is led by General James Scott (Burt Lancaster), the charismatic, outspoken, and politically-ambitious Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Scott's aide, Colonel Casey (Kirk Douglas), comes to believe that Scott is plotting a military coup d'etat, kidnapping the President during an emergency drill and establishing a far-right government. The President and his associates are skeptical at first, but when the President's aide, Paul Girard (Martin Balsam) dies in a plane crash, and Senator Clark (Edmond O'Brien) is arrested while trying to visit a secret military base, the government must act to foil Scott's plans.

Seven Days in May expresses the fear of early '60s liberals: a coup by hardline Cold Warriors. This was a very real concern: the well-known distrust between John F. Kennedy and Generals Curtis LeMay and Maxwell Taylor came to a head during the Cuban Missile Crisis, with the Joint Chiefs furious at Kennedy's emphasis on diplomacy over military action. The movie opens with right-wingers crashing a peace demonstration outside the White House: an eerie premonition of the hard-hat/hippie clashes to come. Kennedy was almost universally-loved for his charisma, charm and good looks; his politics were much more divisive than the Camelot myth suggests.

When Kennedy died in 1963, many fingered the military as culprits, killing their commander-in-chief for being "soft" on Communism. Certainly the Red-baiting ramblings of LeMay, Edwin Walker, J. Edgar Hoover and Barry Goldwater, painting anyone who spoke of peaceful coexistence with the Soviets as an anti-American pinko, did little to dissuade them. However exaggerated these fears seem today, they were certainly prevalent at the time, and echoes can be heard today in conservative hatred of the "socialist" President Obama.

Made in 1964, just before Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement kicked off, the film is a curious mix of paranoia and New Frontier optimism. It anticipates the paranoia and anti-militarism of post-Watergate thrillers like The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor, but lacks their bald cynicism, with President Lyman and Colonel Casey nobly upholding democracy. Here, Scott is an aberration, anathematic to American values; disillusioned seventies filmmakers would treat him as a natural product of the system. Lancaster himself would later star in Executive Action (1973), a crude prototype of Oliver Stone's JFK, illustrating just how much the '60s soured liberals on America.

The movie moves at a brisk clip, expertly reeling off exposition, introducing a large ensemble cast and generating a perfect mixture of paranoia, unease and suspense. Frankenheimer's direction is understated, providing an almost documentary feel to the proceedings. Storywise, there are two big faults: a pointless romance with Casey and Scott's mistress (Ava Gardner), which exists only to prove the nobility of our liberal heroes, and a dud finale. The final confrontation between Lyman and Scott is wonderfully explosive, but it's followed by a self-important lesson on democracy, concluding with a shot of the Constitution (!). The film makes its point well-enough without the patronizing social studies lecture.

Burt Lancaster owns the film, carefully hiding his anger fanaticism behind a facade of righteous rectitude. Kirk Douglas is fine in a one-note role; the attempts to portray his character as conflicted between country and military don't come off, and he's sidelined for the film's second half. Ava Gardner is squandered in a useless role. Frederic March (Inherit the Wind) personifies liberal nobility and fortitude, and the supporting cast includes fine actors like Edmund O'Brien (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance), Martin Balsam (Little Big Man), Andrew Duggan (Red Nightmare), George Macready (Vera Cruz) and John Houseman (Three Days of the Condor).

Seven Days in May is a fine thriller, and despite its flaws and obnoxious speech-making, is entertaining, nuanced and thoughtful. It probably couldn't happen this way, but the film remains unsettling regardless.