Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)

Alex had us watch Thunderbolts* as a precursor to this, due to the post-credits scene. I don't really think that was necessary, but it wasn't like T'bolts was a slog to watch, so why not? As for this, set in its own universe (and in the '60s) four years after the FF received their powers, they've become beloved heroes and celebrities. Now Sue (Vanessa Kirby) and Reed (Pedro Pascal) are expecting their first kid! Which is when the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) shows up to tell Earth, Galactus will be coming to eat their planet soon.

So, I like the visual aesthetic of the movie, even if the '60s aren't an era I have some massive fondness for. It looks different, distinctive, from all the other Marvel stuff, and that's nice. Let the creative talent's styles and influences show through. (Also, I suspect Reed likes to write things out on a chalkboard anyway, but being in an era before ubiquitous computers means it's not that strange he's doing a lot of calculations by hand.) 

I like they dispensed with the origin, trusting us to understand enough from the TV show intro. I like that the team went into space to try and stop Galactus before he got close, and the whole faster-than-light chase, escape around the neutron star, sequence. It felt right for the Fantastic Four, not winning by overpowering their opponent, but outsmarting them and leveraging their group's individual skills (Ben's piloting, Johnny's adjusting to shooting in a wormhole.)

I was expecting Ben Grimm's voice to be gruffer, but Ebon Moss-Bachrach is also playing a Ben who seems content with his circumstances. He's not wandering rainy streets in a trenchcoat bemoaning his fate, and even tells Reed not to beat himself up about what happened. This version is in a much better headspace than any of the prior film versions, though maybe that's why it feels like he got the least focus. (The rock beard thing was freaky however, and I did not like it.)

A lot of the film is, naturally, focused on Reed and Sue, as new parents of a child that's going to be far more than they thought, and who might be able to save the world, if they're willing to give him up. Reed having to learn to deal with the uncertainty and unknowable parts of raising a tiny human. Sue, probably putting that experience at the UN to good use, keeping the others focused and working to some sort of solution. Don't let Reed get too far into the impossibilities of things, take the time to listen to Johnny when he thinks he's on to something, even if it isn't clear what.

(I sort of like Reed and Sue's big fight isn't because Reed actually suggests giving up Franklin to save the world, but because Sue can tell he's at least run the math on the idea before rejecting it, instead of just categorically concluding, "No way." Reed of course presents it as how his brain works, assessing potential threats and vectors, then trying to devise countermeasures.) 

But Johnny (Joseph Quinn) gets this whole thread about deciphering the Surfer's native language. Instead of just being a shallow attempt to more successfully flirt with the shiny alien, it's ultimately a way to understand her, to reach her, and maybe turn her to their side. Admittedly, turn her with guilt over all the worlds that died because she brought Galactus there, but they were already going far afield from the Surfer switching sides because the nobility or kindness of Earthlings touches their soul, so why not? Given that, it does feel like The Thing doesn't get much time.

Reed's initial solution on how to, if not defeat Galactus, at least escape him, caught me by complete surprise. I'm not sure how he was going to account for the loss of tides when the Moon presumably got left behind, but they were on a tight schedule. Certain corners had to be cut. I also wasn't expecting the film's take on Galactus' ship or how he devoured worlds. It was a little more Darkseid than I would have figured. Maybe that was just the giant, burning maw in the center of the drill. So I don't know if I loved it as visualization for Galactus' process, but it was definitely an effective visual. That whole part where Reed detects the Surfer within the alien world and then boom! Here's a massive ship tunneling out like a worm from an apple. It really depicts the scale at which this threat is operating and how different this is from Mole Man, or Red Ghost and the Super-Apes.

Thunderbolts* (2025)

Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) is not living her best life. Alternating between drinking and scanning her phone, and running operations cleaning up messes for Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Until one of those operations runs her headlong into Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Failed Captain America John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Taskmaster, and a confused guy in hospital scrubs named Bob (Lewis Pullman).

(Taskmaster ends up dying in the 4-way free-for-all. Chalk her up as another antagonist with lots of personality in the comics wasted by the movies. Batroc's another that's high on my list.) 

Figuring out they're the last loose end Valentina needs to clean up, they first try going on the run with the Red Guardian (David Harbour), then convince Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) to let them try and attack Valentina head on. Which fails miserably, because it turns out the medical study Bob was part of worked. He has the power of a million exploding suns. Unfortunately, the study didn't do anything for his myriad mental health issues, and having that much power only exacerbates said issues.

It was pretty good. Alex felt it was the best Marvel movie since Endgame, low bar that is to clear. I might put it above Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3. While Thunderbolts* has the Sentry (minus), it also feels less bloated than GotGv3 did in places. And I will grudgingly admit, the Sentry's whole deal does fit well with this group of damaged people, full of exposed nerves and insecurities, lashing out and crashing against each other. The messy, exhausted way Yelena goes about her work, the unhelpful advice she initially offers Bob about dealing with feeling everything is useless. The relationship between her and Alexi, where he keeps defaulting to this loudmouth, gung-ho guy, but when he really focuses on her, the young woman in front of him, he can actually help her.

I don't know if admitting that the time where he felt best was when he was a public hero, saving people on the streets and being cheered in parades, was the best answer, but it was honest, at least. I expected him to say the time where they were a family of four in the U.S., which would likely have come off as schmaltzy. Doubt Yelena would have believed it, either.

Bucky being a lousy Congressman, who can't get any bills passed, is awkward with the press, and clearly not taken seriously by any politicians, was both amusing, and felt entirely accurate. Honestly, I was trying to figure out by how and why he became a politician. It doesn't feel like something he would have any interest in doing.

Walker and Ghost get short shrift on their issues, with so much being taken up by Yelena and Bob. Russell seems to play Walker as more of a dumbass than I remember from Falcon and Winter Soldier, but maybe that's just him trying to puff up and impress people who are absolutely not impressed by his act. Feels like there could have been something with the notion that, at one time, the others at least had a semblance of normal family lives (before things went to crap), while things have pretty much always been crap for Ghost. Unless I'm misremembering her backstory, which, entirely possible. Yelena calls her out for not even being a good person and it's like, yes? When would she have received positive reinforcement for that development? When being used to steal equipment to try and keep herself alive?

I thought Pullman did a good job as Bob and the Sentry (Alex really liked the design for the Void, with the two tiny glowing pinpricks of his eyes as the only light.) I liked that even when he's the Sentry, and even as he starts to get high on his own supply, there's still something unsure in his posture and the way he looks at Valentina. Like when he asks her, wouldn't he qualify as God if he's stronger than all the Avengers, who included a god, it doesn't feel rhetorical so much as he's almost bracing himself for a cutting response which will reveal how stupid it is for him to even think such a thing.

Also, the bit in his mind where they encounter Methed-Out, Sign-Spinning, Chicken Costume Bob made me bust out laughing. 

A Thinker's Damn - William Russo

This is the book I mentioned a few weeks ago, about the making of first film version of The Quiet American. I'm not sure where the notion that it was about the government meddling with the film came with, whether my dad misunderstood what was in it or I misunderstood what he said about it, because that's not evident in the text.

A lot of things went wrong with this film, but the kind of things that go wrong with a lot of movies. Mankiewicz originally wanted Laurence Olivier and Montgomery Clift for his two leads, and went 0-for-2 for various reasons. I've never been all that impressed with Clift in the things I've seen him in, but if you want Clift and get Audie Murphy, that's probably not ideal. Murphy coming down with appendicitis shortly after reaching Saigon, which limited his availability, and what he was physically capable of doing, as Mankiewicz apparently had more action in his script originally. They really didn't use much footage from the months spent in Vietnam, with most of the scenes that go in the film being shot in Italy.

Russo also explains why we saw so little of Pyle and Phuong's courtship in the movie, because Murphy and Giorgia Moll couldn't demonstrate any romantic chemistry in the scenes filmed. Which tracks with Murphy's inability to fake it if he doesn't feel it. Although Mankiewicz apparently wanted it to be a torrid, passionate romance between young lovers. I've tended to picture Pyle, in the book and the film adaptations, as too straitlaced for that. Like, he's got to marry Phuong first.

But the script seemed to be the single biggest issue. From how Russo writes it, no one except Mankiewicz was actually happy with the script. Redgrave and Murphy, in possibly the only thing those two agreed on, felt the script was way overwritten. Both wanted edits made to the script, and both received assurances there would edits be made. But it doesn't seem like any edits were made until the film itself was hacked to pieces in an effort to trim it from over 3 hours of material to around 100 minutes.

The book is organized roughly chronologically, starting at Mankiewicz trying to get his two stars, but within that broad outline there are some curious choices. Russo will spend most of a chapter detailing Graham Greene's displeasure with the movie based on what he'd heard about the script (as they hadn't even started filming yet.) Then he'll spend the last handful of pages in that chapter discussing the choice of Giorgia Moll to play Phuong, and whether Mankiewicz actually entertained choosing a Vietnamese actress for the role, or if that was just another of those things he paid lip service to. Which feels like it would have been better saved for a chapter focused on Moll, if Russo had taken the approach of devoting each chapter to specific people, as they became relevant to the filming.

The book could also use some editing. Awkward transitions abound, and just a lot of phrases that are clunky or poorly arranged. Russo will mention a particular event once - some of the crew using a day off from shooting to visit Angkor Wat - in the context of a rare moment where Redgrave seems in good spirits. Then he'll mention the same event again in a later chapter, in reference to some other person, but write it like he never mentioned it before. It's just strange, and pulls me out of the narrative.

'Though Mankiewicz had agreed during their courtship period that Redgrave could edit the verbose script to his liking, by the time they were in Saigon, the director had changed his mind. The one pattern made clear during the preliminaries of the picture was that Mankiewicz made grandiose promises to all members of the cast and production staff about altering the script. He gave the impression he spent hours in re-write. In fact, the director seemed to have simply stonewalled all the requests. Mankiewicz never intended to change a word of his script.'

Overdue Movie Reviews #6 - Dark City (1998)

A man (Rufus Sewell) wakes up in a bathtub, with no idea who he is and a rivulet of blood trickling from his forehead. He finds clothes, but also a corpse, a woman with bloody spirals carved in her body. The clerk in the hotel lobby calls him "Mr. Murdoch," and advises him to go to the automat to collect his wallet, because his room is no longer paid up.

Soon he knows his name is John Murdoch, but it means nothing to him. The police are hunting him as a serial killer of prostitutes, led by Detective Bumstead (William Hurt.) John's wife, Emma (Jennifer Connelly), alternately helps Bumstead search, and protects John from him. But that's all of no importance, the real threat the mysterious figures in black trenchcoats and hats, skin unearthly pale, that are pursuing John with strange powers. Powers he seems to have as well, which only a Dr. Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland) may understand.

Dark City offers a strong clue about itself early on, when Emma visits Dr. Schreber, who was supposedly treating John. After she enters his office - itself peculiarly arranged, as the door with his name on it opens onto another long hallway before reaching his lab - she finds Schreber studying a giant, circular rat maze. It's not apparent at first, but as the scene ends, you see there's no exit. The maze's outer walls are solid, the rats are placed inside by Schreber lowering them in, and simply stuck until he chooses to remove them. Nor is there any sort of prize in the middle of the maze, or anywhere else.

(I'm not sure what Schreber was purporting to study with that. What rats do in the face of futility? Do they recognize futility? Is that the equivalent of what Mr. Book and the rest of the "strangers" are seeking in humanity?)

Because that's what this city that John, Emma, Bumstead, everyone inhabit really is. A giant maze. Director Alex Proyas makes the city reflect this. The layout, where the buildings tower over the characters, penning them into narrow, dark alleys, or all the staircases that wind around and around in spirals. (In one scene as he tries to traverse the city, John climbs one flight of stairs, only to reach the top and the next flight take him down. Moving, but getting nowhere.)

But also the way places are framed in shots creates a feeling of artificiality. The room Bumstead's former coworker, Walenski (who has learned the truth on his own), shut himself in looks ordinary enough when we're standing outside with Bumstead and Walenski's wife. Once we follow Bumstead inside, we see his head nearly touches the ceiling. Like he stepped into a dollhouse without realizing it. On the other end of things, when John visits his Uncle Karl and is shown to his childhood room, the initial shot makes him look tiny as he stands in the doorway, the ceiling towering over him. The camera is positioned in the opposite corner from the door, and we feel impossibly far away from John, for what is supposed to be a child's room. Nothing fits, because it's all surface level manipulation by beings tinkering with things to see what happens.

(Later, when John is going through his childhood possession, looking for something that will spark recognition, the shot is framed so that he fills most of it, standing over his old desk, only a little of the room visible behind him. His surroundings seemingly have adjusted to him, or he's adjusted his surroundings, in the same way he unconsciously fills the childhood scrapbook of his time at Shell Beach.)

Not necessarily relevant to the design of the city, the design of the machine the strangers use to amplify their abilities is very cool. The giant metal face that opens down the middle to reveal a giant clock that stops at 12 when they begin their work.

There's a nice contrast between the human characters - John, Emma, Bumstead, even Schreber - and the strangers. The strangers always move with a deliberate stride, never hurried (it feels like Proyas shoots those scenes in slow-motion, maybe.) They fly, but in a singularly undynamic way, looking like they're standing on an invisible conveyor belt. Even when Mr. Hand has himself injected with the life Murdoch was supposed to get, he still moves the same, still speaks in his same deliberate cadence. He has these memories, but that doesn't mean he understands them, why they were meant to possibly motivate John to kill. The same way they seem to have given themselves names, but it's just, objects. Mr. Hand, Mr. Wall, Mr. Book. Occasionally an adjective (Mr. Quick, unless it's for "cut to the quick")

Because there's no apparent significance to the names to them. All their memories and experiences are shared, there's no real individuality. Their body is whatever corpse of one of their subjects they happen to inhabit. Schreber makes no effort to distinguish them, and they don't care about that, either. They may be trying to understand humans, but they haven't gotten anywhere. Mr. Book says it would take a human lifetimes to learn to "tune", i.e., alter reality with their mind, not considering that a) that's true for his species, not necessarily humans, and b) in a way, John Murdoch has already lived innumerable lifetimes. Each time he got another set of memories imprinted on him, it's another life.

Whereas John is scrambling around in a rumpled coat and clacks, wild-eyed as he tries to piece together what's happened to him, what's wrong with this city, why the sun never shines, why no one can tell him how to get to Shell Beach. When he really embraces his power for the climactic fight, Mr. Book stands ramrod straight, but John lowers his head like a bull about to charge. When he flies, he leans forward like he's about to do a Superman (one arm extended.) He shifts, he adjusts, his feelings factor into his actions, whether they drive him to smash through a wall, or surrender to protect Emma.

Schreber shuffles along, wheezing out sly lines a few words at a time. It's a very odd performance by Sutherland, I'm curious why he took that route. But Schreber is in a peculiar place. He's an accomplice to the strangers, but also a victim. As he explains, he was allowed to retain his expertise in the human mind, but made to erase everything else. He doesn't know the name he was born with any more than John or any of the others do.

Bumstead is, outwardly, the closest to the strangers. Tall and thin, a measured stride, initially unaffected by another killing. A man who focuses on details like untied shoelaces or goldfish spared a slow death by asphyxiation. It's clinical, just work, a puzzle to be solved, then set aside. Walenski's wild claims are something to dismiss. But the longer he's involved, the more he's drawn in. Hurt doesn't lose the stilted, slightly awkward manner, but gives Bumstead a willingness to question, a flexibility of mind the strangers lack. If Bumstead lacks the air of authority to make people halt when he tells them to, he at least seems able to get people to talk to him.

Connelly plays Emma as soft-spoken, but certain. She doesn't know what John's been doing since he "moved out", didn't know about his seeing a doctor, but she doesn't believe he's a killer. Even when they meet - their first meeting, really - in their apartment, and she can't understand what he's talking about, she doesn't hesitate to bar Bumstead's path so John can flee. The strangers would likely attribute that to the memories they've provided, though John and Emma would argue otherwise.

It was a little strange to me, that John could fall for Emma so quickly, minus the memories she has of their "relationship", when they had something like two brief conversations. But I imagine that's the point. Love isn't a matter of logic or rationality, something the strangers could have Schreber implant or remove at a whim. It's something that happens, sometimes in an instant, and can't be recreated if you simply put one of the two people in the same location with a different person spouting the same lines, like when Mr. Hand follows John's "memories" to his first meeting with Emma and finds her there. They have a pleasant enough chat, but there are no sparks, nothing forms between them.

(Also, John doesn't have the memories of Emma's infidelity he's supposed to, which lets him see her with a clear eye.)

The final showdown suffers a bit from the special effects limitations of the late '90s, so that you get John and Mr. Book throwing wobbly translucent waves from their foreheads. The times where they manipulate their surroundings, like Mr. Book making parts of the floor erupt into massive spikes around John, are better. If the big deal is the ability to manipulate to reality, then that's what the conflict should revolve around. And John does ultimately win by making that building with the water tower grow so it's in Mr. Book's path.

I read once that, at least in dreams, water is a symbol for reaching a truth. So the strangers being vulnerable to it is a nice touch, even beyond water being something humans need to function. John's pursuit of answers points to a beach, to crashing waves, the kind of thing that repels the strangers. And John is able to learn at least some of what he wanted to know, while the strangers never get what they were after. They purposefully keep at a distance from water, because it kills them and their notion that a person is strictly the sum of their experiences, and it's just a matter of making the right combination of experiences to produce the result you want.

The Unforgiven (1960)

The Zachary family are cattle ranchers, and after a lot of lean years, they and their neighbors actually have some good cattle to drive to Wichita to sell, and make money. But a wild, one-eyed man with a cavalry saber is drifting around the periphery of their home, spreading whispers that Rachel (Audrey Hepburn), might not be the baby of some dead settlers that the now-deceased Zachary patriarch rescued and adopted. She might be, gasp, an Injun baby!

The whispers spread among the Zachary's neighbors, and even to the Kiowa tribes in the nearby hills, as the family itself try to close ranks around their sister, even as doubts start to pull them apart. The eldest brother, Ben (Burt Lancaster) is steadfast in defending his sister, but the middle brother, Cash (Audie Murphy) is violently hateful towards anyone he even suspects is any kind of Native American. 

This is another one of those Westerns where I see so much potential for a better film. Where director John Huston could have left it uncertain which version of Rachel's parentage was true, and what people decided for themselves was true spoke more about them than her.

There are pieces of that in here. Some of the other ranchers approach the head of the Rawlins family, long-time friends of the Zachary, because they've heard the rumors and they don't like it. And the elder Rawlins essentially tells them if they've got a problem, say it outright, to Ben's face, instead of sneaking around behind his back. Of course, once their son Charlie is killed, via arrows, after getting permission to marry Rachel, the matriarch Rawlins turns on Rachel in a second, all too eager for someone to blame. And Rachel, who Hepburn plays with a wide-eyed earnestness, will stand there and take it, even if she doesn't understand it.

And the film could have done more (anything, really) with the notion the Kiowas want back the child that was stolen from them years ago, that they presumed dead, only to learn she's been in another world too long. Instead, we get a lengthy siege battle, a bunch of Kiowas trying to break into the Zachary's home and either take Rachel or kill her. Yes, I know, it's a movie from 1960, there wasn't going to be a nuanced view of the perspective of a group of Native Americans about the abduction of a child, but it would have made for a more interesting movie if there was.

I do like that Huston spends time showing the day-to-day lives, not just of Zachary family, but also how they interact with others, especially the Rawlins family. Play up the connection between the two groups, so that the schism, when it comes feels all the more ugly. Mama Rawlins didn't have any objections to her son courting Rachel before, when she presumably knew or suspected just as much. But when things turn sour, she starts screaming slurs, and it makes Rachel's confusion all the more palpable, because you can understand how out of left field it must seem to her.

I like that the movie keeps Kelsey - the crazed guy with the saber - off-screen most of the time. He's there, watching, observing, occasionally screaming about being the sword of god, but most of what he's doing, we only see the after-effects. Ben and Cash know he's around, but their attempt to hunt him down fails, and he continues to operate when they're not around to confront him.

(The notion everyone would believe Kelsey's final statement because no one would lie as they were about to meet their Creator makes me roll my eyes, but I have to allow for a different time and attitude there.)

But, and here I don't know if this was Huston's doing or the studio chopped the movie up and mangled the pacing, it took too much of the runtime getting to the reveal and the ultimate fracture between the Zacharys, leaving too little for fallout. It happens, Cash's hatred bursts loose, but there's no time to delve into anything between the characters we're really supposed to care about. Gotta start the big final battle.

Lancaster has to play the grown-up, the one who indulges his baby sister or lets his brother rant when he needs to. Not laconic, but relaxed most of the time. An easy smile and a cool head, until he feels the need to be firm. When Rawlins demands Ben send Rachel to the Kiowas if he wants to continue their partnership, there's no hint of doubt in Ben's resolve to just ignore him and return home.

As a supporting actor here, Murphy gets to be less clean-cut and polite in his role, and he goes with it. Where Ben keeps his inner steel and resolve buried until he needs it. Cash runs off anger, and it's always right at the surface, 0 to 60 in a heartbeat. Even when he's ostensibly relaxing at a get-together dinner between the Zacharys and Rawlins, there's a mean edge to how he interacts with the marriage-happy daughter of the Rawlins' clan. Less so around his family, but it feels like that's only because he can aim it outward, towards the broad category of "Indians." Once he perceives the object of his hatred as being in his own home, he wheels on Rachel fast.

The Naked Gun (2025)

Frank Drebin Junior (Liam Neeson) has to stop a rich techie dipshit (Danny Huston) from unleashing his deadly P.L.O.T. Device and bringing about the downfall of civilization. But Police Squad's in danger of being shut down for good - in no small part because of the shit Frank Jr. pulls - so he'll have to work fast, with the help of a murdered man's sister (Pamela Anderson.) 

It feels like this movie only came out 5 minutes ago, but it was already on one of the movie channels my dad gets through his satellite TV package last month. I missed the beginning - we came in during the dash cam footage of Frank's desperate search for a bathroom - but it isn't exactly a difficult story to follow. Though I was confused by the appearance of Daddy Owl during the chase sequence, but my dad had apparently watched an earlier showing and explained it before we risked life and limb cleaning his chimney. Which is nice. Would have hated to die without understanding that joke.

Neeson is basically playing the steely-eyed bad ass he's played routinely since Taken (17 years ago?!) He talks more, and the things he says are more ridiculous, but he says them in the same gravely tone. Which is fine, Leslie Nielsen played Drebin as being completely serious about what he was saying and doing. That's kind of the point, they don't see that they're doing anything funny at all. Nielsen mugged for the camera more, especially with all the trip and fall gags, which Neeson didn't really seem to do. Maybe his face just isn't built for that after 20 years of cinematic scowling. Our mothers did always warn out faces could freeze that way.

I thought Pamela Anderson showed some good comedic chops and timing, and she also committed. The jazz club bit caught me by complete surprise. It didn't exactly make me laugh, but I was impressed by how hard she sold it.

I did laugh a lot, though. Probably more than any other movie I've watched this year (sorry, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story!) and at a variety of things. There are a lot of good sight gags, a few cameos that work well - the Dave Batista one cracked in particular - and a few scenes where the joke keeps building to a great climax. The sequential confessions, and the self-driving, evil electric car, were my two favorites. 

I apologize for being vague, but I don't want to spoil them if you, dear reader, elect to watch this movie in the future. Which I think you ought to. The supporting cast don't get a lot to do, but Neeson and Anderson do good work as the focus of the film.

The Quiet American (1958)

Set in Saigon in the early 1950s, it revolves around Fowler (Michael Redgrave), a middle-aged British journalist, his girlfriend Phuong (Giorgia Moll), and a young American that abruptly enters their lives (Audie Murphy.)

The American quickly falls for Phuong, is convinced he loves her and wants to marry her, but thinks it wouldn't be "fair" to make a play for her without informing Fowler. So he catches a flight, then drives through Communist-held roads at night to an outpost the French military brought journalists to, all so he can tell Fowler (and deliver a telegram.) He made it by borrowing a Red Cross jeep, confident that, of course, no one would shoot at a Red Cross jeep.

So as the American woos Phuong, Fowler steeps in bitterness that he's going to lose her one way or another. He's been promoted, but it requires moving back to London. His wife will not grant him a divorce. It's against her religion, and besides, he's waited so late in life she wouldn't be able to find anyone else at this stage, so fuck him, the selfish bastard (paraphrasing.)

My dad loaned me a book - I haven't read at the time I'm writing this - that apparently discusses government interference in the making of this movie, which resulted in more focus on the love triangle than the political aspects. Although, because it's framed from Fowler's point of view, we don't see much of the courting between Phuong and Pyle. So the romance is still almost in the background. Unlike in the book, Murphy isn't playing a CIA agent. He's an idealist, a believer in the idea the U.S. can help bring democracy and self-determination and security. In the same way that "uninvolved" is a word that comes up repeatedly with Fowler, usually in describing himself, "secure" is a word Pyle uses frequently. He wants Phuong to be able to feel secure and have a future, preferably with him.

There's not much focus on Phuong as an actual character. Pyle and Fowler have entire conversations about her, while she's in the room, as though she's not there. Pyle may actually love her, though, again, the lack of time they spend together on screen makes it seem more like she's a charity case. Someone he's going to save. Phuong tells Fowler that Pyle told her he loved her, was willing to let himself love her, unlike Fowler. Who knows if that was legit, but she believed it, for what that's worth. Fowler is using her as an escape from a life back in England he doesn't want. A solution to a mid-life crisis, that also keeps his apartment tidy. I thought she'd learn his duplicity from the letter Fowler's wife sent, because it would turn out Phuong's English had progressed far beyond what Fowler believed (Pyle was apparently working on it with her.) Instead her sister read the letter for her, which I guess could be a part of the safety net of family in the culture that Fowler didn't account for (but certainly should have expected, the sister was a presence he was well used to by then.)

But neither man really understands her, too caught up in their own visions. Pyle was shocked to learn Phuong was once a girl that you could pay to have dinner and dance with you if you went to a certain restaurant. It's something he needs to "save" her from, not recognizing that for Phuong, it was a way to make a living, to survive from day-to-day. Not something that she's ashamed of, just a necessity of her life. But he can't see outside his own upbringing and culture.

(This is a larger issue for Pyle, as he keeps pounding on the notion of "natural democracy" for the country, not recognizing most people in the country are more focused on keeping a roof over their head or food on their table, and don't have time to worry about what type of government controls the country.)

But Fowler treats her like a child. When Pyle tries to explain his feelings, with Fowler translating whatever Phuong can't follow in English into French - he says she and her people have no concept of "future." At least not the way Pyle means it, where he wants to give her a more secure future. Fowler attributes it to her being focused on that day-to-day necessities, but when he asks Phuong if she'd prefer to leave him and go somewhere else, she replies "never." Which, as Pyle notes, suggests she has some conception of the future after all. But that's not what Fowler wants from her. She cleans up after him, makes him feel smart, makes him feel like he's more than a drunken, cynical reporter running from his responsibilities. She's a crutch, but it only works like that as long as he can keep things as is.

If Pyle's guilty of falling into the line of thinking that every country would be improved by being more like the United States (more accurately, the fantasy version of the U.S., where all the ugly history is swept under the rug) and applying it to Phuong, Fowler's guilty of old European colonialist thinking, where Phuong is a resource best controlled and managed by him, because she can't take care of herself. That he benefits immensely is, of course, just a coincidence. 

I'm only a little ways into Graham Greene's book, but based on the introduction, Murphy's version of Pyle is pretty close to how Greene apparently saw Americans. That you can't hate them because they're 'innocent,' where innocent really stands for "ignorant." Murphy's version of the American is quick to introduce himself or speak with anyone about what he wants or hopes for. He's soft-spoken and polite, eager in an open, almost childish way. (Although the description of him as "quiet" in the book is meant to be a joke, or ironic. The only quiet American is a dead one, apparently.) 

He won't leave an injured man behind, even if that man tells him to. If asked for a cigarette, he'll offer the remainder of the pack. He's got a carton still at home, after all. He's generally polite, and talks a lot about being "fair," although that's based on his definition, and Fowler would no doubt feel what Pyle saw as fair was already tilted in his favor. He thinks capitalism's going to be a big help for the Vietnamese, to the point he's importing a bunch of plastic so they can manufacture toys and masks for Chinese New Year.

In the Michael Caine/Brendan Fraser version, and I assume the book, that's a cover for him bringing in plastique to be used in bombings. Here, that's what Fowler is led to believe is happening, and while he might find it appalling, he ultimately gets "involved", i.e, consigns Pyle to death, for a more personal reason. And it turns out he's been fooled. Pyle was what he appeared to be, and if he was indeed ignorant of the forces and cultures he was putting himself in the middle of, too blinded by his belief he could help people just by his good intentions, Fowler was no less a dope. For all his affected wisdom and experience, he got used by people he never suspected of ulterior motives.

Redgrave's version of Fowler isn't so old as Michael Caine's but he's more pitiful. Looks shabbier, looks more worn down and ragged. It seems as though he's already fallen a long time before the end of the film, when he's really left with nothing. My dad was trying to figure out why the French detective was, in-story, going to such pains to lay out all Fowler's mistakes, even taking him to see Phuong so Fowler could manage one final, spectacular faceplant. He was unconvinced by my French vs. British "national rivalry" theory. Nor was he impressed with my theory the detective has the intelligence resources to know Phuong's no longer available to Fowler, and dislikes the man enough to want to watch this last flameout up close and personal. To be fair, the detective doesn't look like he's enjoying watching Fowler humiliate himself, but he wouldn't be the first guy to enjoy a present more as a hypothetical than a reality.

Arrowhead (1953)

Ed Bannon (Charlton Heston) is a civilian scout for the cavalry. He spent a few years as a child living with a group of Apache, which left him both well aware of their beliefs and tactics, but also deeply distrustful of them, to the extent it tips into hate.

Certainly, most of the soldiers in the cavalry units he works with think so, especially when he kills three men who were supposed to escort the cavalry to arrange a peaceful meeting between the cavalry and their tribe, and then that tribe attacks the unit on the way back to the fort, killing the commanding officer. Bannon is convinced the talk of treaty was a sham especially when he hears Toriano (Jack Palance), who Bannon was raised with during that stretch with the Apache, is on his way back from a school in the East. 

I mean, I'm sure any talk of peace was a sham, but I expect the U.S. government to be the ones failing to live up to the terms of the agreement, based on, well, this country's entire history. 

Everyone keeps telling him it'll be fine. The guy who runs the Wells Fargo station is blood brothers with Toriano, gave his son the middle name "Toriano," he's sure it'll be fine. Captain North (Brian Keith), in command after the colonel's death, has orders to make the peace happen, and keeps throwing Bannon in the guardhouse when he shadows Toriano. Nita (Katy Jurado), who handles Bannon's laundry and fools around with him (except when he's mooning over a white lady at the fort North also fancies) will listen to Bannon's theories, but she and her brother (who are each half-Apache) both seem to feel there'll be peace, too.

Of course they're wrong. Toriano is trying to play the prophesied invincible warrior who will come from the East to destroy the white-eyes. He leads a series of raids (we just see a few burned out buildings), then there's an offer to meet and discuss peace. Which North accepts, resulting in his walking into a very shitty trap.

(Seriously, it's the dumbest trap. Toriano has guys ahead and behind North's unit, then just lets the cavalry scramble into the trees at the base of a bluff without even trying to stop them, then just sends waves at them. I thought for sure he had guys waiting in the woods, or positioned atop the bluff, that he'd learned well back East how the Army worked and was using it to run them into the jaws of an ambush. Nope.)

There could have been something to this movie. That Bannon's experiences have so tainted his view that he needs the Apache to be untrustworthy killers, so he applies pressure, causes trouble, hounds Toriano and (figuratively) poisons the well until violence does erupt. And that violence gets Apache and soldiers alike killed, including Bannon's one friend, and Nita's brother, leading to her trying to knife Bannon. And Bannon in his hatred, insists she'll be imprisoned for a long time, apparently anathema to Apache (which he knows), and she kills herself rather than endure it. And the violence climaxes with Bannon in a fight to the death against the man who was once his brother.

But that's not how it plays out, not that I would expect it from a Western from the '50s. Bannon eventually reveals the circumstances under which he left (escaped?), and that he was hounded after that. Every place he started to build a life, the Apache catch up and destroy. So he decided he destroy them first, and helping the Army was the best way he saw to do it. So actually, his hatred is self-defense!

At no point is Palance subtle about the notion he has plans. He always has that intense look, and when he's dressed in a suit and tie, looks deeply uncomfortable, like he's about to crawl out of his skin. He's so happy to whip off his hat to show he didn't let his hair get cut short like the whites wear it while he was back East. Nita turns out to have been a mole all along, trying to get info about the Army through Bannon, and always despised him. The apparently loyal Army Apache scout turns out to have been on Toriano's side all along as well. The guys set to meet the cavalry at the beginning were hiding war paint under their hair, so obviously it was a trap.

On the one hand, the notion that pushing people into your schools or your military is no way to make them love you is solid. But in the movie, it basically means the Apache are a monolithic unit, all of them suspect. So Bannon was right about everything, everyone else that believed there could be peace was wrong, or a sucker. It's not helped that Heston plays Bannon as a complete dickhead. The fact most of the soldiers taunt him about being a white Apache, or blame him for violence, along with his reveal of how long he's been running (which comes when he's drunk and falling apart) are supposed to explain it. A defense mechanism to keep people at arm's length so their words don't hurt, but watching the movie, the back third feels like it's saying, "worst guy you know has a point."

Overdue Movie Reviews #5 - Clue (1985)

A host of colorful characters are invited to an isolated manor, where they come face-to-face with the man that is blackmailing all of them. That man shortly turns up dead, and the guests, each using an alias, the butler Wadsworth (Tim Curry), and the maid Yvette, scramble about, trying to figure out who the murderer is, and how more dead bodies keep turning up, while also keeping anyone from outside the manor figuring out what's happening.

For the purposes of this, I selected the option on the DVD to play one of the three endings at random, rather than all three. Might as well simulate the '80s experience, though I can't figure what it would have been like to go see this movie, then talk about it with someone else and find out they saw an entirely different solution to the crime.

I got the ending where Wadsworth is actually the blackmailer, a reveal Curry delivers with a delightfully smug charm, which is appropriate given Curry is the one who holds the movie together. He can play the adult in the room, who moves things along when the guests are descending into panic. But he can also turn up the manic energy when needed, driving the guests into a frenzy, like during his lengthy explanation of the series of events that have taken place. He sprints from room to room, pretending to be one or the other of them, forcing them to either chase him, or at times being chased by him.

The part where he uses Mr. Green (Michael McKean) as a proxy for Mr. Boddy (I love that the victim's name is "body"), shoving him on the floor, then hauling him up so that Green can scream, 'Will you stop that?!', only for Curry to reply with a drawn-out 'Nooo,' then shove Green headfirst into the bathroom.

Madeline Kahn as Mrs. White is a delight, especially the comment comparing husbands to Kleenex and 'flies are where men are most vulnerable.' The bit where the guests try to conceal the fact there are dead bodies everywhere from the cop, by either playing them off as drunk or pretending to make out with them is made even better by Wadsworth not realizing what they did and being confused at how chill the cop is ('It's a free country. I didn't know it was that free.') It sells the haphazard nature of what they managed, and how disorganized everything has become. This isn't a well-oiled group of sleuths out to solve a mystery, it's a bunch of frightened idiots trying to stay out of jail.

Likewise, the scene where the guests discover splitting up resulted in three more people are dead is well-played. They can't even muster up the energy to be frightened, instead moving silently en masse, confirming one corpse before shuffling wearily to the next. They might as well be in a line at the DMV. Next. *shuffle two steps* Next. It works both as a sign of how exhausted they've become, the fear of death or exposure can't even produce adrenaline now, and gives the audience a breather to take stock and reset. We can take in what's happened at the same time as them, where things stand, and whether we have any clue what's going on before Wadsworth dives into his explanation.

Just a very funny movie, lots of good lines and gags, and the mystery is really secondary to all that. Like a group of friends are actually playing the game, but at least a couple of them are drunk or just not taking it seriously and messing around for a laugh. 

Sirocco (1951)

Set in Damascus in 1925, the French are trying to assert control over Syria, and the Syrians are, as you would expect resisting. A French officer, Colonel Feroud (Lee J. Cobb) is trying to negotiate a peace with the rebel forces, while also searching for the one responsible for smuggling weapons into the country.

Among his half-dozen or so prime suspects, all men who deal in various goods, is one Harry Smith (Humphrey Bogart.) Smith is, in fact, the one Feroud wants, but for reasons besides the gun-running. Feroud is smitten with Violette (Marta Toren), but she also catches Smith's eye. And while Smith's attempts to charm her by purchasing a dancer's bracelet and having it "returned" to Violette, fails to impress, there is one advantage he has over Feroud. Violette hates Damascus, and while Feroud would never help her leave, and is too hamstrung by both is respect for the rules and his position in an invading army to give her the life she wants, Smith could certainly get her to Cairo or Constantinople, for a price. 

Cobb plays Feroud as a man of high ideals (and I'd say more than a little repressed anger), but woefully out of his depth with Violette. He dresses in his drab uniform while she wears fine dresses (and pitches a fit if said dress gets damaged in a bombing.) He speaks in a low tone while trying to order something for their dinner, only to be told the restaurant is out of that dish, to Violette's annoyance. Especially when Mr. Harry Smith sits across the room, dining on a filet mignon made from a steak he brought in himself.

Toren gives Violette on one hand, an experienced air of a woman who has seen a lot, or at least seen a lot of men fall at her feet. She's willing to play the games men ask in exchange for what she wants, but she's not shy about letting it be known when she has to upper hand. But sometimes the confidence crosses into a frail petulance, where she throws tantrums or turns cruel when not getting what she wants. Which might be expected of someone used to men falling over themselves to impress her.

Bogart is about what you would expect. The quick remarks, the world-weary expression, the cynicism. But the greed and self-interest are more naked than usual. This is Rick Blaine in Casablanca if he wasn't hiding a shattered idealist behind a cynical facade. The trenchcoat doesn't fit well on him, it's rumpled and swallows him up. He's been chasing the money for long, it's eaten away at him. He's not subtle with his plays for Violette's attention - she even tells him his mistake is that he tries too hard - or that his help or loyalty comes at a cost. People come to him with sob stories, and he names a price. They either meet it, or get shown the door.

Of course, that means when things turn against him, Harry has no one to rely on. He abandons Violette the moment things get hairy, but finds that any help he's going to receive, comes with a price. In contrast, when Feroud uses Smith to help him march into the lion's den, still hoping to broker peace, his comrades are determined to get him back, to the point of bribery being an acceptable price. And in the end, Feroud's idealism and commitment to his principles may have actually paid off, at least for one day.

Smith, on the other hand, tries to do the right thing for once, and it does not pay off. Which is a heck of a message, because it seems to say, if you've been an unscrupulous person for most of your life, you can't change your stripes. The world will not allow it, and you'll be struck down.

Foul Play (1978)

Gloria (Goldie Hawn), in an attempt to break out of a rut, picks up a man whose car broke down. They make plans to meet at a movie later that night, and he leaves his cigarettes with her before leaving. When he shows up at the movies, late, he dies, after warning her to 'beware the dwarf.' When Gloria alerts the theater manager that there's a dead man in the audience, the body is missing.

Soon, she finds herself pursued by a man with a scar, an albino, and a black limo. People keep dying around her, then vanishing when the police show up. Despite Gloria's inability to describe the events in a way that doesn't make her sound like she's either stoned or a ditz (Hawn does a very good job playing someone trying to convince people she's sincere and failing utterly), she eventually convinces Lieutenant Carlson (Chevy Chase) that she really is caught up in something, though his partner (played by Brian Dennehy) remains skeptical.

The "something" turns out to be an assassination, although the movie isn't concerned with a mystery, so there's not much progress in terms of the characters figuring that out. They're ultimately told who the target is once the bad guys capture them. The photographs that would give away the target, hidden in the cigarette pack, get burned by Hawn's landlord (Burgess Meredith) to keep his pet python from eating the smokes. No one ever actually finds the photos, which is kind of nuts.

Also, when the pack burns up in the fireplace, the camera lingers on the python, who is watching and snickers. That is what the captions said, "snickers." Why does the snake think that's funny? I have no idea.

It's not a thriller, with Hawn being pursued for reasons she can't understand, by people no one can find, because two of her escapes involve her meeting up a twitchy, desperately horny conductor played by Dudley Moore (it feels like Mike Myers based a lot of Austin Powers on this guy) and embarrassing him terribly. Those scenes kind of swing between sad, creepy, or funny, depending on what second you're watching.

Hawn and Chase don't have much romantic chemistry - no doubt difficult to fit into the picture with Chase's ego taking up so much space - though the movie keeps trying to impress us that it exists. Mostly via phone conversations between Hawn and her coworker friend at the library, who is constantly encouraging her to beware of men with only one thing on their mind, and to carry a weapon (she loans out hers, and they do enable Hawn to escape once when she's abducted.) The movie probably should have leaned into the fact Chase is very good playing a guy who thinks he is terribly clever and charming, but who most people found obnoxious or tedious. It's when he's trying to be cool and fails - like when he warns Hawn to be careful getting aboard his houseboat because the walkway is slick, then promptly falls in the water - that he's at his best.

It's longer than it needs to be - there's a long stretch where Chase and Hawn are trying to get across San Francisco to stop the assassination and have to keep getting new cars because Chevy Chase is apparently a terrible driver and keeps wrecking their rides - but Hawn's good in this, I always like seeing Burgess Meredith, and there are a couple of funny side gags (Hawn trying desperately to get the attention of two old ladies playing Scrabble, one scoring big spelling out profanities.)

Who's Harry Crumb? (1989)

When a young heiress is kidnapped, her wealthy father turns to Crumb & Crumb for a private investigator. And lucky him, Harry Crumb (John Candy) just happens to be available to take the case! Except, well, there's a saying, the first generation builds the company, the second maintains it, and the third ruins it? Harry's a third generation Crumb in the P.I. biz.

Crumb is not quite Inspector Gadget. Sometimes he demonstrates a pretty good memory, though at other times, he will misuse a word off his word-a-day calendar, or somehow misremember the word off the calendar. He knows all sorts of random trivia about fly fishing or classic automobiles, but can't actually read lips worth a damn. His ridiculous disguises somehow work, but he apparently never looks at the clandestine photographs the disguises give him chances to take before showing them to anyone.

So maybe it's a case of having book learning, but limited ability at practical application. Except the guy has been working as an investigator for a while, so that seems more like incompetence. He really does thwart the scheme by almost a fluke of circumstance. The circumstance being there are two, independent, plots to get money out of Mr. Downing. Crumb has one set of culprits figured out, but, because he's unaware there are two plots, tied to the wrong one.

Jeffrey Jones plays Crumb's boss with as a mixture of conniving shitheel, and a whipped lickspittle. His motivations do at least explain why he would assign such a boob as Harry Crumb to work on the case of such a wealthy client. Crumb ends up with a sidekick in Downing's younger daughter (played by Shawnee Smith), and there's a decent friendship built between her and Crumb. Candy's ability to play a bumbling, but nonetheless kind and well-meaning person cuts through a teenager's suspicion of people trying to be charming, and they bond over both feeling like they don't measure up in their parents' eyes. 

Those three carry the film, the rest of the cast is not given a chance to be much more than furniture. The kidnapped daughter spends her few scenes in a cage, looking terrified of the creepy weirdo that abducted her, who spends those few scenes being creepy and brandishing a cattle prod. There's a police lieutenant around to be hostile and contemptuous of Harry, but she's there just enough to be proven wrong when it really counts. Annie Potts plays Downing's new wife, and she's very good at making her seem like a horrible person with no morals, but I could not see how she had so much power over all these guys. Even when she's trying to be alluring or pleasant, it just comes off as sleazy. Love is blind.

There are some good random jokes in there. The one about Crumb's fondness for foreign languages got a laugh. I rolled my eyes at the first mention of his 'black belt in akido, with the boots to match,' but I have to give it credit, they paid that off at the end. Jones trying to protect his prized, fossilized dinosaur egg from Crumb earned a couple of snorts. As an '80s comedy goes, it beat the hell out of Throw Momma from the Train.

Overdue Movie Reviews #4 - Bandidas (2006)

I hesitate to call this "overdue", but I've had it for a while, so here we are. Really, I thought I had reviewed it, but I can't find the post searching via title or primary actresses. Maria (Penelope Cruz) is the daughter of a poor farmer with a loan on his farm from a Mexican bank owned by Sara's (Salma Hayek) father. Or, that's how it was. The bank is seized by an agent (Dwight Yoakum) of a U.S. bank, after he poisons Sara's father. By that time he and his guys have already killed Maria's father, not to mention most of the other subsistence farmers under the auspices of failing to pay off their loans (and the exorbitant interest rates), as part of a railroad-related land grab.

Essentially, if this were Once Upon a Time in the West, Yoakum is playing Henry Fonda's character, which is not a comparison that does Yoakum any favors, but it's the one I thought of. Although his twangy delivery reminds me of Gary Oldman in The Fifth Element (Luc Besson's got a writer credit for this film), and Yoakum does have some of that same self-assured, shit-eating salesman to his performance, minus the unhinged energy Oldman brought to that role.

Independent of each other, Maria and Sara decide to strike back by robbing the now American-controlled banks. Except they're both incompetent at it. Fortunately, the local priest took confession from a retired bank robber - 37 banks, never caught! - and they eventually get the training montage that establishes Maria is a natural with a pistol, but Sara couldn't hit the broad side of a barn because she starts hiccuping when she gets nervous. She is, however, good with knives and they successfully rob several banks.

At a certain point, the railroad tycoon - who is, of course, completely unaware of Yoakum's skullduggery, and aghast when he learns during the climax, sure, pull the other one, it plays "Yankee Doodle" - asks his future son-in-law (Steve Zahn), the 19th Century equivalent of a forensic scientist, to go down and poke around. Zahn quickly figures out Sara's father was murdered, and just as quickly gets taken hostage by the "bandidas", then starts helping them as security on the banks tightens. Which is the point when it shifts more to a heist movie, as the ladies use him to get inside banks that are looking for two women, not a young married couple, or a widow and her father.

It's a little ridiculous both women seem really into Zahn, unless you look at it as a way in which they're competing, as there's a fair amount of class tension between Maria, who dresses plainly, isn't up on global politics or finance and sometimes struggles to win tic-tac-toe against her (admittedly clever) horse, and Sara, who is just back from studying in Europe and is skilled at ice skating and archery. Sara is the one who understands if the gold is transported into the U.S., the money in the Mexican banks is worthless paper, while Maria understands how difficult life is for the people that are rallying around them, passing information, helping them escape. In the same way the stuff about gold making the paper money worth anything is just talk to Maria, the lives of most people in Mexico is just something Sara was vaguely aware of, if that. She talks about herself as being European. So Sara lost her dad, but Maria lost everything except her horse.

(I did think it was funny, during their initial meeting, Sara tells Yoakum that in Europe, 'we have learned to be wary of the American definition of friendship.' Who do you think the U.S. learned, "here's some booze, and while you're drinking, we'll take everything you have at gunpoint," from? Just because we do it better - as in, more ruthlessly - is no reason to get salty.)

Hayek and Cruz play off each other well, in the times where things go well and they're having fun, and when they get frustrated and start fighting (sometimes literally.) Zahn can easily play a strait-laced goober to be mostly pushed around by the force of their personalities, but with enough integrity to occasionally bust through the sniping about who kisses better and get them to focus.

The movie sets up certain things quietly, to pay off later - Sara's ice skating is established via one shot of a photograph on the wall of her father's office, the intelligence of Maria's horse is set up by the tic-tac-toe game at the beginning - during the last big bank heist. There's a funny bit where Zahn is crawling along a rope to get into a building and as Maria's horse gets distracted, the rope begins to sag, dropping him towards one of the guards. The guard's tuning a banjo, and as the rope sinks lower, the plucking gets more out of tune, only to start sounding better as the horse resumes its post and the rope draws taut.

It's not reaching for any great heights, but the movie knows what it wants to do, sets up what's needed to get started and then pretty much gets to it, letting the actors have some fun with their roles. 

The Killer Elite (1975)

Mike (James Caan) and George (Robert Duvall) work for a private company that handles, among other things, protection of people governments might want eliminated. George proves a turncoat, and after killing a client, shoots Mike in the knee and elbow to encourage him to retire.

Mike's not willing to go quiet like that, and much of the first hour is him trying to rehab. Adjusting to the metal brace around his arm that helps stabilize it. Rebuilding strength in the leg, learning how to adjust to the change in balance as he moves or fights.

Mike gets an opportunity to get back in action when there's an attempt on the life of Yuen Chung (Mako) almost as soon as he gets off the plane. By ninjas, no less, albeit in plainclothes. The stereotypical ninja garb doesn't come until the climactic fight scene aboard a derelict ship. (To their credit, the ninjas at least wear outfits that blend in with the ship's paint job, not that it helps.) Hedging their bets, whoever is after Chung also hired George, and Mike is tasked to protect Chung until he leaves the country.

Mike brings in two guys, Mac (Burt Young) and Miller (Bo Hopkins.) Mac runs a cab company and thinks Mike going back to this work is a bad idea, while Miller's a gun nut with an itchy trigger finger, but that's who Mike wanted, so that's who he gets. It's hard for me not to see Burt Young and just picture him as Rocky Balboa's loudmouth brother-in-law, but he plays Mac much quieter. Head down and shoulders slouched. Not defeated - he doesn't let Miller push him around - but tired. Like he knows this is all a bad idea, but maybe he can keep his friend alive.

Broadly, the film is about how dirty and messy all this political squabbling is. How temporary alliances are, how easily people turn on others. The CIA hires the company to protect Chung (the CIA also accounts for 11% of the company's annual revenue), but make it clear they just don't want him dying on American soil. Once he's out of the country, they don't care. Or more accurately, the CIA guy's attitude suggests they'll probably try to kill Chung, once he's far enough away they have deniability.

George changed sides for money. Mike's boss, Cap, bemoans that the world belongs to men like George, and that heroes are on the way out. Then turns out to be a traitor, but his boss doesn't really care beyond it might affect the company's bottom line. He was ready to throw Mike away when he assumed there was no coming back from the injuries, but now that Mike's proven otherwise, well, would he like Cap's job?

Mike seems disgusted by all this, but also ridicules Chung's idealism. When the leader of the ninja challenges Chung to a swordfight, Chung accepts rather than let Mike just shoot the guy. He says if he loses, he's not the man his country needs. There's probably a fair point that his value to his nation lies in something other than his facility with a blade, but I don't think that's the argument Mike's making. He just thinks it's dumb to risk your life over things like national pride, in a world where loyalty is bought and sold so easily.

Which makes it seem like everything is on a personal level for Mike. The politics don't matter, the money doesn't matter. But he doesn't really seem to be out for vengeance. He decks Miller when Miller gets George, but I don't think it's because he wanted more info. George already told who hired him, whether Mike believed it or not. Unless he wanted to understand why George let him live, but again, I think George explained that he felt enough camaraderie to not want to kill Mike. Maybe he's mad he couldn't beat George personally, but he put together the team that beat George, out of guys the company would never have used. That ought to count for something, even if Mike doesn't seem to understand the people he chose.

He's constantly frustrated Miller is so quick to shoot, so casual brandishing his guns in public. Except Cap described Miller as nuts when Mike mentioned him, and Miller repeated it when Mike approached him. Then Mike does the shocked Pikachu face when Miller turns out to be trigger happy. It's like the only criteria Mike used in picking his team was guys on the outs with the company.

The big fight aboard the ship is kind of a mess. All these ninjas, just charging at guys with guns and getting shot up in slow-motion. Mac at one point just picks a ninja up, carries him to the railing, and dumps him over the side like a sack of garbage. Maybe there was meant to be contrast between the code of these men and guys like Mike and George, but the film didn't go into enough depth about the ninjas to really sell that notion. It feels like there's gotta be some thematic reason for using them, but I can't see it.

Mortal Kombat (2021)

I would like to say, at the start, I didn't suggest Alex spend $3.79 renting this movie off Amazon Prime. All I did was ask if he'd seen that there was a new Mortal Kombat movie coming out and, once we got past him not remembering who Karl Urban ('cause he's playing Johnny Cage in the upcoming movie) is, mentioning it's Mortal Kombat II, and I didn't even know there'd been a first movie (assuming it wasn't being set up as a sequel to the '90s movie with Christopher Lambert.) At which point Alex insisted we watch this, and that's how I spent the hours of 2-4 a.m. two Fridays ago.

Once it started, I did vaguely recall reading something about a Mortal Kombat movie got everything backwards as far as Sub-Zero and Scorpion's history. Which I guess was referring to how this starts with Sub-Zero (still just Bi-Han at this time, played by Joe Taslim) attacking a famous ninja's home in an attempt to wipe out the guy's bloodline. Because prophecy, or "for the Lin Kuei," which he says a couple of times without explaining who or what that is. But he missed a baby. Can't go giving yourself a codename if you're going to make rookie mistakes! Then it jumps to the present, to focus on a fading MMA fighter, Cole Young (Lewis Tan), who's unaware he's the most recent member of the ninja's bloodline. 

This is really a "getting the team together" movie. The actual tournament to keep "Earthrealm" from being invaded by "Outworld" starts in a month, and the movie never gets that far. Earth's side is still trying to find its fighters, while Shang Tsung (Chin Han) has decided the easiest way to win is make sure Earth doesn't have any fighters to participate. Apparently it's fine if all their would-be champions just happen to get brutally murdered before the tournament begins, and even if it wasn't, the "Elder Gods" are apparently too lazy to get off their asses and dish out punishment.

Wow, those in authority unwilling to uphold their responsibilities? The gods really did create us in their image.

So it ends up being the few fighters that have unlocked their "arcana" - Liu Kang (Ludi Lin) and Kung Lao (Max Huang) - trying to both train the others and keep them alive until the tournament. So it's a lot of Cole trying to figure out what drives him, or Jax (Mehcad Brooks) trying to adapt to losing his arms, or Sonya (Jessica McNamee) coming to grips with the fact she's not considered a champion, so even though she seems the most raring and ready-to-go, she can't fight. And then there's Kano, who Josh Lawson plays as a loud-mouthed, unscrupulous dick all the other characters despise. Which means he's the best part of the movie. He has a good delivery on a lot of his lines, and it's fun watching him get his ass kicked. Win-win.

I was curious if they were going to kill off Cole's wife and daughter, since they went to the trouble of showing they're a close family, and his daughter is actually the one in his corner during his bouts. Considering his ancestor lost his wife and one child, leaving him so vengeful he's spent centuries roaming the Netherealm, I figured they might go for history repeating itself. While the movie does tease that possibility, a lot, it never actually follows through. Which is fine. Different people, different era, different motivations.

It's kind of funny, for someone who hasn't really played a Mortal Kombat game since whichever one I had on the N64, to see Sub-Zero played as the Big Bad. Yes, Shang Tsung's his boss, and this is all his plan, but the story revolves around Cole and his ancestor, and Bi-Han's attempt to prevent the prophecy. He's the last of Shang Tsung's guys they actually beat, and it takes two of them. When Shang Tsung shows up spouting more threats, Raiden kind of casually zaps him back where he came from, which makes him look like a chump.

I'm sure Raiden is trying to push Earth's defenders by vocally doubting them, or by explaining all the things he can't do, but it does make him look kind of incompetent when the barrier he put up gets wrecked, his fighters start dying, and he's nowhere to be found. 

Throw Momma from the Train (1987)

Larry (Billy Crystal) is a writing teacher with notions of being a big-time author. Problem is, he can't get past, "the night was. . .", which suggests he really ought to find a better way to start his novel. He also can't get past the fact his ex-wife (Kate Mulgrew) is a best-selling writer, appearing on Oprah and fucking her gardener in his big house in Hawaii. "Her" as in Mulgrew's gardener, not that Mulgrew's character is fucking Oprah's gardener. Especially since Larry claims the book that made her a hit is actually his.

(The truth of that statement is never verified or debunked. I lean towards him being delusional, but also, "Hot Fire" is an incredibly stupid title for a book.)

Owen (Danny DeVito) is one of Larry's students. He lives with his mother (Anne Ramsey), who belittles Owen in every way possible, whenever she's not barking orders at him (and sometimes while she is.) Owen wants to be a writer, and he's more successful getting something down on paper than Larry, but the results are. . .woof.

Larry doesn't want much to do with Owen, but one night does explain some things he thinks Owen's attempts at murder mysteries are lacking. Like motives and alibis and names. Upon Larry's advice to watch Hitchcock movies for inspiration, and after hearing Larry very publicly deride his ex-wife as a "slut", Owen gets the idea that he and Larry can pull a Strangers on a Train. Owen flies to Hawaii to kill Larry's ex-wife, and expects Larry to reciprocate by killing Owen's mother.

The movie takes a while to get to the killing, since it's trying to establish how bitter Larry is, and how awkward and lonely Owen is. Plus, how much each of them blame a woman for their lot in life. Larry's got a fellow teacher (played by Kim Greist) that's interested in him, but he keeps ignoring her or getting distracted stewing over his ex's success.

It feels like a big chunk of the movie is Larry hiding at Owen's house (because Owen didn't warn him, Larry doesn't have an alibi) though it's probably only the last third or so. Owen's trying to get Larry to fulfill his half of the "criss-cross", and that's probably when the movie comes closest to being funny. Owen panics because Momma's mad and smacks Larry with a frying pan. Larry starts driving really fast in an attempt to scare Owen into agreeing to confess to the police and the car goes out of control.

The movie could probably have used more pitiful attempts on Momma's life, or Larry attempting to keep her from dying and getting hurt. Most of the time, Owen's too pitiable to laugh at, and Larry's anger is too steeped in resentment to be comical. Maybe if it were directed at himself, or if he was humiliated for how he acts when he lets the bitterness get to him, it would work better. Screaming in a public place about how his ex-wife is a slut when she isn't around and no one brought her up in the conversation but Larry is an opportunity to mock him or make him the butt of a joke, but the movie just kind of lets the thing hang there. I assume to set things up for when the cops question his students later, but you could still do that even if you use it to set up a gag initially.

Overdue Movie Reviews #3 - Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994)

When the Miami Dolphins' mascot goes missing right before the Super Bowl, there's only one man to call: Ace Ventura, pet detective (Jim Carrey.) Should he be the man one the case when the Dolphins' quarterback, Dan Marino (Dan Marino) is abducted as well? No, but the Dolphins are desperate to avoid decades of ineptitude.

Too bad, they're getting the ineptitude anyway (last playoff victory: December 30, 2000.)

I don't think I realized how much of this movie is Jim Carrey almost addressing the camera. Sometimes he's breaking the 4th wall, like when the owner of the dog he rescues at the beginning asks if he wants her to take his pants off, and he looks at us and says, "Gee, let me think." But a lot of times, it's just him doing Jim Carrey shit while looking into the camera. Almost like he's talking to his reflection, which would at least suggest Ace acts that ways because he's just like that, rather than for anyone around him.

But the movie is basically Jim Carrey doing Jim Carrey stuff for 90 minutes. I'd forgotten that it was during the scene where he's pretending to be committed that he finds the news article about the missing woman hiker, so I spent most of it thinking this was in the movie just to give Carrey an opportunity to act like a football player while wearing a tutu. Like, it wouldn't even end up being relevant to the plot. 

Really, that's a description better used for the fancy dinner party where he survives a shark attack. All it does is eliminate a suspect, not provide any clues as to the actual culprit. But Ace can act weird around high society types, eating fancy foods messily, and embarrass Courteney Cox's character by coming out of the bathroom in torn up clothes.

It's a humor barrage approach, Carrey constantly acting weird or childish and people reacting to it. The exaggerated walk, the goofy voices, pretending his butt has a mind of its own, which I definitely would have found bizarre when this movie came out. I can't remember if I thought it was funny. Probably, butts were funny to me back then. Heck, Alex still uses "Do NOT go in there," when he comes out of the bathroom, and we both crack up.

(Though, seriously, when he says that, I believe him.)

Some of it works, some of it doesn't. The part where he demonstrates the team official's death couldn't have been suicide because the soundproof glass sliding door had to be shut after he fell, by singing while sliding the door open and shut repeatedly cracks me up. The montage of him trying to check the Dolphins' '84 AFC Championship rings for a missing stone, too (encouraging one guy to punch him in the forehead so he can count the stone by the impression they left.)

But the plot hinges on an angry kicker getting a sex change operation to become a cop (using the identity of the missing hiker) as part of this scheme to take revenge on the Dolphins and Marino. The movie has one scene of Ace being horrified he, 'kissed a man.' You could argue (if you care to) the humor is in Ace's overreaction. Using a plunger on his face, burning his clothes in a trashcan and jumping crying into the shower. But given the scene at the end where Ace reveals Lt. Einhorn has a dick tucked back, and dozens of cops all freak out, I don't know. Doesn't seem great.

There's also that strange bit where Ace is sulking that he couldn't find a ring missing a stone, and when Cox's character suggests maybe the stone was from something else after all, he starts insulting her weight. The stuff about her dog not being happy at least felt on point for a character so concerned with animals, who is also feeling defensive. The ugly comments about someone who has been trying to help him, not really funny.

It is such a weird scheme. Finkel disappears, becomes a woman, and somehow rises to the rank of lieutenant in the Miami police, ensuring that when Marino goes missing, Finkel/Einhorn can control the investigation and make sure it never catches her? That seems like a lot of effort with low odds of paying off (there's no throwaway line the Finkel studied criminal justice while setting NCAA kicking records.) But the police station always seems to be full of cops to mock Ventura, so clearly they're not doing anything. Any basic level of competence could probably get a person promoted.

In the movie, the Dolphins lost the '84 Super Bowl because Finkel shanked a short field goal. In reality, the Dolphins lost that Super Bowl because Joe Montana lit their defense's ass up (final score: 38-16.) It's funny to envision Finkel sitting there, staring at the scoreboard and wondering how the hell he's taking the blame. "We were down 2 touchdowns when I missed that field goal!" "Shut up, kicker." (The Dolphins kicker actually made all 3 of his field goals in that Super Bowl.)

Bringing the albino pigeon back for a gag right at the end was a nice touch. Especially since it resulted in Ace beating the crap out of the Eagles' mascot. I don't know why he was embarrassed, the Dolphins' fans probably loved it. It was gonna end up the high point of the game after the Eagles finish crushing them. (Although the Eagles were deeply mediocre at this point in time.)

I like the bit where Einhorn's goon says, "Hey Marino, I'm throwing passes to a Dolphin!" then spikes the ball in the water in front of the Snowflake, the Dolphins' mascot. Not just because the Dolphin splashes the guy, but Marino makes this disappointed shake of the head which is probably supposed to be him not approving of animal mistreatment, but could easily be, "That was a terrible pass, do you play for the Jets?" 

Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3 (2023)

So, Nebula's (Karen Gillan) on the team now, while Gamora's (Zoe Saldana) alive but not on the team, because this Gamora didn't get free of Thanos until later or something related to all the time hijinks in Endgame, and Star-Lord's (Chris Pratt) being a mopey, depressed drunk about her not remembering him.

Then Adam Warlock showed up, and boy, I was not feeling great about this movie, given my noted antipathy for that character. He turns out to be kind of an idiot, and Nebula stabbed him, so that was a plus. But he's working for the High Evolutionary (siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh) who created him and Rocket, among others, and wants the latter back. And since Rocket's gravely injured and they can't give him medical treatment without a passkey the Evolutionary's got, the team has to go to the bad guy.

I was actually pretty excited for the break-in at the "Orgoscope", because who doesn't love a heist movie? Except it turns into a clusterfuck because this team is a mess. One issue I have with the movie is, Gunn dragged the "comedy" bits out too long. The part in the elevator, where Star-Lord's explaining his whole deal with Gamora to their hostage? Too long. The part in the family's living room once they get to Counter-Earth? Too long. Maybe Gunn's just trying to lighten things up from the sad flashbacks to Rocket's early years in a cage on the High Evolutionary's stupid ship, but, the movie's long enough as it is, and they're supposed to be dealing with a ticking clock of Rocket dying if they can't treat him. A little less of the Guardians being dumbasses isn't going to hurt things.

Not sure how I feel about all the Mantis (Pom Klementieff) and Drax (Dave Bautista) stuff. One calling the other an idiot, or the wiping memories, or Drax constantly lying to her. It wasn't funny, so much as kind of sad. But, then there's how Mantis sticks up for him against Nebula's harsh words, although maybe she was just sick of Nebula's attitude. And Drax does actually repeat the speech she gave him to tell Star-Lord, word-for-word, was kind of nice. So, it's mutual respect, but they're both incredibly bad at expressing it?

(Also, Drax is the only member of the team that doesn't hate himself? I'd never gotten self-loathing vibes off Groot. All the others, yes, absolutely, but not Groot.)

Also not sure about the suits the security guys were wearing. Points for going a different route, and it plays into the notion of the Orgoscope as a biological station, but maybe less human airbag, more bone armor, would have helped? At least give the suits the option to sprout defensive armor or spikes or something less, Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.

Good things. Cosmo! Cosmo got speaking lines! Cosmo is, a girl? OK, that's fine. Boy or girl, Cosmo is definitely a good dog! Given it kept coming up, I expected at some point one of the Guardians (probably Nebula) would order Kraglin to just tell Cosmo she's a good dog, or that stupid fin was getting shoved someplace extremely unpleasant. Was it too obvious a bit for James Gunn, or not obvious enough? We'll never know.

Chukwudi Iwuji as the High Evolutionary. I thought he brought a mixture of intelligence, arrogance, and childishness to the role. The, 'you win the crying contest,' line was just incredibly cruel, A+ delivery there, and made it so much more satisfying when Rocket ripped his face up. Granted, for someone Gamora tells us is a thousand times more powerful than Star-Lord, H.E. doesn't seem particularly competent. But power and competence aren't necessarily linked. He's become so fixated on how this one particular experiment (Rocket) not only went beyond what he "should" have been capable of, but has in a sense thwarted the Evolutionary's will by continuing to survive, that he gets tunnel vision.

He's a bored kid who knocks over the tower of blocks as soon as he loses interest. Everything he creates is just an experiment. Whatever he says about pursuing "perfection", there's no meaning or significance beyond how proving how smart he is. Which helps to distinguish him from Ego, who was also ultimately trying to cover the universe in his creations, but thought of it as his biological imperative. And I guess he pretended to care about Peter, maybe even did care when he thought their goals would align. Whereas the Evolutionary might have been impressed at Rocket's insight and intuition, but his interest was never anything more than curiosity (resentment?)

That said, it was ridiculous Rocket refuses to kill the Evolutionary because, 'he's a freaking Guardian of the Galaxy.' That didn't stop you from killing all of the Evolutionary's goons while listening to the Beastie Boys. I mean, maybe the human-looking goons survived. Drax just pinned that one guy upside-down to the wall via knife in the leg, but Nebula and Star-Lord were shooting people, and I didn't see them going back to pick those guys up during the evacuation. There certainly was no pulling of punches on the "Hellbeasts", who are, at the end of the day, creations of the H.E. like Rocket.

Much like Batman not running over the Joker in Dark Knight, I will never understand this notion that it's OK to kill the goon squads, but you can't kill the monster who's actually responsible for everything. If you're not going to go lethal at all, fine. That's great. Preserve life. Offer second chances. But if you're not gonna do that, Cut. Off. The. Head.

I'm not generally a big believer in Chris Pratt when he plays anything other than "idiot man-child," but the part where he's refusing to let Rocket die and he's sobbing through chest compressions, he really sold that scene. It was nice to see Gillan get to return to playing Nebula as the angrily competent one surrounded by idiots, much like she did in the first movie. It's a little different in that she actually cares about this group of idiots, something that wasn't true of Ronan and his "burn planets to ASH!" shtick, so she's a bit like a kindergarten teacher running on zero sleep and too much caffeine.

It's been a while since I watched the second one the whole way through, but I think I liked Vol. 3 more than Vol. 2 (the first one remains the best.) Maybe because it's not so intensely focused on Star-Lord's crap? This is one offers a chance for the entire cast to try and get something. Maybe closure with a rough past, or the courage to admit what they feel, or enough stability and confidence to make a change in their lives. How successful the movie is at these things depends on which character we're looking at (Groot didn't get a lot of time), but on the whole, at least there was an effort.

Once Upon a Time: The Films of Sergio Leone - Robert C. Cumbow

Cumbow goes through each of Leone's films in sequence, discussing plot, character relationships, camera angles and approaches, and how all that ties into various themes of ideas Leone is exploring. So in addition to comparing and contrasting A Fistful of Dollars to Kurosawa's Yojimbo, Cumbow discusses the repeated notion of threes in the film. The Baxters, the Rojos, "Joe" in the middle. Or the Rojos (3 brothers), the Baxters (mother-father-son), and the innocent civilians (Silvanito, the coffinmaker and the bellringer). 

There are a few things in those chapters where I can tell Cumbow missed something. In the chapter on A Fistful of Dollars, he wonders why, during the prisoner exchange, Ramon's guy doesn't simply gun down Silvanito when he emerges with a shotgun to defend Marisol's husband and child. Well, the answer is Joe pushes himself off the wall of the cantina to stand beside Silvanito, hand resting on his pistol in an obvious warning.

That said, I never realized prior to this book how incidental Eastwood's character really is to For a Few Dollars More. It's about Mortimer and Indio, and Monco is the man on the outside (which is kind of funny, considering he ended up being the man on the inside in he and Mortimer's attempt to trap Indio.)

I end up disagreeing with almost all of Cumbow's interpretations of Duck, You Sucker, and it's not even a case where I can say I see how he came to that conclusion, because I think he's just flat-out reading the material wrong. When Mallory, after Juan freed the political prisoners, describes him as a, 'grand hero of the revolution now,' Cumbow says he does so, 'rather earnestly.' Impolitely, that's bullshit. James Coburn is grinning like the Joker. He laughs at Juan's anger, pointing out he never said anything about there still being gold in the Bank of Mesa Verde. He only asked if Juan still wanted to get in. It's the payback to Juan shoving him back into the Revolution by tricking him into blowing up his boss.

Which is another error. Cumbow asks why, if Mallory says one revolution (meaning Ireland) was enough didn't he take up another profession? He did. He was looking for silver for Aschenbach, the German mining guy. He was out, and Juan, unwittingly, because he's more focused on the fact one of Huerta's captains got blown up, forced him back in. The Mesa Verde bank job is Mallory's revenge. 

That aside, the movie-specific chapters occupy half the book, the second half being devoted to an overview of the filmography as a whole. A chapter on the "moral geometry" of his films, as well as chapters about significant collaborators, Ennio Morricone for example, and another about the actors he used.

Actually, Morricone's music gets an entire chapter of its own. It's a difficult chapter, because I can't always "hear" the right piece in my head (I don't really know which ones go with which names), but the discussion of things like the importance of bells to Morricone's pieces, given their religious connotations, was intriguing.

Especially compared to how religion is often portrayed in Leone's films. There are often churches, or parts of churches, and they usually have bells. But rarely, if ever, are those churches being used as a house of worship. In For a Few Dollars More, Indio uses an abandoned church as his base, (and several of his gang announce their arrival by shooting its bell.) The monastery where Tuco's brother lives in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly has become a hospital for war wounded. In Once Upon a Time in America, religion (in this case a synagogue) is what draws people from their homes, allowing Max and Noodles to rob them. Bells might be significant for marking death or places of God, but God's rarely present in Leone's world. (Cumbow would probably disagree with that, given his entire chapter titled, "Sergio Leone, Catholic Filmmaker.")

There's also a chapter about recurring themes. So more delving into Leone's use of threes - which recurs across his films - but I found the bit about trains the most engrossing. The further into his films you get, the more trains factor heavily. Entirely absent in A Fistful of Dollars, used briefly by Mortimer at the beginning of For a Few Dollars More, and Tuco for his escape from the big Union sergeant in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

But in the later films, which move forward in time so that Duck, You Sucker and Once Upon a Time in America are firmly in the 20th Century, trains are critical and ubiquitous, symbols of eras defined by commerce. Once Upon a Time in the West is really all about trains and the changing of the times. The types of men who headlined Leone's early movies are on the way out, being pushed aside by businessmen planning to lay down rails that clearly mark our boundaries or paths. Cumbow notes it's similar to how American westerns about cattle ranching depict barbed wire, a constriction of the open lands (that we took from the Native Americans) and freedom (ditto.) Cumbow doesn't make that comment, I'm just editorializing.

It was a really informative book. I think my dad found a copy that was Cumbow's dissertation. It looks like it was done on a typewriter (and there's a couple of places I think he means to refer us back to earlier pages in the book, but forgot and left it blank), but it's well-written and aside from the occasional misread of a scene, feels very well-researched. 

'In the more primitive ethos of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, those who dig work for those with loaded guns. But in the incipient modern world of Once upon a Time in the West, the gunman is hired boy to the businessman. Money talks. Morton says it is the only weapon that can stop a gun - but he's right only to a point. He and McBain are both visionaries, albeit at opposite ends of the capitalistic scale, and both are doomed to fall victim to men with loaded guns. Nevertheless, it is their values that survive: both the town and the railroad continue to grow.'

Ten Seconds to Hell (1959)

6 German soldiers join in the efforts to defuse and dispose of unexploded bombs that litter Berlin after World War II. While they're able to maintain a confident front when stumping for better pay - on the basis of being experts - they all quickly agree to a deal where each man puts half his pay into a fund, and whoever is still alive after 3 months gets that money.

Besides the tension of wondering when each man while be called out to deal with the 1,000 pound British bombs they can't figure out how to disarm successfully, the conflict is between Eric Koertner (Jack Palance) and Karl Wirtz (Jeff Chandler). Koertner is the de facto leader of the group, while Wirtz is the one who suggests the bet in the first place. He's focused on winning, and his approach is to risk high stakes for big rewards. He goes out on the town, returning in nice coats with bottles of champagne, and tries unsuccessfully to woo the woman who owns the house they stay in.

Koertner is all nerves. It's that guy on the edge Palance played so often, but in this case, he's on the edge of falling to pieces rather than going ballistic. It feels like we never see him in anything other than his work clothes. He comes home and collapses into his bed. The housefrau clearly prefers him to Wirtz, who she tries to politely deflect until that doesn't work, but Koertner is too broken by the continued losses of his friends, by the knowledge his turn is lurking out there, everything. Even if he survives this bet, he can't see himself having any sort of a life. The strain has broken him, and he's almost holding on just to try and deny Wirtz his "win."

So it's a tense, personal film about how men try to cope with going out every day and facing death when other people are trying to move on. The British major they work for remarks, when explaining why he can't get any info about the fuse on those British bombs says, like most countries, England wanted to forget about the war the moment it ended. But it lingers, it still reaches out and claims lives, in more ways than one.

The movie does make a mistake with its unseen narrator at the beginning and end of the film. It feels like a way to not waste time introducing the characters, relegating that to panning from one to another while telling us things like that Tillig, 'only wished to laugh again.' But the narrator doesn't put any emotion into it, so it sounds like a telephone operator just reading off facts. It's an approach better suited to a documentary about bomb disposal than a movie about men crumbling under sustained pressure.