High Risk (1981)

After buying weapons from a cameo-ing Ernest Borgnine, a quartet of Americans (James Brolin, Bruce Davison, Cleavon Little and Chick Vennera) are flown into Colombia (Mexico) by a couple of ex Vietnam vets much more accustomed to this sort of affair. They plan to steal the ill-gotten gains of a local drug lord (James Coburn). Our protagonists’ main problem is that they are all perfectly unaccustomed to violence, have two brain cells going between all four of them (these are the kind of people who take a yappy family dog on their drug money heist) at the best of times, and may have read the word “planning” once on a toilet wall but were distracted by the drawing of a tit.

Still, after some misadventures and bad decisions our – ahem – heroes actually manage to steal a good five million dollars. Alas, two of them are captured very soon indeed (might have something to do with taking a whole night’s rest while actively hounded by the drug lord’s people; or not setting a watch), while the other two escape with most of the money but wake the interest of some local rebels/bandits/whatever under the demented leadership of one Mariano (Anthony Quinn, as we all know a member of every ethnicity on Earth that isn’t white in the US-sense of the word). Lots of tedious business ensues; Lindsay Wagner pops up.

Stewart Raffill’s High Risk is often listed as an action comedy, and if you’ve only ever read a plot synopsis or two and looked at the film posters, you may very well come to the conclusion that it indeed is one. Having actually gone through the experience of watching the film, I’ve rather come to the impression that the filmmakers were the same kind of bumbling incompetents their character turned out to be. There are a lot of elements in here that could by all rights only belong into a comedy - like the business with the dog, or Coburn having a little bull fight as an aperitif to a torture session. However, these are never presented in a way anyone would confuse with being funny or the film attempting to be funny. At the same time, it’s all just too dumb to be taken seriously by anyone.

And yet, the film presents its stupid ideas in so straight-faced a manner, it’s simply impossible to believe the filmmakers were seeing the joke there at all. Which is actually too bad, for an action comedy about people throwing themselves into the violent life without having the slightest capability or the lack of humanity needed for it bumbling through an action movie plot could be very funny indeed; in fact, given that this is about Americans doing the same in a Central American state, you might even turn this material into a pretty great political satire. None of this happens here, though. Instead, this is a film about a bunch of people who are very bad at what they do fighting against various groups of other people who aren’t terribly great at it either, full of dumb plot developments and underdevelopments, plotted so amateurishly, one might wish oneself back to the slickness of homegrown SOV horror movies.

The actors clearly have no idea what the hell this is supposed to be either: The lead quartet looks bored, Wagner mildly bemused, and Coburn just shrugs and shows his teeth while grimacing (his usual move when not wanting to apply any of his actual considerable talent). Quinn does of course chew the scenery like a madman, because what’s a guy to do when confronted with a project like this one?

Three Films Make A Post: A Western Classic in the tradition of 'Shane' and 'High Noon'.

Bite the Bullet (1975): This Western (not at all in the tradition of Shane and High Noon, whatever the taglines said) by Richard Brooks concerns an early 20th Century horse race across the Southwest of the USA. It’s a film certainly interested in the adventure, and the physical toll these adventures take, but at its core, the film does very much treat its race as a way to explore the nature of the USA, the divisions of class and race, the way crass commercialism can turn into acts of quiet heroism, the vagaries of love on an aging cowboy’s wages, and the way people of a certain age drag their pasts around with them. With Gene Hackman, James Coburn, Candice Bergen, Ben Johnson, Jan-Micheal Vincent and so on, it has a cast that helps Brooks turn something that could be a bit too didactic for its own good into something at once lively and epic.

Rancho Deluxe (1975): Frank Perry’s Rancho Deluxe, made in the same year, seems also very interested in the question of America. But unlike the Brooks film, it also has an anarchic quality to it and quite a few jokes, good, bad, and strange to make, so it never quite seems to come to an argument, and certainly no conclusion, except that sex and nudity are good (and pretty funny), rich people suck (in a very non-sexual manner), and that there’s something to be said for having a very peculiar sense of humour. And everything’s better with Jeff Bridges and Harry Dean Stanton, of course.

Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw (1976): Keeping with the decade, this AIP production directed by Mark L. Lester does its best to transfer the kind of Bonnie and Clyde doomed gangster plot that’s more at home in the depression era US into then contemporary times, with mixed results. From time to time, the film really hits on a moment or two that manages to cast very different times in parallel; at other times, it just seems to go through the sub-genre motions and couldn’t afford the period dress. The performances by our titular characters, Marjoe Gortner (also getting to preach for a moment) and Lynda Carter (who also sings and is nude, providing for more than one kink, it that’s why you’re here), are a mixed bag too, both making at least half of their scenes more interesting through their presence and choice, the other half more awkward.

It’s never a less than interesting film, though – and even this early in his career, Lester knew how to shoot a great low budget action scene or three.

Harry in Your Pocket (1973)

Sandy (Trish Van Devere) and Ray (Michael Sarrazin) meet cute at a train station when he awkwardly steals her watch, and her bags are stolen by somebody else when she’s politely going after him to get it back. Ray’s got a bit of bad conscience about the whole thing, and they hit it off as well, so he offers to give Sandy a couple hundred dollars once he’s sold off his other ill gotten gains.

They don’t only land in bed but sort of team up, following the small time crime grapevine to a job opportunity. Harry (James Coburn) the suave yet cold boss of a wire gang (a small team of dedicated pickpockets) is looking for new partners, seeing as he’s only working with aged pickpocket – and his sole friend - Casey (Walter Pidgeon) right now. Thanks to Sandy – who’d be convincing even if Harry didn’t take a shine to her – Harry takes them on despite Ray’s dubious talent and lack of a knack for his chosen criminal enterprise. It’s going to be a learning experience.

Various factors – among them a developing love triangle, Ray’s overambition and Casey’s love for cocaine – just might end up ruining a good thing.

Harry in Your Pocket’s director Bruce Geller is best known as creator/writer/producer of TV shows like Mission Impossible and Mannix and less for his only cinematic film as a director (he’s also responsible for TV movie The Savage Bees but nobody’s perfect). It is an unfairly overlooked little film, though I’m not exactly surprised by how comparatively little seen Harry is, for the film’s copious charms aren’t exactly on the obvious side.

This is a film, after all, you’ll compliment with adjectives like “quiet”, “unassuming”, or “consciously small-scale and dramatically inconspicuous” which is not an approach to filmmaking that will help many people notice a film. It certainly doesn’t help the film either that Geller’s direction is not at all on the flashy side – in fact, two or three scenes show his TV roots rather clearly. There is, in particular, a pretty damn tacky scene of slow motion seagull feeding to ignore, but if you do ignore these few moments of tosh, you realize Geller is usually just stepping back to make room for his actors and their characters, doing exactly as much as he needs to help them while otherwise getting out of their way.

Which is obviously the right decision for a film this disinterested in heightened drama or rather, one this interested in the small drama of human interactions and the musical qualities of pickpocketing. The quartet of main characters (the film not really features anyone else as more than objects for the characters to work on) earns Geller’s trust well: Coburn is letting go of a lot of his typical acting tics (I’ve never seen the man acting less with his teeth), while Van Devere manages to effortlessly sell Sandy as an independent woman despite her part in the love triangle (where the film to my surprise and approval still doesn’t treat her as an object for the men to fight over but as an active participant) so much that she dominates the audience’s sympathy for much of the film. Sarrazin’s believably inexperienced, and Pigeon shows all the dignities and indignities of age in a profession not made for old people (I mean pickpocketing, not acting).

While the film slowly meanders through not much of a plot in which only a handful of small scale dramatic things happen, it does so in the full knowledge that actual people like you and me live and die on this small scale. The film clearly wants its audience to let go of the crutches of melodrama without going all arthouse on it. It works beautifully too for most of the time. I, at least, found myself quietly enraptured by the proceedings, in sympathy with the characters and actually touched by a quietly sad ending that even shows one of the characters committing a quietly heroic act – on a human scale.

In short: The Internecine Project (1974)

Professor Robert Elliot (James Coburn) is an up and coming star of the military-industrial complex, soon to be promoted into a highly influential US government position. Unfortunately his overlords (represented by Keenan Wynn) need him to get rid of the four people in London who helped him with his own personal, and highly effective, mix of espionage, industrial espionage (in a clever nod to realism, the film doesn’t treat these two things as independent of each other) and good old blackmail.

Elliot, true believer in his own superiority that he is, decides the best way to get rid of his soon to be former associates is a complicated plan that will result in all of them killing one another in a single night with not a trace pointing to Elliot himself. As it goes with these plans, things go well until they don’t go well anymore.

Ken Hughes’s British/German co-production turns your typical 70s paranoia into a crime procedural very much like a nastier heist movie. For most of the time, the result is a deeply focused film, perhaps at times even too deeply focused, with only limited space to get an actual feel for James Coburn’s character.

The film’s only actual detour is Elliot’s relationship with his former girlfriend, journalist Jean Robertson (Lee Grant) but instead of revealing much about Elliot, or even just humanizing him, the scenes between the two don’t add much more than a distraction. I honestly don’t know what the writers were trying to achieve with the subplot. As it stands, it mostly seems there to deflate the tension every twenty minutes or so.

Which really is a bit of a shame, for the rest of the movie is very tense indeed, with Hughes using simple yet effective traditional thriller tricks to string the audience along while not keeping anything about Elliot’s plan secret. I don’t think contemporary thriller writers could even conceive of keeping tension without holding things back or adding twists to a plot, so if nothing else, The Internecine Project’s clearer approach does feel novel again in a movie, at least from the perspective of 2014.

The only real twist here is how Elliot gets his comeuppance in the end. Given when this was made, I was actually a bit surprised things didn’t end well for him, how ever much I was hoping for an ignominious result to his exploits.

The film’s politics are of course 70s standard fare of the type you could still use in a movie today without anyone complaining it to be too far fetched. Alas or fortunately – depending on your tastes – the politics here aren’t explored very deeply, and are only ever used to enable the plot. Which is perfectly alright in a film as effectively plotted as The Internecine Project is.

Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,german movies,in short,thriller,ken hughes,james coburn,lee grant

Three Films Make A Post: The only thing they don't use...is the scream

Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde (1976): Sure, they can't all be as good as Blacula but when they're directed by the same William Crain who did Blacula, one would hope so. Alas, Crain's blaxploitation version of Stevenson's short novel is just a bit crap, with many a wasted opportunity in a script that sure would like to go interesting places but doesn't seem to know how to get there, actors that really could do better than be bland and uninvolving, and direction that seems disinterested in most of what's going on here. The effect is a kind of mild boredom - the worst thing that can happen with a film with a perfectly fine exploitation idea and people of actual talent involved.

Dead Rising (2010): I honestly don't understand some companies' multi-media strategies. Why bother to make a movie companion to your videogame at all when all you're willing to pay for are boring actors waddling or wheelchairing through warehouse sets to the tune of an indifferent script whose main claim to creativity is a flashback-heavy structure that does not fit the primitive plot at all? Capcom won't to tell, so all I got were 80 minutes of my time wasted on a zombie film so aggressively mediocre it won't take more than a day for me to completely forget I even watched it at all.

Firepower (1979): Oh hi, The 70s! What did you bring me today? James Coburn baring his (frightening) teeth, Sophia Loren's hot middle-aged woman act, O.J. Simpson and Jake LaMotta, Gato Barbieri working oh so hard on the soundtrack, and a convoluted plot full of sometimes gritty, sometimes just dumb action scenes? Directed by Michael Winner in his most hyperactive white light/white heat manner? I'll take it, though I certainly would enjoy the whole concoction more if it were less satisfied with racing through its plot and actually attempted to involve the viewer on any level at all.

Technorati-Markierungen: in short,american movies,japanese movies,horror,zombies,action,william crain,james coburn,sophia loren,o.j. simpson