The Great Train Robbery (1978)

The Great Train Robbery was written and directed by Michael Crichton, based on his own novel. It was shot in England and financed by Dino de Laurentiis. It’s a heist movie set in 1855.

Crichton had become obsessed with Victorian England and also with the question of the origins and nature of criminal underworlds. He had also come across a factual account of an attempted robbery which had been the first of its type and which was the inspiration for Crichton’s novel.

Crichton’s story concerns an attempt to rob a moving train - a feat considered at the time to be impossible. The target is a very large shipment of gold, gold which will be used to pay British troops fighting in the Crimean War.

The gold will be in a safe which requires four keys and the keys are in the custody of three  separate bank and railway officials. The first essential step is to steal those keys.

An apparently respectable but actually very shady businessman named Pierce (Sean Connery) believes the gold could be stolen and he intends to steal it. 

His chief accomplice is Agar (Donald Sutherland), a brilliant pickpocket and lock specialist.

And he has his girlfriend Miriam (Lesley-Anne Down) whose very considerable powers of seduction will be very useful.

As in most heist stories there’s a long lead-up to the robbery but that’s no problem here because the gang has to carry out a whole of series of impossibly difficult and daring preliminary crimes.

And the heist itself is immense fun.

Crichton was famous for his techno-thrillers but what makes The Great Train Robbery so interesting is that he approaches it the same way - meticulous research and an amazing ability to make painstaking attention to detail of absorbing interest.

And with his keen interest in Victorian criminality Crichton would have been aware of the challenges facing the police. In the days before central databases and fingerprinting establishing a criminal’s identity could be tricky. Forensic science did not exist. And without international telegraphy if a criminal could get out of England he could disappear very easily and very completely. The police of course had informants but they more or less had to catch criminals in the act. So if Pierce and his gang can penetrate the security surrounding the gold shipment and get hold of the gold they might then be very hard to track down.

Connery oozes charisma and plays his part with a twinkle in his eye which is absolutely the right approach. And lighthearted adventure was something Donald Sutherland did extremely well. Connery and Sutherland make a delightful pair of rogues. And Lesley-Anne Down makes a fine Sexy Lady Rogue.

While the aim was always to get a PG-13 rating what I do like is that Crichton gives the film a delightful feel of Victorian bawdiness. There’s some extraordinarily risque dialogue  laced with delicious double-entendres. The brothel scene and Miriam’s seduction scene are naughty in a very Victorian way. It’s also obvious that Miriam is an ex-whore but this is suggested rather than stated.

The movie was well received by critics with the one criticism being the pacing but listening to Crichton’s audio commentary it’s clear that this was deliberate - he wanted that more leisurely Victorian pacing rather than 1970s pacing. And he was right. 

And it’s never boring. There’s fine suspense and the action sequences are superb. The budget was tight but it looks great and the period details are a joy. It has a fine old-fashioned rollicking adventure yarn feel.

The Great Train Robbery is immense amounts of fun. Highly recommended.

The main extra is an excellent audio commentary recorded by Michael Crichton in 1996.

Physical Evidence (1989)

Physical Evidence is a 1989 mystery crime thriller, it’s a courtroom drama and it also has serious neo-noir vibes.

It was directed (but not written) by Michael Crichton. It might seem like an outlier in Crichton’s filmography but in his early career as a novelist he wrote relatively straightforward thrillers so it’s reasonable to assume that he had some affinity for the thriller genre.

It starts with a very impressive visual set-piece on a bridge. Which leads to the discovery of the body of Jake Farley, a sleazy nightclub owner with a spectacularly shady past.

Cop Joe Paris (Burt Reynolds) is arrested for Farley’s murder. Joe is already on suspension. He’s a good cop with a very short temper which has landed him in trouble many times.

Hotshot lady lawyer Jenny Hudson (Theresa Russell) works for the Public Defender’s Office and she begs for the case. It will be a very high-profile case, the kind of case that can make or break an ambitious lawyer’s career.

The audience has no idea whether or not Joe is guilty. The evidence against him is very strong but if he is being framed by someone powerful you would expect that, and Joe has plenty of powerful enemies.

Jenny Hudson also has no idea whether or not Joe is guilty. She’s a lawyer. Her job is to defend him either way.

And the uncertainty about Joe’s guilt is maintained quite skilfully, for a while at least. The evidence against him steadily accumulates but the possibility that someone might be framing him also increases. We still do not know. Nor does Jenny. It’s a good basis for a neo-noir suspense thriller and it works.

The main problem is that this is the most potentially interesting aspect of the plot and it gradually gets lost and the story thereafter becomes rather routine.

There’s also the problem that courtroom dramas are always dull because courtroom scenes are always dull. They’re stagey, rather than cinematic. They’re all about dialogue and dialogue scenes are inherently uncinematic. They’re at best a necessary evil. And it’s very difficult to get away from that staginess in courtroom scenes.

I have seen very few Burt Reynolds movies but he’s pretty good here, not making Joe too sympathetic but just sympathetic enough.

Theresa Russell’s specialty was playing offbeat roles in offbeat roles in offbeat movies for directors like Ken Russell and her husband Nicolas Roeg. This is a much more straightforward role but she handles it well. I like the way she does the full-on power-dressing girl boss thing on the job but throws off that persona as soon as she’s off-duty. She’s a pro. The girl boss routine is part of the job.

The sexual tension between Joe and Jenny works quite well because they’re so radically mismatched. Yes, that’s an established formula, but Reynolds and Russell carry it off well enough.

It bombed at the box office but there’s nothing really wrong with this movie. It’s a bit like an old-fashioned B-movie or a well-crafted TV-movie. It’s decent entertainment but it isn’t going to knock your socks off. And if, like me, you’re a bit of a Theresa Russell completist you’ll enjoy her performance.

This movie is paired with The Anderson Tapes on a double-header Blu-Ray from Mill Creek. There are no extras but it looks terrific. Physical Evidence isn’t particularly special but if you buy the set for The Anderson Tapes (and you should) it’s worth giving Physical Evidence a spin as well.

No Mercy (1986)

No Mercy is a 1986 thriller which pairs Richard Gere and Kim Basinger. It could perhaps at a stretch be considered to have a slight neo-noir tinge and also perhaps an erotic thriller vibe although to be honest that’s a lot of a stretch.

As an indirect result of a bungled drugs stakeout Chicago cop Eddie Jillette and his partner Joe Collins stumble upon something much bigger - a planned hit. Eddie and Joe, perhaps unwisely, arrange a meet with a mysterious New Orleans businessman (we will find out that his name is Paul Deveneux) who wants a rival rubbed out. Eddie poses as a hitman. Perhaps Eddie and Joe should have realised the meet might not go smoothly. The guy who wants to hire a hitman doesn’t seem the type. He’s more of an old southern aristocracy type.

This guy has a girl with him. Her name is Michelle (Kim Basinger). She’s the reason for the hit. So it’s not business but a personal grudge, which could get messy.

It does get messy. Eddie’s partner gets disembowelled. He’s not the only one who gets killed. Eddie is off to New Orleans, ostensibly to bring his partner’s killer to justice but in fact his objective is revenge pure and simple.

The problem is that Eddie doesn’t know the identity of the target of the aborted hit. All he knows is that the target was a powerful ruthless man, and that he is Michelle’s owner.

Eddie is going to have to track down Michelle. He finds her, and he finds the man who owns her, Losado (Jeroen Krabbé). He also finds out that everything that he assumed he knew about the case is wrong, and everything that he assumed he knew about Michelle is wrong as well.

Another unpleasant discovery is that the New Orleans cops do not want him in their city. Or rather Deveneux’s brother doesn’t want him in New Orleans. Deveneux is extremely rich. If he’s upset, the New Orleans PD is upset.

Eddie ends up in the middle of a bayou, handcuffed to Michelle. They’re lucky to be alive. Losado doesn’t just employ a couple of goons to enforce his will, he has a veritable private army.

Eddie is just one cop on his own in a strange city but by now he’s seriously annoyed. You don’t want to get Eddie Jillette seriously annoyed. And as far as Eddie is concerned if his mission is to be a kamikaze mission, so be it.

He still has to figure out what to do with this strange girl. And Michelle is a very strange girl. Eddie is not just in a strange city. He’s stumbled into a totally foreign world. This is the world of the old French Louisiana. It’s the 1980s in Chicago but here time has stood still for a couple of centuries. And Michelle is like a girl from another planet.

Looking at online reviews I’m surprised that so many people dislike this movie. There’s no shortage of adrenalin-rush action and mayhem with some terrific action set-pieces. There’s good suspense. There’s a weird twisted love story. There’s an exotic setting. As far as thrillers go this one ticks most of my boxes.

I’m also surprised so many people dislike Richard Gere. His performance is very much in that intense edgy wired mode that was so popular at the time but for my money Gere does this sort of thing with more class than most actors of this type. He doesn’t have to shout and wave his arms about and jump up and down to get the message across that he’s a man on the edge. I like him a lot in this movie.

As for Kim Basinger, she has a tricky role. She’s playing a woman who just doesn’t see the world the way women of the 80s see it. She’s like a woman living in two different eras at the same time. I think Basinger is very good indeed in this part.

There’s nothing subtle about Jeroen Krabbé’s performance as Losado but he radiates pure evil and that’s what the part calls for.

The one weakness is that although the acting chemistry between Gere and Basinger is excellent this is a movie that needed a lot more erotic heat.

Richard Pearce is not a particularly big name as a director but he handles matters here with assurance.

No Mercy hits the ground running and maintains the momentum. Whether it’s a neo-noir or an erotic thriller or a plain old action thriller doesn’t matter - whatever it is it delivers the goods. Highly recommended.

The Kino Lorber Blu-Ray presentation looks great.

Someone to Watch Over Me (1987)

Someone to Watch Over Me is a 1987 Ridley Scott thriller which flopped badly at the box office.

This is very much a movie intended to be about class.

Detective Mike Keegan (Tom Berenger) is newly assigned to the Homicide Squad, in fact he’s newly assigned to the Detective Bureau. He lives in a cruddy house in a bad part of Queens, with his wife and kid. They’re far from rich but it’s a happy marriage.

Claire Gregory (Mimi Rogers) is a super-rich Manhattan high society type. She lives in a luxury apartment in Manhattan. Luxury is a pitifully inadequate word to describe it - she lives like royalty. She lives like a princess.

One of her super-rich friends was murdered by big-time gangster Joey Venza (Andreas Katsulas). Claire witnessed the murder. She’s not just the State’s key witness; she’s their only witness. And she’s the one whose evidence could send Venza to the big house for a long stretch.

The cops have to keep Claire safe but at the same time they cannot let her know how much danger she’s in. She might get cold feet about testifying. So they lie to her and tell her there’s no real danger.

Mike Keegan is assigned as one of her babysitters. He’s uncomfortable because he knows that Claire has been lied to. He doesn’t believe that the cops can keep her safe.

Claire and Mike are from different universes. Claire can spend the equivalent of a years’ salary for Mike on one dress. They’re like aliens to each other.

Mike is inexperienced and to be honest he’s not a very good cop. He makes a rookie mistake early on making an arrest. This is his first case as a detective and he’s already being hopelessly unprofessional, getting personally involved with a material witness in a murder case. He’s in way over his head.

Of course Claire and Mike sleep together, of course his wife finds out and of course his career at risk.

The plot is strictly by the numbers. There’s not a single original twist.

This is TV-movie stuff, both in terms of plot and visuals. Competently shot but there’s nothing here to dazzle. It looks like a well-made TV-movie.

So what about the class angle? It’s there but it’s handled in an uninteresting trite way. OK, it’s tough for a working-class stuff and a wealthy socialite if they fall in love. Now that’s an earth-shattering revelation.

The big problem is the two leads. Tom Berenger is boring. He has zero charisma. He has the emotional range of a coffee table.

Most importantly, he’s a passive pathetic whiney loser.

There is no way a rich society dame is going to fall for a guy like this unless he exudes huge amounts of masculine sexual electricity. This guy is about as exciting as a librarian. She already has a rich passive whiney boyfriend. Why would she dump him for a poor passive whiney boyfriend?

Mimi Rogers is also a problem. A married man is not going to be tempted to go after a woman way outside his league unless she’s sexy and glamorous and exciting. Claire is none of these things. It might have helped had she been put in glamorous slinky dresses, but she dresses like a teacher at an up-market community college.

There is zero sexual chemistry between the two leads. And zero passion and zero romantic chemistry. When they kiss for the first time we’re surprised, since they’ve given no indication of being the slightest bit attracted to each other. We just don’t buy the idea that they have become sexually and romantically obsessed with each other.

This is not an erotic thriller. It could be described as an un-erotic thriller or an anti-erotic thriller. It could also be described as an unromantic thriller.

It’s also not a neo-noir since Claire is way too bland to qualify as a femme fatale. She fails to give off any femme fatale vibes.

It’s the casting that sinks this movie. With someone like Richard Gere or, even better, Kurt Russell, it might have worked. We could imagine a rich society dame going weak at the knees for Kurt Russell as a tough masculine working-class cop. And as the female lead, maybe Kim Basinger or Sharon Stone (not yet a major star but she’d had a couple of leading roles by this time). A man might sacrifice everything for a woman like Basinger or Stone.

I really can’t recommend Someone to Watch Over Me to anyone but a Ridley Scott completist.

Breathless (1983)

Breathless is a 1983 neo-noir based on Jean-Luc Godards’ 1960 À bout de souffle. It was directed by Jim McBride.

Jesse Lujack (Richard Gere) is caught up in a spectacular self-destructive spiral but he doesn’t know it yet. He has to get from Vegas to LA to collect some money so he steals a Porsche.

By the time he reaches LA there’s a dead cop lying by the side of the highway.

He collects his money but to his horror it’s a cheque, not cash. If you’re a regular law-abiding citizen and it’s clean money a cheque is no problem. If you’re a gambler who has not always been on the right side of the law and it’s dirty money a cheque can be a huge drama.

Within a few hours he’s carried out a minor robbery and stolen another car. He should be keeping a law profile but Jesse is just not capable of doing that. He’s extravagant and wild and crazy and he attracts attention everywhere he goes.

He’s intending to head for Mexico with Monica (Valérie Kaprisky) but Monica doesn’t know that yet. He and Monica had a brief but exciting fling in Vegas. Jesse just knows that Monica is the girl for him. Monica is not at all sure that Jesse is the man for her. She’s about to take her degree and begin a successful career. The last thing she needs is to get involved with a crazy irresponsible loser like Jesse.

On the other hand Jesse is a very good-looking sexy bad boy and what girl can resist a guy like that?

Jesse qualifies as an authentic film noir protagonist. He’s a bit of a bad boy but he’s not really evil. He thinks his problems are due to bad luck but in fact they’re the result of his character flaws. The key to Jesse’s character is that he’s a loser who thinks he’s a winner. He’s ludicrously over-confident. He thinks his charm and his confidence will keep him out of serious trouble. He makes one bad decision after another and he has no idea just how deep a hole he is digging for himself.

Richard Gere’s hyperactive charisma-overload performance is perfect. He captures Jesse’s obliviousness to reality very neatly.

Jesse is not conventionally likeable. Having Jesse in your life would be a nightmare. We care what happens to him not because we like him but because he is a hunted animal and all the odds are stacked against him and we know he’ll just keep doing dumb things. He can’t help it. He’s not so much breathless as hopeless and clueless. He’s so dumb and hopeless that we feel that it’s cruel to hunt him down like a feral dog. And somehow Gere manages to persuade us to be on his side.

Monica is not a femme fatale in a conventional sense (she is not scheming or manipulative) but she is a disastrous choice for Jesse. She is way out of his league. He should just head to Mexico without her. Rich respectable girls will always get guys like Jesse in trouble. And Monica is at heart respectable.

Valérie Kaprisky has had a lengthy successful career in France but Breathless seems to have been her only significant Hollywood role.

This movie is as hyperactive as Jesse. This is the only Jim McBride-directed movie I’ve seen but based on this the man knows how to make a wild rollercoaster of a crime thriller. There are definitely touches of dark humour. It’s like Jesse himself. It dares us not to enjoy ourselves.

I love that at one point our couple on the run end up in a movie theatre and the movie that is playing is Gun Crazy, the greatest couple-on-the-run movie ever made.

Jesse lives in a fantasy world in which he’s the hero. He loves comic books and the world of the Silver Surfer is more real to him than the real world. And the movie to an extent takes us into Jesse’s fantasy world. We’re seeing the world the way Jesse sees it. We’re seeing Jesse trying to be a comic-book hero. The movie takes place in a kind of heightened reality.

Apart from that interesting detached from reality vibe this is also a hugely entertaining movie.

Breathless is great stuff. Very highly recommended.

The Blu-Ray includes an appreciation by Mark Kermode which is very worthwhile. I love his enthusiasm for this movie and I share it.

The Key (1934)

The Key (1934) is one of four pre-code movies included in the Warner Archive DVD set William Powell at Warner Bros. The Key was directed by Michael Curtiz. The script (based on a play by by R. Gore Brown and Jocelyn Lee Hardy) is by Laird Doyle.

The setting is Ireland in 1920. Ireland is a dangerous place. Tensions are high between the Sinn Fein separatists and the British troops. British soldiers are constantly being shot by snipers.

Captain Andrew Andy Kerr (Colin Clive) is a British intelligence officer and the stresses are starting to get to him. His wife Norah (Edna Best) worries about him.

Then Captain Bill Tennant (William Powell) arrives on the scene. He has just been posted to Dublin. He had a colourful career, full of brave deeds and scandals. The scandals invariably involve women.

Bill and Andy are old friends.

Things could get awkward, since Bill Tennant and Norah have a shared past - a passionate love affair before she met Andy Kerr. That’s all over now. At least that’s what Bill and Norah thought.

Dublin is more and more unsettled. It’s more or less open guerrilla warfare.

Andy’s task is to track down Sinn Fein leader Peadar Conlan (Donald Crisp). A very dangerous task indeed.

Bill and Norah soon discover that they’re still madly in love. Breaking this news to Andy is not going to be easy.

Obviously this could all end very badly, with plenty of emotional turmoil and the constant background threat of sudden death.

William Powell gets a rather nuanced role here. Bill has been a hell-raiser but now he’s thinking that he should have married Norah when he had the chance. Bill is a man who finds that he will to re-evaluate his life. Powell manages to make him sympathetic even while he’s stealing another man’s wife.

Edna Best is good. In this same year she landed her best-known role, the lead in Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much.

As so often Colin Clive is the weak link. He’s as pompous and stuff as ever which is a problem because the audience needs to sympathise with him as the wronged husband.

Andy is a brave man but a man obsessed by duty. Bill has some sense of duty but given a choice between duty and love he will choose love every time. And given a choice between duty and friendship he will choose friendship every time.

The most pre-code element is that it’s made very obvious that while Andy was out hunting Sinn Fein leaders Bill and Norah spent the night together.

Although it was shot in Hollywood this film has a mostly English cast. The casting of William Powell as a British officer is neatly explained when we’re told he is a Canadian.

The subject matter was potentially dicey. The movies tries not to pick sides but since the two male leads play British officers we inevitably get more of the British viewpoint. It tries to be both a thriller and a romantic intrigue and does so fairly successfully.

William Powell is the reason to watch this one. It’s reasonably enjoyable. Recommended.

The Key gets a very good DVD transfer. I’ve reviewed other movies in this set - The Road to Singapore, Private Detective 62 and the excellent High Pressure.

Ransom (1974)

Ransom (AKA The Terrorists) is a 1974 British thriller. It was shot in Norway but apparently it was felt that it was best to make the setting a mythical Scandinavian country called Scandinavia. It had a Finnish director (Casper Wrede) and a Swedish cinematographer (Sven Nykvist) but an entirely British cast headed up by Sean Connery. It’s a largely forgotten movie but it’s at least moderately effective.

It’s a hijacking hostage drama made at a time when hijackings and terrorist outrages were regular occurrences.

A British terrorist named Shepherd, along with several of his cohorts, has kidnapped the British ambassador to Scandinavia. They are demanding the release by the British Government of other members of the terrorist gang currently in custody. The British Government intends to accede to Shepherd’s demands but there’s a complication. Other members of this terrorist gang, led by Petrie (Ian McShane), have hijacked a Scandinavian airliner. They are demanding free passage for Shepherd and his accomplices to the airport so that they can all make their escape by air to destinations unknown.

So the hijacking comes under Scandinavian jurisdiction and the Scandinavians intend to accept the terrorists’ demands but double-cross them.

The task of apprehending all of these terrorists without risking any civilian casualties is handed to the Scandinavian chief of security, Colonel Tahlvik (Sean Connery). He thinks that his task is impossible but he’s a soldier and he intends to do the best he can and he most definitely does not like the idea of letting terrorists get away with outrages on Scandinavian soil.

It’s a double hostage drama, with two sets of hostages held in different locations.

The plot gets complicated but it’s perfectly coherent and includes some sound ideas.

There is of course a major twist and it’s signposted by subtle clues scattered throughout the movie. It’s still a pretty decent twist.

Connery as usual exudes charisma.

It should have turned out better than it did. The potential was there. It ends up feeling a bit too much like a TV-movie.

One major problem is that Colonel Tahlvik is the only interesting character. We don’t get any insights into the motivations of Shepherd and Petrie and they’re just not sufficiently menacing. This is a movie that really needed a memorable villain to provide a worthy adversary for Tahlvik, and he needed to be played by an actor with enough charisma not to get totally overshadowed by Connery.

Ian McShane is in fact a fine actor but his performance fails to build up enough steam. He just doesn’t seem to be fully engaged.

John Quentin as Shepherd is a total washout and that is a major weakness.

Most of the movie’s problems would seem to have stemmed from the fact that as director of an action/suspense thriller Casper Wrede was just not up to the job. The action scenes are not exciting enough, the suspense doesn’t build the way it should and there’s a general lack of energy and urgency.

There is some 70s cynicism but it needed to be given a bit more bite.

Visually it’s a fairly impressive film.

This is not by any means a bad movie. It’s decent entertainment but in a TV-movie time-killer sort of way rather than in a nail-biting adrenalin-fuelled feature film sort of way. Worth a look if you can pick it up really cheap or if you’re a Sean Connery completist.

Network’s Blu-Ray lacks extras but looks very good.

The Running Man (1963)

The Running Man is a 1963 Carol Reed crime thriller and it’s a somewhat overlooked entry in his filmography. This is what I call a “little movie” - it’s rather low-key, it’s not overly ambitious and it’s essentially just an entertainment. But with a script by John Mortimer and Carol Reed in the director’s chair it’s quite a clever and nuanced little entertainment.

It opens with pretty American Stella Black (Lee Remick) grief-stricken at the memorial service for her husband Rex. A keen aviator, he was killed when his glider crashed into the sea. His body was never found. So why does Stella give that odd little smile when nobody is looking?

We soon find out the reason, when Rex (Laurence Harvey) walks in the door.

Rex and Stella are pulling an insurance fraud.

Stella is asked quite a few questions by insurance investigator Stephen Maddox (Alan Bates) but it’s obvious that he’s quite satisfied with her answers.

Obviously they will have to abroad. Rex is after all supposed to be dead. Once they have the insurance money they will meet up in Spain, in Malaga.

In Malaga Rex manages to get hold of a passport belonging to rich Australian sheep farmer Jim Jerome (John Meillon). He steals his identity. It crosses Rex’s mind that if Jim Jerome were to die suddenly Rex and Stella could pocket another nice little insurance payout.

There is trouble in paradise. Stella and Rex had been madly in love. Now Stella is not sure this is still the man she loved. He has changed. He seems colder, with a touch of cruelty. Perhaps it isn’t possible to remain the same person once you become a criminal.

And then Stephen Maddox turns up in Malaga.

Of course Rex and Stella know that he must be on to them. Rex decides that they need to get pally with him. To find out how much he knows. Stephen gives every indication that he is falling for Stella. He of course thinks she’s a widow. He has never seen Rex so he accepts him as Jim Jerome.

Now things start to get a bit twisty. Is Stephen really sweet on Stella? Is she sweet on him? He’s a very nice guy and he isn’t irritable and cruel the way Rex is these days.

The twists get more interesting with some lovely little ironic touches. Mortimer’s screenplay is nicely plotted.

I like Laurence Harvey a lot and he manages the subtle changes in Rex's behaviour pretty well. But his (mercifully brief) attempt at an Australian accent is excruciating!

Alan Bates is excellent as the shy very diffident but very likeable Stephen. You can see why Stella might be attracted to him. Rex is exciting and glamorous but Stella isn’t sure she wants any more excitement. Stephen is gentle without being boring.

Lee Remick gives her usual fine performance. She conveys Stella’s conflicted emotions and sense of guilt skilfully and subtly.

The scene between Stella and Stephen in his hotel room is a fine example. What exactly is she feeling? Perhaps she isn’t sure herself.

Perhaps The Running Man’s problem is that it looks very conventional but it’s filled with subtle ambiguities (not necessarily resolved) and ironies. It’s a very pretty film but it’s cleverer than it looks and it’s not as cheerful and lighthearted as it looks.

Rex is a bit of a villain, but he isn’t really evil. He’s reckless and irresponsible and the whole saga began as a result of his own carelessness (which resulted in an earlier quite legitimate insurance claim being rejected), and his inability to take responsibility for his own mistake. Stella’s emotions are complicated.

The Running Man is highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed lots of Carol Reed’s movies - The Fallen Idol (1948), Our Man in Havana (1959), Girl in the News (1940), Trapeze (1956), The Man Between (1953).

The House of the Seven Hawks (1959)

The House of the Seven Hawks is a 1959 British thriller directed by Richard Thorpe.

Robert Taylor is John Nordley, an American who operates a charter boat service in a small British port. His latest job involves a brief cruise in English coastal waters. His passenger is a Dutchman named Anselm. Anselm wants Nordley to take him to the Netherlands. That could cause problems with the British authorities. Nordley had not informed them that he would be heading to a foreign port. But Anselm is paying well.

It’s established from the start that Nordley is a nice guy but perhaps not scrupulously honest. He’s not quite a crook but he can be persuaded to bend the rules and perhaps venture just a little bit outside the strict letter of the law.

He makes it to a Dutch port but by this time his passenger is deceased. Nordley assumes the man had a heart attack.

He’s puzzled when the man’s daughter appears in a small power boat and invites herself aboard his yacht just before he reaches that Dutch port. He’s even more mystified that she seems to be looking for something and having failed to find it she departs very suddenly.

Nordley has already found something curious, a letter with a diagram, among Anselm’s effects.

The Dutch police have astonishing news for Nordley. His passenger was not a man named Anselm. He was a high-ranking Dutch police officer, Inspector Sluiter, engaged in a mysterious investigation in England.

Both Nordley and the Dutch police are puzzled by Sluiter’s actions. Was Sluiter involved in something shady?

Nordley has another surprise in story for him. That girl who came to meet his yacht is no relative to the dead man. She is Elsa (Linda Christian). And now another woman has shown up who really is Inspector Sluiter’s daughter, Constanta (Nicole Maurey). Nordley is not sure that he trusts either woman. They’re not sure that they can trust him.

The mysterious Captain Rohner (Eric Pohlmann) is interested in that letter as well. Nordley has no doubt that Captain Rohner cannot be trusted at all but he is open to the idea of a deal, if the terms are favourable.

That letter is a key, in a metaphorical sense. A key to something interesting, fascinating and valuable. Probably not legal, but nobody involved in this tale is overly concerned with legalities.

Robert Taylor is ideally cast. He did the world-weary slightly morally corrupted thing so very well in so many movies at this period and he does it extremely well here.

Eric Pohlmann is always an absolute joy to watch and he’s in fine form here. Nicole Maurey and Linda Christian are good. Philo Hauser is fun as Nordley’s useful but very disreputable and thoroughly untrustworthy friend Charlie Ponz.

The plot is nicely worked out. There’s not much action (although there is some). Mostly the movie relies on an atmosphere of double-dealing and general moral murkiness.

This is a low-key but fine entertaining thriller and I do enjoy nautical thrillers so it’s highly recommended.

The Warner Archive DVD offers a very satisfactory transfer.

This movie was based on the 1952 novel The House of the Seven Flies by Victor Canning, a now forgotten but very fine British thriller writer.

Dead Calm (1989)

Dead Calm is a 1989 Australian suspense thriller directed by Phillip Noyce, based on a novel by Charles Williams.

It’s a nautical thriller. John Ingram (Sam Neill) is an Australian naval officer whose son was killed in a car accident. His wife Rae (Nicole Kidman) survived the accident. The accident was not her fault. They both need time to recover. A cruise on John’s yacht seems like the perfect answer.

They spot a black schooner. A guy in a dinghy rows across from the schooner. He is Hughie Warriner (Billy Zane). He claims to be the sole survivor of a bizarre tragedy. The other five people on board the schooner died of food poisoning. Hughie claims the schooner is slowly sinking.

John is no fool. He’s spent twenty-five years at sea. He isn’t the slightest bit convinced by Hughie’s story. He locks Hughie into a cabin and rows across to the schooner to investigate. It becomes apparent that very bad very strange things went on aboard that schooner. Meanwhile Hughie has escaped and he’s hijacked John’s yacht, with Rae aboard.

John is stranded on the schooner. There is no wind and the engine doesn’t work. Rae is stuck on the yacht with a guy who could be merely a bit unbalanced but could be a total psycho. The latter seems more and more likely. Either way he’s extremely dangerous.

There are now essentially two stories going on. John, on board the schooner, tries to unravel what really happened on that unlucky vessel. It seems to have been some sort of sex cruise, with some very dangerous games being played.

Rae, on the yacht, has to find some way to subdue or trick Hughie so that she can stay alive and rescue her husband. This is becoming rather urgent. The schooner is slowly sinking.

Hughie’s intentions are frightening because they’re unknown. He might be a killer, he might have been a victim. He may be sexually obsessed with Rae. Or, more worrying, he may have created some weird romantic fantasy in his head, a fantasy in which he and Rae sail the South Pacific together. He may intend to kill Rae. He may intend to rape her.

It’s Rae’s story that becomes the main focus. That puts a lot of pressure on Nicole Kidman who was at that time a young relatively inexperienced actress and unknown outside Australia. She is more than equal to the challenge. This is the movie that demonstrated that Kidman could easily carry a film as a lead actress. And Rae is an interesting character. She’s no action heroine, just a resourceful woman fighting for survival. And she’s fighting to save her man. That will make her fight very hard indeed. Kidman makes Rae likeable and convincing. Rae could make things easier for herself by simply killing Hughie but, quite realistically, she is very reluctant to take that step. She’s an ordinary woman. Killing does not come naturally or easily to her.

Rae has one thing going for her. She’s a Navy wife. She knows boats and she knows the sea.

While Kidman is the standout performer both Sam Neill and Billy Zane are excellent.

These three people are the only significant characters in the movie, in fact for most of the running time they’re the only characters. The three leads had to be good and they had to work well together. They’re all equal to the job.

The cinematography is gorgeous. The location shooting was done on the Great Barrier Reef and the natural beauty nicely counterpoints the unnatural horrors.

The only character developed in any detail is Rae. Having lost her only child she comes to the realisation that her husband is all she’s got, but she loves him so that’s enough. She will do whatever it takes to save him. Nicole Kidman never goes over-the-top but she does a fine job letting us know what makes Rae tick.

We don’t know exactly what makes Hughie tick but that’s a plus rather than a minus. It makes him more frightening. It also means that Rae cannot reason with him.

Dead Calm doesn’t try to do anything too fancy. It’s a suspense thriller and it doesn’t get bogged down with extraneous details to any great extent. It just happens to be an extremely well-executed suspense thriller. It’s obviously a must-see if you’re a Nicole Kidman fan. Highly recommended.

The DVD release is barebones but the transfer is very good. There’s been a Blu-Ray release as well.

Philip Noyce went on to direct the criminally underrated erotic thriller Sliver (1993).