JimB-4

Absolutely atrocious garble about ancient Greek gods returning to Earth to get involved in a silly spy caper. Christopher Lee and Richard Todd do their professional best in tiny roles. But everyone else is in a contest to see who can be the worst actor. The storyline is almost impossible to follow. An utter waste of time.

Robert E. Sherwood's play was very much of its time, when social and political unrest seemed to make the world a completely unpredictable and tenuous place, more so than at any point in modern time. Intellect versus brute strength, romanticism versus cynicism, community versus individualism, all swirling in conflict with no ready resolution. Humphrey Bogart reached a turning point in his career as gangster Duke Mantee in the original stage production and did the same for his film career with the 1936 movie. Now, near the end of his too-short life, he revisits the role in a live TV production, also starring his wife Lauren Bacall and Henry Fonda. Condensed but still containing parts of the play that were omitted from the film, this production is staged very much like a theatre production, something that was par for the course in the days of live television. The production suffers less than one might imagine from staginess, and tension and action are scarcely less dramatic than in the movie. The ages of Fonda and Bacall work against complete success, as while Fonda, at fifty, has the proper world weariness for the disillusioned Alan Squier, he seems too old to be just coming to these conclusions about life. And Bacall, while still a young woman, is far too mature for the just-blossoming girl who could inspire Squier to make real for her the dreams he can no longer believe in. But for all that, it is still a fine production, and Bogart retains the menace, style, and irony that made him such a hit in the original versions. Joseph Sweeney is fine as Gramp, the teller of tall tales, and Richard Jaeckel and Jack Klugman give real color to the roles of Mantee's henchmen. This is a quick production, sometimes a little rushed in the dialog, but overall it is a very successful live example of the Golden Age of television.

This is an intriguing independent film that seems for a while destined to be one of those injury-recovery-of-the-week movies like "The Other Side of the Mountain." It's about a champion-grade skate boarder who suffers a devastating injury and hopes to come back not just to walk again, but to skate, as well. But just at about the point where it seems we've seen all this before, the film makes a very interesting left turn into something few of us have seen in a movie before. The shattered skateboarder, Bobby Wake, suddenly discovers he has the power to heal and even raise from the dead.

What follows is a fascinating story of the tug-of-war between duty and desire, as Bobby, who only wants to get well so he can skate again, must face the fact that he has a gift, apparently from God, and that with great gifts come great responsibilities.

The film has a few holes. Bobby and a helpful priest are practically the only two major characters who are non-Latinos, yet there's no explanation or particular attention given to why Bobby is so deeply immersed in a culture other than his own. Bobby is shown to be such a decent fellow, such a mensch, that his reluctance to use his new-found healing powers seems unlike the young man we've watched before this point. And there are questions about the mechanics of the healing process that arise because they are not well explained before we see alterations in them. When one healing plays out completely differently than the ones that came before, we're left wondering why we didn't know about this possibility, when knowing of it would have sharpened its effect. Also, a sequence involving Bobby's girlfriend in a crack house seems a huge digression and a poor substitute for further exploration of a huge change in the relationship between Bobby and the film's antagonist, a vicious thug who is the father of Bobby's girlfriend's son. It would have been wonderful to get more of the juice out of that dramatic shift instead of a confusing and seemingly pointless adventure among dope addicts.

Yet the film asks some interesting questions and poses some intriguing possible answers. Writer-director (and art director!) Steve Garrett (who also plays the priest) obviously knows his Ambrose Bierce, and he films with style and gets some fine performances out of his actors, particularly Renee Victor as the girlfriend's grandmother, who nurses Bobby after his accident.

A very nice film from a promising filmmaker.