No.87 : The Revengers (1972)

The Revengers at the IMDb

I’m not sure that ‘revengers’ is a word, and certainly my spellchecker doesn’t think so, but if it is a made up word at least it’s one that tells you what to expect. Yes people seeking, if not always getting, some revenge - western style.

William Holden plays Mr Benedict, an ageing rancher who returns to his family after business away. He’s a firm but fair father and has brought presents for all. Things are looking up as the army has offered his son a place at West Point owing to Benedict being a Civil War hero. As you’d anticipate this five minutes of contented bliss is shattered when bandits kill all his family while he’s away hunting a mountain lion. The bad guys are mostly Indians but they also have two white men in their ranks, one of whom has a distinctive milky eye.

Benedict takes the time to bury the five murdered family members before setting off on a mission to kill all the men who have condemned him to lonely Christmas dinners. He gets some clues and realises that as the bad guys are holed up in a notorious trouble spot that he’ll need to hire some guns. Rather than go to a bar or other desperado hangout he heads to a prison camp where he recruits six colourful characters including Ernest Borgnine (last seen in ‘The Vikings’) and a German and a Frenchman. If this sounds like the beginning of a bad joke you are quicker on the uptake than me!

Our trusting hero kits his now fugitive felons in new clothes and gives them guns and horses. It is no surprise when they all bugger off apart from the loyal black chap, but for no obvious reason they all return the next day having drunk and spunked away all their cash. They are soon ready to launch an assault on the bad guys’ base and manage to infiltrate it with an unlikely ruse regarding empty boxes. They shoot the place up but old Milky Eye gets away.

Not one to give up, Benedict chases after his man and is soon followed by his petulant posse who show an unbelievable streak of loyalty. A montage shows a year passing with all our guys still together - the Milky Eye bandit must be the World Hide and Seek Champion at this rate! Things start to fray and after a shocking bar room showdown they go their separate ways. While Benedict recovers with an Oirish lovely, his men start to catch up over some red eye. Can a new tip lead them to their quarry and will revenge be best served extremely cold?

This was as straightforward a western as you can imagine. Benedict is set up as happy and then revenge driven in the first ten minutes, and after that it’s basically ‘The Fugitive’ in cowboy hats. The locations and cinematography were great but the characterisation was lacking with the main bad guy barely getting a word in during his couple of brief scenes. OK this was an exercise in assessing the benefits of revenge and what it can do to people, but when the final showdown appeared I doubt any watcher was urging Holden to pull the trigger.

There was one clumsy scene where an old friend catches up with Benedict a year into his quest and says he’s now a stranger to him. He also is repulsed by a bloodstained bottle and retreats into one of his own. I get it that a bloodlust isn’t necessarily a good thing, but the character’s struggles with his dilemma didn’t convince.

On a more positive note the posse of six prisoners was good fun and they were grotty enough to be a ‘dirty half dozen’. Their motivations were mixed and I liked the self interest of Borgnine’s Mr Hoop, the only one who seemed realistic,. The rest looked like they were hanging about as they’d nothing better to do apart from one who, in a pointless sub plot, thought he might be Benedict’s long lost son.

The final battle was well staged with plenty of explosions and people falling off horses, as you’d expect. The final confrontation didn’t surprise but neither did the film in general so at least it was consistent!

Best Bit : Translator works from Hungarian phrasebook  64%

No.86 : The Breed (2006)

The Breed at the IMDb

Feeling a bit wuff? Well then, ‘The Breed’ may just be the film for you.

We open with a young couple on a yacht having a super time in the wide blue sea. They spot an island and decide to have a look - Huge mistake! While the bloke ties up the boat the girl runs off to find a bar but instead finds a big fence with ominous looking equipment poking out from within. She heads off but is soon chased by an unknown assailant and is quickly caught and pulled off camera by an unseen but snarling attacker.

We then cut to a group of college kids in a seaplane heading towards the same island. We learn a rich yuppie type has inherited the house that some of them holidayed in as kids, and they’ve brought some friends along for some pre-exam partying. After some unnecessary but highly enjoyable frolicking about in bikinis we get down to business as a blonde hottie gets nipped by a stray dog. A medical student tells her she will be OK as rabies will take a week to develop, but she’s soon getting horny and ‘feeling great’ which is usually movie shorthand for ‘possessed by monsters’.

The bloodied bloke from the yacht appears to warn them that ‘the dogs don’t want you here’ before being mercilessly chomped by a pack of mutts that look more ‘Crufts’ than junkyard. The kids take refuge in their cabin, after one gets an arrow in the leg from a friend who’s not so much ‘Green Arrow’ as ‘Crap at Archery’. The kids recall a local attack dog school (on a deserted island?) but it was closed down after a rabies outbreak - could these be refugee mutts driven insane by a strain of rabies? And why are the dogs drawn to the bitten girl, even after she puts on clothes and starts to get all weird?

These are some smart poochies and once they send the seaplane out to sea they terrorise the kids as they try to outsmart the ferocious Fidoes. As you’d expect the kids start to get picked off in a variety of dog based methods including an inventive ‘death by merry-go-round’. Soon we are down to three survivors and they manage to get an old car working - where better to head than the dog experiment laboratory? Who will survive and will the bitten maintain their ‘doggy instincts’ and will they be house trained?

‘The Breed’ is a workmanlike thriller with nothing new to say but it’s still good fun all the same. The premise is slight with the synopsis basically being ‘sexy kids fight killer dogs’ but you can’t say it is aimed at the high brow market. The cast are mostly unknowns with only Michelle Rodriguez being a familiar face and indeed body. This works well as you’ve no idea who is likely to survive given the low star profiles on offer.

The threat level is mild throughout with a severe biting the worst fate offered. To get in the range of the jaws a few unlikely scenarios are worked into the script with a handy zip line offering plenty of dangling opportunities. The origins of the threat are barely touched upon with a rack of test tubes offered as definitive proof of evil scientists at work.

The dogs themselves seem well trained but lack any real evil or frothing jaws. They take a few hits themselves with a few hot dogs thinning their numbers. Obviously they can’t hurt real dogs so their actual deaths happen off camera with whines and whelps dubbed on to show it’s one up for the good guys.

This was a fast paced 90 minutes and it certainly kept my interest. The film offered mild peril, some bikinied lovelies and a few inventive deaths - you could do a lot worse!

THE Tag Line - Doggone It’s OK!  68%

No.85 : The ‘Burbs (1989)

The 'Burbs at the IMDb

Off to the suburbs now as we take a look at this horror comedy staring Tom Hanks and directed by ‘Gremlins’ helmer Joe Dante. Sounds a sure fire winner? ‘Fraid the ‘Burbs isn’t worth the effort.

Hanks plays  his usual likeable every man character, who on this occasion is called ‘Ray’. He’s married to Princess Leia and is looking forward to a week off at home. Leia is worried he’ll go nuts in their quiet cul-de-sac but we’re pretty sure all sorts of exciting stuff is going on behind the net curtains. They don’t show this exciting stuff however and rely on a dog shitting on someone’s lawn to get a feeble laugh - two if you count the man trodding in the mess five minutes later.

The neighbours are your predictable collection of kooks with Bruce Dern leading the way as a military nut with an unfeasibly attractive wife. For your money you also get Corey Feldman off ‘The Goonies’ and some other assorted and forgettable oddballs.

The pressure of suburbia soon gets to our principals, but while they are at each other’s throats they realise that the new neighbours who moved in a month ago have yet to tend their yard. This mild observation leads to more suspicions and paranoia and before long the gang are convinced a fully fledged cannibal cult have moved in.

They get little satisfaction from the householder but that’s little surprise given he’s the lead Nazi from ‘The Blues Brothers’. With the mania reaching fever pitch our heroes plan a mission to break in to their home and investigate the weird goings on while Feldman hosts a house party so he and his friends can observe the doubtless wacky conclusion.

This was a really dull effort that only succeeded if its intention was to show how dull life in the suburbs can be. The slow build up lasted a full hour and the tension never got above ‘don’t care’. It was clear from the off that the mysterious happenings would have a reasonable explanation and once it all goes explosive it’s equally predictable that a wrong foot is on the cards, otherwise our heroes will end up in the clink.

Part of the issue for me was that the film never left the same few houses. Of course this claustrophobia is part of the plan but it just makes the whole enterprise seem small scale and unimportant. The plot where the foreign neighbours were thought to be eating people was absurd from the off but not in a funny way. Why Hanks didn’t spend his week off getting Leia out of her frumpy outfits and into her ‘Jabba’  bikini instead of raking through bins was never explored.

Bruce Dern was passable doing his usual ‘mania’ bit but Hanks phoned in his performance from very far away. The plot was too thin to sustain the film and although the last half hour brought some explosions and a some surprises they felt unearned as all empathy towards the characters had been lost long ago.

The seismic shift in pace towards the end and the unfolding revelations looked like frantic rewrites that failed to save this laugh and gore free horror comedy.

THE Tag Line ‘ ‘Burbs Fails to Disturb or amuse  45%

No.84 : The Vikings (1958)

The Vikings at the IMDb

Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis star in this 1958 campy historical romp which my cynical eye believes not to be 100% factual.

It is England in the Dark Ages and the Vikings are raiding and ruffling the ladies’ clothes. The king has been killed and his Queen is been pensioned off by the new pretender to the throne. The Queen confides in the Bishop that she was impregnated by a Viking and the child will be the rightful heir. The Bishop sends the infant off to Italy so a bunch of priests can look after it - a likely tale! The boy is given a rare jewel to prove his lineage - well DNA testing is about 1200 years away.

Meanwhile the Vikings return home with much revelry and a fey Englishman who has fled the land after being correctly accused of helping the raiders. They go for a tour of the grounds and after Kirk’s falcon fails a test he’s upstaged by a slave who has the better bird. A fight breaks out and Kirk ends up one eye down. The slave, who turns out to be Tony Curtis under a beard, is condemned to the traditional ‘death by crabs’ - and not in a good way!

A seeming intervention by the Gods saves Tony from his nippy fate and he is claimed by the English traitor - possibly because of that rare stone he wears around his neck - remember that? A bit of digging reveals the infant was saved from the priests by the Vikings without them knowing his true identity. The Vikings soon set off for England again with a plan to kidnap the King’s bride to be - a rather fetching Janet Leigh. They get there and back in five minutes and after a bit of squabbling over who gets first dibs Tony frees the wench and they make off in a stolen longboat.

The low speed chase results in Kirk crashing his boat and Tony rescuing Ernest Borgnine, the Viking leader whom he takes prisoner. He also takes a fancy to Janet especially after getting a hot look at her sexy back when she reluctantly pitches in on the rowing. Tony delivers the Viking chief to the evil King but after helping him have hero’s death in the wolf pit he forfeits a hand to the malevolent monarch. Tony heads back to the Fjords and the eyepatched Kirk and soon the two join forces to gets some revenge and steal the girl. Will the two save the girl and who gets her fair hand? Will the crown be restored to the rightful heir and will an early episode of ‘Who Do You Think You Are’ save some sibling slaughter?

I wasn’t looking forward to this raid on the dressing up box but it was a lot of fun with plenty of action. It is of course hard to see beyond the two Hollywood stars hamming it up as Norsemen but they have so much fun in the roles that you soon forget your misgivings and sign on for the ride.

The cast is uniformly great but I especially enjoyed Frank Thring as the evil king. His overacting made Dr Evil look low key but he is so malevolent and hammy that he’s a joy to boo. Leigh is lovely if somewhat bland and Borgnine was almost unrecognisable as the rapist Viking Chief.

The production was lavish with some cracking locations and a cast of thousands, most of whom got killed by a variety of gruesome methods - axes, big rocks, arrows you name it. The fate and destiny elements were well signposted with a wise woman on hand to keep us right lest we have fallen asleep. The big ending battle was well executed with a couple of inventive ways employed to get into the impregnable castle. The closing scenes were more of a shock but I’m all for a few last minute surprises.

At two hours the film never drags and despite the action switching from England to Norway like they are a bus stop apart the customs and battles seemed well researched and authentic - unlike Tony’s false handless arm!

THE Tag Line : Vi-King of the Castle!

Rating : 77%

No.83 : The Infidel (2010)

The Infidel at the IMDb

 Thousands of years of religious strife are sorted out in 90 minutes in this largely mirth free and simplistic British comedy.

Comedian and certainly not actor Omid Djalili stars as a fat middle-aged Muslim who runs a taxi firm. He has an unfeasibly young and attractive wife and a son who is hoping to marry his girlfriend if he can impress her step father. Omid is a pleasant enough chap unless he comes across his bete noir - black taxi cabs.

He has recently lost his mother and runs afoul of a Jewish taxi driver who lives across the road from mum’s house. After this brief preamble we quickly reach the crux of the matter as the Muslim Omid finds his birth certificate and, after a funny stint from Miranda Hart, discovers he’s adopted and is in fact Jewish.

Meanwhile his son reveals that his father in law to be is a radical cleric who is stirring up hatred in the community. Omid is aghast but to keep his son happy he dons his Muslim dress and bones up on his Koran. Choosing to complicate matters somewhat he tries to trace his Jewish father and after a rebuke from Matt Lucas’ rabbi he also mugs up on his Torah after enlisting the help of the once unfriendly Jewish cab driver. With all these worlds colliding you could be forgiven for thinking mirth will ensue - it totally doesn’t.

To delve into his twin culture Omid attends an anti Israel rally and becomes a flash point for the campaign when he burns his mistakenly exposed skullcap to appease the radical elements of the crowd. To keep the balance he also attend a Bar Mitzvah with his new friend but will soon have to choose sides.

That predictable modern plot point of ‘Youtube sensation’ threatens to derails his schemes of supporting his son and meeting the father who gave him up.

Can a ridiculous subplot involving an 80’s pop sensation save the day and can the radical Muslim crowd be convinced that love and togetherness is the way forward?

To be honest this film was better than I thought but it had way too few laughs to sustain what was a preachy message about all getting on together. Omid is a likable guy but I wasn’t buying into his character’s arc which was all over the place like Noah with a wonky sat-nav.

The eventual resolution was way too easy and simplistic, and the idea that a room full of Muslims who turn up to hear a radical preacher speak are so easy swayed beggared belief. The exposure of the nasty cleric was also too pat and although foreshadowed it was too reliant on coincidence and indeed a requirement to be detached from reality.

The best parts of the film belonged to the cameo turns such as Matt Lucas, Miranda Hart and Tony Hayers off ‘Alan Partridge’. There were a couple of decent recurring gags such as people asking that Omid not to do the ‘inverted commas’ gesture but overall the message was too blatant and the resolution too far fetched and drawn out to retain any goodwill as the credits rolled.

THE Tag Line : Excommunicate!  58%

No.82 : The Arrow (1997)

The Arrow at the IMDb

Sorry fans of verdant archers this one is about the development of a Canadian plane, but hang about there maybe some bow work later (there won’t).

This film was originally a 4 part mini-series and one of the most watched TV shows in Canadian TV history - presumably ‘Moose Hunting Hour’ was cancelled that week. The version I saw was a pared down 90 minutes and although it was passable, I was in no way inclined to seek out the 4 hour cut.

The film concerns the ‘Avro Arrow’ a fighter plane developed in Canada in the 1950’s. The plane is the veritable bee’s knees but every engineering triumph is offset by bungling bosses, conniving politicians and Dan Aykroyd’s love of the bottle.

The cut I saw bypassed much of the initial development and largely focused on the testing and attempted selling of the jet, whose manufacturer at the time was the third biggest employer in Canada; behind the hockey stick and lumberjack industries.

The characters are largely based on real people, who are profiled at the end, as well as some composite characters made up to represent some of the contributions from minority groups such as ‘all the women’. The first drama concerns the go-getting pilot who is usurped from the inaugural flights by a ‘celebrity’ flyboy whose endorsement will sell the plane. The initial numbers are good but Elwood Blues is keen to hold back until his own engine is online, less the glory goes to the American engine maker he’s currently using.

This turns out to the first of many missteps from the Blues Brother as other vested interests such as the dad out of ‘The Sound of Music’ and the always great Michael Ironside start to spread gossip about our favourite plane. With terrible timing Dan’s wife does a bunk and the bevvied bluesman soon starts to make a tit of himself with the Canadian Prime Minister, no less.

Pretty soon, despite breaking all the records, the axe falls on the Arrow and we have to worry if some made up stuff will save the Arrow from the scrap yard as the film veers from docu-drama to fantasy at MACH 3.

‘The Arrow’ was an OK effort but it’s agenda was plain to see and the bad guys were thinly painted as moustache twirling idiots while the airmen were all solid square jaw types. The attempts to show the American aviation industry as villains for pushing their own agenda was ridiculous as was the actions of Aykroyd and the Canadian PM who couldn’t have been more broadly drawn if they’d resurrected Laurel & Hardy for the roles.

The film also displayed a lack of budget and indeed imagination as archive news footage was intercut with shot film on a totally different stock, that obviously didn’t match up. The vital flight shots were also poor with some obvious model work and again old footage showing the ill-fated fighter in the air This is understandable given the fate of the planes, but it certainly takes you out of the fantasy when you are trying to see the strings.

The acting was ropey throughout with Aykroyd’s dipsomaniac draughtsman the worst, although he had some awful dialogue to contend with. The tacked on ‘will they, won’t they’ romance was totally without chemistry and the weasely politicians might as well had had Hitler moustaches given their depth and downright evil self-interest.

Overall I quite like the dreamy aspirations of ‘The Arrow’ but as a real world tale it didn’t take off for me and its simplistic view of economics and politics made this one for an early ditching at sea.

THE Tag Line : Plane Game Pain Gives Viewer Lame Brain
64%

No.81 : The Liability (2012)

The Liability at the IMDb

I was hoping this was going to be an exciting film set in the sexy world of insurance but alas it’s another ‘bad slags’ British gangster flick.

Wide boy 19 year old Adam should take better care of his stepdad’s stuff as a smash up in Pop’s Merc sets in motion a chain of events that will change his life forever, and take up 90 minutes of yours. His stepdad is Peter Mullen a gangster half way up the food chain. He has a nice house, is boffing Adam’s mum and has a seedy sideline in sex trafficking.

He tells Adam he’ll need to work to pay off the car debt and he sets him up with a driving job the next day. Adam isn’t keen at first but when he sees his stepdad in action on his laptop he decides he better play ball, lest he too end up in grainy x-rated footage. I just hope he shut the computer down correctly!

The next day Adam meets up with the guarded Tim Roth in a nicked Ford Granada. Tim plays Roy who prefers no chit-chat but does enjoy cassette tape Mexican music which seems a pointless affectation to add a touch of colour to his rather dull character. We learn his daughter is soon to be married and that he likes strong cheese in his sandwiches - you can’t say they are skimping on the details.

The two head to a forest and complete a messy hit on a Lithuanian gent living in a caravan. They start chopping up the body for souvenirs but are stumbled across by a young woman who manages to escape in the hapless hitmens’ car. We soon learn she’s not the innocent backpacker she makes out when she negotiates the return of the body parts for a few grand. The payoff goes OK but things start to spiral off in all directions when Tim’s true target is revealed and our savvy lady starts to turn the screws.

This was an OK sort of thriller but it wasn’t  memorable and the attempts to make it out of the ordinary seemed staged and unconvincing. For example our protagonists are all running around the country in vintage vehicles while shooting with gay abandon with never a copper in sight. I could see them trying to do a bit of the unsettling other worldliness of ‘Kill List’ but it didn’t get close to the atmosphere of that much better film.

The problem for me was in the second act where things started to get confused and muddled. It did salvage something towards the end but by then all the characters had been rewritten and any investment we had in them was long gone.

Peter Mullen was his usual angry and sweary self and Tim Roth showed his range doesn’t extend too far once again. The tension never got above lukewarm and despite some implied violence with axes there wasn’t much to react to apart from the destruction of a Churchill nodding dog, oh yes.

Overall the film wasn’t a disaster but there was nothing really to recommend it either, so damned with faint praise it is!

THE Tag Line - Yer going down - to the bargain bin!  61%

No.80 : The Brotherhood (1968)

The Brotherhood at the IMDb

Off to 1968 as Kirk Douglas tries to shoe horn is as many Mafia clichés as he can in 90 minutes - will he break the record? Fagagettaboutit!

We open as a plane begins its decent into Sicily with our focus on a nervous young man. He is rebuffed by taxi drivers at arrival when they hear his destination but one cabbie agrees to take him. He must have flown Ryanair as it takes ages for him to arrive at his destination. Meanwhile a moustachioed Kirk Douglas is also making a journey and taking his gun along for the ride.

The two meet at a ruined castle and quickly embrace - Kirk tells the guns wielding torpedoes to settle down as this is his brother. The two men have a good old chat but Kirk’s wife warns him that ‘they will send someone’ as his brother unpacks his own gun in his bedroom.

We then go into flashback mode to see how things ended up as they have.

This section of the film opens with the younger brother, Vince, getting married. He’s fresh out of the forces and asks Kirk if he can join the family firm. Kirk is made up about this but we can see that the never smooth running world of the Mafia is creaking at the edges as different factions at various tables spend the whole time glaring at each other.

Some sections of the mob are keen to modernise with a lucrative deal in electronics appealing to the new guard. Kirk is more old school and is cautious to stay in scams that he understands, which unsettles the other Dons.

Meanwhile a canary is executed and as always in these films everyone is wondering who is squealing to the Feds to save their own skin.

After some pretty complicated double crosses Kirk decides to make a stand and kills a suspected snitch. This sends him into exile to Sicily and we are quickly back where we started. With the two bothers reunited can they resolve their differences and satisfy the mob? Will ties to the Mafia supersede family loyalties?

For a film concerned with the mafia this was a dull affair with too much talking and not enough action. As the title implies ‘brotherhood’ and loyalty are closely examined but as with all mafia films they all come across as a bunch of nutters looking out for themselves. The plan here to corner the electronics market was hardly exciting, and this was borne out by Vince showing Kirk lots of accounts to demonstrate how lucrative it could be. Call me old fashioned, but I was longing for a bit of honest to goodness leg breaking instead.

The film was hung on the central relationship between the two brothers and it didn’t work for me. Kirk was the fiery, headstrong one while Vince was more thoughtful and measured. This may be to show they are chalk and cheese but I didn’t see any real passion and that followed through to the denouement where the big decision was made without a second thought.

The locations in New York and Sicily were great but the cast was chock full of dull old stereotypes and the script was plodding at best. Overall how they managed to wring such a dull non-event out of the subject matter was an achievement indeed!

THE Tag Line : You won’t see this, Right?   56%

No.79 : The Grey (2011)

The Grey at the IMDb

Liam Neeson sheds his hard as nails killer with wife problems image from ‘Taken’ to play a hard as nails killer with wife problems in this survival thriller. You can’t say the man doesn’t have range.

Neeson works as a hunter for a petroleum company in Alaska - basically when a work crew goes out to fix the pipes it’s Liam who shoots the wolves. He’s not happy though, and neither are we as we have to listen to five minutes of sentimental voice over as he writes what may be a suicide note before heading out to the pub. He downs a couple of shots, and presumably because the kebab shop is shut, heads outside to eat his rifle.

He’s about to end the film early when some howling makes him think twice - huge mistake! He heads for home the next day but his flight is of the no frills variety - the fare doesn’t even include a proper landing! Before the plane goes down he pisses off a friendly workmate so we know he’s not exactly a people person, well for now at least.

The plane goes down in the wilderness with only half a dozen survivors who include both Liam and the man he had words with - awkward! The guys gather up the salvable stuff and once we establish Liam’s gun is wrecked we meet the bad guys in the form of a pack of mostly CGI wolves. These guys aren’t after dinner, they only want to assert their authority over these interlopers. Liam assumes control and given his wolfy knowledge the rest fall in line despite the normal grumbles.

What follows is what you’d expect in the form of the group being relentlessly whittled down by the lupine louts. There are some slight deviations to the ‘Ten Little Indians’ format but as you’d probably guess we end up with Liam and one cannon fodder guy and a showdown with the marauding pack.

I quite liked ‘The Grey’ but I felt it was writing a smart cheque that its script couldn’t cash. The attempt to make Liam deep and thoughtful failed despite the constant call-backs to his wife who may have left him or is dead. There was a lot of spiritual stuff going on throughout with a couple of near death workers experiencing visions of what they loved most.

This would suggest we are delving into the realms of metaphor or allegory but I’m not buying. You could argue that they were all dead from the off and it was how they met their fate and faced it was what mattered. Indeed some of the guys don’t fall prey to the wolves with the weather and a direct lift from ‘Sometimes a Great Notion’ taking care of two of them.

The tension never really scaled the heights I expected with the attacks too far apart and too much time spent jabbering on about the meaning of life. If I wanted my mind expanded I’d gets some LSD - what you want in a Liam Neeson survival picture is some man on wolf action.

I did like a few scenes especially early on, when the darkness was lit up by more and more wolf eyes. At this point the guys knew they were screwed and that kind of fed into their approaches going forward. The ensemble cast mostly of lesser known actors did well and each got a decent dispatch.

The finale was kept enigmatic with a post credit snippet giving us a clue. I don’t always need a definite conclusion, and a helicopter showing up to save the day may have been stretching it, but something less inconclusive may have been more satisfying.

The film is worth a look but at two hours it does plod at some points and I really needed more bang sticks for my bucks if I was going to rate it higher.

THE Tag Line :  No Result - Going to Extra Time 70%

No.78 : The Rounders (1965)

The Rounders at the IMDb

Gentle cow poke action now as we check out this proto ‘Brokeback Mountain’.

Henry Fonda and Glenn Ford play a couple of ageing cowboy in what would have been the present day when this was made in 1965. The pair work at breaking wild horses and regularly have to postpone their plans and dreams as they inevitably piss away their earning at the saloon or on the ladies.

After breaking a couple of troublesome steeds, ranch owner Jim Love offers them a deal to round up any stray steers or horses for a tempting $7 a head. The guys agree and, after stopping in on their hooch supplier, head off to the hills to their romantic cabin.

The round up goes well and, despite a couple of mild run ins with other cowboys, their prospects look good. They have however rounded up all the fat and lazy strays and will need a fast horse to be able to rope all the lean and quick nags that remain. They have such a horse but it can’t be broken despite their repeated attempts. Winter passes in due course and although their Christmas party is ruined by a drunk horse they are soon ready to claim their cash.

The make a seemingly hefty $700 but as they head into town they have a brainwave - why fritter their cash as always? Why not risk it is a gambling scheme involving their wild horse? Along they way they pick up a couple of stranded strippers (the best kind!) and the plan is set. Will they find happiness or at least keep their cash and will the horse that has blighted their lives save the day?

I didn’t have this film down as a comedy at first as all the ‘laughs’ seemed to be people falling off horses, again and again. It does however gather pace and towards the end it’s like ‘Blazing Saddles’ with a big saloon fight and slide whistle bottom exposures.

The two leads work well together but there is no suggestion that they are in anyway attracted to each other and indeed woman are slotted in occasionally to remind you that these are red blooded men, albeit in double denim. Down the cast there are a lot of character actors mugging away for all they are worth and although not full of laughs, the film does have a good nature and no threat element whatsoever.

The direction is OK but I could have down with out the repeated sharp cuts of various people falling off the same horse - I know it’s a buckin’ horse but they don’t have to show it so buckin’ often! The Arizona locations are great and you do get a sense of the freedom that keeps drawing the cow pokes away to the hills year after year.

There is no attempt to layer the film with any sense of commentary on the nature of man or freedom; it’s more interested in plenty of pratfalls and a brief flash of bum that gets an over prominent showing on the poster above.

At less than 90 minutes the film isn’t asking for much of your time and even less of your analytical skills. It’s gentle feel good fun and a film that I enjoyed without feeling moved or asked to understand any concept or commentary.

THE Tag Line : Well Rounded - and that’s just the bums!   73%