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%

No.77 : The Honeymooners (2005)

The Honeymooners at the IMDb

A film with a score below 3 on IMDb can’t have too much to recommend it, can it? Well some may, but it won’t be this total dog turd of an effort

There is no reason why this is even called ‘The Honeymooners’ - it bears no resemblance to the TV show of that name and the couple involved are married six years. Still maybe they are going for brand recognition and surely it’ll be a fun, knockabout comedy with winning characters? Nah.

Our hero Ralph, played by the total misnomer Cedric the Entertainer, is a loveable loser. He has dreams of being rich and when we meet him he’s planning to make a killing with his Y2K survival kit. He drives a bus and tells a pretty passenger of his dreams and she shares hers. Like Del Boy next year they’ll be millionaires. Predictably the next caption is ‘Six Years Later’ and we find the couple, now married, stuck in their same ruts.

They live cheek by jowl with Ed and Tixie and true to form the brother is as thick as pig shit while is wife is the brains of the outfit. Why the two women both work as waitresses despite being super sharp isn’t touched upon.

Anyway the one white guy in the cast, played by an embarrassed Eric Stoltz, is a yuppie asshole who for some reason does his business deals in a diner. He plans to buy an old woman’s duplex and turn it into apartments. The waitress wives overhear and offer to buy the house, keeping the area Stoltz free. Alas they don’t have the cash as Cedric has spunked their savings on a new scheme to buy a train car, meaning the rest of the film is a scramble so they can swindle the old bat out of her house rather than let big business take the spoils.

After a few padding scenes of them trying to raise a dollar, complete with an overbearing R&B soundtrack, they find a dog in a dumpster and of course it is a champion grey hound. They enlist a poor John Leguizamo to train it up and soon the race is on. Will the dog win the conveniently deposit sized purse of $20k or will one of the seeds planted earlier in the film spring up and award an unlikely conclusion?

This is a terrible mirth free affair. The main loveable loser is nothing of the sort with every advantage gained being at the expense of some poor schmuck who gets swindled. They are meant to come across as rascals but in the real world they’d be pulling 20 at Rykers.

The humour is unsophisticated to the extent of being insulting to morons - “I know every inch of the sewer system” immediately followed by him walking into a big pipe - hilarious, I trust you disagree. The two leads are equally bad but they can thank the script for that. Well their terrible delivery and total lack of empathy helped too.

The wives were your standard smart wife with an unfeasible fat/stupid husband, a combination seen only in the movies. The cast does have a few familiar faces dotted about but nothing can save the execrable plot that is almost devoid of any surprise apart from a few ‘hmmm bullshit!’ moments.

On the plus side New York looks fine and it is quite short at less than 90 minutes but that’s about it.

THE Tag Line - Divorce Yourself From This Crap!  17%

No.76 : The Professionals (1966)

The Professionals at the IMDb

This is gonna be great - a big screen adaptation of the adventures of Bodie, Doyle and that bloke off the Fine Fare ads. What? 1966 western ? Buggeration!

This film had passed me by despite its stellar cast but it is a lot of fun and well worth a look.

The film opens with small vignettes featuring four characters from the early 20th century wild west. Lee Marvin is making a living demonstrating machine guns to the army, another chap works on a horse ranch and shows he’s a good guy by beating up a horse abuser. Elsewhere a chap who looks like Virgil off the wrestling is collecting a bounty while Burt Lancaster is hopping out of a lady’s bed in his long johns as her husband appears.

They appear unconnected but soon we are in a box car with Lee Marvin who is being offered a contract along side the two who aren’t Burt. Ralph Bellman (the rich guy who isn’t Don Amiche’ off ‘Trading Places’) offers a fat reward if they can return his wife from kidnappers. The Mexican revolutionaries who have her want $100,00 and although Ralph has the cash he doesn’t trust the gringos to return his wife when payment is made.

He’s picked Lee as he used to ride with the revolutionaries and knows their leader Raza (a moustache twirling Jack Palance). He agrees $10k a head and asks for an explosives expert to be hired too. Of course the expert is Burt who, when his bail is paid, has once again lost his clothes.

The guys set off into the badlands of Mexico and within an hour they are at the Mexican’s camp with a cunning plan. Things are complicated when the ‘kidnapped’ wife seems quite happy in Raza’s clutches but they grab her all the same and set off on the long journey home. This is fraught with danger and it’s not clear who’ll survive or what will transpire at the showdown when the rewards are due. They are ‘Professionals’ right? Surely they’ll take the cash from the evil rich guy?

This was a fun two hours with wall to wall recognisable faces. The performances vary but Marvin and Lancaster are true stars who shine in every scene. Lancaster especially exudes charm and is happy to take the less glamorous but easily most fun role of the clothes shy Dolworth. Marvin exudes his usual quiet menace and Palance is fine although most of his dialogue is yelled in Spanish.

The film looks great in HD and is as sharp as something shot yesterday. The familiar red rock of Arizona never looked better and the action scenes are well staged with plenty of blood and bullets flying. The plot is a bit straightforward with the big surprise signalled as soon as the rescued  wife offer to tend someone’s wounds - she’s nice, you see. They do try to tack on some stuff about the morality of a hired gun and your debt to brothers in arms, but ultimately what you remember is loads of Mexicans getting shot off their horses.

The film doesn’t take itself too seriously and although you won’t learn much about the revolution you will have a good couple of hours in the company of some great, long lost talent. You couldn’t see Zac Efron doing this!

THE Tag Line - Professional Job All Round  75%

No.75 : The Debt (2010)

The Debt at the IMDb

A bit of ‘secrets and lies’ now as Helen Mirren tries a funny accent and keeps her clothes on - Boooo!

Helen plays Rachel, a Mossad agent, who is celebrated in her homeland for killing a Nazi war criminal in the 1960s in East Germany. The mission is coming back into the public consciousness as Mirren’s daughter has written a book about it and the launch sees Mirren and her fellow agents reappraise past events.

Mirren does a reading from the book and we flash back to witness her shooting their fleeing captive after he manages to get free, leaving her with an ugly facial scar. All is not well however when one of her fellow agents jumps in front of a truck on the way to the reunion and another has gotten wind that their 30 year old secret may be falling apart.

Mirren’s wheelchair bound ex-partner and fellow agent discuss the death of their friend and his motivation for this. We flash back again to the start of the mission and see how the rookie Rachel posed as a wannabe mother so she could get a closer look at the alleged Nazi surgeon - not as close as the look as her gets of her, given he’s working as an obstetrician.

They manage to capture their man but after a bodged escape they are left in their grotty flat for ten days while the Israelis plan their way home. The evil Nazi doctor begins to plant seeds of dissent between the flatmates and after stealing a plot point from ‘Breaking Bad’ he escapes. The three agents agree that they’ll keep the lie that they killed the Nazi and disposed of the body - secure in the knowledge that the Nazi would lie low.

Alas, the best laid plans fall apart as you’d expect, as the wheelchair bound ex-agent Tom Wilkinson finds out that a Ukrainian hospital patient is claiming to be the undead Nazi - and not in a fun zombie way. With one agent dead and the other in a wheelchair it’s up to Helen to travel to the Ukraine and try out her handy fluent Ukrainian and see if she can pay the debt she’s been living off for 30 years.

This was a pretty workmanlike thriller but it had a lot to like. The narrative flow jumped back and forth and the payoff from the ‘real’ telling as opposed to the ‘fictional’ one was signalled some way off. Given they reused a lot of the footage there was a sense of deja-vu but it was well worked with the tension racked up as the world closed in on them.

The flashback to the mission took the best part of an hour and although 1965 East Germany was well realised it did drag a bit - we all knew a debt was going to be incurred and that it’d be up to Helen to pay it off so it took a bit long to get there. I did enjoy the scene with the evil doctor as he probed his patient and would be captor both literally and mentally. Jesper Christensen, who you’ll know as ‘Mr White’ from ‘Quantum of Solace’, was excellent as the malevolent medic , with evil pouring from every loaded statement.

Mirren did her usual class act, although her Russian heritage showed in her Ukraine scenes and her lack of an Israeli one did so equally when she put on their accent. Tom Wilkinson did his usual angry routine and it was a shame we didn’t see more of Ciaran Hinds who must be the worst ‘Frogger’ player in history.

The film avoided preaching too much about the rights and wrongs of what transpired, but that tended to leave you somewhat unsympathetic towards the characters all of whom where aloof and distant. It was a well played and directed film but it could have used a tighter edit and maybe a bit more humanity to allow us to invest in the characters. There again maybe an investment in ‘The Debt’ is best avoided!

THE Tag Line - We Always Get Our Man - Eventually   71%

No.74 : The Reckoning (2002)

The Reckoning at the IMDb

Off to the Middle Ages now on the Definite Article Blog with this tale of actors, murder, child abuse and some illicit sex - well they didn’t have the internet back then.

We open as Paul Bettany gives himself an  impromptu haircut with a sharp rock. We jump back and forth to hairier time, when he was a priest giving a sermon. He catches the eye of a buxom wench and we assume he’s been defrocked after being caught in the act with the temptress. He chucks his priestly robes in the river but keeps his crucifix in case it might come in handy later.

He wanders the woods until he happens upon a travelling troupe of actors. He witnesses one murder another but quickly accepts it was a mercy killing and asks to join up - clearly he wasn’t put off by their grievance procedure.

The actors include such luvvies as Brian Cox, Willem Dafoe and the always lovely Gina Mckee. They take on the errant priest to fill the minor roles in their production despite some sensing he has more to hide than he lets on. They are soon on the road and arrive at the fakest looking hilltop castle this side of ‘The Holy Grail’. The town is empty as the villagers are all at the trail of a local woman accused of murdering a young lad. She is found guilty but we know she’s innocent as she’s so darn pretty.

The actors stage their production of ‘Adam and Eve’ to lukewarm reviews and after being refused a burial for their dead colleague by the local vicar our once priestly friend agrees to do a comeback gig to plant the stiff. There are however rumblings in the town and it can’t all be down to the stew. The villagers think the condemned woman is innocent and Dafoe thinks recreating the murder may be a money spinning idea to get the troupe’s cart fixed. They bribe Simon Pegg’s overacting jailer to get access to the woman for plot tips and start to piece together the mystery. A exhumation confirms their worst fears and we have to wonder if the woman will be saved and if those responsible will meet justice.

For a medieval murder mystery this was pretty good stuff. It’s no ’In the name of the Rose’ but it had plenty going for it, not least a top notch cast. OK Dafoe’s accent is all over the shop and I’ve no idea why we had to keep seeing him do stretches in his pants but he’s always a strong and likable presence. Brian Cox does his usual blustery outrage shtick and for one performance he dresses up as Darth Maul - maybe he’s hoping for a gig in the new trilogy. I was sorry not to see more of Gina, but Bettany was excellent at what he does best - the oddball religious character. He should try and broaden his range - he was really convincing as a Pro tennis player in ‘Wimbledon’, then again…

The detection angle was well done with the gristly exhumation a real stomach turner. It was clear from the off that Ewen Bremner’s sneering monk would be involved as would the man seen peeping out his windows a lot . The finale where the actors utilised their skills to convince the thick townsfolk of the real villain was well done and although low budget they did capture the grime and smells of ye olde world shit hole.

The main twist was that we had a priest trying uncover child abuse rather than be involved in it, but the resolution was great and well earned. One thing I would have changed was the non-descript title - maybe ‘Luvvies Vs Nonces’ was already taken?

THE Tag Line : Luvvie to See You   76%