No.107 : The Undefeated (1969)

The Undefeated at the IMDb

 John Wayne and Rock Hudson star as two Civil War officers trying to adjust to peace. The film opens with Wayne leading a cavalry charge against a Confederate position. He wins the day with plenty of rebels killed by sword and gun. As they are clearing up a messenger arrives to tell Wayne that General Lee surrendered three days before. The Duke surveys the carnage and sees what a waste of life has just occurred. Damned internet - hurry up and be invented!

Wayne meets more Southerners who advise them they intend to fight on as they see the Union soldiers as trespassers. Wayne is thoroughly cheesed off and decides to resign his post and go and round up stray horses along with the remnants of his battalion.

Meanwhile Southern Officer Rock Hudson is counting the cost of defeat. His backing of the south has left him broke and he has to set free all his slaves. At least he gives one his watch to show he’s a stand up dude. Rather than surrender his house to carpet baggers he torches it and heads south to a new life in Mexico - and he’s taking the same route as John Wayne!

Wayne and his men are now out of uniform and have rounded up 3000 wild horses. He planned to sell them to the army but when he gets stiffed on the deal he agrees to sell them to the Mexicans instead. Wayne has an adopted Indian tracker son and he advises that he can see two sets of tracks ahead - one is Hudson’s group of men, women and children and the other some stinkin’ banditos. Wayne rides ahead to tell Hudson of the menace that is stalking them and, despite their differences, they join together to see off the threat.

After some mild peril the two groups get together and soon learn that they are not so different after all. Can this mixed group of lost souls bond and show America how to heal its wounds?

This was a decent western but it didn’t have nearly as much to say about the aftermath of the Civil War as I’d have thought. Given the set up I thought Wayne and Hudson would be at loggerheads from the off but after ten seconds of sizing each other up they were swigging bourbon like old pals. Of course the mutual respect for a fellow soldier is fair enough but without any conflict what was the point? There were minor scuffles down the cast list as old scores were settled but no one, apart from the Mexicans, were brutal or untrustworthy.

Wayne put in his standard ten gallon hat performance and you can’t criticise him for that. He did have some decent lines and I liked him bopping the corrupt army buyer on the nose “I ain’t done nothin’” / “Well ya should have done”. Hudson was less of a presence and generally just stood back and let Wayne do the heavy lifting. There were a few laughs sprinkled about with a fun ‘getting to know you’ punch up serving to clear the air and allow Wayne to do his rolled eyes when punched manoeuvre.

The locations were impressive as was the massive herd of horses which would have been a tough ask given the film pre-dates CGI. There were some decent gun fights but it was all PG blood free stuff. The healing and distrust was a bit overdone but every challenge was answered with virtue and goodwill and no doubt the film played as well in the south as in the north.

Personally I like my westerns a bit grittier than this and with more a story to tell, but it was undemanding and visually impressive stuff.

THE Tag Line  - Undefeated - Unless you watch ‘The Rounders’, ‘The Professionals’ ‘The Kentuckian’ and ‘The Bravados’.

60%

No.106 : The Mountain (1956)

The Mountain at the IMDb

 Spencer Tracy and ‘Number 2’ Robert Wagner star in this 1956 thriller that sees two squabbling brothers attempt to reach the site of a mountain plane crash.

The brothers have an age difference of 30 years and it certainly shows as old shepherd Spencer has to deal with his angry young man brother Robert. No concession is given to accents or costumes so you have the slightly jarring spectacle of a sharply dressed, American accented Wagner bemoaning his fate as an ‘entertainer’of rich young women - he should try a job in insurance!

The film opens as a brave model aeroplane gives its life to the motion picture industry. It looks like an airliner in the long shots but when we focus on the pilots it looks like they've recycled a set from a World War 2 bomber flick - no wonder they crashed! Despite it being model work the actual crash happens off screen but the camera pans back to give us a rubbernecker's view of the devastation.

Back in the village at the foot of the mountain a rescue attempt is mounted. They ask Spencer along but he’s ten years retired and refuses to get involved, believing the mountain has it in for him after several accidents. His gadabout brother is keen to go but we suspect his motives. The initial rescue proves rubbish when they need rescuing themselves and they decide to wait until spring before going back.

Robert, ever the humanitarian, refuses to leave the wreck alone but he’s more interested in the money and watches that surely litter the crash scene. Spencer is aghast but soon agrees to accompany his brother as he’d inevitably die without his help. The two set out on the arduous climb across several well constructed but not very convincing sets before reaching the downed plane. As Robert starts filling his boots, Tracy finds a badly injured survivor and promises to take her back to civilisation. Robert doesn't like this plan as the police will take the cash off him so he tries the far more legal route of strangling the girl. Spencer fights him off and starts the perilous decent down the mountain. With Robert in pursuit who will survive and at what cost?

Once you get beyond the strange casting and American accents there is a lot to like in this morality tale. The settings around Mont Blanc are great and it certainly seems authentic. The same can’t be said for the mountaineering shots which understandably were done on sets with rear projection. The climb was well done with a lot of thought given to explaining the technical points without it being patronising. It did beggar belief that the ageing Spencer could skip up the mountain and then haul his brother up too but this guy has some healing ability - hands burnt raw by ropes to fully healed in 10 minutes!

Tracy was the better brother in more ways than one and you could almost believe him as an alpine guide once he got his beret on. Less good was Wagner who had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. We all love a heel but this guy was just a dick throughout.

The finale wasn't a great surprise and, although still a bit shocking, the pieces were set that it couldn't have been any other way. Initially I thought they would have given more character to the mountain what with Spencer foreshadowing a big showdown with the malevolent mound but in the end it was two brothers seeking their own kind of redemption with a fair result recorded for all concerned.

This was an entertaining film with at times a dubious moral compass but as a study of men and their motivations it was well done and with several memorable scenes.

THE Tag Line - Mountain High Score  74%

No.105 : The Change-up (2011)

The Change-up at the IMDb

One word or two? Hyphen says one!

Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman star in this high concept body swap comedy.

The pair play life-long friends with Bateman a successful lawyer with three kids while Reynolds has an enviable loafer lifestyle devoid of commitment or worry. The two discuss their lives over some beers and when they take a piss in a fountain their expressed dream of wanting the other’s life is granted by the statue looking down over them. OK it’s a lot of twaddle but at least they mock the plot themselves when explaining the situation to the wife.

What happens next is essentially two fish out of water stories for the price of one as the slacker has to cut it in the corporate world while the lawyer has to try his hand at soft porn and bedding sluts. It is better than it sounds but you can probably guess that both learn to appreciate what they have and to be more considerate to others. Again this sounds terrible but for compensation there is also swearing, ample nudity and a baby that projectile shits into someone’s mouth.

The plot is easily covered in a couple of paragraphs but there is a lot to recommend the film not least the two leads who seem to be having a lot of fun with the sometime ribald material. Bateman is always good value and he does well shifting gears from the stuffed shirt to the layabout who sometimes manages to outwit rooms full of high flying merger analysts. Reynolds gets more of the fun as the slacker who has small time acting jobs in low budget pornos. He also has some funny scenes with a heavily pregnant love interest and with Bateman’s wife who really should learn to close the bathroom door.

To pad things out there is also a couple of subplots one of which involves Bateman’s co-worker Olivia Wilde whom he arranges a date with Reynolds whose body he presently inhabits. That’s the trouble with these body swap films it always sounds more complex than it is and I for one need to keep reminding myself that he’s not who he looks like, he’s the other one. The film addresses this towards the end as a panning shot shows our men alternate between their real and assumed persons as people pass by.

The message of the film is signalled from the off with Bateman not appreciating his family and Reynolds’ avoiding his father’s (Alan Arkin) wedding  - both could do with a wake up! The power behind the switch is never addressed and it really doesn’t need to be - it’s basically an excuse for two hours of growth, values and toilet humour.

Overall the film is a bit too long to maintain its thin plot and although well made and offering a liberal sprinkling of sex and vulgarity it could have done with some tightening up. That’s said it was far better than I was expecting when it started with some nappy changing and there were enough surprises, mostly naked ones, to keep me watching.

THE Tag Line - Boobs, Bonding and Baby Shit  69%

No.104 : The Package (2013)

The Package at the IMDb

 When a film stars Steve Austin and Dolph Lundgren you know it isn’t going to be Oscar bait; but is it a credible entry in the wrestler becomes action hero genre? Hmmm, not really!

Stone Cold plays Tommy Wick and I don’t think that was intended as rhyming slang. Wick is an ex-marine reduced to debt collecting for a mob boss due to his indebted brother being in prison. I think you are meant to think he’s a decent guy but he comes across as a sadistic asshole as we join him on a routine collection job at the bowling alley. He sticks one guy’s head through a table and another into the ball return slot before giving him the obligatory 24 hours to pay.

He returns to his boss with the day’s takings and gets another job; to deliver a package to ‘The German’ for a fat bonus that’ll see his brother’s debts written off. We’ve already met The German (Lundgren) who turns a double cross into his favour when he kills a dozen heavily armed guys with a small knife. He’s tasty too you see - I can see a big fight finale in our future!

Tommy goes on his delivery job with his colleague reasonably asking why can’t the Fed-Ex the package, which is a small computer drive. This logic is not required and he gets a shot in the head for his troubles from an unseen sniper. Rather than come to a slow stop their vehicle does a massive flip from which only a wrestler with a two foot neck can escape. Luckily we have one and when the rival gang snatch squad arrive to recover the package Tommy is ready to kill loads of them in slow motion.

Realising this shit got real Tommy calls his boss but is persuaded to carry on as the threatened 50% pay cut would endanger his brother. Meanwhile The German is doing his own handiwork and teaching various henchmen the finer points of music and smoothies before killing them all - what a waste of an education.

Eventually Tommy is captured and after some very mild torture escapes only to get caught again and delivered to The German. Once again Tommy is strapped to a table and the Smoking Man off ‘The X-Files’ is ready to go to work on him. Can Tommy escape and will the secret of ‘the package’ be a surprise to anyone?

This was a dreadful film but it just about qualifies as a guilty pleasure. The acting is uniformly awful as is the action which mainly consisted of slow speed fist fights. People were taking half a dozen haymakers to the jaw with no effect. The gun play was worse with Austin spraying bullets like fly spray. He seemed constantly surprised when he ran out of bullets but we all knew that was just an excuse to punch some more face.

Attempts to soften Austin’s image with some intimate moments with his wife were wasted as you were too worried that she’d get splinters from the big lump of wood in her bed. Swedish Dolph excels at being a bad actor playing a German and his fighting skills have faded badly since he took that beating off Rocky Balboa.

The action takes place over the course of the day and although there are about 50 deaths and a million bullets spent it seems like the longest day you’ll ever endure. It was decent brain-dead action but you have nothing invested in anyone involved and when the credits roll you feel slightly ashamed that you have spent 90 minutes in their charmless company.

THE Tag Line : Package Fails to Deliver  43%

No.103 : The Man (2005)

The Man at the IMDb

Samuel L Jackson and Eugene Levy star in this alleged comedy that marries the familiar plots of ‘fish out of water’ and ‘mismatched partners’.

Levy play Andy, a nervous Wisconsin dental supplies salesman who is travelling to Detroit for a convention. His supportive family wish him well as he practices his speech and warn him of the dangers of the mean streets of Michigan. Meanwhile Jackson’s detective partner has been murdered and he’s out for revenge.

Jackson bullies $20k from a fat evidence clerk and arranges a meeting with a dodgy gun dealer. Jackson fails to find the USA Today he needs to signal his contact and wouldn’t you know it? Levy is already at the meeting place diner reading the self same newspaper. Strangely the paper alone is enough to convince the gun runner that Levy is his buy and he hands him a phone and gun as a taster. This unlikely scenario means that Levy is embroiled in the sting and he has to team up with Jackson to solve the case.

Initially Levy is shy and nervous and Jackson rough and tough but soon the two start to learn from each other and gain confidence and humility as a result. Yes, it is that crappy. The gunrunner and ruthless killer is laughably Luke Goss out of ‘Bros’ and as you’d guess he exudes all the menace of Elmer Fudd. Like no gunner runner you could imagine Goss sends the unlikely duo across town as he tries to work out if they are cops while Jackson tries to keep the unpredictable Levy onside.

Back at the station the familiar face of  Miguel Ferrer is heading up an investigation of Jackson whom he thinks may be bent. Jackson also has Susie off ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ as his unconvincing boss who tells him to hand in his badge and gun - yeah that’ll work. As we enter the last third seeds are sown that make us wonder if Jackson really is corrupt (he isn’t) and whether Levy will manage to pull of his big speech following his experiences (he does).

Jesus wept,  this is a terrible film. It suffers from virtually every problem a film like this can have from poor script, terrible acting, a famine of laughs and an unbelievable and deeply padded plot. The majority of the film (read : all of it) is totally pointless as it was always ending up with a showdown at the warehouse for the big gun buy. To get us there we have to suffer some execrable scenes where Levy farts a lot and another where he gets shot in the ass and chooses to treat it with taco sauce.

There is no danger whatsoever with cool killer Luke completely out of his depth as the thinly sketched bad guy. The subplot of the internal affairs investigation is also a waste as we know Jackson is innocent mainly because he’s the star but also because we witness Luke carrying out one of the killings pinned on Jackson.

I’m probably looking a bit too deeply into this film which is not something the script writers can be accused of. If they played it straight up comedy you could excuse some of the shortfalls but when they include murders and a mystery element along side and extended farting scene you can tell it’s all over the place.

Levy probably garners half marks as he’s just doing his usual nervous dad shtick but he doesn’t cover himself in glory, not least in the scene his trousers fall down at a busy crossroads - I guess he had a tax bill due. Come to think of it he must get loads of them what with all the straight to DVD ‘American Pie’ films…

Jackson is dreadful as the hard man who isn’t lonely but regrets the deteriorating relationship he has with his ballet dancing 10 year old daughter. He tries to come across as tough but just seems like a bullying dick in every scene. Miguel and Susie have little to do but both will be crossing this effort from their CVs if they have any sense.

I appreciate this isn’t meant to be an awards contender but the low brow laughs, terrible acting and non-existent plot mean it will be regarded as an insult even to the most committed moron. Avoid!

THE Tag Line -  Man, This is awful    25%

No.102 : The Challenge (1982)

The Challenge at the IMDb

East meets West now in this 1982 action thriller, which was a lot better than I anticipated.

Scott Glenn stars as Rick a down on his luck boxer - but we know he’s still got it when he KO’s the smart mouth champ he’s meant to be sparring with. His skills attract the attention of a wheelchair bound Japanese businessman who for some reason finds his employees in back street gyms. He offers Rick $500 dollars a day for taking an antique sword back to Japan. The sword’s ownership is sorely contested by two brothers and by entrusting it to Rick he hopes it can be delivered without incident - haven’t these people heard of Royal Mail special delivery?

As expected, things don’t go smoothly with Rick being intercepted at the airport - what a rubbish plan! Rick’s captor is a westernised Japanese thug who is tasty with his knife and has a nice line in casual swearing. He soon finds out that Rick is a decoy as the sword in his golf bag is a fake. Careful not to upset his boss the thug grabs the wheelchair man and shoves him out onto a road and off a bridge that wasn’t designed for wheelchair access. With the deception exposed and paymaster lost Rick has to wonder who is going to sign his expenses chitty.

He meets the evil big boss and is offered $15,000 if he can get in with the nice brother and steal the sword back when the opportunity arises. Rick agrees and after some training in the martial arts he gets his chance. His honour gets the better of him however, and after looking at the nice engravings he takes it back only to be greeted by the master - he saw Rick’s good character all along!

The sensei looks after Rick and trains him in the old ways of stick, sword and throwing stars. The other brother is a total dick with a big lair and loads of goons with guns - frankly I think the baddie has the better idea! Rick falls for the master’s foxy daughter and after a few run ins with the bad guys they decide to take the fight to the leader’s lair to reclaim their sword and their honour. Can the sword beat the gun and will the family be healed? Will that order for new hats be a waste and will Rick achieve redemption?

Directed by John Frankenheimer this was a superior ‘fish out of water’ movie that had plenty of action as well as some intelligent commentary on culture clashes and the old meeting the new. It was a lot like ‘The Last Samurai’ with the two brothers at opposite ends of the moral and weaponry spectrums. As with all these kind of films there is a lot of chatter about ‘honour’ and ‘loyalty’ and it’s wasted as they all end up stabbing each other in the back - it’s just like the Klingons!

The action was great however and the assault on the bad guy’s lair was like something out of a James Bond film with endless henchmen being mercilessly dispatched. The main bad guy and his helper got great send offs with the effects equal to the gore.

Scott Glenn isn’t the most enigmatic of actors but he does well here with his rite of passage from loser to hero well documented. He spends five days in a hole eating bugs and comes out of it none the worse and he nails the hot daughter to boot! The settings were all authentic and although the frenetic last 20 minutes was out of kilter with what had gone before it meant the film ended on a high.

The film was a lot like earlier Definite Article subject ‘The Yakuza’ with many of the same scenes present and correct. It was however a more enjoyable and fulfilling movie that had a satisfying mix of sex , violence and a man eating cockroaches and it is certainly this blogger’s ‘Round Eye in Japan’ film of choice.

81% Best Bit - I’ll get my hat - wait, don’t bother