No.224 : The Fury (1978)

The Fury (1978) at the IMDb

I remember seeing the trailer for this film probably 35 years ago and thought it looked great. The main showpiece was an exploding carnival and I made a mental note to look it up. Decades passed, but eventually it came up on Film 4 and I got my long awaiting viewing. What a disappointment! It’s like a low rent ‘X-Men’, with the heralded funfair scene lasting 30 seconds and consisting of some Arabs flying through a window.

The film opens in the “Mid East 1977”. Kirk Douglas is on holiday with his son Robin and friend John Cassavetes. He tells the reluctant son that they need to go to live in Chicago to investigate his abilities, but before they can pay their bar bill some Arabs attack. Lots of bullets fly but strangely one Arab is videotaping events. For reasons unknown Kirk makes off in a speedboat which immediately explodes. With Kirk thought dead Cassavetes shows his true colours and congratulates the Arabs on a job well done. Fortunately Kirk suffered only a torn t-shirt and manages to machine gun Cassavete’s arm before the  traitor makes off with the confused Robin.

A year passes and we’re in Chicago. Amy Irving is out with her friend but is tagged as a psychic by a suspicious looking man in a mac. He calls Kirk and tells him he’s found someone who maybe able to help him trace Robin. The CIA are however on the ball and trace the call to Kirk’s hotel room. If he hadn’t stayed in the same one as Jake Blues he’d have been less conspicuous. Just hope he remembered the Cheese Whizz, Boy.

Kirk gets away but Amy is enrolled into a school for talented psychics after she causes some trouble with her mind reading and nose bleed inducing powers. She forms a psychic connection with Robin and, despite them both being sedated and controlled at the CIA special school, both start to see their powers develop.

Can Kirk save his boy? Was it a good idea to inspect the roof together and will Cassavetes get his cleaning deposit back?

This was an overlong thriller with not enough happening to justify the two hour investment of your time. It was quite dated with the film stock looking like video tape. Director Brian De Palma also made some strange choices such as a round table dolly shot that made me dizzy and some terrible rear projection work in the car scenes. To be fair, there were some inventive touches such as Irving inhabiting the visions she was seeing, while the action played on, oblivious to her presence.

The special effects were variable with the blue eyes that signified ‘the fury’ looking painted on in post production. Some of the ‘Scanners’ like psychic violence was pretty brutal, with Cassavetes especially getting a rough time of it. (it's only a model!)

Kirk Douglas didn’t convince as the semi action hero running about in his shorts with a machine gun. He was 60 or so at the time of filming, so the only convincing scenes he had were those when he was ‘disguised’ as an old man.

The plot was quite weak with no explanation of the powers or their extent. Robin seemed to be corrupted by his power in five minutes whereas Irving needed a major character shift to mete out her revenge.

If the film lost half an hour and focused more on the powers than the quest to find the son it would have been a lot more enjoyable. As it was, it was really just Kirk looking for his son with added thought powers - and those are the cheapest of all super powers!

THE Tag Line : John Cassavetes is Definitely Dead  60%

No.223 : The Gambler (1980)

The Gambler (1980) at the IMDb

It’s quite common to have hit songs come from a film, but it’s less usual to have a film made around a hit song. Such is the case here in our third ‘The Gambler’ offering in short order. Dare you place a wager as to which is best? Clue : It’s not this one!

In doing my usual exhaustive research I was surprised to learn that this was the first of five films in ‘The Gambler’ franchise. All were TV movies and each starred Kenny Rogers as the wily and wise card player, Brady Hawkes.

The film sets its stall out early doors with ‘The Gambler’ predictably playing over the titles. Kenny was 42 when this came out so he’s clearly meant to be the one doling out the advice rather than the one asking for it. That said maybe he’s the non-dead one in the song, now grown up.

Anyway, Kenny rides his horse slowly into town and makes his way to the station waiting room which could not look more like a set if it had ‘This is a set’ written all over it. We’ve already met young card sharp Billy Montana who has tried and failed to pick up a single lady with his tales of his journey to a big poker tournament in San Francisco. He takes on and beats a couple of poker players who accuse him of cheating and who draw guns on him. Fortunately Kenny has arrived and exposes them as cheats and sends them on their way. He also notes that Billy was cheating too, but he was better at it than his marks.

Kenny enlists the lady to deal the cards and he gives Billy a lesson in five card stud. At no point does anyone swear or stab anyone and you just know we’re in the version of old west, where values remain strong and no one says ‘motherfucker’. With the wisdom now extolled, the long awaited train is ready to leave now that the rich owner has arrived. We also learn that Kenny is on a mission, no not to sell chicken but to answer a letter. We hear it read out by a young lad who claims Kenny is his Dad - rubbish he doesn’t even have a beard. He says his mother kept him a secret, so that we know Kenny isn’t a bastard, but now they need help.

The son’s mother has a Mrs Skywalker relationship with his step-father and can’t escape his evil clutches, but the boy gets away and meets up with Kenny on the train. Meanwhile the rich railroad owner has set up a $10k a head card game involving Kenny, Montana and a hired card sharp, The Doc. Soon the hangers on are eliminated and it’s down to the last hand. Can Kenny win and will he outsmart the boy’s father’s henchmen who lie in wait? Can the boy escape his servitude and will Kenny gets some more homilies in before the credits roll? Yes to everything!

This would fall strictly into the ‘does what it says on the tin’ file and you would be hard pressed to find fault in this gentle offering. Let’s try anyway. Rodgers is no actor and tends to mistake talking slowly for wisdom. He hobbles about on a stick but is as fast a cheetah when chucking folk out of windows or over bars. Hope the DSS are watching.

Everyone listens with rapt attention when Kenny starts giving out his wise words, including a long conversation with the lady who turns out to be a reformed whore. Kenny tells her that’s all good and she’s very grateful to him. Not that grateful though.

The poker scenes were decent with a king high losing to a pair of fours in one hand of five card stud. It did all fall apart in the last hand however, when Kenny starts to shove in the chips despite facing three aces with a card to come. ‘That’s way they call it gambling’ he says wisely - no Kenny, that’s what they call suicidal bankroll management.

Bruce Boxleitner was likeable as Montana, but I doubt he’d last five minutes in the real old west. That said, Kenny’s large ass would be hung out to dry as soon as he took on three gringos with his stick, so there is an element of disbelief being suspended throughout.

You could show this one to your granny if she was OK with talk about whores and unlikely straight flushes. Right onto the sequels for me.

That was a bluff!

THE Tag Line : You Gotta Know When to Watch ‘Em and When Not to Bother 57%

No.222 : The Iceman (2012)

The Iceman at the IMDb

No, it’s not a spin off from ‘Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends’ instead it’s a bio-pic of mob hit man Richard Kuklinski, starring blog second favourite Michael, Mr Shannon.

The film opens with an aged and beardy Shannon being asked if he has any regrets. Before he can answer the film morphs back to 1964 with a younger Shannon on his first date with soon to be wife, Winona Ryder. She admires his tattoos and slow drawl, and even believes his story of being employed as a voice actor for Walt Disney. In fact he has a slightly seedier job copying porno films. He plays pool for cash in a bar and we get a quick taste of his temper when he slashes a man’s throat for giving him some lip.

Meanwhile at the porn lab he takes a slap himself when gang boss Ray Liotta wants to know why his order of porn isn’t ready yet. Ray sees a steely coolness about Shannon and offers him a job as a hit man. Shannon is keen to please and shows his loyalty, and psychopathic tendencies, by gunning down a random beggar. Things go well for a while and Shannon, Ryder and their two daughters move to the suburbs. His cover story is that he’s a currency trader, but it’s more whacks than Marks that he’s into.

Liotta has issues of his own when big boss Robert Davi wants him to kill his idiot henchman David Schwimmer who has stolen some drugs. This causes Liotta to lie low and this puts Shannon out of business. Despite being warned off, he decides to go freelance and hooks up with Captain America’s ‘Mr Whippy’ hit man who uses an ice cream van as cover.

The two soon pile up the bodies, keeping them frozen to disguise their crimes and the dates of death. After one loose talker too many, we are back at the start with Shannon reflecting on his worthless life and lack of regret.

I had high hopes for this film but it dropped off quickly and became a bit dull. It was confusing in places as the double crosses racked up and it was hard to care for a mass murderer whose only redeeming feature was supposedly his loyalty to his family. They touched briefly on his abusive childhood for his motivation but you need some excuse to pardon over 100 confirmed kills.

They did try to sugar coat the character of Richie, but reading the real life accounts it’s clear he was nothing but a murderous and wife beating psycho.

The cast was mostly good with thin material with the likes of James Franco, Chris Evans and Winona all underused. Chris Evans was hidden in a big wig and beard and his casting seemed largely pointless. Better than Franco though, who only got one short scene.

60s/70s New York was well realised with lots of classic cars and brown clothing on show. The film did one of my pets hates in that they had captions for dates of certain events at the start but they quickly disappeared, even when years had clearly passed in terms of fashion. Do it consistently or not at all!

Shannon was OK in the lead with his usual quiet menace. I didn’t really buy the character however and if he was seeking sympathy he got none from me. You could dress this up as a morality tale but ultimately it’s a bloke killing loads of people for money and getting caught. THE END.

THE Tag Line : Will Leave You Cold  - 56%

No.221 : The Sinner (TV) (2017) Series 1-3

The Sinner at the IMDb

A second trip into the Definitive world of TV now as we look at all three seasons of the American show ‘The Sinner’. Each season deals with a single case and lasts for 8 episodes. This may seem like overkill for a single investigation but the format does lend itself to an exhaustive approach to the crime and the motivations behind it. It won’t be for everyone, especially if you need a lot of action, but fans of the police procedural will lap it up.

Bill Pullman stars as Harry Ambrose a bearded detective working out of a precinct in Dorchester New York. It’s a well heeled community and you get the sense that murders are the exception rather than the norm. Harry has a basket full of issues, with a troubled marriage, that is soon dissolved, and a few kinks of his own including paying fat hookers to beat him up. These edges start to disappear in the later series which are pretty much straight up investigations, with Harry’s quirks largely set to one side.

The three seasons broadcast so far deal with individual crimes although mentions of the previous events do crop up in later investigations. The crimes all involve unlikely murderers and Harry’s, largely self appointed, task is to understand the motivations behind them and whether they can be explained or justified.

The three seasons are named after the main subject with the first being Cora. Cora is a young mother who one day at the beach stabs a man to death with a fruit knife. It looks like an open and shut case and she pleads guilty, but Harry knows he has 8 episodes to fill, and starts to dig deeper. As he slowly unravels details of the case we learn of a larger conspiracy and a horrific back-story that begins to explain her actions.

In the second season a young boy poisons his two carers, with tea made from a deadly root. Again it’s an open and shut case, but why did he do it and what has the mysterious cult, in which he was raised, got to do with it all?

In the last season to date, a young teacher survives a car crash in which his friend dies. An examination of the timeline shows that the friend could have been saved,. Why was he allowed to die and what about these other murders that are cropping up?

For me the first two seasons were great with the third only being so-so. I liked the fresh approach to detective work, although it beggared belief that Harry would be given free reign to pick apart an open and shut case whilst, presumably, loads of other murders were going unsolved, The first series was the most satisfying in terms of revelations and detective work. Harry has no special powers apart from asking the right questions and reading people. At first his kinky life is a major factor in his character but that’s rightly sidelined as the series progresses. I know every cop show needs an angle but I don’t need to see my leading man get his face sat on, on a regular basis.

The second series involving the cult was good too and I liked how the conspiracy was all over the town with various worthies getting drawn in. The creepy kid was excellent as was Carrie Coon, who you’ll know off Season 3 of ‘Fargo’. It was also good to see ‘Mr Dresden’ off those old Orange Cinema ads as ‘The Beacon’.

The third season was still enjoyable but it stretched things a bit far in terms of the indulgences allowed to Harry and by him to his suspect. When he agreed to be buried in a grave to win his suspect’s trust you could almost hear the ‘whoosh’ as the shark was jumped.

Bill Pullman is likeable in the lead, as the sharp but laid back detective. He is given too much latitude in his investigations to be believable, but you give it a pass as it’s enjoyable to see him dismantle an unbreakable case.

At the start I thought there was going to e a supernatural element to the series but in the end it is down to nothing more than peoples’ minds and their motivation, which is ultimately more satisfying than a lot of paranormal gubbins.

The series has been renewed for a fourth season and I’d certainly recommend that you get on board before that comes out. All series can be found on Netflix.

THE Tag Line : Sinner’s a Winner 74%

No.220 : The Deceived (TV) (2020)

The Deceived at the IMDb

A change of pace for us now as we delve into the box sets section of the ‘My5’ app - Channel 5’s online offering. I’m sure this show would have broadcast on their main platform but it passed me by. I don’t watch much Channel 5 to be honest, as I largely dismiss it as a lot of tabloid nonsense and soaps. This sweeping view wasn’t totally discouraged as the inescapable ads that peppered this app viewing were for programmes about being fat and WWF Divas. ‘The Deceived’ may however be their attempt to get away from such risible rubbish (there was also a trailer about a show about what happens to your rubbish) as this was a pretty decent, quality production.

The series has only four episodes of about 44 minutes each so you could easily see it off in one evening, as we did. It’s debatable whether there is enough material to fill two and a half hours of viewing, but lubricated with a bottle of wine it passed the night in a decent, if largely unmemorable manner.

The film opens with Cambridge student Ophelia eyeing up her bearded lecturer, Michael. Michael has a beard that a bird could nest in and looks like Mac out of ‘Always Sunny’, but the girls all agree he’s dreamy. The two meet up in the time honoured fashion of her dropping papers and him helping to pick them up, and soon they are having awkward looking sex in his office chair. Michael’s wife is a successful author and he’s living in her shadow, but he does have a new book of his own coming out.

He seems to put it about though, and Ophelia gets warned off when she and a friend witness Michael fighting with another woman. He then disappears and after some detective work Ophelia tracks him to his remote home village in Ireland. It turns out that Michael’s wife Roisin has died in a fire and he has returned home to sort out the house and her affairs. His day gets even better when Ophelia announces that she’s pregnant.

She moves into the creepy, half burnt out, family pile and soon starts to hear strange noises coming from a locked room. She also gets attention from a local handyman and an overbearing mother figure who suspects that Ophelia may not be the literary agent that she claims to be.

As the episodes go by a young man appears looking for his missing sister and Ophelia starts to see and hear strange goings on. Why is everyone feeding her tea and what really happened to Roisin on that fateful night?

I quite liked this workmanlike mystery thriller. As soon as it got underway you knew where it was going and the only cliff-hanger was which of the obvious outcomes would the writers chose for the big revelation. There was more than a little of ‘Rebecca’ about the whole enterprise with it clear to us that Ophelia wasn’t going nuts, and that there were strange happenings afoot.

I’m not the sharpest at such things but even I cottoned onto the twist by episode two and it was a long 90 minutes wait to see things pan out in the predicted fashion. To be fair it was well made with rural Ireland and Cambridge both looking great. The cast was largely good with there being no big names to distract you. Emmett J Scanlan in the lead had most of the heavy lifting to do, and he carried it off well moving from charmer to…something else, with relative ease. I was less sympathetic towards Emily Reid as Ophelia who was a bit needy and annoying.

Overall I think this could have been condensed into a 90 minute film as there was plenty of padding and subplots, like that with the builder, not going anywhere. There was nothing you haven’t seen before, but as a lockdown time passer you could do worse.

THE Tag Line : No Mystery Here! 61%

No.219 :The Gambler (2014)

The Gambler (2014) at the IMDb

It was always going to be a tough ask to have Marky Mark fill James Caan’s 70’s Cuban heels, but this remake falls well short of the original. It does have a decent cast, but with nothing new added you have to wonder why they bothered.

The film opens with George Kennedy on his death bed - presciently so as it turned out to be his last role. He offers sage advice to his son Jim (Marky Mark) who proceeds to ignore it, heading off instead to a casino. He has $10k, which he bets on a single hand of blackjack, which he doubles up again and again before losing the lot. The casino’s owner is owed $240k and refuses any more credit. That’s fine as Omar off ‘The Wire’ is there and offers a $50k loan for a vig of 20 points a week - ten grand to you or me.

These rates would make Brighthouse blush but Jim is an addict and pisses the cash away. If you think he doesn’t convince as a gambler wait til you see him as a university literary professor. He tells his students not to try and write unless they are a genius or Captain Marvel who has shown up, as she’s not due to save the world for at least five years. He has another student who doesn’t care for class but he’s good at basketball and needs the scholastic credit. Might come in handy later that nugget!

Jim then goes hunting for more credit with John Goodman, using the impeccable logic that he can gamble his way out of his financial hole. When that doesn’t work out he heads to his mother Jessica Lange, who gets him a big bag of cash out of the bank. Problem solved.

No wait, he’s off to Vegas with Captain Marvel and he pisses that all away too. With the loan sharks circling Jim has only one shot - his ‘in’ with his basketball playing student. Can he corrupt the youth to save his neck and if he does is he only postponing the inevitable?

As a standalone movie this was decent but it pales in comparison to its predecessor. I felt Marky was too young to convey the gravitas as a professor or the world weariness needed to portray a gambler, keen to lose his cash as soon as possible.

The film followed the same narrative lines as the original but with some changes - there is no long suffering girlfriend here, only a prospect of a better life in the shape of Brie Larson. The mother role was transplanted intact but it was a mistake to have so many loan sharks played by familiar faces. Omar and Goodman both lacked menace and were too fond of talking and not keen enough on the leg breaking. I found it hard to believe the lines of credit being offered and the fact they were cool with Jim being in hock to so many bookies.

The film tried to add a bit of tension by having captions counting down the days until the debts became due. This was mostly pointless as Jim got shaken down every day anyway.

The gambling was mostly restricted to blackjack and roulette which at least it kept simple, without rules having to be explained. The Vegas sequence was a misfire with the ‘hit me on 18’ scene stuck in at the start which totally missed the point for me - in the original this was a sign that Caan was on an unbeatable lucky streak. Here he wins that one and then loses the lot.

The film missed the thrill and sleaziness of the gambling life with most of the bets being skill free coin flips. Fair enough the man’s an inveterate gambler, but his motivations and redemption were lacking for me.

Over all a decent character piece but one lacking any real insight or tension.

THE Tagline : Stick to the Seventies!  60%

No.218 : The Gambler (1974)

The Gambler (1974)

With our revolutionary new policy of adding the year of release after the film’s title we can now do pair ups of same named films. These may be remakes & originals or just the same name, different film. The options are literally two.

First up in this double bill-athon is the original ‘The Gambler’ from 1974. Don’t fret, there’s no Kenny Rogers in sight - this is a gritty look at the world of betting and gangsters.

James Caan plays ‘Axel’ a literary professor who is an inveterate gambler. We see him at first in a back street joint losing $44k - and that was a lot of money in 1974 - over a quarter of a million in today’s bucks. It’s not clear at first why get gets so much credit but we soon learn he comes from a rich family who bail him out. He has a lovely girlfriend in Lauren Hutton and a sweet Mustang, but he still needs his gambling hit.

He manages to get his mother to give him the cash, who extracts it from James Woods' slimy banker, but he’s straight off to Vegas to gamble it up. Despite winning, he soon loses the lot and more owing to his habit of picking the losers in every basketball match.

With Lauren fed up and his family despairing, Caan has one last card to play - will he get out from under or is he in a death spiral, from which there is no escape?

That quick summary covers more or less all of the plot, in what is a pretty straightforward film. As soon as we meet Caan he’s in a hole, a hole that he manages to make progressively worse as the film goes on. It was a great lesson in observation with many classic gambling traits rote large. He explains that he needs the action, so even when he’s ahead, it’s never enough. He’s a brave man as a cavalcade of familiar mob leg breakers dog his every step including Paul Sorvino and Paulie off ‘Rocky’.

Caan was excellent as the tunnel visioned Axel, who couldn’t see beyond the next big score. The film did show the highs of being a gambler too, with a great sequence in Vegas seeing him ride his luck to the point he was hitting on 18 as he knew a ‘3’ would be the next card. It never lasts though!

The chaos he creates for his family and friends was well done with his mother a picture of resignation. There was some confusion about where he was with his debts and who he owed, but I guess that would be a deliberate ploy to show how mixed up Axel’s life was. There were loads of great character actors on show with Huggy Bear being a standout at the end as , you’ll never guess, a pimp.

I felt the film should have ended with the climatic basketball matched but it meandered another ten minutes just to show that the spiral would continue as greater thrills were sought. Some things are better implied, but at least we got Huggy shouting some jive.

Overall this was a great character piece that was well observed and acted and it may even make you think twice the next time you fancy £5 on ‘Lucky Lad‘ in the Chepstow 5.15.

THE Tag Line : Take a bet on this  78%

No.217 : The Greatest (2009)

The Greatest at the IMDb

This film opens with Kick-Ass getting it on with Carey Mulligan - enjoy this happy scene as it’s the last bit of joy you’ll get for another 90 minutes, as a dysfunctional family deals with the loss of their son. Kick-Ass you see may be ‘the greatest’ in bed but isn’t so hot on his driving. He stops in the middle of the road to profess his love and is killed by Michael Shannon’s truck for his trouble.

His mother Susan Sarandon is devastated and his father Pierce Brosnan is a bit upset too. His brother is mostly stoned and the bereaved girlfriend, who survived the wreck, finds that she is pregnant.

We learn that Pierce, a maths professor, had an affair with Jennifer Ehle and his marriage is on shaky ground as a result. Sarandon wakes up crying every day and wants to know what happened in the 17 minutes following the crash, before her son expired. The other driver Shannon, is in a convenient movie coma, so she goes and reads to him hoping that he awakes and fills in the blanks.

The pregnant Mulligan moves in with the family but finds it hard to connect with Mum who wishes the girl had died and not her son. She also doesn’t want people to think they are blessed with the son’s baby, when she is grieving for her first born. Meanwhile the less favoured druggy son heads to a grief support group a la ‘Fight Club’ and meets a nice girl who sadly turns out to be a mental.

The film progresses in chapters, signalled by the months of the pregnancy. As she becomes due Pierce has a heart episode, Sarandon has a breakdown and Shannon wakes up - it’s almost like a movie script! Will the baby be born without issues and will it be accepted by the dysfunctional family who could fill a whole season of Alan Partridge’s ‘Problem People’?

I tried to like this film, and to be fair it had a lot of good qualities, but at the end it all seemed somewhat forced and unrealistic. For a start Brosnan and Sarandon weren’t a good match. You could say that’s why he strayed but her earthiness and his tidiness never really gelled, and in some scenes with them both wailing it was flat out embarrassing.

Mulligan was better, but she hadn’t much of an emotional range given she’d had the hardest time out of everyone. The big fall out seemed totally engineered and the coming together was laughable as the family chased the labouring mum to be through the woods. Everyone had a breakthrough and all was put right just in time.

Shannon, who spent the first 70 minutes in a coma only got one real scene and he didn’t convince as the criminal car crasher. He starts by telling Sarandon to bugger off but after a moment’s pleading he manages to recount every second of Kick-Ass’ last minutes in beautiful detail. Maybe that’s what she needed, but I doubt that’s what she really would have gotten in a prison hospital from a man going to the clink due to her idiot son.

The film did have some touching moments and was a decent essay on the way different people have varying reactions to loss. It seemed a bit pat and convenient on many levels however, and far from being ‘the greatest’ it will have to settle for ‘the average’ in this critic’s book.

THE Tag Line : Bring the Kleenex - no not like that -  57%

No.216 : The Chameleon (2010)

The Chameleon at the IMDb

Sometimes you see a story on the news and think ‘That’ll make an interesting film!’. Other times you go with ‘mmm, that’s interesting, I wonder if ‘Tipping Point is on?’ This film falls squarely into the second category. It’s a decent set up, based on a true story, but not a lot happens and things panned out pretty much as I expected from the off.

The film tries to be interesting by jumping about with the narrative timeline but ultimately it’s about someone faking an identity and getting caught doing it. There are the motivations of the various characters to consider, such  as to how they allowed this to happen but ultimately, who cares? The films tries and fails to inject some drama and insight into proceedings but it ends up with all the excitement of a ‘Crimewatch’ re-enactment.

The films opens in 2006 with Famke Janssen’s FBI agent trawling the bayou in Louisiana, presumably for a body. Before anything happens we jump back to 2000 and a boy being found in the street claiming he had escaped from kidnappers who had held him since 1996. He says he is an American boy who had gone missing in 1996 and, given he knows the names of all of the missing boy’s family, he is reinstated to them.

The sister greets him with open arms, the brother less so. The mother, played by a scuzzy Ellen Barkin, isn’t keen at first but soon starts to confide in her ‘son‘. No one seems to worry about the boy’s change in appearance or his new French accent and no one apart from Janssen who smells a rat. She thinks the brother killed his missing sibling and his acceptance of this interloper is proof that he has something to hide. Sister and mother both have their own issues and this new transplant offers an answer to some of their problems.

After an hour Janssen, like the viewer, gets bored of all the hanging around and arranges a DNA test which proves the missing son is in fact a serial French con man, who has multiple identities. He gets charged with the impersonation but can his new foothold in the family generate any new leads into the case of the missing boy? Before long we are back at the bayou where we started - will something get resolved at last?

I wasn’t impressed by this film and had nothing invested in any of the paper thin characters. Druggie Mum Barkin was like Seymour Skinner’s Mum accepting Armin Tamzarian into her home despite all the evidence to the contrary. The sister , who was an awful actor, was just plain needy and the violent and  potentially murderous brother carried all the threat of a Teletubby.

Famke had a thankless task going through the detective motions and you have to wonder why they bothered. We knew from the start he was a big faker and even though it was a true story it beggared belief that the police would accept the ‘missing’ boy’s story at face value, especially as all his knowledge of ‘his’ family was freely available on the internet.

I think the story would have been better served as a documentary, as the dramatic elements  that were introduced didn’t take and stuck out like a sore thumb. If you need to know about this thin tale I’d recommend the Wikipedia page over this dull 90 minute hash of the facts.

THE Tag Line - He Came, He Faked He Went Away -  45%

No.215 : The Driver (1978)

The Driver at the IMDb

One of the better known definitive films now, as we delve into this noirish 1978 effort, that sees Ryan O’Neal’s titular driver takes on Brue Dern’s Detective.

I hadn’t seen this in a while and it struck me by how much style wins over substance. The film is relatively short at 91 minutes, and large sections of that are taken up with car chases or moody silences. O’Neal doesn’t say a word for the first 15 minutes and only has 350 words of wisdom in the whole film - dark and moody type you understand.

The film opens with a casino heist and the ensuing car chase get away. More cop cars get trashed than in a ‘Blues Brothers’ marathon but our man gets away. The criminals he’s working with were late and won’t see Ryan on anther job as a result. His rules have kept him out of prison so far. This time however there is a witness, and manic cop Dern is keen to collar ‘The Cowboy’, as he calls O’Neal due to his love of Country & Western music.

The witness fails to pick O’Neal from a line up but we later learn that she’s been paid off to provide O’Neal with an alibi. The witness, played by Isabelle Adjani, doesn’t say much either and prefers to stare a lot.

Dern decides that he won’t catch O’Neal by playing fair so after capturing a hapless trio of robbers he offers them a deal - one more job with O’Neil as the driver and they can walk away. This generous offer is accepted despite the protests of Dern’s underlings - is he becoming obsessed? You bet.

The robbery goes down, but there are double crosses and bag switches galore before we learn who, if anyone, is going to drive off into the sunset.

Directed by Walter Hill this film is a lot like his next project ‘The Warriors’ although not as good. O’Neil tries to do broody and interesting but he and Adjani look like they have lost their scripts in most of their scenes, with you almost shouting at the screen for them to spit it out. Dern is better as the obsessed policeman and no one can out stare him in what is largely a staring contest throughout.

Of course all the memorable scenes are the car chases and you get two good ones for your money as well as a Merc getting trashed in a parking garage -  and a bus ride too. I did get a sense that the footage had been sped up somewhat but the pace was excellent, with a real sense of danger. New York City planners should however be criticised for having a large ramp on every corner that flips cars over - that’s plain dangerous.

With very little script and no romance this is a slight affair, but there are enough good scenes in the short run time to keep you occupied. You don’t buy into any of the characters and no back-story or even real names are offered. I think the film was trying to be a sort of parable or morality tale, with the characters irredeemable and all wearing the same clothes throughout, like they are characters from a comic book.

Not one that will live long in the memory once the tyre screeching has dissipated but some excellent driving stunts make it all worthwhile.

THE Tag Line - Drive Don’t Talk!  68%

No.214 : The Cooler (2003)

The Cooler at the IMDb

Time for middle aged man wish fulfilment now - getting off with Maria Bello and winning at Vegas.

William Hall Macy, to give him his full name, stars as Bernie, a cooler in a Vegas casino. He’s basically the physical embodiment of bad luck and is employed by the casino to cool down players on a hot streak. His effectiveness is displayed by how much cream he gets in his coffee (not a metaphor) and how baggy his suit is. As the film starts he’s super baggy and cream free but that will soon change.

His casino, The Golden Shangri-La, is the last of the old school casinos, still run by the mob and holding out against the corporate takeover that has befallen many of its contemporaries. The manager Alec Baldwin likes his old school crooners and leg breaking policy, but change is on the way in the form of Ron Livingston’s corporate go-getter who is keen to transform the ageing casino.

Things change fro Bernie too as he meets up with attractive waitress Maria Bello. It’s unclear why she takes a shine to Bernie but the pair hit it off and are soon repaying Bernie’s demonstrative neighbours with sex noises of their own, albeit faked ones. This upswing in Bernie’s happiness is a dampener on his powers and soon everyone is winning on his watch. Added to the mix is Bernie’s hustler son and his possibly pregnant girlfriend and Bernie’s ambition to leave his old life behind. Can he get away and find happiness or will Baldwin display his big brass balls once again and keep him in his cooler job?

I hadn’t seen this film in many years and although I still liked it, it was hard to justify my previous 8/10 rating. It is very good with some excellent performances, but I just fund it somewhat slight the second time around. No explanation is given for Bernie’s powers and although Bello likes astrology, there is no suggestion that anything supernatural is going on. I think it was better left unexplained but as a gimmick it was a but light to carry a whole film - I could see it as an ‘X-Files’ episode quite comfortably, but as a 100 minute feature it seemed a bit padded.

Macy and Bello were good and I liked that my early thoughts that she’d never go for him were borne out when Baldwin’s scheming was revealed. It was nice that she did end up liking him after all and it’s doubtful that his piles of cash had anything to do with that. Both were fully immersed in their role and, whilst their expressions of love were justified in the context of the film, I could have done without the shots of Macy’s sweaty bum.

Baldwin was excellent as the casino boss hanging onto the old times but he didn’t quite match the intensity of his ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ performance. It was also good to see Ron Livingston off ‘Office Space’ and ‘Band of Brothers’ but he didn’t get much to work with as the corporate face of Vegas’ future.

There were some quite brutal scenes of women being beaten up and the film wasn’t shy is showing Vegas’ seamy underbelly, but a pat ending made for an enjoyable if slightly underwhelming experience.


THE Tag Line : Worth a Flutter 70%