Category: Crime Drama

LITTLE CAESAR (1931)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Mervyn LeRoy
CAST: Edward G. Robinson, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Glenda Farrell
MY RATING: 7/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 96% Fresh

PLOT: A small-time hood shoots his way to the top of the mob ring during Prohibition, but how long will he stay there?


Lurking in the DNA of Mervyn LeRoy’s seminal gangster flick Little Caesar are the genetic markers for virtually every mob movie that’s been made ever since.  It helped kick off a trend of gangster films that proliferated in the 1930s: Angels with Dirty Faces, Scarface, The Public Enemy, The Roaring Twenties, et al.  Its themes have been repeated in masterpieces like The Godfather, Bonnie and Clyde, and Brian DePalma’s epic remake of Scarface, and we never seem to tire of it.  If Little Caesar lacks the visual and editorial pizzazz of those later films…well, what are you gonna do, they were pretty much breaking ground on the genre.  Let’s cut them at least a LITTLE slack.

The film tells the story of the rise and fall of Caesar Enrico Bandello, a small-time thug played by Edward G. Robinson in the performance that would follow him for the rest of his career, no matter how many times he tried to shake it off.  His delivery and intonations would become the hallmarks of gangster-speak for decades.  (Even Chief Wiggum’s voice on The Simpsons is an echo of Robinson.)  The movie opens with a scene of sudden and startling violence, even if it’s done in the shadow of darkness.  Afterwards, Rico and his partner in crime, Joe, talk things over in an all-night diner.  The casting of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as Rico’s partner was a masterstroke, emphasizing their differences in size and demeanor right at the start.  As their career paths diverge, Rico gets a little meaner and “squintier”, while Joe stays as improbably handsome as ever.  Clever visual shorthand.

Little Caesar moves quickly…really quickly.  Think of one of your favorite gangster movies.  Picture it as a big hamburger patty sitting on a bun.  Now trim everything off the edges so nothing spills off the boundaries of the bun, and you’re left with nothing but a lean little circle of meat.  That’s Little Caesar.  Clocking in at a scant 78 minutes, it’s barely longer than Bambi.  This movie exemplifies the get-in-get-out-nobody-gets-hurt school of moviemaking.  We get all the character exposition we need in the opening five minutes.  Villains look like villains, cops look like cops, and you can tell the nice girls from the not-so-nice ones by the way they dress, not by what they say.  Considering Little Caesar was made just a few years after the advent of sound, it’s not too surprising to see these vestiges of silent film lingering on the screen.  (There are even a couple of title cards to indicate the passage of time, so we don’t get bogged down with all that talking…)

There is one scene where director LeRoy and the studio editors tried for an effect and failed.  Rico leads his gangsters to rob a hotel lobby during a big party.  The robbery is edited together in a series of fade-ins and fade-outs, instead of quick cuts from one shot to the other.  In the course of the robbery, an important character is murdered.  But because of the shots fading into each other, the effect is not startling, but dreamlike.  It’s hard to explain.  Was this intended to try to get into Rico’s head, to experience the robbery through his own perception, as if he sort of “goes away” whenever he commits acts of violence?  If so, it never happens during any of the other killings he commits.  I can’t figure out exactly what this effect is supposed to symbolize, and as the great man once said, “If you have to ask what something symbolizes, it doesn’t.”

Aside from that scene, and apart from the occasional overacting by a supporting player who is still getting used to using their voice on camera, Little Caesar is lean and mean, like its title character.  Supposedly, it also features what may be the first drive-by shooting ever put on film.  Kinda neat.  It gave Edward G. Robinson the role of a lifetime, as well as one of the greatest exit lines in the history of cinema.  (If you don’t know what it is, you deserve to hear it from him, not me.)  It doesn’t get my blood racing like, say, Heat or The Untouchables, but as a piece of Hollywood history, I’d call it required viewing for anyone who’s a fan of the genre.  Watching Little Caesar is like participating in cinematic archaeology, discovering the roots of everything that came after it.  I’d try to put it more eloquently than that, but it’s late.  Nyaa…nyaa.

P.S. Even Goodfellas paid homage to Little Caesar…there’s a scene where Rico is being introduced to his new gang, and the camera goes around the room: “There’s Tony Passa. Can drive a car better than any mug in town. Otero…he’s little, but he’s the goods all right.” …and so on. I was waiting for one of the mugs to repeat himself like Jimmy Two-Times…

THE LONG GOODBYE (1973)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Robert Altman
CAST: Elliott Gould, Nina van Pallandt, Sterling Hayden, Henry Gibson
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 95% Certified Fresh

PLOT: Private eye Philip Marlowe does a favor for a good friend, and as a result he loses his cat, spends three days in jail, and incurs the wrath of a mobster looking for his missing $355,000.


Elliot Gould’s version of Philip Marlowe is a far cry from Humphrey Bogart’s classic interpretation in The Big Sleep [1946], and I’m okay with that.  Who wants to see any actor, no matter how talented, try to follow in Bogey’s footsteps?  Gould resembles no one so much as Walter Matthau as he shambles from one fine mess to another, cracking wise to cops and hoodlums alike, smoking cigarettes like there was no tomorrow, and bemoaning the loss of his cat (played by the original Morris the Cat…no, seriously).

I mention all that because, apparently, there were (and maybe still are) Raymond Chandler fans who were none too pleased with Robert Altman’s film The Long Goodbye when it was released, as Gould did not fit the image they had in their mind of one of fiction’s greatest hard-boiled detectives.  In my opinion, it just doesn’t matter.  Bogey is Bogey and Gould is Gould and, as Marlowe himself repeats throughout the movie, “It’s okay with me.”  Just had to get that out of the way.

The Long Goodbye is one of the finest private eye flicks I’ve ever seen.  With Robert Altman’s trademark style and wit, we first encounter Philip Marlowe as he wakes up in the dead of night to feed his cat.  Much has been made of this opening scene, as the filmmakers apparently intended it to be a metaphor for the Marlowe character being transposed from the ‘50s to the early ‘70s, like a “Rip van Marlowe” suddenly having to deal with a new world after being asleep for 20 years.  I get it, but the movie plays just as well without that kind of metaphysical layering.

Next thing you know, Marlowe’s best bud, Terry Lennox, shows up at his door with bruised knuckles, scratches on his face, and a sudden desire to visit Tijuana, Mexico…indefinitely.  Marlowe does what any friend would do: drives his buddy to Mexico and drops him off at the border.  But when he gets back to his apartment, the cops are already there, interrogate him, and bust him on a phony charge until he tells them where Lennox is.  Three days later, Marlowe is released because Lennox has turned up dead, with a suicide note and a confession to murdering his wife at his bedside.

That’s just the setup.  Next thing you know, he’s hired by a ritzy dame, Eileen Wade (Nina van Pallandt), to find her drunkard husband, famous author Roger Wade (the always dependable Sterling Hayden), who apparently has a nasty habit of taking his drunken frustrations out on Eileen’s face.  That leads to an encounter with a mean little mobster named Marty Augustine (director Mark Rydell) who makes Roger Wade look like Tiny Tim.  HE wants to know where his $355,000 is, that TERRY was supposed to deliver to him in Mexico.  Are these three plot threads connected?  Is the sky blue?

Even if the mystery plot of The Long Goodbye weren’t meticulously plotted and virtually airtight, the movie would still be a pleasure to watch and listen to because, hey, it’s a Robert Altman movie.  I’ve only seen one movie of his that I HAVEN’T liked so far, but I’m reluctant to say what it is for fear I’ll get a deluge of comments about how wrong I am.  Anyway, Altman’s style is in full force in this movie: overlapping dialogue, the occasional cameo (David Carradine as a cellmate, and a certain Austrian bodybuilder as one of the mobster’s muscle men), and characters who never, ever look like they’re acting.

Altman frames his actors and directs them almost as if he’s shooting a documentary, although there are very few (if any?) hand-held shots, so you can tell that there was a method to the…well, not madness, but spontaneity.  Watching them deliver their lines is like watching the scene play out through a keyhole, or like we’re watching them on a hidden camera.  There’s a voyeuristic feel to the whole movie that, while it lacks a certain polish, is nevertheless compelling and absorbing.  I wanted to know what happened next, not because the mystery still hadn’t been solved, but because I simply wanted to see what these characters were going to do or say.  This is a vibe that I don’t even REALLY get, at least not to this degree, in some of Altman’s later films, like The Player [1992] or Short Cuts [1993].  There is something about the synergy between Gould, Altman, and the Marlowe character that struck a chord in me, and I was just happy to be along for the ride.

Naturally, I wouldn’t dream of revealing any of the secrets to the mystery of Terry Lennox and the mobster and the author’s wife.  But I do want to mention one specific scene, between Marty Augustine and his beautiful mistress.  To say that the payoff of this scene was a jolting is a vast understatement.  I can’t even say what other films it reminded me of, but it’s safe to say that it took me completely by surprise.  You’ll know what I mean when you see it.  (And how about that ending!?  Altman had a clause written into his contract specifically stating the ending of the film could NOT be changed by studio interference or whatever…and thank God he did.)

Based on the movie posters for The Long Goodbye, I had always assumed this was Altman’s stab at madcap, screwball comedy.  I could not have been further from the truth.  This is a great film noir, or I guess neo-noir, that does its best (and mostly succeeds) to capture on screen the grittiness and fatalism of only the best dime store detective novels, as well as some of the more highbrow entries in the genre.  Only Altman could have made a movie specifically like this, in this way, and only Gould could have captured that precise mix of “here we go again” and “I’m smarter than you and we both know it”.  I wouldn’t call it a forgotten film, but it’s worth digging up if you’ve never seen it.

EMILIA PEREZ (FRANCE)

By Marc S. Sanders

I never watched a telenovela from start to finish.  At best, the only footage I’ve seen are on GIF scenes that tease at the over exasperated expressions (bulging eyes, big teeth, big hairstyles, lots of lipstick) of the actors and the characters they are portraying.  The Funny Or Die You Tube clips draw their comedy by having the straightest voiceover summarize a season of these miniseries. The stories were not meant for humor, but on the surface, I can’t help but think they are operating with a Naked Gun tongue firmly in an Airplane! cheek. 

Emilia Pérez looks like a telenovela compiled into a two-hour film, but as outrageous as the storyline and the sequence of events play out it’s anything but silly.  I held an appreciation for the circumstances that writer/director Jacques Audiard set up so that the insurmountable conflicts appeared convincing, and most especially overwhelming.  Emilia Pérez performs like an episode of Three’s Company – the one with the misunderstanding – but there are complications that border on bloody violence, life, and death.

Zoe Saldana portrays Rita, a defense attorney for Mexico’s worst criminals, and she despises the purpose she serves for the murderous scum she represents as she assists in getting one thug exonerated after another.  Early on in the picture, Saldana espouses her remorse through song and dance all within the middle of a courtroom, because as you quickly learn Audiard’s film is a movie musical. 

Shortly after the opening number Rita is summoned by Manitas, the most powerful head of the Mexican drug cartel.  He has unlimited resources and cash, and he hires Rita to do a worldwide search for the finest physicians to complete his sex change operation.  Once that is complete, the two will arrange the publicly known death of Manitas, send his wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) and their two children off to hiding in Switzerland, and the drug czar will be replaced by the woman Emilia Pérez.  Emilia and Manitas are portrayed by real life trans actress Karla Sofía Gascón.

Four years jump by, and Emilia catches up with Rita, who remains the only person to know of the ruse that took place.  Emilia wants Rita to deliver Jessi and the children back to her.  The former father will now pose as the wealthy aunt and they will live together in Mexico, going forward. 

Rita discovers a new kind of respect for Emilia as the bloody past of this individual have ceased since her sex change.  As such, Emilia recalls that her former self was responsible for countless murders and kidnappings, many of which took place under her command.  Now she seeks redemption by making herself public with a well-funded campaign that will focus on the recovery of missing people and set up proper burial arrangements so next of kin can have closure.  Emilia reveals a common burial site where hundreds of bodies were secretly laid to rest.  No one questions how she knows of this area.  Yet, she becomes a philanthropic woman who has earned the respect of millions within Mexico.  The irony is that she recruits other cartel lords to make sizable donations to this cause.  If anything, it makes them look more noble in a public eye.

Elsewhere, simplicity does not hold for her relationship with Jessi.  I won’t reveal what occurs because it lends to an ending you might expect.  All three leads embrace different perspectives of this storyline, and it only heightens the complexities of the film.

Jacques Audiard is of French descent, and after seeing the film I learned that many have taken issue with him overseeing this project.  He does not speak Spanish, has no Mexican heritage and according to many has not embraced a true account of Mexican culture or activity.  The movie was also submitted for Oscar contention as the French candidate in the Best Foreign Film category. I’m glad I did not learn of these objections until after seeing Audiard’s film, though.  It did not interfere with my take on the picture, and I believe it should not cloud your viewpoint if you intend to see it.  (It’s currently showing on Netflix.)  There were moments in the film that I predicted would occur such as where a boy on a bicycle is heading with a plastic shopping bag in tow.  By that moment, I knew what was to be revealed inside the bag. 

The film is soap opera like, especially with the musical numbers that are included.  I’d think the songs were composed by Lin Manuel Miranda if I didn’t know better because the lyrics work like dialogue much like you would see in Hamilton or In The Heights.  I was taken with the singing performances of Saldana, Gascón, and of course Gomez who works part time as a professional singer anyway.  It’s almost operatic how they and other cast members express their conflicting feelings in character.  Out of context of the film, I don’t think any of these songs work or would draw an attraction to leave the radio tuned in.  The songs are storytelling, but not memorable or catchy with chorus versus.

While I did not mind the song portions, I never missed them when scripted dialogue, primarily in Spanish with English subtitles, was being played.  I guess you could say the music makes the film different.  A different kind of telenovela, a different kind of crime drama, a different kind of soap opera, and certainly a different kind of musical.  Whether you take to the assembly of the film or not, you cannot deny that Emilia Pérez stands out within any one of these categories.

The film is up for the most Oscar nominations in the year 2024, thirteen in total.  One thing that is odd though is that Zoe Saldana is competing in the Best Supporting Actress race while Karla Sofía Gascón is up for Best Actress.  Even though Gascón plays the title character, I insist it should be the other way around. Saldana occupies most of the running time of the film and as complicated as the character Emilia Pérez is, I found Saldana to be more conflicted as Rita, the outsider looking in with all the secrets held tight in her subconscious.  The best way to share her struggles with the audience is to sing them aloud.  The long-time action movie star (Guardians Of The Galaxy, Avatar) sets the stage for the whole movie, as soon as the five hundred million studio logos get their street cred at the beginning of the film.  (I empathize with Peter Griffin on Family Guy.) Saldana is marvelous in this picture.  A stunning performance.

As Emilia Pérez, Karla Sofía Gascón pulls off an intricate stretch as she convincingly plays two very different roles.  Had the film not told me, her character could have easily been the second coming of The Crying Game. Unlike Saldana though, once Emilia is brought into the film I didn’t so much see a performance as I heard the problematic narrative that came from the script.  I don’t recall any special moments or scenes that wowed me to the point of an Oscar nomination.  It’s certainly one of the most unique roles to come along in films lately.  So I guess that’s where the justification for special recognition stems from.

Selena Gomez is a powerhouse in her role.  She was worthy of a nomination that regrettably did not come.  As I understand she cannot speak Spanish fluently and was challenged at times with the dialogue and the singing involved.  Beyond Saldana’s introductory number, Gomez has the standout song with her portion of El Trio.  Gomez has so many dimensions to this character, as the bubbly airheaded and spoiled wife of the drug czar, who then transitions to a sorrowful and cold caricature after time has passed since her husband has been killed, and later she is vengefully outraged.  This is such a standout performance from her lighter material found in Disney programming and Only Murders In The Building.  She’s quite fierce.

I liked Emilia Pérez.  Artistically speaking, I question the worthiness of some of the recognition though.  It’s up for Best Cinematography.  Often the picture is grainy, which I believe was deliberate, but intent does not imply the highest order of artistic measure.  Maybe it is earning praise due to the transitions during the musical numbers.  Nevertheless, this film does not look as sharp as Dune, Alien: Romulus or The Brutalist. 

As well, I did not find anything special for its nomination in Sound.  Perhaps the sound lends to the music embedded throughout the film.  I don’t know.  I can’t figure what was merited here, when there are arguably dozens of other films that likely deserved more recognition. 

The creative licenses are where the strengths lie in Emilia Pérez.  The editing and directing are good with expansive footage of Mexican locales, and transitioning film work during the song and dance portions.  It has a screenplay that grabbed me right away.  The compounded conflicts that arise feel fresh as one new development introduces itself after another. None of the material is so much for shock value like you would find in a telenovela.  The crises all seem to make sense. 

It’s not easy once a gender transition is complete, especially for a murderous drug lord.  Likewise, it’s not going to be easy for the immediate family or the one person who carries all the secrets that no one else does.  Regardless of his background, Jacques Audiard’s film lays enough groundwork and attention for each of these women’s perspectives.  He’s simply a storyteller who triumphs with impressionable tales to unfold. 

FORCE OF EVIL (1948)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Abraham Polonsky
CAST: John Garfield, Beatrice Pearson, Thomas Gomez, Marie Windsor
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 100% Fresh

PLOT: A crooked lawyer working for a numbers-running “combine” nevertheless tries to get his older brother to quit the racket himself when an even bigger combine tries to move in.


On the surface, Force of Evil looks and feels like a B-movie: low production values, populated by talented bit players elevated into larger roles [John Garfield being the exception, naturally], and looking like it was shot on the fly by a television crew.  Of course, reading that sentence back to myself, I realize I could also be describing Hitchcock’s Psycho [1960], but Force of Evil feels even more low rent than that.  There are shadows present in brightly lit rooms that could only be caused by stage lights behind the camera.  Oddly timed edits draw attention to themselves and threaten to take the viewer out of the movie.  The female roles are literal representations of the so-called “Madonna-Whore” complex, limited to expressions of fluttering tension or full-on seduction.  The dialogue, at least near the beginning, is filled with legal and financial jargon that had me rewinding a couple of scenes to try to digest what the characters were saying.

And yet, Force of Evil exudes a strange power through its unique use of language and the borderline-Shakespearean nature of its tragic story, involving a crooked lawyer (John Garfield) who works for a numbers racket, but nevertheless tries to convince his older brother to quit the business when a larger “combine” threatens to take over.

John Garfield, God love him, was no Brando or Bogart, but in this movie, the screenplay provides him and everyone else with dialogue that feels lifted out of a stage play that was translated into English from some foreign language.  Here’s a line from Leo Morse (Thomas Gomez) to his younger brother, Joe (Garfield):

“Do you know what that is, Joe?  Blackmail!  That’s what it is!  Blackmail!  You’re crazy!  You’re absolutely crazy mad!”

Another example:

“All right.  I am sensible.  I am calm.  I’ll give you my answer calmly and sensibly.  My final answer.  My final answer is finally NO.  The answer is no – absolutely and finally no, finally and positively no!  No, no, no!  N – O!”

To call that kind of language “stylized” is an understatement.  The repetitive words, the broken-up clauses…tilt your head and it could almost read as poetry.  In fact, in Martin Scorsese’s introduction on the Force of Evil Blu-ray, he relates a story where a critic watching a screening of the film exclaimed, “My god, it’s written in free verse!”

While I acknowledge the screenplay’s poetic form, I found an even more contemporary comparison: David Mamet.  I semi-recently watched his film Homicide [1991] and wrote in my review that “…Mamet’s signature word choices…suggest an almost Shakespearean construction, as if the words are being shoehorned into a buried structure or pattern that operates subconsciously…trying to create a mood reminiscent of Greek tragedy…”  Those words apply equally well to Force of Evil’s screenplay by director Abraham Polonsky and Ira Wolfert.  I got a distinctly Mamet-esque vibe from the dialogue in this 1948 film, with just a dash of Aaron Sorkin, perhaps.

(Ebert once said that Pulp Fiction [1994] is a movie that he could watch with the picture turned off, just so he could listen to the crackling dialogue.  Force of Evil could just as well fit that mold, in my opinion.)

There’s even a Mamet vibe to Garfield’s acting style, as he rarely cracks a smile or any other expression for the entire film; we only sense changes in tone by the volume of his voice, not by the expression on his face…much like the lead actors in Mamet’s House of Games [1987].  That stylization sets Force of Evil apart from many of its film-noir counterparts.  To be sure, other noirs have their share of stylized dialogue and characters, but this movie sets some kind of stylization bar that must be heard to be believed.

The story can be summarized easily (see the top of this review), but it is powerful in its simplicity, at least when it comes to the interplay between Joe and his older brother.  As for the female characters, they are sadly stuck in placeholder roles that are there either as eye candy (Marie Windsor, a film-noir regular in her first major role) or as the young woman, Doris (Beatrice Pearson), helpless before the wiles of a wicked smooth-talking man like Joe Morse.  No Ida Lupones or Barbara Stanwycks or Lauren Bacalls here.  However, there is an interesting conversation between Joe and Doris that gives us an interesting insight into Joe’s character, as well as hiding a discussion of moral relativism in plain sight.

Joe is doing the ‘40s film equivalent of “putting the moves” on Doris, telling her baldly that she WANTS him to be wicked to her, “because you’re wicked, really wicked…you’re squirming for me to do something wicked to you – make a pass for you, bowl you over, sweep you up, take the childishness out of you, and give you money and sin.  That’s real wickedness.”  In so many words, he’s telling her that she’s ASKING for it.  This is not a nice man.  He goes further.  He tells her:

“If I put my hand in my pocket and gave you a ruby, a million-dollar ruby for nothing, because you’re beautiful and a child with advantages and because I wanted to give it to you without taking anything for myself – would that be wicked?”

In Joe’s mind, charity isn’t just for suckers, it’s downright evil.  Doris mounts a good defense, telling Joe how she hasn’t been fooled by magicians or smooth-talking men since she was a little girl.  Joe keeps following his path of logic, but an interesting thing happens.  He incriminates himself, and at the end of the scene he seems to realize it:

“To go to great expense for something you want, that’s natural.  To reach out to take it, that’s human, that’s natural.  But to get your pleasure from not taking, from cheating yourself deliberately like my brother did today, from not getting, from not taking…don’t you see what a black thing that is for a man to do?  How it is to hate yourself and your brother, make him feel that he’s guilty, that…that I’m guilty?”

There’s that free verse in action again, with those repetitive phrases.  His own amoral code trips him up, and the camera lingers on Joe’s haunted face for a moment before we fade into the next scene.  I mention this exchange because it’s so atypical of even some of the greatest noirs, which are usually full of hard-boiled dialogue about heaters and button men and glamorous dames.  In Force of Evil, we’re invited to turn inwards with our anti-hero and compare our definition of evil with his, as Doris does later in the film.

The film ends with several scenes of shocking violence, including a murder that looks inspired by Battleship Potemkin [1925] and a three-way shootout in a darkened office.  There is a remarkably evocative shot as Joe hurries down a staircase, and it appears as if he is making his own descent into hell.  Force of Evil has recently been critically re-evaluated; after years of being dismissed as nothing more than an assembly-line noir thriller, it was recently restored by UCLA and the Film Foundation and was also selected to the National Film Registry.  It’s not the greatest film noir I’ve ever seen, but if you’re a fan of the genre, you owe it to yourself to hunt down a copy and give it a look…or more appropriately, a listen.

THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE (1974)

By Marc S. Sanders

I’m a big fan of gritty, urban crime thrillers.  A wealth of them came out in the 1970s.  There was a rawness to their material.  They were equal opportunity offenders, picking on every race and demographic out there. It only lent an honesty to the characters that occupied these spaces.  The two guys that easily come to mind are Dirty Harry and Popeye Doyle from The French Connection.  Still, there were others that wedged their way through the cracks.  The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three from 1974 belongs in this fraternity of films as well. 

Walter Matthau is Lt. Zachary Garber, who has a ho hum job working the law enforcement area of the New York City subway system.  Beyond muggings and vagrants lying around you wouldn’t expect any major crimes to happen underground and thus Zach moves with a slow pace that never gets him upended or panicked.  Yet, on the day that he is giving a tour to some visiting Japanese subway architects, a hijacking of the train to Pelham Bay, number one two three, occurs.  Four armed men, only designated by Mr. Blue, Mr. Green, Mr. Grey and Mr. Brown don fake mustaches, hats and overcoats.  They are demanding a cash ransom from the city in the amount of one million dollars.  Zach and his crew have less than an hour to respond with the money, or Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw) will order the killing of one hostage for every sixty second delay.

Joseph Sargent’s film then steers its way into several conundrums.  Even if the ransom is paid according to the criminals’ exact instructions, how are these guys going to make an escape from underground?  What’s the nebbishy mayor supposed to do?  He’s in bed with the flu and he doesn’t know how to respond to this kind of craziness.  What’s the point of him making a public appearance near the scene of the crime? 

Long before everyone’s favorite hostage flick, Die Hard, came about Sargent’s movie was poking fun at the humorous and inconvenient cracks that leak out of a serious captive crisis.  First you gotta get the mayor to agree to the demands and as his wife (Doris Roberts) sensibly points out, there are seventeen potential voters on that train.  Then, you gotta count the money and drive it from uptown to midtown before the clock runs out.  That’s not so easy.  You think New Yorkers get out of the way when a speeding patrol car is barreling through the city? 

Zach doesn’t have it so easy as well.  Schluby Walter Matthau is great at trying to contain a situation but his co-workers are not so understanding.  Rush hour is less than two hours away and this stand still train is holding up the subway traffic.  Dick O’Neil and Jerry Stiller are genuine hilarity born directly out of the concrete jungle for roles like this. O’Neil has to keep all tracks open and the trains moving.  Initially, Stiller doesn’t take this seriously – a precursor to his Frank Costanza role on Seinfeld.

Robert Shaw was always one of the best villains and antagonists with films like From Russia With Love, The Sting, and Jaws.  He’s just as good here, but like those other characters, Mr. Blue is unique.  He carries a uniform, hospital cornered method, and he keeps it to the letter so well, that he’s relaxed enough to play his crossword puzzle as he waits for the money to arrive.  Martin Balsam is Mr. Green, a nervous underling recruited for operating the train.  Hector Elizondo is a crazed kamikaze kind of guy who might just knock the criminals plan out of whack because he’s a little too trigger happy.

The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three carries a simple plot.  What makes it complicated though are the characters surrounding the story.  There are a few levelheaded guys on both sides, but it’s the others around them and even the daily happenings of New York City that tilts any progress to be made off kilter. 

The city and many of these characters are unpredictable and therefore surprises will trip everything up just when it all seems to fall into place.  This even happens in the very, very, very last scene and caption of the film.  I’d love to share what a simple involuntary action that can break any of our concentrations does for a couple of these guys, but then I’d spoil the fun.  Trust me though, you get the last laugh before the end credits roll.

SCARFACE (1983)

By Marc S. Sanders

On Thanksgiving Day when we glutton ourselves with an abundance of food, it seemed highly appropriate to watch one of the most self-indulgent pieces ever put on film.  Brian DePalma’s Scarface with a script written by Oliver Stone and featuring Al Pacino.  This is a movie that brags about its boastfulness.  I mean look at everything that is mashed into this thing.  Blood, bullets, lots of cocaine and too much Al Pacino.

Pacino is Cuban refugee Tony Montana.  He is one of a handful of small time criminals who is shipped over to the United States when Castro wanted less people to oversee.  Refugee camps are fenced up under the highways of Southern Florida where no law is enforced among the tented populations.

Soon after Tony arrives he’s hot on the scene of pushing the newest underground product through Miami – cocaine.  With his buddy Manny (Steven Bauer) the two men get in good graces with a well dressed sleaze named Omar (F Murray Abraham), who is second in command to an established drug kingpin named Frank (Robert Loggia).  For Tony and Manny it’ll only be a matter of time before they take over as the numbers one and two bad guys.  That’ll include Tony marrying Frank’s blond trophy girlfriend Elvira (Michelle Pfeiffer in her breakout role) and winning a trusting partnership with a South American drug czar named Alejandro (Paul Shenar).  If you ever expect to get killed, you don’t want to be by the orders of Alejandro.  A helicopter serves much more of a purpose once it takes flight.

Scarface is a step-by-step movie or a climb up a three-hour ladder and then a gradual drop down off a balcony into a bloody fountain below.  There’s no depth and it works like a shopping list that you check off as it moves along. Props and houses and suits and jewelry and cars and cocaine and cash have more significance than what anyone has to say. Other than Tony, none of the people in this film matter. What Tony acquires and what he says about himself is all that is important.

This is a big ass movie with bloody graphics and killings, mountains of drugs and money, a lot of fucks, a gaudy estate home, a way over the top Al Pacino and lots and lots and lots of bullets and guns to go with them.  The film only settles for one chainsaw killing, though.  At the time, I recall that scene was up for big debate on the film’s MPAA rating.  Brian DePalma wanted to up the ante on brutality to grab moviegoers’ attention.  The scene remains quite stomach churning.

DePalma’s best work is at the beginning of the Scarface.  Following the establishing real life footage of the Cuban refugees arriving by boats in search of an American dream, Tony is taken into custody and questioned by a batch of immigration agents.  DePalma only keeps one steady camera focused on a very tan Pacino with a faint signature scar on his left cheek, sitting in the middle of the room and putting on a Cuban accent that only he could uniquely own.  Pacino’s concentration in this moment is admirable as he responds to questions from all different directions.  It’s all done in one take with the director’s camera circling around Pacino.  After this introduction is over, the tone of the movie changes for the next two hours and ten minutes into a gritty interpretation of Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous.

Oliver Stone’s dialogue with Brian DePalma’s set ups don’t require much of the other actors.  It’s like everything caters to an always inebriated, hyperactive Al Pacino doing his Tony Montana with the gold chains and wide collared shirts over the linen suits.  He’s a motor mouth of endless f-bombs, with a slinky Michelle Pfeiffer in a blond bob-cut, dressed glittery evening gowns, at his side.  She has nothing of significance to say.  This is all you learn about Elvira; what you see of her materialism and all the coke she snorts.  She never smiles or exudes any connection to the Pacino character.  It’s all eye candy.  In fact, there’s never a clear answer of what becomes of this character.  That’s a problem because the movie is so much about Tony Montana, nothing else matters.

Other characters not given enough attention are Tony’s sister Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) and their mother (Miriam Colon).  Momma despises Tony for the criminal thug he is while Gina becomes enamored with the wealth and drug night life.  Unfortunately, Momma only has one meaty scene and Gina’s purpose to the script is to lend reason for another character’s eventual demise.  Both of these actresses are very good with what little they have.  Yet so much is devoted to Tony’s indulgence and the mania that Pacino brings that they are sidelined as well.

Brian DePalma seems to be more proud with how excessive he can make this guy than actually turning him into a guy.  Wait until you see the mansion that Tony gets. His office alone is of black, gaudy exuberance. His master bedroom contains a small swimming pool size tub right in the middle of the carpeted floor.  That setting occupies a fifteen-minute-long scene of Tony in a bubble bath, watching his five TV screens while not talking about anything meaningful except himself as he chastises Manny.  Elvira is only there to uphold her dread for her husband as she snorts coke off of her vanity.  When they both leave, an Oliver Stone monologue ends with a now recognizable sound byte of “Well say ‘allo to da bad guy!” Ah! Big deal! Tony never seemed so bad ass as he does feel obnoxious.

Again, Scarface is about not much else except the conceit of sleazy criminal.

When someone has to die it becomes a long drawn-out process as Tony, aka Pacino, puts on a performance or delivers a sermon.  Tony will meet with kingpins from Columbia along with other South Americans and dirty government officials.  There will be 5-7 guys in the room but for the most part it is only Tony talking.

“Say ‘allo to my little fren!” is one of the most memorable lines to come out of the 1980s decade of excess and it arrives during the ongoing and endless bloody shootout that closes the film.  There’s buckets of blood and truckloads of ammunition fired off.  These machine guns seem designed to kill things twice the size of elephants.  Little Al Pacino, with a ginormous cannon gripped in one hand, gets hit in all places and extremities except the head so that he can keep ranting – I mean this guy never shuts up – and going as he fends off the armies of goons coming at him from all directions.  Truly, it’s laughable and nowhere is it ever absorbing.  It’s like I’m watching someone else play a first-person shooter video game during a sleepover.  My friend is entertained while I’m just watching him be entertained.

Scarface comes to an abrupt halt when the final shootout stops.  There’s no footnote to ponder or real news story to follow up on.  The credits roll and the orchestral strings of the soundtrack cut in. You get the idea that DePalma, Stone, and Pacino became exhausted over this monster of a movie and simply declared “Okay! That’s enough!”

Considering the later insightful pieces that Oliver Stone delivered like Platoon and JFK, I wish he explored more of the politics and Cuban dealings affecting the United States.  As this film arrived in 1983, soon after there would be more of an intellectual standpoint to make us aware of a very real drug epidemic in this country.  It may appear to be sending some kind of message, but Scarface doesn’t challenge the brains that flourished this contraband industry.  Forty five minute episodes of Miami Vice tell more than this three-hour opus.

Plenty of gangster films like Chinatown, The Godfather, and Goodfellas offer up the greed and ego of the criminal mind, but the men of those pictures are never as self-indulgent or off putting as Tony Montana.

Besides, what does it say about a movie called Scarface when no one calls the main guy Scarface, and you hardly ever see the scar graced across his profile?  The real Scarface, Al Capone, would be very disappointed in Al Pacino.

AMERICAN GANGSTER

By Marc S. Sanders

My favorite kind of crime dramas are the ones that tackle the grit.  The screenwriters and directors go for where the itty-bitty stuff scrounges up into something bigger for either the career criminal or the low-level cop.  These guys start out as butterflies flapping their wings and before you know it their legacies and pursuits are as big as hurricanes.  Movies like The French Connection or Heat operate on these trajectories.  How did we get from there to HERE?

Ridley Scott went in an unconventional direction away from his science fiction eye and ancient history recollections when he directed American Gangster with a screenplay by Steve Zallian based on the true stories of Harlem drug kingpin Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) and narcotics detective Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe).

These two sensational actors don’t share one scene together until the epilogue of this always interesting three-hour opus.  Yet, in their second film together their pairing is as classic as DeNiro and Pacino or Newman and Redford.  I hope before they retire, these men pair up for at least one more film.  

Ridley Scott and his nominated art directors, Arthur Max and Beth A Rubino, capture a gritty urban, crime ridden Harlem of the 1960s/70s.  The streets are filthily here, as well as in the five New York boroughs and all the way across the bridge into New Jersey.  Frank’s markets carry a very wide berth. The buildings are distressed and cracked.  The clothes are of the hippie era with polyester suits.  This is where Frank Lucas moves his imported contraband, white powder heroin, labeled exclusively as “Blue Magic.”  The film provides a convincing source locale deep within the jungles of Vietnam where thousands of kilos are shipped to Frank for sale on the street.  The purity of the drug is beyond compare.  Scott and his art designers place you directly in this time period of dingy grime and among the sweaty Viet Cong and rivers to finally arrive at the crop Frank purchases his products from.

Once he finds his footing by eliminating the competition and recruiting his brothers and cousins to run his business, Frank invests in creature comforts with a furnished penthouse apartment for himself and a beautiful mansion for his mother (Ruby Dee in an Oscar nominated performance that comes off so naturally; you’d think she’s sitting at the Thanksgiving table with you).  He marries a beautiful Puerto Rican wife that he treats like a princess. Frank is smart.  He stays under the radar by wearing conservative suits and not making many waves like going out at nights and showing himself around the social scene.  He knows famous athletes like boxer Joe Lewis or the staff on the New York Yankees that could give his nephew a shot at being a pitcher. Still, his profile manages to stay low. Like his mentor, he just operates a business with a viable commodity.  He tells his younger brother (Chiwetel Ejiofor) that the loudest one in the room is the dumbest and the most likely to get caught.  So, mind how you carry yourself, how you dress yourself and how you flaunt yourself.

A separate story has no business intersecting with Frank’s plight until something gives.  Richie Roberts is a good, honest cop. Though he’s also a lousy husband and father. He has been assigned to head up a task force that will bust the top of the assorted drug empires.  He needs those rare breed cops who are not on the take and follow a strict policy of law enforcement ethics.  His team will not bust a common street hustler.  They will be looking for the kingpins with unquestionable evidence to put them away for good.

American Gangster follows two separate stories for most of its running time.  At least during the first two acts of the film, Frank and Richie are unaware of one another.  It’s only through some gradual surveillance that the cop finally gets a whiff of an idea and starts to move methodically towards a conclusion. The methods are the fascinating parts the movie.

When Denzel Washington plays a villain it’s always memorable and contrary to popular opinion, Frank Lucas is my favorite of his antagonists, especially compared to his Oscar winning work in Training Day.  Watch how he walks or sits on a sofa and broods over how his family and his business are functioning.  He’s the only African American actor I can see playing this guy because I’m always convinced that whoever Denzel Washington portrays, it’s a character who will never be intimidated.  This guy faced down Gene Hackman during a threat of nuclear holocaust. Not many other actors can do that so authentically.

Russell Crowe works like that hero who doesn’t want to wear the cape.  Richie Roberts succeeds on so many levels where his peers surrender to their inhibitions.  This cop passes the bar exam while fighting for custody of his kid on top of going after the empirical criminals who litter the streets in drugs and murder.  I’m reminded of his role in The Insider, where he used a similar American accent.  Richie is not as temperamental or hard wired as that guy, but he is at least as focused on doing what’s right regardless of threat or distraction.  Russell Crowe has a way of getting audiences to admire the concentration needed for many of his complicated characters.  You have as much tunnel vision as he wants the men he’s portraying to have. You are zoned in with what his characters live by.  You only trust their standards.

There are signature staples within the construct of this true story adaptation.  There are gunfights.  Punches are thrown.  The guy at the top beats up one of his cronies when he gets out order.  Yet, what stands this material apart from others is that now I’m watching how Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe handle everything.

The truth behind the story of a black gangster defying the dirty cops and the Italian mobsters who were thought to run the metropolitan undergrounds is amazing.  It’s so interesting to see how novel Frank is with smuggling the product from one side of the world to the other. Then, you see how he uses his family members to distribute to the consumers and collect the monies. Ridley Scott provides all the breadcrumbs in an easy-to-understand fashion.  

Painted against the landscape of an unwinnable Vietnam War that just won’t end, power is acquired and thus the best police officers are forced to change their approach.  So again, you see two different stories that start out small and undetected.  Frank and Richie are the most careful and meticulous of guys in their respective fields.  Therefore, it only makes sense that their paths don’t cross until their missions are nearly over.

There’s much to learn from American Gangster.  

You get an idea of how the harm of the war was not exclusive to just what was happening over in Vietnam.  There were more indirect effects to that crisis impacting the streets of New York and New Jersey.  

You see what subtleties an investigation will collect upon before pouncing on to a bigger stake.  You also learn how to handle a criminal empire with trust and dignity rather than announcing your immorality. You witness the sheer defiance of a righteous guy in what is supposed to be a law-abiding field. Steve Zaillian’s script is not just good guy vs bad guy. It’s each of these guys holding on to the top while trying to catch up with or stay away from each other.

American Gangster is a very thorough and well-planned biographical thriller.  

THE HOT ROCK

By Marc S. Sanders

I’m a sucker for a good caper.  Capers play like strategy games.  An object (Hitchcock called them MacGuffins) needs to be acquired.  It doesn’t matter so much what the object is.  The importance falls within the pursuit. 

William Goldman wrote The Hot Rock, adapted from a novel by Donald E Westlake who penned a series of books focusing on the ex-convict John Dortmunder and his further adventures.  In the film, he’s played by Robert Redford. 

On the day that John is released from a New York state prison he’s picked up by his inept brother-in-law Kelp (George Seagel) who escorts him to Central Park.  Kelp wants John to be the fourth member of a team and steal a priceless diamond.  A man by the name of Dr. Amusa (Moses Gunn) sits about five feet away from them on a park bench.  Amusa breaks it down for the men, but they get interrupted by an elderly woman who sits between them to feed the pigeons.  This is what you can expect from The Hot Rock, a film structured under one pesky inconvenience after another.

This rock is currently on display at the Brooklyn Museum, on loan by an African country who has no business having possession of the valuable.  The stone belongs with Amusa’s country and he’s ready to pay Kelp and his crew $25,000 each to pull of the heist.  He’ll also, reluctantly, front some funding monies ahead of the theft for preparations. 

Like in all of these kinds of movies, John is ready to do one last job.  Then he’s out for good.  However, one last job turns into four last jobs.  Without spoiling too much, the rock gets relocated from one place to another.  So, a late-night heist at the museum turns into a break in a prison, and then it’s somewhere else and somewhere else after that.

As Hitchcock describes, you never care about the MacGuffin.  For movie purposes, you see it on display in its majestic glory, encased in a glass box right in the center of the museum, but so what.  The question is to uncover how the guys are going to get it out of there.  The Hot Rock doesn’t work nice and neatly like Ocean’s 11 or The Score.  In those movies, there are things that don’t go according to plan.  In The Hot Rock, nothing goes the way it should. Honestly though, it should be funnier than it really is. 

I recall there was a movie called Quick Change with Bill Murray doing his best to get out of New York City following a bank robbery.  It was comedic all the way through and maybe that’s because it was Bill Murray of Caddyshack and Ghostbusters fame, not to mention Saturday Night Live.  Robert Redford is the rugged actor of the time in 1972, though.  Not a comic and he plays Dortmunder like a serious kind of thief, even with his famous blond locks and toothy grin.  George Segal along with Ron Leibman and Paul Sand are bumbling chatter mouths, but are they funny?  Segal’s character steals a car to pick up John and we see him trying to figure out how to drive the dang thing, nearly running over Redford.  I never believed he did not know how to not drive the car. 

BY THE WAY: Ever notice in movies that they’ll show someone does not know how to drive a car by having them accidentally turn on the windshield wipers?  That’s all that is done.  That and having the car drive in S shape patterns as if the steering wheel suddenly took on a life of its own.  Then the scene comes to a halt with a startling slam on the brakes.  Never fails.  This happens over and over again in the movies.

Zero Mostel appears as the father/attorney for Paul Sand’s character.  It’s Zero Mostel, but Goldman’s script doesn’t give him much material to play with.  It’s not a silly caper flick because suddenly Zero Mostel of The Producers makes an appearance.  Look at Ocean’s 11, and see what Carl Reiner is doing.  There’s an organic affection for Reiner’s character that Mostel never achieves here. 

Peter Yates directed The Hot Rock a couple of years after the car chase thriller, Bullitt with Steve McQueen.  He impressed audiences with what two cars pursuing one another across the hilly streets of San Francisco could accomplish.  In this film from the early 1970s, Yates attempts to dazzle the audience with a few more speeding car stunts but they just don’t cut the corners.  Everything on screen looks like Yates and his crew are trying too hard.  There’s a helicopter sequence and much time is devoted to seeing how the chopper flies low over the Hudson River and then soars above the Twin Towers, still under construction at the time.  Look everyone!  Ron Leibman is flying a helicopter and Robert Redford and the rest look woozy about it all.  Thing is that James Bond movies were already doing this kind of schtick (with special effects) year after year by this time.  Peter Yates just doesn’t offer up anything that looks like a new sensation.

I’m actually surprised The Hot Rock has not been remade like Ocean’s 11 or The Italian Job.  In this film, the tools and skills are left to the guys and their cons. There’s no computer overrides or laser sensors to assist them.  Today, all of the techno stuff would be there with lots of closeups of fingers tapping away on a keyboard and then data entries appearing on a monitor.  In between, would be the comedy and would you believe of all people, I thought Will Farrell would be the guy to play the straight man and lead the charge.  The comedy of the situations would remain, but the thieves would be nerdy geniuses, each having their unique abilities and quirks. 

The set up is there for a remake.  Who you cast and what is done with it is up to the filmmakers. 

COP LAND

By Marc S. Sanders

You need look no further than the HBO series The Sopranos to see that the state of New Jersey is often regarded as a red headed stepchild in comparison to the empires of crime found in New York.  In fact, two years before that series debuted, many of the varied cast members (Edie Falco, Frank Vincent, Robert Patrick, Annabella Sciorra, and Arthur J Nascarella) appeared in writer/director James Mangold’s second film Cop Land, which carried the same kind of regards for the two thirds of the known Tri State area.  Tony Soprano always had to surrender to Johnny Sack and his crew if you know what I mean.  There’s Jersey…but then there is New York!

A whose who of staple actors for New York crime and corruption films take center stage including Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta, and Robert DeNiro.  Yet, the spotlight belongs to Sylvester Stallone in what is arguably the most unsung and best role, next to Rocky Balboa, of his entire career. 

Stallone portrays the pot-bellied schlub Freddy Heflin.  He is the Sherrif of small-town Garrison, NJ where the cops who work within the city, across the bridge, reside comfortably here.  Freddy aspired to be one of those celebrated officers dressed in pressed blue uniforms, but he could not get past the physical due to a loss of hearing in his right ear.  He got that when he was kid and rescued someone from a sinking car that crashed in the river.  Perhaps Freddy wished that never happened.  Maybe his life would have been much more colorful like these New Yorkers.  I can understand the poor guy’s self-reflection.    

An internal affairs investigator named Moe Tilden (another of many convincing New York variations for Robert DeNiro) brings reasonable suspicions of corruption to Freddy’s attention.  How do these guys live so well based on the salary they earn on the police force?  Too often they have been connected with reputed mobsters, and incidents are quickly swept under the rug and kept quiet.  It stands to reason that the cover ups they commit happen in the home state of Jersey, outside of Moe’s jurisdiction.  Moe needs Freddy to quickly offer up anything he knows or witnesses. 

In particular, the leader of these guys, Ray Donlan (Harvey Keitel), might have something to do with the disappearance of his nephew Murray (Michael Rapaport) who was regarded as a young hero cop but is now at the center of a shooting incident gone wrong while driving across the bridge.  Donlan and gang fake a suicide for the kid, but with no body turning up in the river, it’s not so far-fetched to believe that perhaps he’s still alive and hiding out somewhere.

Cop Land works like an Us vs Them observation.  Freddy is the pawn for these guys to keep up appearances while this friendly town operates on other levels.  He’s the guy they can rely on to look the other way and mind his own business.  What I like about Mangold’s script is the dilemma with Stallone’s character.  Who could ever intimidate Sylvester Stallone after Rocky II?  He’s one of the biggest muscle men in film history. Yet here he is the weakling.  Most importantly, he’s utterly believable in this role that’s nowhere in the same league as Rambo or Rocky. 

The cast is as magnificent as you would expect.  Harvey Keitel looks like the family man but he’s got other nefarious ideas bubbling under his exterior.  Robert Patrick fills a role as Keitel’s heavy in a frazzled departure from his anal-retentive evilness that premiered in Terminator 2.  Ray Liotta is the second star of this picture sharing some good scenes with Stallone.  You’d think Liotta was the more seasoned actor even though Stallone came on the scene a few decades before.  Liotta is playing a guy who maybe once lived with a good soul but is now checkered and weary.  How I wish Ray Liotta had more significant screen time during his film career.

The setting works like an intimidating character here. The other supporting players flesh out the environment of Stallone’s sheep herding through a bed of wolves.  Those actors consist of Cathy Moriarty, Annabella Schiorra, Peter Berg, John Spencer and of course Frank Vincent who is a regular in these kinds of pictures.

Cop Land teeters on what Martin Scorsese or Sidney Lumet might have done with this picture.  It only falls short due to a wrap up ending with an unsurprising shootout.  What works so well as a pressure cooker crime drama devolves into blood and bullets and that is a letdown because it’s an easy way out.  In Lumet’s hands for example, the film would have taken advantage of at least an additional half hour to drive the piece into the arena of the public court system (a welcome opportunity for another all-star cameo from the likes of Al Pacino or Sean Penn.   I think the film would have been even smarter for doing so.  The avenue that James Mangold takes with his film is not terrible.  It just feels a little unrewarding or worthy of everything that was wisely executed before.

Cop Land should be seen for the dilemmas it hinges on and then for the various acting scenes among this terrific all-star cast.  Usually, actors will boast that they got to share screen time with Robert DeNiro.  I’m sure guys like Robert Patrick and Michael Rapaport place those experiences high on their mantles.  However, I bet all of these guys said what an honor it was to share the screen with Sylvester Stallone in a performance uncharacteristic of his usual criteria. 

James Mangold’s Cop Land is a terrific crime drama.

POINT BREAK (1991)

By Marc S. Sanders

Stop me if you heard this one before.  Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan walk into a bank…

Yeah.  That’s right.  I’m talking about Kathryn Bigelow’s Point Break.  There’s a line in the movie where the rookie FBI hero, Johnny Utah (Keanu Reeves), is described by his new supervisor as being young, dumb and full of cumb.  Pretty fair assessment.

Much of this crime caper works despite the silly summary.  Agent Utah’s seasoned partner Pappas, played by Gary Busey, believes that a series of coastal California bank robberies are being committed by surfers who roll into town each year when the waves are at their most tubular.  They don silly looking rubber masks in the appearance of the Ex-Presidents of the United States to commit their ninety second smash and grab.  Fortunately, Johnny Utah looks and talks like Keanu Reeves who was raised in Hawaii and has experience playing a gomer like this in two other movies that were headlined by some dudes named Bill & Ted.  As well, don’t forget what he hilariously did in Ron Howard’s Parenthood.  Yes, Johnny Utah should fit right in with the California surf.

Point Break does not take itself seriously in its first half.  Johnny has to learn how to look the part of a surfer with a neon pink board amid the colony of saltwater dwellers.  Standard stuff pops up like the angry supervisor (John C McGinley) who screams about no progress being made.  Unfortunately, a romantic love interest named Tyler has to enter the fold played by an actor I’ve never been fond of, Lori Petty.  I’m supposed to believe that she is going to teach Johnny how to ride the waves and chastise him when he’s doing it wrong, and then he’s going to fall hard for her when she delivers one arbitrary piece of dialogue after another.  “What’s this pig board piece of shit?”  “Too much testosterone around here. Later!” Also, for those intimate scenes in the dark calm waters with the moon and stars gleaming in her eyes, Tyler has to ask Johnny something along the lines of “What’s that strange look you got?”  and “There it is again.”  Maybe it’s not all Petty’s fault.  The script doesn’t give her much to work with honestly.  Nothing Tyler says is relevant.  How it is delivered by Petty is not the least bit intriguing and honestly with only few nip/tucks, this character storyline could have been saved for special edition DVD featured deleted scenes that you’ll only watch once and never share on You Tube. 

On to the good stuff. 

You can see how amazingly talented a director like Kathryn Bigelow really is and it is no surprise that a couple of decades of experience led her to a well-deserved Oscar for directing The Hurt Locker.  Going all the way back to films like Blue Steel and Point Break demonstrated that Kathryn Bigelow made a name for herself based on stellar filmmaking skills.  Just look at the sky diving footage alone.  You see all the tricks as the camera follows the daredevils out of the plane and into the sunny blue sky with genuine close ups and acrobatic flips to relish in.  Sensational work.  Gorgeous photography and smooth, unshaking camera operations. Nothing artificial in these sequences.

Moreover, there is the surfing of course.  The checkered bag guy of this action picture is another variation of a dashingly handsome Patrick Swayze with shaggy dirty blond hair, dirty blond facial whiskers and his distinctive voice that if it could be described as dirty blond it would be dirty blond. Plus, a chiseled chest to show off during a karate fight scene.  He plays a guy named Bodhi.  I guess Walter, Melvin, Murray and Jack would not be cool enough.  (My dad, uncle, and grandfathers by the way.)  While Johnny maintains his undercover investigation with Pappas watching from the outside, he becomes enamored with Bodhi and his crew.  They like him in return.  Yet are these those Ex-Presidents who are robbing the banks?

Point Break is a smarter thriller than I think the filmmakers even realized because other than Lori Petty it is cast very well with Reeves and Swayze in the lead roles and a fun cooky Gary Busey on the side.  These actors are game for the quick moving adventures that Bigelow strives for.  There’s a fantastic foot chase through the back streets of Santa Monica following one such bank robbery.  This scene alone is eligible for a Best Editing Oscar with handheld Steadicams following the running players in and out of houses, around flaming gas stations and backyards with barking dogs and dense red light running traffic getting in the way.  Amazing film work.

The surfing would have to be stellar if the antagonists are in fact surfers. The photography is magnificent with narrow waves curving over the cameras directly pointing at Swayze, Reeves and cast coming right towards the screen while balanced on their boards with golden suns hovering overhead.

While Point Break does not seem to know when to end because the credits could have rolled up on three or four different occasions, at least the film insists on having fun with itself. 

I recall in The Predator Olivia Munn’s character went to MIT with a science major that somehow also included military trained special ops in its elite curriculum. I’m expected to believe that nonsense.  On the other hand, when I see Bill’s friend Ted has graduated in the top two percent of his FBI class at Quantico, Viginia, I can buy it.  I don’t have to dwell on it. Now I can enjoy the ride from a sky diving standpoint or a choppy mariner’s perspective.  My suspension of disbelief is bought, sold and paid for. 

Point Break is a smart thriller with a dangerously fun, zippy edge to it.