SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER

By Marc S. Sanders

One of the biggest cinematic cultural touchstones announced itself just as the fad was withering away.  John Travolta blew up movie screens in 1977 when he strutted down the streets of Brooklyn with a paint can in one hand while wearing his wide collared red shirt under his black leather jacket.  The song that that got audiences grooving in their seats with the immediate superstar? Staying Alive by The Bee Gees.  The movie?  Saturday Night Fever which offered one of the most memorable character introductions in film history.

Disco might be dead and only designed for themed costume parties nowadays, but Saturday Night Fever remains very much alive.  No one forgets the moves Travolta did on the dance floor in his polyester shirts and suits.  John Badham’s film continues to be saluted with spoofs ranging from Airplane! to Saturday Night Live to Family Guy and one commercial after another.  The soundtrack is an unforgettable mix played for every generation that comes along at weddings, proms and bar mitzvahs.  The film was also adapted into a successful Broadway and touring musical.  I loved the live stage performance by the way.

Still, there’s a sensational dramatic story to Saturday Night Fever and Tony Monero, the nineteen-year-old kid who is only a Brooklyn celebrity on the streets and especially at the local dance club 2001: Oddyssey (the extra d is included).  Tony has unwanted ladies dying to sidle up to him, especially his contest dance partner Annette (Donna Pescow) who will eagerly surrender her virginity to Tony without protection.  His buddies idolize him as well, as they cruise the streets at night drinking in their beat-up Ford sedan on the way to and from the club, before finishing off the evening with some risky tomfoolery on the edge of the Verrazano bridge.  His boss at the paint shop even loves the kid.  Tony doesn’t ask for it, but he gets a raise and by the end of the conversation, the boss has nearly doubled his first offer. 

None of this is enough for Tony though. He doesn’t want to be tied down to working at the paint store for the rest his life.  He’s afraid he’s losing his beautifully well coifed hair and maybe his dancing skills will not survive as the years pass him by.  He also gets no love from his father.  Every dinner erupts into a family argument.  His mother has preferred adorations for Father Frank, Tony’s older brother who entered the priesthood.  Ma calls her son Father Frank, because, after all, he’s a Father of the Catholic Church.  Tony is also envious of Frank, first for their parents’ adoration.  Later, it is because Frank decides to leave the seminary to be free of the parents’ expectations.  

Tony also sees the talents and beauty of a dancer named Stephanie (Karen Lynn Gorney) who has no interest in his immaturity but is willing to be his partner for 2001’s upcoming dance contest.  Try as he might, Tony cannot keep up with Stephanie beyond the dance floor.  He’s not educated or cultured like her, and she is relocating across the bridge to Staten Island for a better life.  On the other hand, Tony remains stationary and therefore he is a frustrated man about to put his teenage years behind him with no aspirations and the weight of those who he spends time with holding him down.

I’d argue many are familiar with the colorful dance sequences accompanied by The Bee Gees’ memorable numbers (How Deep Is Your Love, Night Fever, More Than A Woman) as well as KC and the Sunshine Band (Get Down Tonight) and The Tramps (Disco Inferno).  Yet, Saturday Night Fever demonstrates a tough coming of age struggle for its protagonist.  John Travolta is at least just as memorable as James Dean was in Rebel Without A Cause.  Life goes on, but how can it when all you have to show for yourself is being the best at disco dancing?  There’s a whole other world beyond Brooklyn.

Sex is even frustrating for Tony.  He gives in to Annette’s desires to make love to him in the back seat, but then tosses her aside when she does not bring a condom.  All of this is too easy for Tony; so easy that it’s not even pleasurable and thus he’s continuously cruel and dismissive of her.  When Annette gives in to group sex with the guys, one after the other, Tony can do nothing but chastise her for allowing herself to be subjected that way.

Bobby C (Barry Miller) is the fearful, untalented, uncool and insecure buddy who is lost with what to do when he thinks he might have gotten a girl pregnant.  Tony is the greatest guy he knows, but he has no interest in helping.  Bobby even tries the next best thing by approaching Frank…formerly Father Frank.  Everyone wants to be with Tony and stay in his social circle, yet Tony is the one who wants out.

Norman Wexler’s screenplay is tremendously insightful but never so apparent.  As loud as the clothes, the disco music and the dance is, this is a script of subtly in Travolta’s performance.  It’s likely why he got the film’s sole Oscar nomination for Best Actor.  Despite Tony’s continued outbursts, there’s nothing so blatant in Saturday Night Fever like you would find in other coming of age films like James Dean’s, for example, or any of John Hughes’ films.  Director John Badham accustoms you to Tony Manero’s anxiety. 

It’s ironic, normally a protagonist will grow into self-assurance.  In this film, Badham wisely shows the confident swagger of Tony Manero in the film’s unforgettable opening only to see him diminish as the character arc proceeds over the film’s next two hours.  Badham includes small hints in this opening.  Tony might walk with a strut, but the first attractive woman he passes on the street does not give him the gumption to approach her, and the second woman tries avoiding him being in her way.  Later, Tony is outright rejected by Stephanie for anything beyond friendship and dance practice.  Tony wears the local celebrity façade, but in reality he is just a nobody.

John Travolta is so effective at showing on screen how Tony internally speaks to himself as he vocalizes his frustrations at those around him.  Whatever is angering Tony only looks like it’s Annette’s fault, or Stephanie’s or the guys, or Mom and Pop.  There must be something better for him than just being a small time, well dressed disco dancer, and a valued worker in a paint store.  He’s also outgrowing the street brawling with his buddies.  All he knows is he had better find a way out of this life with no promise of a future. Otherwise, he’s destined for a destructive ending.

Saturday Night Fever has a staying power.  Years after anyone has seen this film, all that might be remembered is John Travolta in the white suit on the lighted disco floor while Staying Alive is blaring through the speakers.  However, it’s a deeper film than just glitzy aesthetics that arrive with the final cut.  This is a coming-of-age story that does not hide the struggles nor romanticizes a path towards a better person or future. 

The film’s ending is even deliberately ambiguous. It’s more realistic than you might realize because the future remains uncertain for all of us, especially when we believe we don’t have much beyond what we are envied for to send us forward.  I know of the film Staying Alive directed by Sylvester Stallone which brought Travolta back into the legendary role.  It is the follow up film to Saturday Night Fever; notoriously considered one of the worst sequels ever made as it attempts to bring Tony Manero into the early 1980s cheesy zeitgeist world of Cats on Broadway or a poor impersonation of Prince pop music.  Norman Wexler demanded his story credit be stricken from that film. 

Choosing to ignore what came with that awful sequel, Wexler’s script for Saturday Night Fever wisely offers no promises for its protagonist, because unlike what we often see in the movies, life never guarantees a new day, and that’s what truly scares Tony Manero more than anything else.  It’s fair to say an uncertain future terrifies all of us.  That is why Saturday Night Fever remains completely genuine.  We are never meant to see what comes of Tony Manero because Tony Manero struggles with the unknown of what’s to come.  Some endings are meant to have those hanging threads from a time gone by.

CIVIL WAR

By Marc S. Sanders

On the drive home, my wife and I left saying that we could not recall this country existing on a such a divisive plane within our lifetimes as it is currently.  Maybe we were not paying enough attention as we were growing up.  With that in mind however, it’s not unreasonable to see a possible future coming to life from Alex Garland’s Civil War.  What’s clear is the vitriol displayed in Garland’s film is not surprising.

Civil War is an observational piece as it is told through eyes of photojournalists who function with no stake in the conflict.  Lee (Kirsten Dunst) has become a legendary war photographer.  Along with Joel (Wagner Moura), who’s a reporter, they intend to journey through the Northeastern battlegrounds from New York City to Washington D.C.  As they believe, the seceded states of California and Texas are close to overthrowing the government, they are determined to interview and photograph the President (Nick Offerman) before he’s taken prisoner or more likely, assassinated.  An old-time New York Times journalist named Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and Jessie (Cailee Spaney), a young photographer who idolizes Lee, tag along.  To do this trip is a crazy undertaking, but Lee and Joel know what importance their purpose serves and the fact that they have press passes should uphold their survival amidst violence and chaos. 

My wife asked which side does writer/director Alex Garland lean towards politically and I said I do not know as he’s primarily known for science fiction movies (Ex Machina, Annihilation).  Garland likely wants his political leanings to remain unknown as it upholds what Civil War deliberately steers its focus away from.  We never learn what policies each side of this war stands for or what instigated it.  In fact, it is quite intentional of Garland to make what are arguably the bluest and reddest states in the United States the united seceders who lead one side of this bloody chess board. 

This fictionalized war is well established when the picture opens.  The President attempts to deliver a speech that is clearly uncertain despite the staple resilient vocabulary he includes.  Nevertheless, buildings on fire randomly appear, looters are bloodied pulps who are strung up by random factions, downed helicopters are the carnage occupying a parking lot in front of a JC Penney.  Nothing that anyone says, much less the President of the United States are going to sway this country into a state of comfort.  That time has passed.

The production value of Civil War is astonishing.  Sometimes it looks just like photographic accounts of what we see on the evening news coverage from the Middle East.  Garland also never forgets that his main characters are photographers as he captures in freeze frame people being randomly shot or beaten or simply screaming at one another.  The film abruptly turns off the sound and a black and white photograph interrupts the chaos for you to catch a freeze frame glimpse.  The editing lends to the character designs of the story’s four main players.  I did question, however, why video footage was not also taken beyond just photographs.  Cell phones are not used or mentioned in this picture.  The inconvenience of Wi Fi on a laptop is however. 

The sound design of the film is spectacular and reminiscent of how powerful it served in the Oscar winning film The Zone Of Interest.  As the characters set up camp for the night, rapid pop pop pops are heard in the distance.  On multiple occasions, Garland gets you right in the middle of the various firefights that occur in and around office buildings or what were once shopping districts.  The machine gun fire and rubble blasts are all around you.  The cinematography is also quite eye opening.  I like to think of areas like Virginia and the Carolinas as beautiful American spots during the summertime, and that is when these events unfold. Yet, to see how ugly it is amidst endless debris and bloodshed is an awful, still convincing effect.

My Cinemaniac pal Thomas made a good point about Garland’s approach.  Out of nowhere a needle drop of songs will intrude on the picture and often I found them to be overly distracting and definitely unnecessary.  One such number is a hip hop tune with samples from an 80s tune (I can’t remember which one now) that plays over a gunfire scene.  Regrettably, it takes me a little out of the picture.  Thomas is entirely correct in this area. This technique is not effective as when Oliver Stone or Francis Ford Coppola included The Doors in their set pieces. 

Kirsten Dunst is quite good in her role.  Lee knows where to point her camera, and Dunst lives up to the legendary status that her character is supposed to have.  You can feel the exhaustion that teeters on her mental stability, especially as the story reaches its third act.  Lee has been doing this for far too long and the horrors are a part of her now.  Her trauma can never be erased or covered.  Cailey Spaeny is the standout performer though as Jessie, the young girl who is eager to reach the levels of her idol.  Lee wishes Jessie would just not tag along.  Alex Garland writes good characters, but they are not what stayed with me following the conclusion of the film.  What upholds Civil War is the depiction of this all too convincing reality. 

I write this article the morning after Iran delivered missiles and drones in the direction of Israel and with every article I’ve read, I ask myself again and again what is the purpose.  These efforts are not done for strategic overthrow.  Rather, actions are executed with hate and revenge and the only ones who are paying for it are those that are not arguing; those that are just trying to raise families and live in peace.  Alex Garland might know what finally began his fictionalized American civil war, but none of that matters any longer.  It’s what the pawns do to one another in place to place to place.

The fighters and individuals you meet in his film all move with their own ulterior motive.  A chilling scene includes Jesse Plemons (Dunst’s real-life husband) dressed in camouflage fatigues who does not even have a statement or a cause to deliver.  His minimal dialogue is nowhere near as expressive as the vast graveyard of Americans he’s sprinkling with lye and burying. When the press team comes upon him, nothing they say matters or motivates him to lower his machine gun.

Fighting, fighting, fighting.  That’s all you see in Civil War.  You don’t even know the position that the President holds, or even what his name is.  You never learn what party he represents either.  I salute Alex Garland for not leaning one way or another.  It is the divide that is tearing our country, our world, apart and not what we stand for. 

Sadly, some commentators on social media have already devised in their own minds that Civil War is a “woke film” (whatever the fuck that means) simply because of the pink (HOT PINK!!!!!) sunglasses that Plemons’ sadistic character wears.  Reader do not listen to the voices in your head.  There is no political agenda to this film.  Rather, Civil War shows us what occurs when political agendas have been entirely deafened by gunfire.

LACOMBE, LUCIEN (France, 1974)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Louis Malle
CAST: Pierre Blaise, Aurore Clément, Holger Löwenadler
MY RATING: 7/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 100% Fresh

PLOT: In 1944, an 18-year-old boy from a small French village collaborates with the Gestapo and subsequently falls in love with a Jewish girl.


The effectiveness of Louis Malle’s Lacombe, Lucien may depend partially on how much you know about cinema history after World War II.  It’s a historical fact that there were French countrymen who sided with the invading Nazis, going so far as to infiltrate the French Resistance and inform on their neighbors to the Gestapo.  When the war ended, that fact was politely and discreetly avoided in war films for decades.  No one wanted to spoil the notion that the whole of France united with each other to harass the Nazis at every opportunity, and that the Resistance fighters were unambiguously, morally pure.  In France, surviving collaborators went about their business, some more anonymously than others.

In 1974, Lacombe, Lucien became one of the first, if not THE first, French film to not only broach the topic of Nazi collaborators, but also to depict the French Resistance as employing guerilla tactics and carrying out assassinations that were just as morally questionable as any other similar attacks in history.  It was a bold move, to be sure.  Even when you remove that context from the film, when you watch it as a stand-alone piece of cinema, it is still makes for compelling viewing.  However, for my part, the very ending of the movie left me frustrated.  While French audiences may have seen it differently in 1974, I saw it almost as if the filmmakers simply ran out of story and used a title card to tie things up in a bow.  But the journey to get to those final frames is worthwhile, even though the lead character is one of the most loathsome people I’ve ever seen on film.  I would compare him to Amon Goeth from Schindler’s List, not because they are similar characters, but because they elicited the same reaction from me: disgust.  (Or maybe they are similar characters…you tell me.)

The film opens in 1944, just a few weeks after D-Day, in a small town in southwest France.  We first meet young Lucien Lacombe, maybe 17 or 18, mopping a hospital floor, apparently doing a good deed for his community.  Through an open window, he spies a small songbird chirping on a tree branch.  Lucien makes sure no one is watching, pulls a slingshot from his pocket, takes careful aim, and kills the little bird with one shot.  He smirks and goes back to the business of mopping.  We will witness many other instances of Lucien killing other animals.

Indeed, many of these scenes are done for real: the actor playing Lucien clearly kills several rabbits with a shotgun, one with a wooden club.  In another scene, he catches, decapitates, and calmly starts to pluck a chicken for dinner, all in one unbroken take.  Now, this would have been normal behavior for someone living in a farm community in the French countryside, where someone has to prepare tonight’s dinner.  The difference is, Lucien seems to enjoy these tasks a little too much.  Even worse, though, are the times where he is utterly impassive about it, especially with the one rabbit he catches in the snare.  These are hard scenes to watch, but in hindsight, they are vital to unpacking or interpreting Lucien’s actions later in the film.

Through a series of events that reminded me a little bit of Goodfellas (“All my life, I wanted to be a gangster”), Lucien allows himself to be recruited into a cadre of French collaborators whose base of operations is a fancy hotel where their opulent lifestyle is a rebuke to those silly Resistance fighters who must scrape a living from the dirt.  He is more than willing to do what it takes to get a taste of the good life.  He turns in a schoolteacher who is also a Resistance officer; he makes a show of being contrite about it, but he quickly gets over it.

The rest of the movie shows Lucien puffed up with pride in his new social status, bullying anyone and everyone who dares to talk down to him.  There are, to be sure, broader statements being made here about the psyche of anyone who deludes themselves into believing in their inherent superiority over their fellow man just because they’re handed a membership card, regardless of how small-minded or shallow they might be.  However, during the movie, I never thought of those broader implications.  It’s a testament to how well the movie was directed and acted that I was concerned only with how Lucien behaved and acted, and not with whatever director Malle was trying to say from a metaphorical or allegorical standpoint.

To watch Lucien bully people around was sickening and pathetic.  He is introduced to a tailor, Albert Horn, who will make him some new clothes.  Lucien’s friend in the Gestapo casually informs him that Albert is a Jew who is only allowed to live in relative peace because of his skills as a tailor, and because he makes regular payoffs to the Gestapo.  Albert has a 20-something-year-old daughter, improbably named France, with whom Lucien is almost immediately smitten, despite her ethnicity.  He tries to impress France by getting her to the front of a food line, but she demurs.  When people in line complain, he smugly explains he’s with the German police and he can do whatever he wants.  The idea of that kind of power in the hands of someone as despicable as Lucien made me as angry as I can ever recall being while watching a film.

In the background of Lucien’s plotline is the shadowy Resistance itself.  Various members of the French collaborators are being killed here and there, certainly not a bad thing.  But the aftermath of their attacks is no less disquieting than anything perpetrated by the pro-Nazi collaborators, especially after a brazen attack on the fancy hotel headquarters, where the bodies of the collaborators are just as dead as the bodies of the Resistance fighters.  Perhaps the film is making a point that dead is dead, no matter which side you’re on, so you’d better be sure you’re dead for the right reasons because history will remember you one way or the other.

At the center of all this is Lucien’s face with his cold eyes and virtually expressionless mouth.  He doesn’t smile, he smirks.  He threatens Albert and France with exposure and arrest if Albert doesn’t allow Lucien to date, then marry, France.  For her part, France is wise enough to know when to humor Lucien and when to go along with his behavior, for the good of her father.  Lucien, besotted with power, is too clueless to realize how smart she really is.

I have a general guideline that I dislike movies with rotten characters at the center of them.  But I must admit that Lacombe, Lucien sucked me into the story and kept me there, despite how much I disliked Lucien himself.  I guess I wanted to see how much the filmmakers would allow him to get away with before he was swatted down.  Whether he gets swatted down or not is for you to discover, but let it be said that the ending manages to have it both ways, which was challenging for me.  I both did and didn’t get the kind of closure I wanted, which explains my somewhat median rating despite how well-made the film is.

It may be that I’m not old enough, or knowledgeable enough, to really appreciate the impact Lacombe, Lucien had on 1974 audiences.  I can only report how it made me feel right now.  It made me feel anger and indignance towards Lucien throughout the whole movie, even when he makes a crucial decision that seems as if it will redeem his character.  I don’t think it does, because the damage he instigated has been done and cannot be undone by a single act of contrition when it’s far too late to make any difference.  Perhaps that’s not a very Christian idea, but that’s how the movie made me feel, regardless.  Lucien deserves what he gets and more.  Does that apply to the real-life French collaborators, many of whom were still alive when this movie was released?  It’s not for me to pass judgement on those people.  But I can’t deny how the movie itself made me feel towards the people within the world of the film.

THE GUNS OF NAVARONE (United Kingdom, 1961)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: J. Lee Thompson
CAST: Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn, Anthony Quayle, Irene Papas, Richard Harris
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 92% Fresh

PLOT: A team of Allied saboteurs is assigned an impossible mission: infiltrate an impregnable Nazi-held Greek island and destroy two enormous long-range field guns preventing the rescue of 2,000 trapped British soldiers.


The Guns of Navarone is a “message” picture cleverly disguised as a World War II action-adventure/thriller.  No surprise there since the screenwriter was Carl Foreman, who also co-wrote 1957’s The Bridge on the River Kwai, another stirring wartime adventure with a strong anti-war message buried inside.  I found it interesting that, in the multiple behind-the-scenes documentaries on the Blu-ray, not one of them mentioned the one movie which I feel most resembles The Guns of Navarone: 1967’s The Dirty Dozen.  In both films, teams of men mount insurmountable odds to accomplish an insanely difficult mission, incurring casualties while ultimately succeeding.  In both films, there is a buried, or not-so-buried, subtext about the futility of the mission and/or war in general, while still gluing audiences to their seats.  However, given the timeframe of the release of The Guns of Navarone in the early 1960s, I find it to be the more surprising of the two, despite the foregone conclusion of the movie.

The movie’s narrated prologue tells us everything we need to know.  (Forget for a moment that there is not, and never was, a Greek island called Navarone.)  In 1943, two thousand British soldiers marooned on the island of Kheros must be evacuated before Germany convinces Turkey to join the Axis.  But the only sea lane to Kheros is defended by two massive German guns built into the sheer cliffs of the island of Navarone.  The guns must be knocked out of commission by a team of Allied saboteurs before any rescue attempts can be made.  This team will be led by Captain Mallory (Gregory Peck), Corporal Miller (David Niven), Colonel Stavros (Anthony Quinn), and Major Franklin (Anthony Quayle).  Along with the rest of the team, they must sneak on to Navarone, scale a steep cliff at night, and sneak across the island to the guns, hooking up with Greek resistance fighters along the way.  These details are laid out with admirable brevity, during which we are given just enough information about each of the three primary characters to understand their actions once the mission is underway.

The Guns of Navarone may be constructed almost entirely out of war movie cliches regarding desperate men behind enemy lines on a secret mission, staying undercover, close calls, and unexpected setbacks.  However, I enjoyed how much Navarone sort of “leans into” the material.  It’s almost as if the filmmakers said, “Okay, so this is a cliché, right?  We might as well embrace it and do it up right.”  For example, we find out that one of the squad commanders has a nickname: “Lucky.”  In the history of movies, any character in a war picture named “Lucky” has been anything but.  You know this, I know this.  Even so, as events transpired, I found myself thinking less and less about the most cliched material and just admiring how it was executed.  It’s a tribute to the director, J. Lee Thompson, that he found a way to present everything in such an uncomplicated fashion that its very directness pushes aside our suspension of disbelief.

That’s not to say there aren’t a couple of surprises.  Capt. Mallory devises an ingenious method of dealing with a man so injured he may have to be left behind.  A clandestine trip to a local doctor turns into something quite different, offering Anthony Quinn the opportunity to perform some amazing off-the-cuff histrionics that would make Nicolas Cage envious.  The Greek resistance fighters turn out to be two women who offer much more to the story than mere eye candy or comforting shoulders.  (One of them, played by the great Irene Papas, may even be the strongest member of the squad…discuss.)  David Niven’s character, Corporal Miller, is given two remarkable speeches that would have stopped a lesser film in its tracks, considering their anti-war and possibly even anarchic sentiments, including this exchange:

Mallory: And if Turkey comes into the war on the wrong side?
Miller: So what!  Let the whole bloody world come in and blow itself to pieces.  That’s what it deserves.
Mallory: And what about the 2,000 men on Kheros!
Miller: I don’t know the men on Kheros, but I do know the men on Navarone!

Was that kind of dialogue or sentiment even possible in a war movie made in the ‘50s?  (Aside from The Bridge on the River Kwai, of course.)  A war movie made in 1961, just fifteen years after The Greatest Generation rallied to defeat the worst dictator in history, and one of the main characters seems to be advocating desertion in order to survive the night?  Wow.

In my eagerness to describe how, I guess, subversive The Guns of Navarone is, I have yet to mention the action.  It’s top-notch.  Find it in your heart to forget how some of the effects are clearly matte paintings and models and miniatures and remember that this was top-of-the-line production values in 1961.  In fact, Navarone won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects that year.  There’s an impressive shipwreck sequence, attacks from dive-bombing airplanes, massive formations of tanks and troops (provided by the Greek monarchy), and the titular guns themselves, full-size props that dwarfed the actors and belched real fire when activated.  No expense was spared to provide audiences with true spectacle.

Is The Guns of Navarone perfect?  I mean, I personally could have done without the sequence where one of the soldiers sings along at a local wedding.  The story itself is ageless, but the film doesn’t quite feel timeless, despite its anachronistic tendency towards liberalism in the middle of a war zone.  There are one or two story decisions that I found questionable.  (One character’s death looked as if he was basically committing suicide, and I found no reason for it story-wise.)  But there’s no denying it’s a thumping good yarn.  And come on, who doesn’t enjoy watching Gregory Peck and Anthony Quinn tear up the screen for two-and-a-half hours?

INSIDE MAN

By Marc S. Sanders

The abundance of Spike Lee’s films offer a message as quickly as the film begins.  Then they set out to demonstrate what Lee is talking about in the scripts he writes and/or directs and what is presented on screen for the next two or three hours.  BlacKKKlansman (a favorite of mine) and especially Do The Right Thing are perfect examples.  Lee is direct and hardly ever ambiguous.  Inside Man is an exception.  

This Spike Lee Joint is having a bit of fun with the director’s own take on the staple bank robbery found in so many films.  By the time the film is over, and all the cards are on the table, you realize the audacity of this caper is as unique as Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon or Michael Mann’s Heat.  With a screenplay by Russel Gerwitz, Spike Lee is proudly vague until he finally reaches his conclusions during the third act of the piece.  It’s unusual.  It’s out there and it’s a stretch, but the math of the heist seems to add up.  Still, knowing what I know now, I do wish there was a little more focus on some characters that lend to the film’s twist. Then again, maybe that would have implied too much.

Four people wearing sunglasses, caps and painters’ uniforms take a well trafficked New York City bank branch hostage, complete with the entire staff and around thirty customers who are in the lobby.  The ringleader is played by a mostly concealed Clive Owen.  You might not see his face too often in the film, but you’ll be grateful he’s the bad guy in charge.

Denzel Washington is Detective Keith Frazier, and with his partner Bill Mitchell (Chewetel Ejiofor), they are on the scene attempting to diffuse the situation. The police captain right next to them is John Darius (Willem Dafoe).  Ejiofor and Dafoe are good as expected, though their roles are routine elements for these kinds of movies.  Washington has the kinetic pace that audiences are familiar with as he tries to outthink the bank robbers.  His character is labeled with a checkered reputation as he’s suspected of stealing drug money.  That element really goes nowhere.

Another party comes into the fold with Jodie Foster as a well-tailored and confident “fixer” hired by the bank’s president (Christopher Plummer).  To get these two actors together in a film along with Washington?  Well, that begs for repeat viewing.  Unfortunately, I didn’t see much point to the Foster character.  Upon hearing the news of the robbery, Plummer’s character clandestinely employs Foster to contain the situation so that a particular item in a safe deposit box remain untouched.  She arrives on the scene, exchanges dialogue with Washington that does not add up to much.  She surveys the hostages being held and then exits the story, until the epilogue.  As welcome as it is to see Jodie Foster, I can’t imagine what was gained from the context of her role, which does nothing to advance the story.

Inside Man always kept me interested and guessing.  The structure of Gerwitz’ script jumps ahead at times to show the detectives interrogating each hostage with suspicion after the incident is over.  So, I always wanted to know how it ever came to that shift in direction.  Plus, what happened to the bank robbers, and what precisely had Christopher Plummer so concerned about one particular branch robbery that he had to reach out for special services from Jodie Foster’s character? 

The answers arrive, and I can swallow the explanations.  Yet, the wrap up actually involves additional characters who hardly say a word or appear on screen earlier in the film.  Because they are briskly glossed over, it did not give me complete satisfaction.  I like the twist a lot.  It just needed a more solid foundation.

Inside Man is of those rare films that Spike Lee is invested simply for the fun.  The quick cuts and bustling New York atmosphere work well.  I love the opening credits to the movie; kind of his own spin on what Lumet did with Dog Day…  Lee has a good villain and appealing heroes. Other than few shortcomings, this is a solid crime drama.  

Often, Spike Lee positions himself on a platform that endorses a cause for the African American populace, or he brings attention to social wrongs in world history.  He is one of the best at what he does with his filmmaking approach.  Ironically, a message and a comeuppance arrive with Inside Man, but for a different demographic.  It might not be as hard hitting or thought provoking as other Spike Lee Joints, but it is appreciated.  

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Jack Arnold
CAST: Grant Williams, Randy Stuart, April Kent, William Schallert
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 83% Certified Fresh

PLOT: After being exposed to an ominous mist, Scott Carey starts to shrink in size, baffling medical science and subjecting him to unanticipated dangers.


I appreciate the seemingly endless string of 1950s sci-fi/monster movies in the same way I appreciate the short films of Georges Méliès: I acknowledge their place in movie history and their influence on the films of today, but I have no overwhelming desire to hunt them down and watch them.  If that makes me a dilettante, so be it.  I remember watching some of those ‘50s films as a boy on Saturday afternoons, although the titles elude me.  (One of them was in 3-D, requiring a trip to the local 7-11 to get a pair of those funky cardboard glasses.)  As young as I was, I could already see that these were not exactly Hollywood’s best films.  The plots were creaky and repetitive, the special effects were barely passable, the scripts were hammy and the acting even more so.  The ideas behind the stories were more compelling than the movies themselves.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I sat down to watch 1957’s The Incredible Shrinking Man, directed by Jack Arnold, the man behind a few of the most famous entries in the sci-fi/horror craze at that time: It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, This Island Earth, and Tarantula.  Even though Shrinking Man appears on the National Film Registry as well as the invaluable list of 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, I was prepared to be mildly bored with cheesy effects and overwrought acting.  Instead, I was genuinely thrilled by the adventures of Scott Carey, an everyman whose body inexplicably starts to shrink and shrink, until one day a housecat poses a mortal threat and a household spider – well, a tarantula – becomes as symbolic as anything from Hemingway.

A plot summary seems mildly superfluous: while boating one day with his wife, Scott Carey unwisely remains topside as a mysterious cloud of mist passes over their boat, leaving his body coated with somehow ominous glitter.  Six months later, he starts to notice his clothes aren’t fitting as they should.  His wife, Louise, barely has to stand on her tiptoes anymore to kiss him.  Doctors are baffled, but promise to do whatever they can, spouting pseudo-scientific nonsense about phospholipids and a “deadly chemical reversal of the growth process.”  There is some unintentionally (?) suggestive dialogue as Scott expresses his concerns to Louise: “I’m getting smaller, Lou.  Every day.”  And: “You love Scott Carey.  He has a size and a shape and a way of thinking.  All that’s changing now.”  Not exactly Michael Crichton, but I rolled with it.

One of the things that sells the movie and the story is the ingenious production design that kicks in when Scott reaches about 36 inches in height.  As he walks around his living room, everything has become larger than life.  When he sits in an easy chair, his head doesn’t even reach the top of the back.  A pencil is larger than a baseball bat.  He despondently visits a diner, where a cup of coffee is as big around as a beer barrel.  This aspect of the film seemed reminiscent of, say, a Disney movie.  It seems obvious at first, but it’s done so well that I was drawn into the illusion completely.  Some clever trick photography manages to put the shrunken Scott in the same frame as the full-size Louise many times.  Even my experienced eyes couldn’t see the “splice” without a lot of searching.

Scott eventually shrinks to just a few inches tall and must resort to living inside a literal dollhouse, another triumph of production design.  This sets up the first major set piece of the movie as their housecat sees the tiny Scott as a tiny morsel and attacks the dollhouse.  Scott winds up in the cellar, Louise comes home and assumes the cat has eaten her beloved husband, and Scott, unable to climb the now-inaccessible staircase, must navigate the menacing wasteland of a dimly lit cellar in search of food and water.

This central portion of the film is what sets it apart from most other similar films of its era.  The screenplay was written by Richard Matheson, based on his book.  Matheson also wrote I Am Legend, and in both stories, there are long passages where a solitary character is alone with his thoughts and must solve life-or-death problems with no one to talk to.  The silence of Shrinking Man during Scott’s adventure in the cellar is striking.  The film started with narration, and I expected it to last throughout the cellar sequences, but the filmmakers wisely decided to keep it minimal and focus instead on Scott’s actions, allowing the audience to think along with him instead of telegraphing what he was thinking.  I was reminded of Cast Away (2000), although poor Scott never gets a Wilson.  Instead, he’s stuck with the resident tarantula that becomes his nemesis.

I should mention the subtext of the story, even though it’s not something that occurred to me while watching.  I’m told in various documentaries that Matheson wrote his novel The Shrinking Man in 1956 during a bout of depression and insecurity as a new father.  Scott’s shrinking reflected Matheson’s own sense of insignificance under the responsibilities of a father and husband in an age of accelerating technology and the fears of the Cold War.  This is something that might have been far more obvious to audiences of the time than it is to a member of Generation X, but in hindsight, it’s an intriguing added level to a story that is compelling enough on its own.  If I wanted to, I could connect this story with Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park with its ravenous dinosaurs paired with a warning to the scientific community about the dangers of unchecked progress.  Pretty neat.

As fascinating and, at times, terrifying as the cellar sequences are, what really sets Shrinking Man apart from its contemporaries is the ending.  In virtually every other ‘50s monster film, the story ends on some kind of positive resolution where the threat is removed due to some new scientific discovery or an unexpected ally (the germs in The War of the Worlds come to mind) or, like Godzilla, it just disappears into the sunset.  This movie sidesteps that cliché by presenting the audience with an existential statement about the vastness of the universe on both a cosmic and an infinitesimal scale.  I know that sounds dry as hell, and the final monologue flirts with hokeyness, but listen to it carefully, and the ideas in it are grand and mystifying.  It mentions “God” here and there, but if you think of God, not as THE God, but as the unknowable engine of fate and/or the cosmos, the sentiments expressed have thought-provoking implications.  Scott’s last words in the film may sound simplistic, but they’re loaded with meaning, and can be applied to his own situation or to anyone struggling with the meaning of their own existence.  Pretty heady stuff for a sci-fi/special effects genre movie.

Where other films of its kind attempt and fail to ascribe grand themes to their kitschy stories and rubber-suited big-bads, The Incredible Shrinking Man actually made me think.  That’s an accomplishment.

AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN

By Marc S. Sanders

You ever feel proud of a character in a movie?  Like you walk out, and you say to yourself, “Well done, Rocky!  You did it!!!”  That’s how I feel about Zack Mayo, the Navy enlisted candidate who has to survive his first 13 weeks of basic training on his way to eventually obtaining his dream of flying jets.  Just as important though, Zack has to mature as a responsible young man with a commitment to caring at least as much for others as they already care for him.  Richard Gere plays the guy who must become both An Officer And A Gentleman.

Director Taylor Hackford goes deep into the bottom of the well to show what makes Zack such a loner.  His Navy enlisted father (Robert Loggia) abandoned him and his mother, and only reenters Zack’s boyhood life once his mother commits suicide. Zack spends time growing up on the Philippine Islands Naval base where he gets bullied while remaining unloved.

Years later, after college graduation, not knowing of any other direction to take with his adult life, he opts to go down the same path of his bum of a father and join the Navy where he’ll perform basic training when he arrives at a coastal Seattle base. The enlisted men do not have a good historical reputation in this area.  Many are known for bed hopping with the local factory girls, and then they relocate to where they are going towards next in their servitude, leaving the girlfriends behind and forgotten.  Zack’s father was one of these guys. The ladies in the area also have a stained legacy.  Many of them will deliberately get pregnant or even lie about missing their period to keep these enlisted men from leaving them.

Sergeant Foley (Louis Gossett Jr, in his unforgettable Oscar winning role) oversees Mayo and his class, specifically warning all of them that these trends occur over and over again.  When he’s not cautioning them, Foley attacks the character traits that weigh Mayo and the others down.  If they had a rough childhood or checkered background, Foley will not hold back.  He has to prepare these men and women for a possible war or a position of captivity behind enemy lines.  If these young folks can endure Sgt Foley’s cruel mind games and unforgiving, hard-hearted nature, then they are more prepared for any worst-case scenario that can come while performing military service.  

Mayo is a leading candidate in his class.  He has the potential to break the record on the brutal obstacle course, and he’s secretly resourceful with selling polished boots and belt buckles to his classmates ahead of bunk inspection.  Not bad.  However, he’s not mature and he doesn’t even realize it.  The first time he completes the obstacle course he sits over on the side, proud of himself, rather than joining his teammates in cheering each other on to finish the job.

Love is also not something Mayo is experienced with. He meets Paula (Debra Winger in a superb Oscar nominated performance) who is ready to love Zack but he’s not ready to open up to her.  Perhaps he never wants to love or commit to anyone to save himself from loss or further abandonment because it’s all he’s ever known.  An Officer And A Gentleman is very good at subtly covering what makes a loner a loner.  

Contrary to Zack’s background is the best friend he makes, Sid Worley, a fellow classmate (David Keith).  Sid is a happy go lucky fellow, but eventually the film shares what motivated him to enlist and how his relationship with a local girl pans out. Perhaps there’s some sense to what Foley has been warning these people about.  

An Officer And A Gentleman is sad at some points and very uplifting as well.  Sometimes it’s hard to watch the encounters that Zack and company must endure during these first thirteen weeks of a committed six-year servitude to the Navy.  The glamour of flying jets can only arrive once you shed away the person you once were by developing maturity, respect, resilience and honor.  

I love the way Taylor Hackford’s film tests Zack.  He’s tested by Paula, by Sergeant Foley and even by his own father.  Can he let go of the drunken whore parties arranged by his dad? Raised by a guy who might have worn the officer rankings and uniform, but now beds the women he picks up in bars only to finish it off with a drunken vomit session in the morning.  

Foley puts Zach to his mental and physical limits after he catches him in violation.  The sergeant then insists on the kid’s DOR (“drop on request”).  It’s up to Zack if he wants to take this seriously or simply quit and remain a loser like his father.

Then there is Zack’s commitment to Paula.  Can he trust Paula will not trick him or let him down, again like his father, then his mother, and followed by his father all over again?  

Richard Gere is sensational at balancing two stories at once.  This remains the best role of his career.  It’s a dynamic, multi layered performance.  First, the physicality he devoted to the role is impressive.  That is Gere doing the obstacle course and cockpit test crash dives in the swimming pool.  Gere is the one doing endless pushups in the mud and running in place with a rifle above his head while Gossett’s character torments him with his abusive yelling and a dribbling water hose.  Gere is also the one riding Mayo’s motorcycle.  The actor is completely absorbed in this divided character.  Arguably, he should have been considered for an Oscar nomination.  

Zack Mayo is not always likable.  The purpose of the film is to discover what is to admire about the conflicted loner who never had anyone to care for him or anyone for him to lend sincerity towards.  If joining the Navy can pull this guy towards a meaningful life that can be purely earned and not cheated or circumvented, then it’s possible to feel proud of what this man becomes.  

An Officer And A Gentleman is now over forty years old. So, it might feel dated. Yet, the traits that make a man and a woman good, honorable, and loving people has never lost their immense value.  If you have never seen this movie, it’s time you did, and if you have seen it, it is due for a rewatch.  

The last line of the picture, depicted in one of the greatest endings ever to close out a film, is “Way to go Paula!”  Allow me to also say “Way to go Zack!”

THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI

By Marc S. Sanders

David Lean’s The Bridge On The River Kwai commits to a common theme.  The purpose of war means nothing to the pawns assigned to execute its actions.

The film primarily takes place in Japanese occupied Burma during World War II.  A prison has just acquired a British platoon of soldiers, and the Japanese have mandated this squad to construct a railway bridge that will run over the Kwai river benefiting the Axis efforts in the war.  Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness, in a celebrated early career role) respects the rules of war that come with his battalion being held as prisoners of the Japanese enemy, and he is prepared to have his men begin construction.  However, as his copy of the Geneva Convention Agreement dictates, his officers are not obliged to join in the assignment.  

This is a far off deserted jungle however, that does not even need to be fenced off because an attempted trek to escape is bound to fail.  Therefore, the Geneva Convention Agreement has no value of authority out here in this bug infested, stilted and sweltering heat with minimal resources of food, clothing or medicine.  The Japanese commander Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) does not hesitate to swat Nicholson’s copy in the Englishman’s face.  Now, since the politics of war are no longer a factor, the stamina of these two men are what’s at stake.

Saito forces Nicholson into a cramped, isolated hot box with next to no food or water.  He’s lucky because his remaining officers are forced to share the other box together.  Saito will force them to comply, or he may just have to kill himself.

The Bridge On The River Kwai explores how productivity, leadership and endurance thrive, but at a startling cost of madness.  Before you realize it, none of these characters are speaking of their respective war efforts or even the mandates of war.  As Nicholson persists in his stance as a defiant leader, a remarkable tide turns within this prison camp.  Soon, the question arises as to who is running this camp and overseeing this bridge project. The enforcers or the prisoners? 

A separate storyline involves an American prisoner named Shears (William Holden) – one of the last men in his platoon to survive, and now only here to bury his fallen comrades.  He’s introduced to describe the harsh reality of what Nicholson and his men can expect.  Yet once Shears escapes the camp, he is caught in a twisted irony, being forced to return to the prison camp where he must destroy the bridge under the command of a British special forces leader named Warden (Jack Hawkins).  Warden goes through his own form of madness.  A badly injured foot becomes something worse than a bloody stump and still he insists on leading his small brigade into the jungle.  

Meanwhile, as Nicholson develops more control over the camp, with Saito realizing his own pitiful ineptitude, a faction of the British are now likely to engage with Nicholson’s newfound achievement as a leader over his own squad, as well as the human Japanese resources he’s also recruited to complete this solid foundation.

David Lean had a reputation for never settling for less on his pictures and The Bridge On The River Kwai is a perfect example.  I recently watched the film, for a second time, with my fellow Cinemaniacs.  Thomas and Miguel assuredly pointed out that one less than sturdy bridge was constructed by Lean’s crew to demonstrate its weaknesses and the lack of engineering the Japanese possess, before Nicholson fully takes over.  That structure collapses on film and thus lends to the next plight in the story, when Nicholson proves to Saito that he is more capable than his enemy counterpart.

Later, the actual bridge is finished leading to a nail biting ending that elevates in suspense as an oncoming Japanese train is heard approaching with its signature whistle and chugging overheard as Colonel Nicholson proudly walks across his success, newly minted with a plaque carved with his name.  Elsewhere in the area are Stearns and Hawkins.  What began with Japanese antagonism has shifted to one side likely to do battle with itself.  

Who is fighting who?  More importantly, what are they fighting for?  War or persistent, delusional madness?

The Bridge On The River Kwai is a magnificent adventure produced with sensational filmmaking.  The investment and risk that David Lean took to assemble this picture is astounding.  It was filmed within the actual jungles.  (Miguel said somewhere around Sri Lanka.) The costumes worn by the thousands of extras are tattered dirty scraps that certainly does not invite the sex appeal you’d expect in a modern film of this kind.  Moreover, the audacity of the filmmaker at least matches the nerve of the story’s cast of characters.  

The cast is marvelous, but it is Sessue Hayakawa and Alec Guinness who serve the impact of Lean’s film.  The movie comes close to a three-hour running time.  The first half of the film has Hayakawa positioned as the leading antagonist, but the second half has Guinness filling that spot.  They almost seem to mirror one another as their character arcs move in parallel but opposite directions working to accomplish their goals, while shedding any kind of humane concern for their underlings or the countries they serve.  

I consider this film to be groundbreaking.  It’s a spectacle, but it allows much to be examined in mental acuity, military allegiance and endurance.  The Bridge On The River Kwai tests how effective war can be for any side that participates.  My Cinemaniac comrade, Thomas,  informed me that the story, adapted from a novel by Pierre Boulle, is entirely fictional.  Still, I believe it garners an important message.  Are we supposed to truly embrace “rules of war?”  This is not Risk the board game.

These men might carry the titles and rankings issued to them by their governments. However, isolate them in the middle of nowhere and who is going to uphold any semblance of regulation?  War functions on efforts of violence.  When was the last time anyone had respect for violence?

THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: John Huston
CAST: Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Jean Hagen, James Whitmore, Sam Jaffe, Marilyn Monroe
MY RATING: 8/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 97% Fresh

PLOT: A major heist goes off as planned (almost), but then double crosses, bad luck, and solid police work cause everything to unravel.


On the Criterion Blu Ray of John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle, noir historian Eddie Muller says you can draw a straight line from Jungle to the French heist film Rififi on through to the Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible franchise and Three Kings.  To that list I would add the crime films of David Mamet.  At the moment, I can’t think of another movie in Asphalt Jungle’s era in which the dialogue is so flat, menacing, and uncluttered.  The story is exciting without being flashy, the characters are sharply drawn, and the cinematography creates the underbelly of a city almost Blade Runner­-ish in its gloom.  Even the planned jewelry heist, while detailed, is almost like a Hitchcock MacGuffin: the heist itself hardly matters, only the results…like Reservoir Dogs.  Another descendant.

Doc Erwin Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe) has just gotten out of prison.  After evading a police tail, he visits a local clip joint looking for help in putting together a heist he had worked on before he was imprisoned.  (I like how Doc and his colleagues rarely refer to “jail” or “prison”; it’s always “behind the walls.”)  He eventually enlists Gus, the wheel man (James Whitmore); Louis, the safecracker (Anthony Caruso); and Dix Handley, the muscle (Sterling Hayden, as shambling as ever, even in 1950).  Doc dismisses Handley as a hooligan.  “Violence is all they know, but they are, unfortunately, necessary.”  Throughout the film, Handley will do nothing to prove them wrong.

They need a bankroll for the heist, so the team goes to a crooked lawyer, Alonzo Emmerich (Louis Calhern), who agrees to their terms, but eventually reveals himself to be even more crooked than they are.  (Emmerich has a mistress, Angela, played by a young, gorgeous Marilyn Monroe in the role that made her a star.  She calls Alonzo “Uncle Lon” and steals every scene she’s in.  John Huston reportedly said Monroe was “one of the few actresses who could make an entrance by leaving the room.”)

The Asphalt Jungle is not so much about the heist as it is about the characters and their behaviors.  We watch how Dix Handley treats the one woman in his life, the appropriately named Doll (Jean Hagen).  She shows up on his doorstep the day after he’s released from a police lineup.  He grudgingly acknowledges her existence and allows her to crash at his place for a couple of nights, “but don’t you go getting any ideas, Doll.”  We see the money man, Emmerich, as he sweats about his planned double-cross, but still has to find the time to placate his bedridden wife.  There’s a great scene with Gus, the wheel man, who also owns a greasy spoon.  A rude cabbie takes cruel jabs at Gus’s hunched back, crippled gait, and scrawny pet cat; Gus reveals his true colors when he handily throws the cabby out of his restaurant while Dix looks on, amused.

Everyone gets their character-driven spotlight, even a crooked cop, Lt. Ditrich, who is assigned the task of finding Doc Riedenschneider, but when he does see him inside a clip joint, he simply turns around and walks away.  Later, Ditrich has a brutal scene with the weak-willed owner of the clip joint where he slaps him around several times to get him to spill his guts.  Watch the scene carefully, and it certainly looks as if Ditrich is really slapping this guy around.

Behavior is everything in this movie, not necessarily the plot.  Without giving too much away, behavior is what gets two characters killed, gets one arrested, drives another to suicide, and leads one to meet his fate in a horse pasture.  Nothing feels artificial or melodramatic.  There is an inevitability to what happens, a tragic undercurrent, that causes us to empathize with these hardened criminals.  These are not nice people.  But when one character unwisely stays seated in a diner when he really should have left, we are disappointed.  When one character’s lies to the police come back to haunt him, we shake our heads in resignation.  Their nature got the best of them.

Sterling Hayden is the headliner of The Asphalt Jungle, and he does get one or two scenes that are “juicier” than the rest, but this is a true ensemble piece.  It takes its time to make us familiar with each key player, with who they are, so we will understand why they do what they do at every turn.  That may seem like Storytelling 101, but you’d be surprised how many movies get that wrong.  Here’s one that gets it right in spades.

QUIZ SHOW (1994)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Robert Redford
CAST: John Turturro, Rob Morrow, Ralph Fiennes, Paul Scofield, David Paymer, Hank Azaria, Christopher McDonald, Mira Sorvino
MY RATING: 7/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 97% Certified Fresh

PLOT: In the late 1950s, a popular TV quiz show, along with its current champion, falls under federal investigation following allegations of rigging.


I imagine there will be no shortage of people more than willing to tell me how wrong I am, but while Robert Redford’s Quiz Show was well-directed, well-written, and well-acted, I never fell completely under its spell.  For that matter, it never felt like it had the director’s stamp on the material; a lot of it felt like a Ron Howard film.  No doubt the story captured a lot of attention when it happened in the late ‘50s, but it failed to grab mine, at least to that same degree.  It’s too well-made for me to skewer it mercilessly, but neither do I consider it a masterpiece.  It’s…okay.

It’s 1957, and Sputnik captures the world’s attention at (or at least near) the height of the Cold War.  To distract themselves from Sputnik’s implications, Americans tune their TV sets to the most popular game show on the air: Twenty-One, in which competing contestants are asked random trivia questions while isolated from each other.  These questions are something else.  One multi-part question includes: “Who rode with Paul Revere?  Who lent him his horse?  Was it a mare or a stallion?  And what was the horse’s name?”  I mean, really?  The current champion, Herbie Stempel (John Turturro), knows these answers and many others and has become something of a local hero, but he’s not terribly photogenic, with his oversized shoulders, those nerd goggles, and that one rotten bicuspid that you can’t take your eyes off.

Twenty-One’s showrunners decide Stempel’s run has come to an end and hatch a plan to throw the next episode to handsome young Charles van Doren (Ralph Fiennes), a Harvard professor who in real life did not look quite as handsome as Ralph Fiennes, but whatever, this isn’t a documentary.  Both Van Doren and Stempel comply with this plan, but the scenes in which they make their decisions felt contrived, or false, or something.  I was never convinced of their motivations.  Stempel needed the money but was supposedly swayed by the possibility of being awarded his own “panel show.”  Van Doren clearly didn’t need the money and even turns the offer down at first, but then he changes his mind because…I guess he needed a way to live up to his Pulitzer-Prize-winning father?  All the pieces are there, but it’s never fully explained until his final speech in front of a Congressional committee.

The story engine involves a young DC lawyer named Dick Goodwin (Rob Morrow) who gets a whiff of potential scandal and, eager to make a name for himself – as a possible parallel to Van Doren himself – does some independent investigating.  His digging leads inevitably to Stempel, who is more than happy to name names, but whose irascible personality makes him a less than ideal witness.  Things get interesting when he interviews Van Doren.  He is clearly suspicious, but no hard evidence appears…until he watches an old clip of a previous Twenty-One contestant who appears to give an answer the host was not expecting…

I don’t know how relevant this is, but I feel compelled to observe that director Redford seems to have phoned in a lot of favors when it came to casting Quiz Show.  In addition to the fine performances from the leads (Rob Morrow is outgunned by Turturro and Fiennes, but he holds his own), the supporting cast reads like a Woody Allen picture: David Paymer, Hank Azaria, Christopher McDonald (perfectly cast as the smarmy, superficial host of Twenty-One), Mira Sorvino, Martin freaking Scorsese, and walk-ons by Timothy Busfield, Ernie Sabella, Barry Levinson, Mario Cantone, Illeana Douglas, Calista Flockhart, and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him Ethan Hawke.  Redford clearly wanted to make sure his canvas was deep and well-drawn, and not just with the impeccable period production design.

But to what end?  I went into Quiz Show thinking it would involve a much deeper conspiracy than just two showrunners who, following orders from corporate, simply bribed several contestants to follow a scripted playbook.  About halfway through the movie, I realized there was not going to be much more to that part of the story, and we were going to follow the lawyer on his quest to uncover the truth, and I was like, “…that’s it?”  Does that make me guilty of criticizing the movie that I wanted it to be, instead of criticizing the movie itself?  I’m not sure.  Rightly or wrongly, I felt the movie wanted me to empathize or sympathize, or one of the -izes, with Van Doren.  But I was not moved to goosebumps by Van Doren’s final speech at the end of the film.  I found myself siding more with the committee member who says, “I don’t think an adult of your intelligence ought to be commended for simply, at long last, telling the truth.”

(I suppose a case could be made that the whole film is a parable for Watergate, still several years in the future; Nixon is name-dropped a few times.  The end credits inform us that NBC and Twenty-One’s sponsor, Geritol, were never indicted because their underlings claimed full responsibility for their actions, much like Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and the rest.  Does the buried subtext of America’s lost innocence make Quiz Show a better film?  Maybe a little, but only when you stand back from it, not while you’re watching it.)