Category Archives: Action/Adventure

The Stunt Man (1980)

Posted on July 16, 2014 | 3 comments

the stunt man

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Convict becomes a stuntman.

Cameron (Steve Railsback) is on the run from the cops who unknowingly comes onto a movie set and inadvertently causes the death of one of the stuntmen. Eli Cross (Peter O’Toole) the film’s God-like director takes a liking to Cameron and decides to hire him on as the replacement stuntman. Cameron is initially reluctant as he has no experience, but decides it would make a good cover from the police who are still after him. He starts an affair with the film’s leading lady Nina (Barbara Hershey), but finds that it may be Cross that he should be the most afraid of and who may be planning to film Cameron’s death during a difficult underwater stunt in order to add realism.

This is another one of those film-within-a-film type movies with this one faring a bit better than the others. One of the best ingredients it has is showing the behind-the-scenes politics that go on during any film production as well as hitting-the-nail-on-the-head with its caricatures.

Railsback is fun in a rare leading role. The way he can get intense as well as convey the rugged, ragged personality of a war-weary veteran on the run and just trying to survive is completely on-target. His best moments are simply his frightened and confused facial expressions that he has while going through many of Eli’s elaborate stunt routines and not sure if he will be coming out of it alive or not.

O’Toole is in peak form and was nominated for the Academy Award playing an egotistical director, which he modeled after David Lean. Having a director make a film advocating the horrors of war and violence, but then beat-up or threaten numerous crew members any time they make a mistake is perfect irony. My favorite moment of his is when they are showing rushes of Nina’s scenes from that day to her parents and then to their shock he throws in a few scenes showing Nina naked and in bed with another man. Then the next day he informs Nina about it simply to upset her and get the needed reaction that he wanted for the scene.

Hershey is splendid as a Hollywood actress who at times is quite jaded while at other moments is very naïve, child-like and emotionally fragile. Allen Garfield as the film’s exasperated and beleaguered screenwriter is also quite good. I also liked Chuck Bail who essentially plays himself as a stunt coordinator who tries to teach Cameron the fundamentals of the business.

Dominic Frontiere’s booming orchestral score is quite distinctive and at times even stirring particularly during the chase sequence. There is an abundance of ironies and twists that keep things interesting throughout and at points a bit surreal, but it’s missing that one final delicious twist or payoff and has an ending that seems a bit like a copout.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: June 27, 1980

Runtime: 2Hours 11Minutes

Rated R

Director: Richard Rush

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Action/Adventure, Drama, Dry Humor, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity

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Ladyhawke (1985)

Posted on June 9, 2014 | Leave a comment

ladyhawke 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Trying to reunite lovers.

Philipe (Matthew Broderick) is a thief who manages to escape the confines of the dungeon in Aquila by squeezing through a prison drain and then swimming through the underground sewer. When he finally reaches safety he meets up with Navarre (Rutger Hauer) who is also on the run and straddle with a very strange curse placed on him by the Bishop (John Wood). It seems that the Bishop had a thing for Lady Isabeau (Michelle Pfeiffer) and became enraged when he found that she loved Navarre and not him. As part of his revenge he made it so Navarre and Isabeau will never be able to meet in human form by having Navarre turn into a werewolf by night while Isabeau becomes a hawk by day. Now Navarre wants to use the reluctant Philipe’s knowledge of the city to help him find the Bishop and kill him, which he hopes will then end the curse.

I have to admit that medieval fantasy is my least favorite of all movie genres. The archaic living conditions always comes off as gloomy and depressing and the fact that the action is limited to only swordplay seems to make it less exciting. However, the film has some impressive cinematography and Broderick’s humorous character kept me engaged most of the way.

I also liked the pounding Philharmonic musical score. I realize that it doesn’t fit the sound of the 13th century setting and some fans of the film hate it for just that reason, but it still gives the film distinctiveness and helps boost the energy. I was actually disappointed it wasn’t used more as it seems to taper off too much after booming out strong at the beginning.

I am so used to seeing Hauer playing dark characters that I was initially thrown having him play a good guy, but pleasantly surprised at how well he did it. Leo McKern is a standout as the elderly Imperius.  His castle residence is marvelously captured and I loved all the booby traps he has in store for the invading soldiers. Pfeiffer on the other hand is a bit miscast mainly due to her model-like face that seems too glossy for the time period.

The exciting jousting sequence that takes place during the finale between Hauer and actor Alfred Molina’s character is outstanding, but it takes too damn long to get there. The simple plot could have been wrapped up in a much briefer runtime. The second hour is filled with a lot side dialogue and scenarios that add nothing to the story or characters and should’ve been cut completely. The romance angle is also handled too much from the perspective of a 14-year-old schoolgirl and the scene where the lovers reunite could be deemed as corny by some.

There is also the issue of Navarre looking directly at an eclipse that conveniently occurs through a broken stain glass window in a church. Normally a person would have to shield their eyes with their hand, squint or at the very least turn away from it after only a few seconds. Yet this character stares at it for an extended period without even blinking, which at the very least would’ve burned dark spots into his field of vision and yet strangely that doesn’t occur.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: April 12, 1985

Runtime: 2Hours 4Minutes

Rated PG-13

Director: Richard Donner

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

 

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Posted in 80's Movies, Action/Adventure, Dry Humor, Moody/Stylish, Romance, Surreal/Fantasy

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Little Cigars (1973)

Posted on April 16, 2014 | Leave a comment

little cigars

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review:  Midgets turn to crime.

A young, beautiful blonde (Angel Tompkins) becomes an unlikely partner with a group of midgets who run a small (no pun intended) theft ring. With a title and premise like that you would expect a broad comedy, but that is not the case. Although there are a few snappy exchanges and a funny scene involving a police line-up of some very angry midgets, this is mainly handled on a gritty, violent level.

The midgets themselves aren’t too likable. This may be an attempt by the filmmakers to show them as real human beings and the effects of living in a society with a handicap, but they end up coming off as overly irritable, bad tempered, and vicious without ever confirming if this is some social statement.

Overall it’s just a standard crime yarn with midgets used instead of regular sized people. There is even a storyline involving a romance between Tompkins and head midget Billy Curtis showing how love can spring up between any two people no matter what their size. However, you can’t help but get a queasy feeling when you see a 60-year-old midget in bed kissing a young statuesque blonde.

The film leaves the viewer with a certain degree of unpleasantness too much actually, to consider it enjoyable or entertaining. The only part I really liked was the scene where Curtis goes into a tough bar and takes on a big guy who has his arms around ‘his’ girl, which is both amusing and exciting.

Also, Frank Bonner who later went on to play Herb in the classic TV-series ‘WKRP in Cincinnati’ can be seen very briefly as a hotel doorman.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: June 11, 1973

Runtime: 1Hour 32Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Chris Christenberry

Studio: American International Pictures (AIP)

Available: DVD-R (MGM video on demand)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Action/Adventure, Comedy/Drama, Gangster Movies, Low Budget, Offbeat

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Sky Riders (1976)

Posted on April 4, 2014 | 1 comment

sky riders

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Rescued by hang gliders

Businessman Jonas Bracken (Robert Culp) living in Greece comes home one day to find his wife Ellen (Susannah York) and three children kidnapped by a terrorist group. The police can seem to make no headway so Ellen’s ex-husband Jim (James Coburn) gets involved. After analyzing the background of one of the photos of the victims taken by the kidnappers he realizes that they are being held hostage inside a mountaintop monastery and the only way to get to it is by air, so he hires a crew of hang gliders to fly into the locale and rescue the family.

The film is fast-paced it gets right into the story from the very beginning and never slows down. The kids are pretty cute especially the precious little girl, which helps the viewer emphasize with their predicament and urgency to get out. The Greek locations are exotic and help give the film an extra flair.

The biggest problem is the script. The Coburn character has never hang glided before and yet somehow manages to be trained well enough in only a couple of days to fly into the steep mountaintop location without a hitch, which seemed farfetched. It also seemed highly implausible that this group of hang gliders who work at the local circus would be willing to take on such a dangerous mission or even know what to do once they landed and had to take on the gun toting bad guys. I would have expected a lot more missteps and mistakes from this novice bunch and yet they handle everything like they were a group of seasoned commandoes.

Coburn’s performance is misguided as well. Normally I love his toothy grin and throaty chuckle, but here he does it while watching the hang gliders perform at the circus even though his ex-wife and son are being held hostage. I would have thought he should have been so nervous and tense that he wouldn’t have smiled at all and been instead in a perpetually serious manner.

The scene of when they fly into the locale is done with a darkened lens to simulate nighttime, which beside being annoying makes it hard to see and lessens the dramatic effect as well as the excitement.

On the whole it’s a very basic action flick and an empty-headed one at that. The terrorist group and their ‘cause’ are quite generic and the thin plot and cardboard characters barely camouflage the fact it’s just an excuse to show off some nifty hang gliding footage and nothing more.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: March 26, 1976

Runtime: 1Hour 27Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Douglas Hickox

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD (Regions 1 & 2)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Action/Adventure, Kidnapping Movies, Movies with a rural setting, Police Drama

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Kaleidoscope (1966)

Posted on March 10, 2014 | 1 comment

kaleidoscope

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: He breaks the bank.

Barney Lincoln (Warren Beatty) is a well-off playboy who has come up with a clever scheme that will allow him to win at cards at any casino along the Riviera. He does this by breaking into a card printing company called Kaleidoscope and marking the back of the master plates used to print their playing cards so when he attends the casinos later on he will know exactly what the cards are by reading his own small markings on the back of them.  Angel (Susannah York) is a cagy and flirtatious woman who recognizes Barney’s card skills as a crucial link to help her father (Clive Revill) who is a Scotland Yard Inspector and looking to nab the notorious Dominion (Eric Porter) who is a skilled card player himself.

The idea of breaking into a card printing company and marking the plates is a clever one, but highly improbable. After all if it was so easy to do such as it is portrayed in this movie then wouldn’t somebody else have tried it already? Personally as a viewer the markings were so small that I could not spot them and the Scotland Yard inspector needed a magnifying glass to see them making me wonder how Barney using only his naked eye could make them out when the cards were clear across the table. Also, it seems unrealistic that every casino would use the same cards by the same printing company as there has to be more than one card playing printing company out there to choose from.

Beatty is his usual detached and cool self, which to some degree gets annoying. You want to see this guy sweat a little, but he never does and the character borders on being arrogant and too cocky. However, the intense scene at the end where Barney is playing a high stakes poker game with Dominion is where Beatty’s cool demeanor comes in perfectly particularly when he shows absolutely no facial expressions while everyone else nervously awaits to see what is under the one crucial card that has yet to be turned over.

York is quite good, but sadly underused. The way she initially toys with Beatty a notorious ladies man both on and off screen is delightful and I wanted to see more of it. Their first date culminates with her sitting on top of a cow and he on a hay bale, which can’t be topped, but then her character disappears and when she comes back she is much weaker and less interesting expressing her ‘love’ for the Beatty character like she is just another vapid chick and without the fun edge at the beginning. She does look very attractive here and I loved seeing her in the strapless gown.

Revill is amusing as the much put-upon inspector who has a thing for toy steam engines, but he looks much too young to be playing York’s father and in real-life was only 9 years older than her. Porter adds campy panache as the villain while sporting a most groovy comb-over.

The opening title sequence is done in a way that looks similar to an actual kaleidoscope, which was cool and each scene transitions with a kaleidoscope design. The lavish and garish sets used as an interior backdrop for Porter’s mansion are eye-popping and I loved all the tunnels they have to drive through just to get there. On a mindless level this proves to be pleasant fluff, but the shoot-out and chase sequence at the end gets a little too James Bond-like and is out-of-place with the rest of the film.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: September 22, 1966

Runtime: 1Hour 43Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Jack Smight

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: DVD (Warner Archive)

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Posted in 60's Movies, Action/Adventure, Dry Humor

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Into the Night (1985)

Posted on February 20, 2014 | 4 comments

into the night 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Insomniac gets into espionage.

Ed Okin (Jeff Goldblum) is an insomniac, who has a boring job and an unfaithful wife and is unexpectedly thrown into espionage and intrigue when a beautiful jewel smuggler named Diana (Michelle Pfeiffer) literally lands on his car in the middle of the night while he is out taking a drive.

If you are expecting the surreal, cult-like comedy of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours then you can forget it. This thing actually tries to play it straight and does it in a low key way that makes for a lot of slow stretches intermingled with some slight comedy and action.

It’s a pedestrian caper with some ‘novelties’ thrown into to try to get you to forget how pedestrian it really is. The novelties are director John Landis’s casting fellow directors in cameo roles. Sure it’s nice to put faces to names, but the cameos really aren’t that interesting or funny. Only French director Roger Vadim gets anything remotely flashy. In fact it’s Landis who gets the best part casting himself as a crazed gunman with a large scar on the side of his face.

Goldblum is a solid everyman, but he underplays it and eventual becomes too dull. He doesn’t even react when a loaded gun is put into his mouth!! Pfeiffer is beautiful, but there really isn’t any chemistry between the two so having them end up ‘falling in love’ shows just how contrived this whole thing is.

David Bowie and Dan Aykroyd have very little screen time and are badly wasted.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: February 22, 1985

Runtime: 1Hour 55Minutes

Rated R

Director: John Landis

Studio: Universal

Available: DVD

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Posted in 80's Movies, Action/Adventure, Drama, Romance, Spy/Espionage

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Stunts (1977)

Posted on February 14, 2014 | Leave a comment

stunts

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Who’s killing the stuntmen?

Glen (Robert Forster) decides to join a movie production working as a stuntman when his brother mysteriously dies while doing a routine stunt. Soon more stuntmen meet similar fates. Will Glen be able to find out who’s behind these deaths before he becomes the next victim?

Director Mark L. Lester has done a lot of these standard low budget flicks and has achieved moderate success with them. The story itself is pretty basic and really doesn’t offer all that much tension or interest, but the pace is brisk and some of the stunt work entertaining. On a low-grade level it is okay.

I love Forster’s blunt, blue collar, say-it-like-it-is attitude and his presence elevates the story immensely. Bruce Glover who is the father of Crispin Glover plays one of the fellow stuntmen. Like his son he usually plays weird and eccentric characters, but here plays a normal one who you are even sympathetic to, which was a surprise turn.

The women characters aren’t locked into any dainty stereotype and are as tough and gruff as the men and I liked it. Fiona Lewis plays a journalist looking to write an article and what makes up the personality of stunt people and why they do it. She curses as much as Forster if not more and although the two eventually get into a relationship after a rocky start they continue to spar, which is fun. The beautiful Joanna Cassidy seems like just one of the guys and does all the same dangerous stunts they do and even knocks two guys flat on the their asses during a barroom brawl.

Candice Rialson doesn’t fare quite as well. Her best assets are with her clothes off and trying to turn her a dramatic actress clunks. She doesn’t even have a single nude scene here, which seemed almost like a waste. However, the segment where she keeps flubbing up her lines and they have to do continual reshoots to the consternation of the director (Malachi Thorne) is amusing.

The DVD issue from Synergy Entertainment, which is the same version you get if you buy or rent it from Amazon Instant is atrocious and looks like it was transferred straight off of a faded VHS tape. To some extent I was willing to forgive it as the graininess help reflect the low budget drive-in feel, but this version also edits out any time a character says the F-word, which got annoying. The picture is so blurry I couldn’t even read the credits to find out who did the catchy title tune ‘Daredevil is Gonna Make an Angel Out of You’, but whoever did it did well as it has a nice gritty beat and fun lyrics.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: June 12, 1977

Runtime: 1Hour 29Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Mark L. Lester

Studio: New Line Cinema

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, Action/Adventure, Drama, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Low Budget, Mystery

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Robocop (1987)

Posted on February 12, 2014 | 3 comments

robocop 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Cop becomes a robot.

In Detroit of the near future the city has become overrun with criminals and an underfunded city government is forced to allow a large corporation by the name of OCP to help run its police force. The company is headed by Dick Jones (Ronny Cox) and their chairman (Dan O’Herlihy) who are constantly looking for new and more sophisticated crime fighting weapons and come up with the idea of creating a half human half robot type cyborg using the body parts of a recently deceased officer named Alex J. Murphy (Peter Weller). Initially it’s a great success, but the robot starts to have memories of Alex’s past and becomes fixated with hunting down the scumbags who killed him while avoiding Jones and his men who want to destroy the robot so Jones’s own invention the ED-209 can replace him.

When compared to other big-budgeted studio action flicks this one far and away outshines them all. Director Paul Verhoeven seemed to be given an amazing amount of freedom to create a film with a distinct vision that manages to be both exciting and multi-dimensional. The final shootout at an abandoned steel mill has a particularly nihilistic look and feel more common in European films. The jabs of satirical humor also make this much more enjoyable and entertaining than the run-of-the-mill actioner. My favorite bits included the commercial advertising the family board game call ‘Nukem’ and the outrageous demands of a gunman holding up the mayor’s office as well as the overnight gas station attendant working on geometry problems.

The action is quite good and the film manages to attain a fluid level that allows the graphic violence to work in tandem with the offbeat touches while not being jarring or disjointed. The special effects were decent although the ED-209 robot looks too much like one of those Ray Harryhausen stop-action creations that was clearly a miniaturized model blown up to giant proportions by optical effects. The result is a bit cheesy by today’s standards although the part where the machine is chasing Robocop and slips down a flight of stairs and then lays on its backside while flailing its legs in the air like a wailing child is quite possibly the film’s best moment.

There is also a rather prolonged torture segment where a criminal gang led by Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith) traps Murphy in a steel mill and proceeds to shoot off his arm and hand while laughing at him as he screams in pain. Despite its unsettling nature I liked that this scene was put in as too many times Hollywood takes on dark themed stories, but then makes them tasteful and mainstream. This scene breaks that mold while truly reflecting the vile nature of the people and the world that they live in. It allows vicious characters to be nasty without it having to be implied and shocks the viewer a bit out of their comfort zone, which a true nihilistic movie should do.

The only problem that I had with the scene is that after taunting Murphy and blowing off his limbs they end up shooting him in the head and effectively making him brain dead, which makes the scenes later on where he remembers his past and is even aware of the people who are turning him into a robot seem unrealistic. A better idea would have been to have the men just walk away laughing while allowing Murphy to remain conscious , which would have worked better with their already vindictive nature as shooting him in the head given the circumstances seemed too ‘humane’ like they were putting him out of his misery. It also would have kept his brain functioning and allowed the later segments to be more believable.

Star Weller is so covered up with the massive suit that he has to wear that he becomes transparent and making the bad guys much more colorful and memorable. The character needed more of a backstory and a few distinctive personality traits. I also felt that the history between his character and Officer Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen) should have been more than just one day on the job.

Miguel Ferrer captures the caricature of the young, upwardly mobile do-whatever-it-takes-to-get-ahead 80’s yuppie persona so well that he was one unlikable character I wished had stayed on for the entire duration. Smith who has become so well known in more benign roles in his later career really scores as a particularly vile bad guy.

My only real complaint is that the visuals were not all that futuristic looking. The police station resembled the one on the old ‘Barney Miller’ TV-show and the police cars looked very much like 80’s models. The remake of the film, which is set to be released today, may do a better job of creating more modernistic visuals.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: July 17, 1987

Runtime: 1Hour 42Minutes

Rated R

Director: Paul Verhoeven

Studio: Orion Pictures Corporation

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Action/Adventure, Classic, Movies with Nudity, Police Drama, Satire, Sci-Fi

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Candleshoe (1977)

Posted on February 7, 2014 | 1 comment

candleshoe

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Treasure hidden on estate.

            Jodie Foster stars as Casey a teen living on the tough streets of New York and reselling stolen items for a living. Her abilities come to the attention of small-time crook Harry Bundage (Leo McKern) who gets her to pretend that she is the long lost granddaughter of a rich matriarch by the name of Lady St. Edmund (Helen Hayes).  Bundage has become aware through a former servant that worked there that there is a trove of treasure hidden somewhere on the premises and it is up to Casey to follow the clues and find it.

I saw this movie when it was released in 1977 and the only thing I could remember from it was the little boy who would slide across the polished floors of the mansion. It’s a surprisingly elaborate plot for a children’s movie, but one that is engrossing and interesting. The characters are believable and diverse and it is fun seeing them evolve and learn to get along. Parents should find this as enjoyable as the kids. I was impressed with the way the filmmakers never talk down to their young audience and trust that they will be sophisticated enough to pick up on the little nuances and subtitles, which the film does have.  I found myself longing for this type of family entertainment again. It seems like the family films of today either have kids spewing out a lot of crude nasty things, or they are so sugary sweet and benign that they make you want to throw up, but this film nicely straddles the middle and it really works.

Jodie is great in the lead and the movie wouldn’t have worked as well with another actress in the role. The part nicely takes advantage of Foster’s confident, smart, streetwise persona and almost had me believing that the part was written specifically for her. Later I read how the original director for the film, David Swift, dropped out of the project because he felt Foster was ‘all wrong’ for the role even though I felt she was perfect and other viewers should feel the same.

Helen Hayes is okay in her role, however the character isn’t all that interesting, nor has that much to do. It seems like once she won the Academy Award for Airport in 1970, which helped revive her career, these were the typical ‘sweet old lady’ roles she was perpetually offered afterwards. However, when it comes to the caricature of an old lady Hayes is absolutely perfect almost to the point that it is hard to imagine her ever being young.

David Niven, who plays the butler named Priory, is engaging, but was starting to look frail and elderly. He gets a chance to play several different roles including that of the gardener and chauffeur. The Irish accent that he uses for the gardener part sounded very authentic and I was impressed. His best moment comes at the end when he takes on the McKern character in an imaginative and drawn out duel segment and watching his scared and nervous facial expressions during this is amusing.

I liked the other children who play the orphans that Lady St. Edmond adopts. They are cute in a nice genuine way without it being forced especially the young blonde haired boy named Bobby who speaks in a thick cockney accent. Veronica Quilligan plays Cluny one of the older children who are initially an adversary to Casey. She showed the most disciplined and realistic facial reactions to the action around her while the other kids had lost or vapid looks on their faces. Although she appeared to be about 13 or 14, the same age of the character that she played, I was shocked to find that she was actually 21 when the movie was made.

I was surprised that there wasn’t a car chase scene as every Disney movie from the 70’s seemed to have one. The action for what it is worth is sparse, but enjoyable without ever getting too cartoonish. The ending where the kids take on the band of adult crooks is good and the scene where their car is stopped on the tracks and the train comes just inches from Priory, who is shielding the vehicle, before stopping is a near classic.

I think adults who were kids during this era can watch this film again and still find it entertaining. The kids of today should find enjoyable as well although the ideal age would be between 8 and 14 as I think it is too slow paced for anyone younger.  The film also has a good life lesson in regards to teamwork and how working together and taking advantage of each other’s special talents and abilities can help achieve a common goal.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: December 16, 1977

Runtime: 1Hour 41Minutes

Rated G

Director: Norman Tokar

Studio: Buena Vista

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

1 Comment

Posted in 70's Movies, Action/Adventure, Comedy, Movies Based on Novels, Movies for the Whole Family, Mystery

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Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Posted on February 2, 2014 | 3 comments

lawrence of arabia 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 9 out of 10

4-Word Review: Lawrence unites the Arabs.

Due to the death of actor Peter O’Toole on December 14 we will be reviewing each Sunday of this month 4 films that he did during the 60’s with this one be his most famous role and one that jettisoned his career into stardom.

The film chronicles the life of T.E. Lawrence who helped unite the Arab tribes during World War I and allowed them to fight back and eventually overpower the Turks. The film starts out with his motorcycle death in 1935 at the young age of 46 and then flashes back to his days in the army as a young intelligence officer. It examines his unique personality, determined headstrong ways as well as his ability to unite varying warring Arab tribes and get them to work together to defeat a common enemy.

Director David Lean and cinematographer Freddie Young are the real stars here. Filmed mostly in the countries of Morocco and Jordan Lean manages to capture the barren, hot landscape of the desert better than anyone else as he gives it an almost surreal and exotic quality that takes over the rest of the story and leaves the strongest impression. I loved the sun slowly coming up over the horizon and onto the flat terrain. I also liked the longshots showing characters enveloped by the majestic landscape and looking almost nonexistent when seen against some of the towering rocky formations. Omar Sharif’s characters entrance while on horseback and seen from a distance as he rides up through layers of heat that rises from the ground is also excellent.

The action is well captured although there isn’t as much of it as you might think. Their raid on Aquba is for my money the best. I loved the bird’s-eye shot of seeing all these soldiers looking almost like ants scurrying from the desert and into the fortress through the buildings and property and then eventually into the sea that sits on the other side. The bloody battle that they rage against an already weakened Turk army near the end is also a strong visual as is the Lawrence’s visit to an unsanitary hospital housing the wounded Turks.

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O’Toole’s portrayal of Lawrence was controversial at the time and to some still is. His bright, clear blue eyes makes him look like he is in a trance and the way he says his lines sounds like he was under some sort of spell and gives the character a certain mystique that isn’t quite human. Still I thought the part fit O’Toole’s personality well. My favorite moment of his is when he first tries on the Arab robes that he is given and he goes running around in them in an almost child-like manner. It is also nice seeing a story about a true-life character that isn’t preachy and more open about their flaws particularly his propensity for violence which becomes increasingly more evident as it goes along.

Sharif is excellent is support and in some ways gives the film’s all around strongest performance. I liked the adversarial relationship that his character has with Lawrence. They start out at odds with each other, but slowly become friends and yet continue to have their differences. Arthur Kennedy is good as a glib and detached photojournalist and Alec Guinness was to me initially unrecognizable as Prince Feisal.

The movie does not stay completely accurate to the real life events. Some of these are minor and while others are more major, but are too many to elaborate here. The truth is there is probably no movie pertaining to a true life event that is completely accurate to what really happened and no one should be naïve enough to expect it to be either. On an entertainment and cinematic level this one scores high. My only real complaint is the scene where a character gets swallowed up in quicksand, which in reality is very unlikely to happen, but a prevalent feature in a lot of 60’s movies and the one point where it got a bit too ‘Hollywood’.

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My Rating: 9 out of 10

Released: December 10, 1962

Runtime: 3Hours 47Minutes

Not Rated

Director: David Lean

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 60's Movies, Academy Award Winners for Best Director, Academy Award Winners for Best Picture, Action/Adventure, British Movies, Classic, Epic, Foreign Films, Historical Drama, Movies Based on Actual Events, Outdoors, War Movies

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