Category Archives: Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies

Sheila Levine is Dead and Living in New York (1975)

Posted on January 10, 2014 | Leave a comment

sheila levine is dead and living in new york city

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Heartbreak in the city.

Sheila Levine (Jeannie Berlin) is a recent college grad who moves to New York City in search of a more exciting and glamorous lifestyle, but finds a long line of heartbreak and empty opportunities instead. When her younger sister gets married before she does she becomes jealous, but refuses to give up and continues to strive to make her mark no matter how small it might be.

Based on the Gail Parent novel the film manages to hit a few marks. Her nagging mother and the exchange that she has with a job placement coordinator at an employment agency is good. However, the idea that a woman’s sole purpose in life is to get married and then not have to work afterwards is seriously dated and will not connect with today’s viewers.

The main character isn’t exactly likable either. She is bossy and intrusive with her roommate and seems to think that because she is a college grad that should entitle her to only ‘creative’ and interesting jobs that doesn’t involve typing. She is also strangely naïve as she gets picked up by a middle-aged man (Roy Scheider) at a bar, goes back to his place for sex and then somehow thinks that means he is in love with her and is genuinely shocked when he bluntly tells her that he was simply appeasing his ‘animalistic instincts’. We are supposed to feel sorry for her, but instead it’s more fun seeing her get slapped down.

Berlin is the daughter of Elaine May who was the queen of sardonic humor and I came into this thing with high hopes, but her performance is only so-so. She does indeed look very Jewish and the perfect composite of the Rhoda Morgenstern TV character and a young Joan Rivers. However, her incessant whiny and nasally voice may be too much for some.

Scheider manages to be pretty solid. I was never impressed with his acting range, but here he gives quite possibly his best performance in what is most likely his least known role.Sidney J. Furie’s lifeless direction though makes the production come off like a filmed stage play with scenes that seem to go on forever.

Michel Legrand’s melodic orchestral score is out-of-place and better suited for a romance. There is also a song with a funky 70’s sound that gets played at regular intervals and becomes increasingly annoying.

I was expecting this to be a quirky, dry humored comedy, but found it to be more of a stilted drama that relied too much on the obvious and at times became almost painful to watch. The romantic angle between Scheider and Berlin is unbelievable and ultimately quite corny, which impedes the film from achieving any type of true potential.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: May 16, 1975

Runtime: 1Hour 52Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Sidney J. Furie

Studio: Paramount

Available: YouTube

Leave a comment

Posted in 70's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Comedy/Drama, Movies Based on Novels, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Obscure Movies

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Death Hunt (1981)

Posted on January 7, 2014 | 1 comment

death hunt 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Running for his life.

Last year during January we reviewed films Charles Bronson did during the 70’s, so this year we will look at some of the ones he did in the 80’s. This one is based on the true story of Albert Johnson who was a fugitive that sparked one of the largest manhunts in Canadian history.

Bronson plays Johnson a loner who lives by himself in an isolated cabin situated in the corner regions of the Northwest Territories and Yukon. He comes upon a vicious dog fight that has been orchestrated by some of the local men. Feeling sorry for the bloodied animal he tells the dog’s owner Hazel (Ed Lauter) that he will buy the animal, but Hazel refuses and Johnson ends up giving him he money and taking the animal anyways. Outraged Hazel goes to the local sheriff Millen (Lee Marvin) telling him that Johnson ‘stole’ his animal, but Millen knowing that Hazel was part of an illegal dogfight does nothing about it, so Hazel gets some men together to form a posse. A shootout ensues at Johnson’s cabin and when one of the men gets killed a reluctant Millen is forced to go after Johnson who goes on the run in the frozen, snow covered rugged mountains.

The film is an exciting high-grade adventure from the very start. The tension mounts perfectly and Jerrold Immel’s pounding orchestral score keeps the pace going. Director Peter Hunt mounts some great action sequences including the shootout and standoff at the cabin and also a heart-stopping moment where Johnson jumps off a steep cliff and onto a tall pine tree. The character’s ragged personalities perfectly reflect the raw climate and the internal bickering that goes on amongst the men as the chase Johnson creates an interesting subtext.

The film was shot in Northern Alberta, which is good because it gives the viewer a taste of the cold climate. The aerial footage of the mountainous landscape shown over the opening credits is breathtaking. However, it was clearly not filmed in the dead-of-winter as the sun was too high in the sky and although there was snow it was obviously thawing thus making the moments were the men complain about the bitter cold not ring quite as true.

Marvin is excellent and pretty much takes over the film. He looks older and tired here, but it works with the character that seems to be coasting and uninterested in getting involved with anything. Having both the main characters likable and relatable makes the chase more captivating and psychological complex from both ends.

Bronson is good in a role that takes advantage of his stoic nature although he only gets shown intermittently and it is Marvin who gets the most screen time and the best lines. I liked the character’s relentless will to survive and ability to adapt to the circumstances, but I wanted some explanation for how he was able to survive inside his cabin when it gets exploded with dynamite, but unfortunately one never comes.

Angie Dickinson who was 50 at the time and looked to have had a facelift and some work around her eyes is wasted in a completely pointless and forgettable part. Andrew Stevens who has proved effective in bad-guy roles plays a very clean-cut, rule-oriented Mountie here and does okay. Durable character actor Henry Beckman has a great small role as a shifty trapper who sits-in-the-shadows only to come out and get involved at the most surprising moments.

The film takes a lot of liberties with the true-life incident and was highly criticized at the time for being too ‘Hollywoodnized’, but it succeeds at being entertaining although I thought it would have been appropriate to have some denouncement at the end.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: May 22, 1981

Runtime: 1Hour 37Minutes

Rated R

Director: Peter Hunt

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray

1 Comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Action/Adventure, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies with a rural setting, Outdoors

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Valley of the Dolls (1967)

Posted on January 5, 2014 | 9 comments

valley of the dolls 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: The dolls are pills.

Usually when sites commemorate Sharon Tate it is on the anniversary of her murder, which is in August, but I decided to do things differently and talk about her in January when she was born. Had she lived she would have turned 71 this year and each Sunday this month I will review a 60’s film that she was in.

This one is probably her most well recognized part and it’s based on the bestselling novel by Jacqueline Susann who appears briefly as a reporter. Here Tate plays Jennifer North a woman with ‘no talent’ who must use her body and looks to get where she wants and she is constantly reminded of it by her mother who regularly calls to make sure she is doing her ‘breast exercises’. Eventually she stars in nudie films, which leads to a self-destructive downward slide. Patty Duke is Neely O’Hara a talented young singer who finds climbing to the top can be laced with drugs, alcohol and jealousy. Anne Welles (Barbara Parkins) makes up the third part of the trio as a small town girl who comes to the city looking for excitement, but finds more than she bargained for and eventually leaves.

If there is one thing that saves this otherwise trashy, standard script it is Mark Robson’s direction. Usually most directors come up with a color scheme based on the type of script that they have and mood they want to create, but Robson’s uses every color of the rainbow and more. The plush varied sets and interesting stop action photography that gets implemented from time-to-time keeps things moving at a brisk a visually interesting pace. John William’s score is excellent and Dionne Warwick’s song ‘The theme from Valley of the Dolls’, which charted at number 2 is like most of her work infinitely hummable.

valley of the dolls 1

Duke is lively as the caustic Neeley. She took on the role to get rid of her ‘goody-goody’ image and does so in grand style as her angry tirades and meltdowns are entertaining. While she is attractive Tate’s acting seems limited, but her character is by far the most likable. Parkins may be the least well known of the three, but her performance is solid as the film’s anchor.

Veteran actress Susan Hayward gives the best performance as the aging acerbic singer Helen Lawson who will allow no one to push her from the top. Her confrontation with Duke in the women’s bathroom where Duke pulls off Hayward’s wig and tries flushing it down the toilet and then Hayward’s response to it is by far the most memorable scene of the whole movie.

The story itself is predictable, clichéd and one-note. The characters are cardboard and the dialogue is stale. If it weren’t for Robson’s direction this would have been a ‘bomb’. However, it has attained a high cult following for its campiness, which if you view it from that perspective isn’t bad.

This same story was remade as a 1981 TV-movie starring James Coburn and Jean Simmons.  Also, a young Richard Dreyfuss can be spotted briefly as a stagehand.

valley of the dolls 3

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: December 15, 1967

Runtime: 2Hours 3Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Mark Robson

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video, Netflix streaming

9 Comments

Posted in 60's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Cult, Drama, Movies Based on Novels, Movies that take place in the Big Apple

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

The Survivors (1983)

Posted on December 30, 2013 | Leave a comment

survivors 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Seeking refuge with vigilantes

Sonny (Walter Matthau) and Donald (Robin Williams) are a mismatched pair who inadvertently become involved with bad guy Jack (Jerry Reed) after witnessing him holding up a restaurant. Donald seeks protection by joining a radical militia group while Sonny chases after him in an attempt to get him out of it.

The story certainly has the foundation for good potent satire. It hits on the serious issue of average citizen vigilantes who become more fanatical and dangerous than the criminals themselves. It peaks with a scene in a gun shop were a little old lady packs herself with some really big guns. Unfortunately it becomes soft and aimless after that and the result is a clumsy comedy with too much nonsense thrown in for cheap laughs.

There is also too many shifts in allegiances here, which makes it all implausible. First Donald is on the run from Jack and even tells him off in a funny moment over the telephone. Then before you know it they are working together and going against the fanatical militia group that at one time Donald was really into. The final denouncement involving the true allegiance of the militia group’s leader is also absurd.

There are some good laughs, but they are scattered haphazardly throughout. The best stuff comes from Williams. He seems a little out of place at first playing the part of the henpecked businessman, but he quickly comes into his own. His shootout with Reed is the real topper and Matthau is as always consistently amusing.

The female cast is also interesting. Kristen Vigard is a nice addition as Matthau’s teen daughter. She is pretty and smart, but still quite sweet. Her relaxed and casual responses to things are a nice contrast to the frantic behaving adults. Annie McEnroe as Williams’ wife is also good only because of her facial expressions which never allow you to know what she is really thinking or feeling.

The best line comes from hit-man Reed: “I was raised a strict Southern Baptist and I place a high value on human life… at least $20,000.”

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: June 22, 1983

Runtime: 1Hour 43Minutes

Rated R

Director: Michael Ritchie

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Action/Adventure, Buddy Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Satire

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Jingle All the Way (1996)

Posted on December 25, 2013 | 1 comment

jingle all the way 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: He needs Turbo man.

Howard (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a middle-aged father who finds that the long hours at his job is preventing him from attending some events that his young son Jake (Jamie Langston) is in including his karate exposition. This makes Howard feel bad and he tries to go to every effort to attain the much wanted Turbo Man action figure to give to Jamie for Christmas. Unfortunately every store is sold out of them and he must trek across the Twin Cities to find some place that might have them while competing with a mailman named Myron (Sinbad) who is on the same mission.

The film is energetic and engaging and the segment where Howard runs all through the Mall of America while chasing after a small bouncing ball is funny. The part where he kicks the burning head of a wise man statue out the window that sends carolers screaming and running for cover had me laughing-out-loud. I also liked the scene where he has to take on a roomful of bad guy santas with a giant plastic candy cane. One of the santas is so huge that he dwarfs Arnie and makes him look puny, which is hard to believe but true.

The climatic sequence done during a parade in which Howard and Myron dress up in costume to resemble the Turbo Man as well as his arch enemy and continue to battle each other for the toy is quite lively. Watching Howard flying around the Minneapolis skyscrapers while wearing a turbo charged jetpack is fun, but completely implausible that a costume to be worn at a parade would ever be equipped with something like that. It is also hard to believe that Jamie wouldn’t recognize his own father even if he is wearing a costume especially when he continues to speak in his very distinct Austrian accent.

Sinbad with his engaging personality is good in support. However, the scene where he is seen dumping letters out of his mail bag in order to keep up with Howard while running down a street is a federal offence and would most certainly get him terminated and even given some jail time and since he did it in broad daylight in front of others it could have easily gotten reported.

Langston as the kid is cute, but there are those from the old-school who think that a young child slamming a door in the face of a parent even if he is mad at him is quite rude and out-of-line. Also, being upset with his father because he doesn’t attend some of his events due to working hard at his job isn’t really fair. Becoming enslaved to a demanding job to keep up a cushy suburban existence is a plague of most fathers and if the Dad didn’t do it they might lose that nice house and be out on the street and I’m sure the borderline entitled kid would dislike that even more.

Robert Conrad is great in support as a tough-guy-like cop who is constantly having hilarious confrontations with Howard. Watching him give Howard a sobriety test is ironic since Conrad’s real-life car accident that he had while intoxicated, which occurred just a little after doing this essentially ended his acting career.

Phil Hartman is always good as a slimy character and in this case it is as the lecherous next-door-neighbor, but having him constantly speak his lines like he is a spokesman in a TV commercial becomes irritating. Harvey Korman and Laraine Newman appear in very small roles near the beginning and barely have any speaking lines, which made me wonder why they would even bother to appear at all.

The one-joke premise gets stretched about as far as it can go, but manages to come up with enough different scenarios to keep it feeling like it is evolving. The humor veers a bit too much to the cartoonish and although I liked the on-location shooting done for the most part in Minnesota I felt they didn’t take advantage of the Mall of America locale enough and more could have done more with it. The closing credits take an amazing 7 minutes off the runtime, but it is worth it to stick through them because there in one last amusing bit at the very, very end.

jingle all the way 1

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: November 16, 1996

Runtime: 1Hour 29Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Brian Levant

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray

1 Comment

Posted in 90's Movies, Campy Comedy, Christmas Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Movies for the Whole Family

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

The Ice Storm (1997)

Posted on December 11, 2013 | 1 comment

the ice storm 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Sex in the 70’s.

The sexual escapades between the various members of two neighboring households in the 1970’s are examined as well as the unexpected results.

This is definitely one of director Ang Lee’s best efforts to date. Some of his other films have been overrated and a bit protracted and yet here everything clicks perfectly. It is great to see Sigourney Weaver in an unusual role and sporting a unique hairstyle. The quirky interplay between both the adults and teenagers is interesting and revealing. It is nice to have a period piece and in this case the 70’s, that doesn’t feel the need to drown the viewer with heavy and unnecessary period detail. The use of the ice storm as a dramatic motif is well done and Joan Allen’s performance as the betrayed wife is especially strong. The ‘key party’ scene is amusing and the overall themes that this film conveys are universal and easily relatable.

On the negative end it seems like the filmmakers have never experienced an actual ice storm because if they had it would have been done differently. The main issue is that the moisture should come down in the form of ice pellets or sleet, not like actual rain that just forms into ice once it hits the ground. Also, when one has to drive after an ice storm, which I have done many times, it is important and necessary to scrap off the ice from not only the front window, but the side windows and the rear one as well. Kevin Kline’s character drives his car the next day while only having scraped the ice off the front window. Not only is this completely impractical, but it would also make it a very serious driving hazard. The conclusion, which is intended to be powerful, seems a bit aloof and doesn’t have the impact that it should and would have worked better had we been able to see all the character’s reactions.

Overall this is a movie that comes through on its vision and is a good independent film for the sophisticated viewer.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: May 12, 1997

Runtime: 1Hour 52Minutes

Rated R

Director: Ang Lee

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray (The Criterion Collection), Amazon Instant Video

1 Comment

Posted in 90's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Drama, Movies Based on Novels, Sex

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Street Girls (1975)

Posted on December 10, 2013 | 2 comments

street girls

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Father searches for daughter.

Angel (Christine Souder) is a young woman out on her own for the very first time. To make ends meet she gets a job at a topless bar, but this leads to working as a prostitute and getting hooked onto heroin by her brutal pimp boyfriend. When her father Sven (Art Burke) goes searching for her he finds himself swept in the seedy side of life and the people who populate it almost as much as her.

This otherwise low budget and forgotten film’s biggest claim to fame is that it is the first feature credited to Barry Levinson as the screenwriter who also worked as the assistant cameraman during the production. Levinson has never talked about it in any interview and it is easy to see why. The script is filled with a lot of rambling dialogue that goes nowhere. The story is basic and boring and seems preoccupied with taking advantage of the ‘shock value’ of its topic which these days has lessened.  It’s more clichéd than anything although the scene where one of Angel’s johns asks her to put on some goggles so that he can, to her shock, pee all over her does deserve mention.

This film is very similar to Paul Schrader’s Hardcore that starred George C. Scott and came out four years later and deals with a desperate father’s search for his daughter who has gotten into the world of porn. I actually like this film a bit better to that one. For one thing this one focuses more on the daughter and her experiences while that one solely centered on the father, which wasn’t as interesting. The father here isn’t quite as one-dimensional either. Yes he has all the caricatures of a middle-aged Midwestern man from the period including being homophobic, but I got a kick out of the way he initially gets into the naked girl dancers and likes it as long as of course it isn’t his daughter that’s doing it.

The acting swings from tolerable to really bad, but I did like Carol Case as Sally who has the most screen time and looks like a cross between Susan Anton and singer Carly Simon. Paul Pompain has a certain menacing quality as the brutal pimp although watching him constantly beat up his prostitutes and even kill one didn’t seem to make any sense as these girls were his may source of income and as my friend stated who watched this movie with me “He’s hurting their resale value.”

The picture is grainy with a faded washed out look and muffled sound that makes it seem almost like someone’s cheap homemade movie and yet it is well enough paced that it remains watchable. The scene where the father and daughter finally meet I found to be surprisingly touching.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: January 16, 1975

Runtime: 1Hour 14Minutes

Rated R

Director: Michael Miller

Studio: New World Pictures

Available: None at this time.

2 Comments

Posted in 70's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Drama, Drive-In/T & A, Low Budget, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Sex

Tagged , , , , , ,

Homer and Eddie (1989)

Posted on December 2, 2013 | Leave a comment

homer and eddie

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Losers go road-trippin’

Homer (James Belushi) is a mentally challenged man suffering brain damage from being hit in the head by a baseball when he was a kid. He decides to go on a road trip to visit his sick father, but along the way he gets robbed and has to sleep in an abandoned car. It is there that he meets Eddie (Whoopi Goldberg) an embittered, volatile women who is supposedly suffering from a brain tumor. The two trek off in her car to Oregon to meet up with Homer’s parents and also try to track down the men who robbed him.

I was impressed with the acting range shown here by Goldberg. Usually she is so likable, but here she is quite edgy and does it in an effective way. I applaud her attempts to work outside of her comfort zone although her fits of anger make the viewer uncomfortable and her crying does not sound authentic.

Belushi is good in atypical role and for the most part he is the best thing about the movie. His lines are consistently amusing, but the film walks an uncomfortable line between making him a sympathetic character to also making fun of him. Despite the fact that these two already worked together in Jumpin’ Jack Flash the chemistry between them doesn’t work.

The supporting cast is interesting in cameo roles. Casting 70-year-old 200 pound Ernestine McClendon as a prostitute gets points simply for its novelty, but seeing her in her grossly oversized panties is a bit much. Karen Black as her pimp has such a small, meaningless role that I was surprised that she even took it. Nancy Parsons has an interesting part as a cold and aloof woman who becomes sympathetic, which is a rarity for her. Director John Waters appears briefly as a robber and I kind of got a kick out of Don Hanmer as a very nervous cashier. Belushi’s real-life second wife Marjorie Bransfield can be spotted in the character of Betsy and this also marked the final film appearance for both Fritz Feld and Anne Ramsey.

The film features a wide-array of musical styles, which works against it. I liked Richie Havens rendition of ‘Home’, which had the nice laid-back beat and folk tinged sound that you expect for a road movie. Some of the more hard rock, heavy metal stuff became too loud and obnoxious and takes the viewer out of the picture instead of wrapping them in.

I liked the scenery and there are a few interesting moments, but trying to mix the surreal with the gritty is misguided. The comical bits get drowned out by the scenes of violence and a very maudlin theme. The result is an uneven film that pales in comparison to the classic road movies.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: December 1, 1989

Runtime: 1Hour 40Minutes

Rated R

Director: Andrei Konchalovskiy

Studio: Skouras Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video, Hulu

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Buddy Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Road Movies

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

My Bloody Valentine (1981)

Posted on October 17, 2013 | 1 comment

my bloody valentine

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: A Killer with heart.

After 20 years a small Canadian mining town of Valentine Bluffs has decided to hold another Valentine’s Day Dance. The previous ones were canceled due to one ending in bloodshed by a psychotic mine worker named Harold Warden. Now he is locked away so they think it is safe except the killings start happening again and this time the killer tears the hearts out of the victims and delivers them in heart shaped boxes to their relatives.

This movie has a cool looking poster and a deliciously macabre concept and has also attained a strong cult following including Quinton Tarantino, but I unfortunately was not impressed with it. I found it to be excruciatingly boring and a major strain just to sit through. The direction and writing are uninspired creating predictable scenarios and delivering all the expected teen slasher movie clichés with a monotonous regularity.  Nothing is distinctive or scary and it fails to deliver any suspense or tension. It can’t even make effective use of its unique mine shaft setting. The final sequence takes place there, but it is nothing spectacular. The constant delivering of human hearts in candy style boxes soon loses its effect and eventually becomes stupid especially with the corny poems written on the attached note cards.

The young victims are dull and stereotypical. They look like caricatures from all the other slasher horror films except here they speak with thick Canadian accents. One of them looks like an overweight version of Meathead from ‘All in the Family’. There is also a ‘class clown’ type of character that resembles very closely the ‘class clown’ character from Friday the 13th . Here he does nothing but crack dumb jokes and watching him eventually get decapitated is the film’s single most gratifying moment.

The sheriff character is a real loser. He wears a big belt buckle and dopey haircut that makes him appear to be some middle-aged buffoon who has just stepped out of the 60’s. His logic is also flawed. He decides not to warn the town that a killer is on the loose even after he has killed a couple of people as he is afraid it will create too much of a panic, so instead he waits until seven more people die and the citizens all go into a panic anyways.

Usually in even the poorest of horror films the killings and gore can at least keep things entertaining on a tacky level and yet here they are as dull as everything else. Also, since when has going into a dark and dingy cave been considered a great place to have sex? To me it seems absurd and yet several of the teen couples go into the mine for distinctly that purpose.

Remade in 2009.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released:  February 11, 1981

Runtime: 1Hour 30Minutes

Rated R

Director: George Mihalka

Studio: Paramount

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

 

1 Comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Cult, Foreign Films, Horror, Low Budget, Movies from Canada, Movies with a rural setting, Slasher/Gore

Tagged , ,

The Silent Partner (1978)

Posted on August 9, 2013 | 1 comment

silent partner 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Bank teller outsmarts robber.

This is an ingenious, slick, and really fun caper movie that puts a whole new spin on the old bank robbery theme. Here Elliot Gould plays a bank teller named Miles who, by sheer accident, becomes aware that a man named Harry (Christopher Plummer) is planning on robbing his bank. Miles decides to take the money from his till and put it into his lunchbox. Then when Harry robs the bank it is actually Miles the teller that gets the money while Harry goes away with very little. Yet this is only the beginning as Harry and Miles continue to play a crafty game of cat- and-mouse, which leads from one interesting twist to another.

Gould plays against type here and he does quite well. Usually he tends to be loud, argumentative, and anti-authority, but here he is quiet and unassuming. It’s the type of character you think wouldn’t have the guts to pull off what he does, which makes him all the more intriguing. In fact he just keeps surprising you all the way along, stringing the very psychotic and dangerous Harry in ways you couldn’t imagine. It is only his final move that seems to be testing the odds too much.

Plummer makes a terrific adversary. He is dashing and handsome as ever, but with an intensely sinister edge and an icy cold gaze.

Susannah York as Miles’ love interest Julie is wasted. Her character seems thrown in for good measure and at no time seems interesting. There is no chemistry between them and the whole love angle is forced and unnecessary. Celine Lomez, as Elaine the other female character, is different. She is stunningly beautiful and much cagier. She plays between both Harry and Miles and you are never sure which side she is really on. Her acting isn’t spectacular, but she is sensual and has a nice French accent. Her gory and gruesome demise though is unwarranted and works as a drawback to the movie.

There are a few other negatives about the film. One is the drab setting that takes place in Toronto and yet we hardly see any of it. Having the bank itself set inside a boring shopping mall is not too visually exciting. The same goes for Miles’s bland apartment. The supporting characters, especially the other bank employees are incredibly dull. Their lines and basic presence all seem to have been written in simply as ‘filler’. A young John Candy plays one of these co-workers and his comic talents are wasted.

Still the story is creative and has enough unique twists that it overcomes the technical shortcomings and manages to be a highly entertaining flick.

silent partner 1

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: September 7, 1978

Runtime: 1Hour 46Minutes

Rated R

Director: Daryl Duke

Studio: EMC

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

1 Comment

Posted in 70's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Novels, Movies from Canada, Robbing Banks, Thrillers/Suspense

Tagged , , , , , ,