Tag Archives: Jon Voight

The Champ (1978)

Posted on May 22, 2023 | 2 comments

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Idolized by his son.

Billy (Jon Voight) is a former boxer whose been out of the ring for 7 years. Now at age 37 he works as a horse trainer. His 8-year-old son T.J. (Ricky Schroder) idolizes him and refers to his as ‘The Champ’ instead of dad. Billy though suffers from many inner demons including his perpetual drinking and gambling as well as not making enough money to sufficiently support either himself, or his son. Nonetheless he continues to go out gambling whenever given the chance and he manages to win enough money to buy his son a horse, which they name She’s a Lady. They enter Lady into a race where T.J. meets Annie (Faye Dunaway). Unbeknownst to T.J. Annie is his mother whom she gave up at birth, but now that she’s married to a wealthy man (Arthur Hill) she wants to have custody. Billy refuses to allow it, but when he loses the horse because of a gambling debt and Annie gives him the money to pay it off he eventually relents and has T.J. go live with her while he’s in jail for assault. Once he’s released the father and son reunite, but Billy realizes he must make more money in order to keep him and thus decides to go back into the ring one last time despite warnings from Jackie (Jack Warden), his former manager, that to do so could be life threatening.

The film is remake of the 1931 classic with Wallace Beery playing the part of the father and Jackie Cooper as the son. Director Franco Zeffirelli remembered watching it as a child and it having a profound effect on him. Then years later while he was in his hotel room while on-location filming another feature he saw it come on television and the film again moved him in such a way that he decided he wanted to do a remake. This though wasn’t the first remake as it had already been done in 1953 as The Clown starring Red Skelton though the story had been revised without the boxing theme and the climactic event at the end doesn’t take place at a sporting event, but instead a dangerous stunt that the lead character must do during a live broadcast of a TV special.

While this one stays more faithful to the original concept it was still panned by many critics as being overly sentimental and soap opera-like. Many who were fans of the original felt this one fell far short and complained about the long running time, this one runs of full 2-hours while the older one was only 83 minutes, with the feeling that it stretched the plot out too much and at spots was too slow. Though I’ve never seen the 30’s version I found myself genuinely wrapped up in the drama and the characters.

Many at the time complained that Voight was going back to the same type of Joe Buck character that he played in Midnight Cowboy, but I disagreed. That character was genuinely stupid, but Billy isn’t he’s just down-on-his-luck and suffering from basic human frailties, which made his situation far more compelling.

Schroder is an absolute jewel. He got the part after beating out over 2,000 others and it’s easy to see why. His ability to cry on demand with real tears streaming down his face is amazing and not something other actors are able to do. He’s cute and engaging without it ever getting forced, or overdone. His presence gives the film its energy and virtually the sole reason for why it works as well as it does.

The main complaint that I did have was with Annie. She’s marvelously played by Dunaway, who’s always been one of my favorite actresses and it’s a good role for her acting style as she’s excellent at playing characters that have a bit of a cold and aloof manner while not easily able to show their soft side, but with that said I still couldn’t understand what made the character tick, or her motivations. For one thing she seemed to have nothing in common with Billy, so what brought them together in the first place was a mystery and then having her abandon the kid while she went off living her life seemed pretty extreme. In most cases it’s the father that shirks the responsibility of raising the child, but here it’s reverse, but with no clear explanation as to why. There’s a vague excuse later on that it was so she could ‘pursue her career’, but then this doesn’t explain why she now wants to get close to her son. If she was selfish back then what made her change to suddenly want to be loving and caring? She went 7 years without ever seeing the kid, and did pretty well without him, so why now must she have him? I felt there needed to be some extra context added like she had been addicted to drugs when she had TJ, which then made her deemed unfit to raise him, but now that she had kicked the habit she wanted him back, or maybe she had suffered a miscarriage with her second husband and this made her feel guilty about the child she had let get away and this motivated her to want to seek out TJ, but without any of this added information the character comes-off as transparent, unrealistic, and unrelatable.

I will agree with Leonard Maltin in his review where he states that it looks like Faye wants to go to bed with her own kid. This occurs during the scene where Ricky is on her yacht and looking off in the distance while Faye comes up behind him and begins sniffing his hair like she’s getting turned-on by him. To call this a cringey, awkward moment is an understatement and it’s unintentionally laughable. Why it was left in, or why Zeffirelli thought it would be a good idea to put in I don’t know. The movie manages to recover, but it’s a segment that is indeed ridiculous.

The boxing element is another problem as it gets introduced way too late. It gets briefly mentioned throughout the first 2 acts and there’s even a quick scene where Billy shows up at a gym, but overall it gets played-out as a side-story only to suddenly, 90-minutes in, becomes the main focus, which gives the film a very disjointed feel. Jack Warden’s character doesn’t appear at all until near the end almost like it’s a tacked-on bit that doesn’t really flow with everything else that came before. The boxing scenes are impressive and helps to effectively expose the brutality of the sport, but I felt Billy’s training and decision to enter the ring should’ve been made sooner and the boxing scenes mixed-in throughout, but either way it’s still an competent tearjerker that shouldn’t leave a dry eye in the house.

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My Rating: 7 out of 10

Release: March 20, 1979

Runtime: 2 Hours 3 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Franco Zeffirelli

Studio: MGM

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Drama, Movies that take place in Florida, Remakes, Sports Movies

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The All-American Boy (1973)

Posted on April 18, 2023 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Amateur boxer seeks fame.

While Jon Voight is best known in the world of boxing movies for having done The Champ in 1979, which some consider infamous, his first go-around was actually this one though it remained stuck on the studio shelf long after it was filmed only to be released after his success in Midnight Cowboy. He plays the character of Vic (Jon Voight) a talented, good-looking man whose shown ability in the amateur ring and now is ambitious about making the Olympic team. Arty (Ned Glass) takes him under-his-wing, even lets him stay at his place, while he trains him, but then all of sudden Vic decides he doesn’t want to be a boxer anymore, to the shock of everyone, and never bothers to give anyone any explanation as to why.

The script was written by Charles Eastman, who also directed, and who was the brother of Carole Eastman, who wrote the script for Five Easy Pieces under the pseudonym of Adrien Joyce. Like with his sister’s script it works as a character study and the story is broken up in sections, in this case ‘The Manly Art in Six Rounds’. At various times, usually every 10-minutes, a title will appear on screen such as ‘Round 1’, or ‘Round 2’, but honestly I didn’t see the point  and it doesn’t really make it more interesting and could’ve easily be discarded and probably should’ve been.

On the writing end, particularly the dialogue, it works. Eastman creates a conversational quality where what the characters say is never ‘too on the nose’ (screenwriter’s lingo for being too specific) and the viewer must read into it in order to understand what they mean. In that area the film works, but it’s also highly talky and begins to have a stagnant feel. There’s also very little about the actual sport of boxing. If you’re expecting something like Rocky where there were long segments dealing with the his preparation you’ll be out of luck here. I got particularly frustrated with the scene dealing with Vic getting ready for a contest where he’s seen standing around while other participants and fans enter into the arena, which gets drawn-out, and then just as the fight is supposed to begin it cuts away showing Vic on the phone describing what happened, but to have to sit through a long build-up just to see no action is a letdown.

There finally is some boxing about 50-minutes in and the choreography in the ring, with each participant getting some hits on the other, appears realistic though there’s no blood, or bruising. What makes this segment unusual is more what occurs amongst the audience where one of the spectators, played by Noble ‘Kid’ Chissell, a former professional boxer from 1924 to 1934, begins to masturbate underneath his raincoat, which he has over his lap, which becomes painfully obvious to the other people around him.  Why this was put-in I don’t know. It’s not clear either whether he’s getting-off on the two boxes, or his attraction is to one of the pretty ladies in the audience (I’d presume it was the boxers), but such a bizarre character doing such a strange thing in public needed better fleshing-out and quite frankly more screentime as cringe or not I found his appearance to be one of the few diversions and far more intriguing than the main star.

Seeing a young Anne Archer, who looks almost like an adolescent here, this counts as her film debut since it was filmed before either The Honkers or Cancel My Reservation, which were both released earlier, is a pleasure though her character doesn’t have a lot to do. E.J. Peaker is quite good as Vic’s on-again, off-again girlfriend, who has a memorable bit inside a recording studio as she attempts to boost her singing career. Jeanne Cooper, better known for her work on ‘The Young and Restless’, which lasted for 5-decades, is quite striking. The best acting though goes to Ned Glass, who is engaging as the foul-mouth manager who spews the F-word seemingly non-stop.

The ending in which Vic gets on a helicopter and is cheered on by his fans and supporters who gather to see him off is the film’s best moment. It’s not like anything super exciting happens, but the location, filmed in the hills just outside of Vacaville, California, where the grass is dark brown, but the trees that dot the landscape remain green gives-off a surreal effect. It goes on for a full 20-minutes all in this vast brown countryside with characters running around in it and at certain points even sliding down the hillsides. The unusual topography leaves a lasting impression and I’ll give props to the filmmakers for taking full-advantaged of it and the one element that allows this otherwise sterile production to stand-out.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: October 24, 1973 (Filmed in 1970)

Runtime: 1 Hour 58 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Charles Eastman

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: DVD-R (Warner Archive), Amazon Video

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Coming Home (1978)

Posted on March 12, 2023 | 1 comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 10 out of 10

4-Word Review: Falling for injured vet.

Sally (Jane Fonda) is the military wife to Bob (Bruce Dern) who’s been deployed to Vietnam. Since she now has more free time she decides to volunteer at her local VA Hospital. It is there that she meets Luke (Jon Voight) a former classmate from high school who has now come back from the war a paraplegic. Luke is very embittered about his condition and he’s initially angry and confrontational with Sally. Eventually he softens and Sally invites him to her house for dinner. It’s there that their romance begins to bloom and eventually they become intimate. Bob though, having suffered a leg injury, returns to the states and while Sally and Luke agree to keep their affair a secret Bob soon finds out, which leads to an ugly confrontation between the three.

The idea for the film was inspired by Fonda’s meeting with Ron Kovic, an injured vet who had written his autobiography Born on the Fourth of July that later, in the 80’s, became a movie starring Tom Cruise. Fonda though wanted to make a film with a character that was similar to him and got together with screenwriter Nancy Dowd in 1972 to write a script, which initially focused completely on the hospital setting without the affair, or B-story dealing with the conservative military husband. After many rewrites and bringing in Oscar winner Waldo Scott to help bolster the story the script finally managed to gain interest amongst the studios though many were still cautious about producing a movie dealing with the after-effects of the war, which at that time had never been done before, up until then only films dealing with the war, or those coming back with psychological issues, but not actual physical impairments and thus making this a first in that category.

Since Fonda was instrumental in getting the project produced she was the only choice to play Sally. I think she’s a fine actress who deservedly won the Supporting Oscar for her work here, but since she was on the front lines of the war protest and in many ways even became the face of it, the transition of her character isn’t as profound. Having an actress whose name wasn’t so aligned with left politics and who could better fit-into the part of a conservative housewife would’ve then made the character’s arch more dramatic. I felt too that Sally is too understanding of Luke right-off, the history of them going to high school together should’ve been excised, and instead she should’ve feared Luke when she first encounters him as he does act out-of-control and the romance between them happens too quickly.

Also, once her character changes her hairstyle from the old-fashioned straight to curly it should’ve remained as this visually establishes her character’s changing perspective and not go back to the straight look when she visits Bob in Hong Kong. To remedy this she should’ve decided to keep the curly look even if she feared Bob might not approve, she was technically becoming more empowered with him away anyways, and this would’ve signaled to Bob that she wasn’t the same person he knew when he left, or had the hair change occur after the Hong Kong visit, but having the hair style flip-flop works against the arch, which should be linear and not zig-zagging.

Voight, who won the Best Actor Oscar, and who had to lobby hard for the role as the producers originally wanted Jack Nicholson, is outstanding and there’s not a flaw in his performance with his best moment coming at the very end when he gives a lecture to a room full of high school students about his war experiences. My only complaint, which has nothing to do with his acting and more with the script, is when he bluntly tells Sally, when he goes to her place for dinner, that he dreams of making love to her, which seemed too forward especially since they end up having an impromptu kiss later. Since movies are a visual medium it should’ve settled with the kiss exposing the underlying brewing romance without his character having to explicitly state it. I also found it interesting that the DVD features a commentary track with Voight, Dern, and cinematographer Haskell Wexler, but Fonda is conspicuously not present and I wondered if this may have been due to Voight becoming a hardened conservative as he’s aged and because of their political differences Fonda not wanting to be in the same room with him.

Dern, like the other two, is excellent. His improvisational Dernisms as I like to call them come into play particularly when he gets intense I even learned what the slang term Jody meant, which is what he calls Voight at one point. You also, at the end, get a full view of his bare ass. Now, on the celebrity male naked ass scale I still say it’s a distant third to Dabney Coleman’s in Modern Problems  and Tim Matheson’s in Impulse, but it’s not bad.

Accolades must also go to director Hal Ashby, who was not the first choice as the studio initially wanted John Schlesinger. While Schlesinger could’ve been great I felt Ashby’s use of all natural lighting is what really makes the difference and becomes the over-riding look of the film. He displays keen use of the music too at the end when the song ‘Time Has Come Today’ by the Chamber Brothers is played and the lyrics are used to expose the underlying ticking time bomb of the situation that the three characters are veering speedily into.

My Rating: 10 out of 10

Released: February 15, 1978

Runtime: 2 Hours 7 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Hal Ashby

Studio: United Artists

Available: DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 70's Movies, Academy Award Winners for Best Actor, Academy Award Winners for Best Screenplay, Academy Award Winners for Best Supporting Actress, Drama, Movies with a Hospital setting, Movies with Nudity, Romance

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Conrack (1974)

Posted on May 6, 2022 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: He teaches underprivileged kids.

In the spring of 1969 Pat Conroy gets a job teaching children in grades 5 through 8 in a one room schoolhouse off the coast of South Carolina on an island known as Yamacraw. He soon finds that the students, all of whom are poor and African American, don’t know even the basics of arithmetic, or geography and can’t read. He becomes compelled to change that by instituting unorthodox teaching methods, which he hopes will ‘jostle’ them from their intellectual slumber and get them into learning and enjoying it. Mrs. Scott (Madge Sinclair) is the principal who’s not keen to these methods and routinely lectures him. Mr. Skeffington (Hume Cronyn) is the superintendent who also frowns on some of the things Pat is doing and proceeds to have him fired. Pat tries to win his job back and the students and townspeople help him in his fight, but will it be enough?

The film is based on the novel ‘The Water is Wide’, which was written by Pat Conroy, who later went on to even greater success with The Great Santini, which was based on his father, and also made into a movie. This story was supposedly based on some of Pat’s true-life experiences while teaching on Daufuskie Island. Some of what’s shown is revealing and even captivating, but I couldn’t help but feel certain other aspects were exaggerated. I realize that these kids didn’t have the best education system and certainly might not be as well read as certain other kids their age, but to not know what 2 + 2 was, or that they lived in the U.S.A. came off as too extreme to me. There’s also no real explanation for why the teacher before him failed to teach even these most basic things to them. Was she/he just lazy, or grossly incompetent?

The film also comes-off a bit too much like a vanity project where Conroy is portrayed as being this ‘amazing’ teacher who’s able to get extraordinary results from kids that no one else could simply by his sheer presence alone. All the students bond with him quickly and there’s no trouble-maker, or discipline issues. One could argue that Mary (Tina Andrews) was difficult because she refused to show-up to class, but truancy and in-class disruptions, as well as those students who test authority, are two entirely different things and the fact that Pat is able to avoid that is something few other teachers can say they’ve been able to do as well.

Voight is certainly energetic and engaging, but the students themselves fail to elicit any distinctive personalities and it’s hard to distinguish any of them from the others. I enjoyed Sinclair a great deal and felt she gave a great performance, but her confrontations with Pat could’ve been played-up more. The side-story dealing with Paul Winfield as an illiterate hermit whom Pat teaches to read is a total waste mainly because his character is underdeveloped and not in it long enough to really care about.

I enjoyed Pat’s visit with Edna (Ruth Attaway), one of the elderly townspeople, but his relationship with the other people in town should’ve been shown intermittently all through the film instead of just saving it until the third act where they all attempt to come to his rescue when he loses his job. They seemed to really like him, which is great, but I wasn’t sure they even knew he existed since there were never any scenes showing him interacting with them up until then.

Spoiler Alert!

The ending had me raising my eyebrow a bit, as Pat, once he’s let go of his job, proceeds to drive around the local town and broadcast his grievances through a speaker attached to the roof of his pick-up, which had me concerned that in typical Hollywood fashion he would be able to win his employment back even though in real-life stunts like that usually don’t work. Fortunately that doesn’t happen making the film, which was already idealized to begin with, not seem quite as fabricated. If you can forgive some of these issues, the production as a whole is well down and the always reliable director Martin Ritt perfectly captures the rural setting and ambiance, which is the best thing about it.

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My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: March 15, 1974

Runtime: 1 Hour 46 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Martin Ritt

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: Blu-ray (Out-of-Print), DVD-R

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Posted in 70's Movies, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies Based on Novels, Movies that take place in the South, Movies with a rural setting, Obscure Movies

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Lookin’ to Get Out (1982)

Posted on June 3, 2021 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Hiding out in Vegas.

Alex (Jon Voight) is a high stakes gambler in debt for $10,000. Joey and Harry (Allen Keller, Jude Farese) work with the syndicate and when they come around to collect their debt from Alex he escapes out of the city with his pal Jerry Feldmen (Burt Young) where they go to Las Vegas in hopes of recouping the money by playing blackjack. Alex employs the services of Smitty (Bert Remsen), an expert card counter, to help him at the dealer table, but just as he and Jerry think they’ve got their situation solved Joey and Harry reappear and chase the two through the hotel demanding that the debt be repaid immediately.

The script was written by Al Schwartz who based it on some of his own life experiences as he struggled to make it in the entertainment world. While working as the business manager to singer/songwriter Chip Taylor he showed him the script to get his opinion and Chip suggested that Al send it to Jon Voight, Chip’s brother, and when Jon read it he purportedly ‘fell in love with it’ within the first 30 pages. The story is a bit different as the situations itself aren’t necessarily funny, but instead it relies on the desperate nature of the characters and the way they interact with each other for its humor.

It was filmed at the MGM Grand Hotel, which at 6,852 rooms is the largest single hotel in the United States and third largest in the world. The ambience of the place is well captured and reminded me of the atmosphere of a lot of casinos I’ve stayed at where everyone is looking to ‘get lucky’ while in the process living very much on the edge. Having the plot that place over only a two-day period nicely reflects how gamblers live for the moment without any concern for either the past or future. It’s all just about the risk and excitement of beating the odds, which on that level, the film captures admirably well.

The acting helps, particularly from Voight who gives a souped-up rendition of his more famous Joe Buck character from Midnight Cowboy, playing a clueless schmuck who believes he can con his way out of anything and it’s also great seeing him share a scene with his real-life daughter Angelina Jolie, who at age 4 makes her film debut, appearing briefly as Alex’s daughter near the end and to date has been the only project that the two have done together. Young is also quite good as his more sensible friend and to an extent that he becomes the person the audience connects with. Remsen has a few key moments too playing a character that initially seems insignificant to the story, but slowly begins to have a much more meaningful presence by the end. As a buddy formula it works, but throwing in Ann-Margaret as Alex’s former girlfriend who comes back into his life, doesn’t gel and she should’ve been left out.

The foot chase where Alex and Jerry try to outrun Joey and Harry by dashing throughout the hotel is the film’s single best moment and I was impressed with how unlike other movie chases scenes there were no jump cuts and you can visually follow the action even as it shifts between different rooms. The other segments though get overly drawn-out. While his trademark was a slower, more subtle pace, which worked in his previous movies, director Hal Ashby would’ve been wise to have paired this one down. The plot isn’t intricate enough to justify the long runtime and a 90-minute version would’ve been ideal. The original theatrical cut was 105 minutes, which had issues too, but the longer director’s edition isn’t perfect either and in this instance less definitely would’ve been more.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: October 8, 1982

Runtime: 2 Hours (Director’s Cut)

Rated R

Director: Hal Ashby

Studio: Paramount

Available: DVD, Amazon Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Dry Humor, Movies with a Hotel setting

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The Revolutionary (1970)

Posted on March 19, 2015 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: He fights against capitalism.

Jon Voight plays a college student involved in a student protest group called The Radical Committee. They push for social change particularly with a more communist/socialist style of government, which he becomes fonder of after working with Despard (Robert Duvall) a nearby factory worker who’s trying to start a union up at his plant. After being suspended from the school for his radical views he becomes frustrated at seeing how his work and actions seem to have very little influence or effect. He then meets up with Leonard (Seymour Cassel) who is a more seasoned radical and not shy about using violent or unethical methods to make his point and pressures Voight to start doing the same.

On the whole despite its slow pace this is a slickly produced intriguing character study. I enjoyed the grainy pictures of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution shown over the opening credits, but I didn’t like the film’s choice of on-location shooting. Supposedly it takes place in a small American city, but it doesn’t resemble one since it was filmed in London, which gives everything from the old buildings to roadways and sidewalks a European look that you never see in any American town or city. There is also no explanation initially about what the students are protesting against or why they are at odds with the school, which makes the storyline seem generic and hard to get into at first.

I loved Voight’s character as it is similar to his Joe Buck one in Midnight Cowboy with all of the social awkwardness, but fortunately he is not as painfully dumb. It is interesting to see how such a highly intellectual man with strong opinions and ideals can still at times be quite timid. I was looking forward to seeing the character go through a transition and was disappointed that it took so long to get there.  To me the ending should’ve been the beginning and the fact that it isn’t hurts the film’s overall impact. I was also confused as to why the Jennifer Salt character, who plays a young lady from an affluent family, would find Voight so appealing, or why she wanted to continue to go out with him, which to me demanded more of an explanation.

The scene in which a mob gets attacked by some riot police is photographed in a way that makes it intense and startling and could’ve been extended even more. The ending is nerve wracking and great example of how complete silence without any music can sometimes create far more tension. Unfortunately the ambiguous resolution is a disappointment and after such a long and deliberately slow build-up comes off almost like a cop-out.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: July 15, 1970

Runtime: 1Hour 40Minutes

Rated R

Director: Paul Williams

Studio: United Artists

Available: DVD (MGM Limited Edition Collection), Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, College Life, Drama, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity

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