Tag Archives: Lee Marvin

Avalanche Express (1979)

Posted on January 24, 2025 | Leave a comment

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By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Defector on a train.

Based on the 1977 Colin Forbes novel of the same name the story centers around General Marenkov (Robert Shaw) a soviet agent who’s decided to defect to the west. Harry (Lee Marvin) is the CIA agent in charge of extraditing Marenkov back to the U.S., but to do so they must travel via train across Europe. Nikolai (Maximilian Schell) is a KGB agent assigned to stop Marenkov’s escape and tries many ways to stymie his trip before finally settling on creating an avalanche, which will not only impede the train ride that Marenkov and Harry are on, but if done right should completely destroy it and end the lives of everyone inside.

The film was noted for its many difficulties during the shoot including the death of its director Mark Robson from a heart attack with only 2-weeks left of filming forcing Monte Hellman to step in and complete the production. The biggest problem though was that during the post-production it was deemed that the opening scene, which featured Shaw speaking to his soviet counterparts in broken English, should be redone with Russian dialogue. However, Shaw too had already died from a sudden heart attack in August and thus was no longer able to come-in for reshoots, so they settled on his voice being dubbed by Robert Rietti for that scene. This would’ve been fine had they stopped there, but instead they came to the conclusion that for the sake of consistency Shaw’s voice should be dubbed by Rietti for the entire film, which was a huge mistake.

Shaw has a highly distinctive and wonderfully articulate delivery and for the viewer to miss out on that is downright criminal. I think most audiences could’ve forgiven that his voice sounded a bit different during the opening bit and probably wouldn’t have even cared or noticed since they were so busy focusing on the subtitles anyway. It becomes like a bait and switch, since Shaw’s name headlines the cast, but since somebody else does his speaking it’s like he’s not really in it and thus a big rip-off to his fans who came to see the movie simply because of him.

The special effects are equally abhorrent. There’s been many movies that have created fake snow scenes, but this one has to be the cheapest looking one yet. The falling flakes look more like Styrofoam and the white stuff on the ground resembles foam from a bathtub especially as the vehicles slush their way through it like it’s a white liquid. The sequence showing the train gliding down the tracks is clearly of the miniature variety and will fool no one.

The casting is a mess too especially the appearance of Joe Namath, a great football player, but a threadbare actor who has no business being in a big budget Hollywood picture. He’d be okay for a TV-movie with other B-performers, but for something that’s supposed to be taken seriously his presence makes the thing even more tacky than it already is. Even stalwart leading man Marvin fails here as he shows no emotion even when it’s warranted, like when he gets word that train they’re on is headed for disaster and yet he remains hyper stoic like he’s a robot with no feelings. Having him get shot dead early on only to return later isn’t the gotcha they thought it would be as I was predicting he’d reappear as there’s simply no way a big-name star like him would sign onto a movie just to be killed off right away.

Linda Evans is good simply because she has the ability of playing a cold, bitchy lady quite well. It could almost be described as her forte and her snippy comments and icy behavior towards Marvin during the first half are engaging and helps give the proceedings a bit of a dramatic flair. Turning the two into lovers though during the second half ruins all the underlying tension and since they don’t share much of a chemistry anyways having them remain adversarial throughout would’ve worked better.

Schell as the villain is as cardboard as he was playing the bad guy in The Black Hole. His career is long and distinguished, but his success is clearly not in these types of roles though he does at least get the film’s one good line. It comes when he’s told he must go undercover in disguise by playing someone who does not smoke. Since his character is a chain smoker, he panics that he won’t be able to go on without a cigarette and exclaims “That’ll kill me’.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: October 19, 1979

Runtime: 1 Hour 28 Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Mark Robson

Studio: 20th Century Fox

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

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Disaster Flicks, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a train setting, Spy/Espionage

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Pocket Money (1972)

Posted on September 27, 2020 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Herding cattle for money.

Jim Kane (Paul Newman) is a not-too-bright modern-day cowboy living in Arizona that is broke and without a job. In desperation he takes an offer from a shady businessman named Bill Garrett (Strother Martin) who promises Jim a lot of money to buy a certain breed of cattle in Mexico and then bring them up to the US. Jim has his suspicions about the deal, but decides he has no choice but to take it. He elicits the help of his longtime pal Leonard (Lee Marving) another down-on-his-luck loser. Together they find the cattle and herd them to the states despite a lot of obstacles along the way, but when they return Bill and his cronies are nowhere in sight forcing Jim to seek him out and right the injustice.

Many people have complained about the film’s slow pace and the script, which was written by Terrence Malick and based off of a novel by J.P.S. Brown, has a lackadaisical quality, but to some extent I really didn’t mind it. Too many Hollywood movies are compelled to rush right into the plot while leaving atmosphere and characterizations behind, but here Laszlo Kovacs cinematography brings the rustic western locations to life. I had traveled just recently to a small town in Mexico earlier in the year and this film captures the same ambience that I saw including all the feral dogs running around, the old rundown buildings that make up the town center, as well as the pot-holed filled roads. It was almost like I can gone there a second straight time.

Newman is brilliant in a rare comedic turn. His character is dopey, but in a funny, lovable way where you laugh at his ineptness one minute and cheer him on the next. Marvin is good too and the banter the between them as well as their contrasting approaches to things help keep things interesting. Reports where that the two did not get along and Marvin even admitted as much in interviews stating that Newman ‘finessed’ him during their scenes and when you get two big name actors with heavy egos this sometimes happens, but they were at least professional enough not to let their animosity show through on the screen. Both Wayne Rogers and Strother Martin, who co-starred with Newman just 5 years earlier in the classic Cool Hand Luke lend great support and in Martin’s case should’ve been seen more.

Spoiler Alert!

My biggest beef comes with the ending, which is a complete letdown. The intention was to show the life of two aimless men who are going nowhere, which is fine, but there still needs to be a payoff at the end. Instead when Newman and Martin finally confront Rogers and Martin in a hotel room, after searching everywhere for them, nothing happens. They never get their money, or revenge, or anything. Even losers can have a random moment of small victory, which is what I felt was needed here, and to have nothing of substance occur makes the viewer feel like the joke was on them and sitting through this, despite the marvelous production values, becomes sadly a big waste of time.

End of Spoiler Alert!

This was another case of where Leonard Maltin’s review, or whoever wrote it for him, is off from what you end up seeing. He commends the performance by Jean Peters, who plays Newman’s ex-wife, like it’s something special when in reality it’s just a throw-away-bit that lasts for a couple of minutes and isn’t too memorable. He also comments on Marvin’s car, which he states is ‘the damnedest thing you’ll ever see’ even though despite a few multi-colored panels I didn’t see what was so unusual about it. The craziest car I’ve ever seen in a movie is the one the two teens drive in Robert Altman’s 1985 flick O.C. and Stiggs, but again watch both movies for yourself and then decide, but I believe most would end up agreeing with me.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: February 1, 1972

Runtime: 1 Hour 42 Minutes

Rated GP

Director: Stuart Rosenberg

Studio: National General Pictures

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

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Posted in 70's Movies, Movies Based on Novels, Dry Humor, Revisionist Western, Buddy Movies

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The Delta Force (1986)

Posted on September 12, 2018 | 2 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Elite operation rescues crew.

Based on the real-life hijacking of TWA flight 847, which occurred on June 14, 1985, the story centers on a Boeing 707, which gets hijacked by a terrorist group lead by Abdul (Robert Forster).  The terrorists take over the plane and force it to fly to Beirut, Lebanon where they then separate the Jewish passengers and those that were in the Marines from the others. These hostages are then transported to a prison cell in Beirut while twelve other terrorists come on board. Major Scott McCoy (Chuck Norris) and Colonel Nick Alexander (Lee Marvin) head the Delta Force team assigned to rescue the remaining passengers on board while killing off the terrorists.

The film was directed by Menahem  Golan who headed the Cannon Production Company which was notorious for producing a lot of cheap, cheesy, grade-B action flicks during the ‘80s and initially I was fearing the worst although this one is surprisingly tolerable and adequately funded. The opening scenes inside the plane prove to be moderately intense with Hanna Schygulla a stand-out as the brave stewardess.

The second act though veers off in too many directions with the hostages essentially becoming forgotten as it then focuses more on the elite squad of soldiers, which dilutes the narrative too much. Eventually they’re just too many characters to keep track of and too many scenarios that occur outside of the airplane until it becomes confusing and overreaching. A good film should stick to only a few main characters that the viewer can connect with and keeping them in the majority of the scenes, but this thing takes on more than it can chew making the viewer feel detached from what is going on the more it progresses.

The third act gets filled with a lot of over-the-top actions segments that looks like it was taken straight out of a comic book and diminishes the realism that had come before it. Norris shows no screen presence at all and only comes alive when he is doing an action stunt while Marvin, who was much older and not in the best of health during the production, shows much more onscreen energy. It almost seemed like it would’ve been better had Norris not been in it at all especially with the way the film tries to portray him as being this mystical, super human figure that borders on being corny.

The music is geared for an American propaganda film and the film’s mindset is that the US is always the good guy in no matter what foreign mission or policy it takes on. It also conveys the idea that might equals right while the proportion of terrorists who are killed, which is essentially all of them, compared to only one American soldier seemed way off-kilter.

Forster gives an outstanding performance as the villain as he literally disappears into role while conveying a foreign accent that seemed so genuine I almost thought his voice had been dubbed. The terrorists are portrayed as being just as nervous as the hostages if not more so, while at certain random moments showing a surprisingly human side, which is well done, but unfortunately everything else here is formulaic and fraught with too much of an emotional appeal.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: February 14, 1986

Runtime: 2Hours 9Minutes

Rated R

Director: Menahem Golan

Studio: Cannon Film Distributors

Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Action/Adventure, Movies Based on Actual Events

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Death Hunt (1981)

Posted on January 7, 2014 | 1 comment

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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

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

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