Crime/Thriller – Page 24 – The Magnificent 60s

The Enforcer (2022) *** – Seen at the Cinema

After pulling double worthy duty with Empire of Light and Till as the starting points for my Monday multiplex triple bill it was something of a welcome relief to finish with an unpretentious pretty serviceable actioner that traded on Taken, The Equalizer and The Mechanic.

Ex-con Cuda (Antonio Banderas) has taken up his old job of debt collector/enforcer for bisexual mob boss Estelle (Kate Bosworth). Through happenstance he acquires streetfighter protégé Stray (Mojean Aria). Cuda’s daughter won’t speak to him so he’s partial to coming to the aid of homeless 15-year-old Billie (Zolee Griggs). To get her off the streets he puts her up in a motel. But, of course, no good deed goes un-punished and the motel manager arranges for her kidnap by Freddie (2 Chainz), a rising gangster who threatens Estelle’s dominance.

Meanwhile, Stray falls for dancer/hooker Lexus (Alexis Ren) who works for Estelle and may well be her main squeeze, though the consensuality of that relationship may be in question.

There’s none of the pavement-pounding hard-core detective work or even nascent skill undertaken by the likes of Taken’s Bryan Mills before Cuda tracks down Billie’s whereabouts and it doesn’t take long for the various strands to coalesce, resulting in a variety of fights and shootings. Given it’s a perky 90-minutes long, there’s very little time for subplots anyway or to find deeper meaning. That’s not to say there aren’t patches of clever dialog – Estelle compares the blood in her veins to that of the marauders in ocean depths whose blood has evolved to be extremely able to withstand parts of the sea where the sun never shines. (She says it a bit neater than that).

And there’s no time wasted on sentimentality either. Neither Cuda’s ex-wife or daughter want anything to do with him and thank goodness we’re spared a scene of him emerging from jail with nobody to greet him. The movie touches on the most venal aspects of modern crime, paedophilia, webcam pornography, kidnap, sexual violence, and of course Freddie bemoans the fact that Estelle is so old-fashioned she wants her tribute paid in cash not cryptocurrency.

It’s straight down to brass tacks, Cuda not seeing the betrayal coming. Thanks for bringing me fresh blood, Cuda, says Estelle, would you like one bullet or two with your retiral package. The only element that seems contrived at the time, that the battered and bloodied Stray can fix Cuda’s broken down car, actually turns into a decent plot point. And where Bryan Mills seems to be living on Lazarus-time, here it’s clear that the ageing Cuda is not going survive these endless beatings and shootings, so if there’s going to be a sequel it will be on the head of Stray.

I had half-expected Antonio Banderas (Uncharted, 2022) to sleepwalk through this kind of good guy-tough guy role but in fact his mostly soft-voiced portrayal is very effective, and his occasional stupidity lends considerable depth to the character. Kate Bosworth (Barbarian, 2022) has been undergoing a transition of late and is very convincing as a smooth, if distinctly evil, bisexual gangster.

I’ve never heard of Mojean Aria though if I’d kept my ear closer to the ground I might have ascertained he was a Heath Ledger Scholarship recipient. He had a small role in the misconceived Reminiscence (2021) and took the lead in the arthouse Kapo (2022). Judging on his performance here, I’d say he is one to look out for. He has definite screen presence, action smarts and can act a bit too.

And just to show my ignorance I was unaware that Alexis Ren is one of the biggest influencers in the world. This is her second movie and she doesn’t really have much of a part beyond compromised girlfriend. Zolee Griggs (Archenemy, 2020) is another newcomer. But you remember that old Raymond Chandler saying that when the plot sags have a man come through the door with a gun. Well, here, there’s a different twist – it’s a woman, in fact both these women turn up trumps when it comes to rescuing the guys.

This is the directing debut of Aussie commercials wiz Richard Hughes and, thankfully, there’s none of the flashiness than would have drowned a tight picture like this. He keeps to the script by W. Peter Iliff who’s been out of the game for some time but who you may remember for Point Break (both versions), Patriot Games (1992), Varsity Blues (movie and TV series) and Under Suspicion (2000).

Undemanding action fare, for sure, but still it delivers on what it promises. It doesn’t have a wide enough release or a big enough marketing budget to even qualify as a sleeper but I reckon it will keep most people satisfied. I had thought this might be DTV but that’s not so. Although it’s not been released in the States it’s had a wide cinema release in Europe. However, this looks like it’s already on DVD but been thrown into cinemas to coincide with the launch of Puss in Boots.

The Borgia Stick / F.B.I vs Gangsters (1967) ****

Happily married after five years Tom Harrison (Don Murray) turns to wife Eve (Inger Stevens) and asks: “Who are you?” No, we’re not tumbling down some existential rabbit hole. Reiterating his love for her, he continues, “Don’t you want to know who I am?”

They’re living an effective lie, nice house in the suburbs, Tom catching the train every morning with neighbor Hal (Barry Nelson), joshing with Hal’s youngest son about the giraffe that took the elephant’s seat one morning, Eve a contented housewife, cocktails and sex at the ready, charity work to occupy her idle day.

*Since nobody knew what money-laundering was in the 1960s and any mention of Borgia took audience minds in a historical direction it was best to play safe in the title department.*

They work for The Company aka The Mob. Nothing nasty though. He’s not in the drugs/enforcement/prostitution departments. He’s a money launderer. He goes round the country opening accounts in obscure banks and helping deposit Mafia cash as a means of buying other companies. “It’s not illegitimate, but it’s legal,” he’s informed.

This isn’t the Mafia that Coppola and Scorsese would later invest with grandeur, it’s closer to the faceless corporation of Point Blank (1967) but taking the business aspect to a higher level. There’s computerisation for a start, personnel files appear as a printout, and some hefty degree of organisation required to keep tabs of the $100 million-plus that enters legitimate business each year. And you would think they were spies, everyone uses code names, “Borgia Stick” being Tom’s, telephones have particular numbers, even conversation is some kind of code.

Trouble is, what was supposed to be an arrangement with benefits has turned into true love, and Tom wants to find a way out, live a different life, have kids. Eve backs off from that kind of commitment. But eventually the decision is taken out of their hands. A guy called Prentice (Ralph Waite) comes snooping around, claiming he knew Tom as Andy Mitchell from Toledo.

*“Murder Syndicate” in one country translated into “Gangster Syndicate” in another, no mention of the FBI.*

Cover potentially blown, Tom’s boss Anderson (Fritz Weaver) plans to give him a new life – his employers are not “unfeeling monsters” after all – pack him off to Rio with $83,000 to get him started. But only Tom. Eve is sent back to her old life, to prove she can be trusted, the life she was trying to keep from her husband. She is put to work in a clip joint.

Of course, it doesn’t work out that way and there are about a dozen twists before we reach an unexpected climax, especially given the opening scene which I won’t disclose.

Although The Godfather is seen as the high point of humanising the Mafia, in that picture Michael’s constant concealment from his wife of his true life means it avoids the real drama of the situation. Here, that drama is the crux. A clever big boss would try to avoid a marital mismatch. The wrong kind of love match can endanger the Family – just look at Meghan and Harry – and it’s a pretty clever device to splice two souls rescued from potential prison and a more sordid life, give them life’s trappings, assured that a woman who has sold herself to so many different men might be grateful just to be assigned a single one, and that a man who otherwise might have been a dull banker could receive, almost as an “extra,” a glamorous wife.

That they might have feelings for each other may well have been calculated into the equation. What would that matter? Surely, it would only benefit the relationship. Every manager knows that an employee with a happy home life is one less problem to worry about.

As long as company loyalty remained uppermost. Eve reminds Tom he’s no less guilty in helping the company get rid of tainted money than the guys on the ground who made it in the first place. Quite why Tom has a stab of conscience and hasn’t the smarts to work out that gangsters can be happily married is never made clear. However, once he sets rolling the particular ball of quitting the Mafia, it can only end in trouble.

Director David Lowell Rich (A Lovely Way To Die, 1968) does an exemplary job, spinning emotion and angst, humanising a couple we should really despise, and every now and then throwing in a corker of a twist. Unlike the experience of Lee Marvin in Point Blank, the employers are shown to be far from rigid, with an apparent touching regard for their employees.

Rich even manages to slip in a couple of scenes that provide greater insight. One of Tom’s co-workers talks like any successful salesman about the pressure of hitting his targets. And he fears the effect of computerisation, that it could make the Mafia vulnerable to Government investigation (rather than, as would later transpire, harnessing it to massive financial effect). And there’s a little nugget about how 200 businesses who controlled the entire U.S. economy in 1932 held the country to ransom for a year by refusing to accede to the wishes of President Roosevelt.

Inger Stevens (Firecreek, 1968) is the pick here, by turn confident, vulnerable, loving, hating, and with a terrific scene as she tries to control her emotions when tossed back into bargain basement of prostitution. Don Murray (The Viking Queen, 1967) spent his entire career trying to live up to the promise shown in Bus Stop (1956), for which he was Oscar-nominated, without quite getting the roles consistently enough that he deserved. But he is pretty convincing here.

This was television regular Barry Nelson’s first movie role in a decade. Fritz Weaver (The Maltese Bippy, 1969) is good as the boss whose game face is “understanding” and you might spot John Randolph (Seconds, 1966). George Benson wrote the songs for the nightclub sequence.

If you’ve never heard of this, it’ll be because David Lowell Rich is a very under-rated director and because it started life as a made-for-television movie in the heyday of that particular notion, but, as was often the norm with such projects, was released as a movie abroad under the alternative title.

Terrific little film, well worth a look. Way ahead of its time regarding money-laundering, sexual business arrangements (Homeland, 2011-2020), the pressures of working for the Mafia (The Sopranos, 1999-2007) and quitting that organization (Stiletto, 1969). You can catch it on YouTube but be warned this was filmed on video so the quality ain’t great.

Lost Highway (1997) *** – Seen at the Cinema

One of these films with bits missing. Where you are fated to fail to join the dots the director didn’t put there in the first place. Or so it seems. But when you work it all back from the end appears to make some kind of sense.

But that’s only while you are of a mind, given the directorial credentials, to stick it in the cult category rather than the direct-to-video vault where its companions might be any erotic thriller featuring Shannon Tweed. And that might be appropriate in another way because this was such a flop on initial release, despite David Lynch’s reputation courtesy of Blue Velvet (19860 and Twin Peaks, that it owes much of its current cult status to rediscovery on DVD.

Mysterious message, mysterious video, mysterious man (Robert Blake) resembling Lindsay Kemp from The Wicker Man (1973). What connects jazz saxophonist Fred (Bill Pullman) and garage mechanic Pete (Balthazar Getty) except the women in their lives, brunette and blonde, respectively, and the fact that the former’s high-pitched music gives the latter a headache.

In fact, sorry to spoil it for you, though you’ve no doubt already seen this, this is really a story told, however opaquely, from the perspective of blonde/brunette Alice/Renee (Patricia Arquette), a commodity du jour looking for a dupe du jour. Because it’s, don’t you know, about a young woman lured into debauchery, forced to strip at gunpoint for gangster Mr Eddy (Robert Loggia), act in porno and become his squeeze, and naturally looking for a way out. Enter Pete, an easy enough snare, just turn up at his garage looking blonde and sexy. Not that Pete in any way resembles the introspective jealous Fred, Pete can make out in the backs of cars with other willing women like Sheila (Natasha Gregson Warner).

Into Fred’s dull life – he doesn’t seem that excited by being an avant garde jazzman and his sexy wife has given up on sitting adoringly in nightclubs gazing at her idol – comes the mysterious trilogy. “Dick Laurent is dead” is the mysterious message. The video contains footage of their apartment, with some footage shot when they were asleep. The mysterious man, unless he’s a ventriloquist, has the mysterious ability to be two places at once and then just turn up, like a subconscious, out of the blue.

That’s not the only switcheroo. At times Fred turns into Pete. And the two women turn up in the same photograph. And nobody seems much alive except when it comes to villainy. The gangster has a neat method of teaching tailgaters the error of their ways and likes his goodies (women) to unwrap themselves in the presence of others.

And it’s a nightmare of sorts, hallucinatory, or at least the characters exist on a surreal landscape. The audience never quite knows where it is. Instead of the usual twists of the thriller genre, this has mind-bending twists. It may make sense, I tried to make sense of it, but I’m not sure that’s necessary and it may even be folly, the whole idea I guess being to go with the flow and just enjoy what the director puts in front of us.

The forced strip sits uneasily in these times, though the beating up of the tail-gater always geta a great audience response, as if of course gangster violence has the imprimatur of Martin Scorsese, and in the world of a lost woman seeking a way out any man, no matter how innocent (Pete refuses loan of a porno video), is there to be used.

David Lynch is one of the few directors of the last 30/40 years to be considered a true auteur, his movies full of strange exotic images, and characters who would not exist outside his imagination, and it was quite rewarding to see that he has at least garnered an audience for I saw this in the largest cinema in a triple-screen arthouse and it had attracted a sizeable audience.

Peak enjoyment for the head-scratching fraternity, red meat for arthouse hounds, it certainly has the Lynch trademarks in camerawork and music and the parcelling up of the illicit into digestible fragments.

The Lie (2018) ***

I rarely feel inclined to dig around the two streamers – Netflix and Amazon – available to me what with a vast backlog of 1960s DVD/VHS still to plough through and interest in contemporary cinema sated though a weekly visit to the multiplex. It’s rare that I can sit through more than five minutes of the movies funded or picked up by streamers, so poor is their quality control. So this came as a surprise.

The acting’s not the best and just when you are beginning to run out of patience suddenly the real twist kicks in and it makes terrible, terrible sense and a situation that has spiralled out of control ends up in a bottomless pit. I say the real twist because I had guessed the first twist, an obvious consequence of the set-up of these kind of films. But the real twist is much darker and eminently more savage.

So, the basic story is rock musician Jay (Peter Sarsgard), estranged from wife Rebecca (Mireille Enos), takes teenage daughter Kayla (Joey King) to dance camp and on the way picks up her best pal Trini (Dani Kind) and somewhere in the middle of an ice-bound wilderness said friend needs the toilet. Kayla and pal go off but only Kayla returns, admitting she has pushed friend off a bridge into icy river.

Jay’s now got to decide how to protect his murderous daughter, hide any evidence of Trini being in the car etc. He confides in Rebecca, and protecting their daughter brings the couple closer together. Meanwhile, Kayla is acting as if what’s all the fuss about. This is dysfunctional on the rocks.

Luckily, it turns out Trini has a record of running away and her dad Sam (Cas Anwar) has a terrible temper and may be abusing her so it’s relatively easy to get the police to consider him the main suspect, especially as he’s very lax in reporting the child missing. Plus, Rebecca seems to know her way about the police and Sam makes the mistake of causing a scene in the street.

But, of course, nothing goes according to plan, the situation gets worse, as the innocent parents try to fabricate something that will make the police go away. There’s a lot of other subtle stuff that complicates the situation. But essentially it’s two parallel stories diverging along psychological lines.

With those malevolent eyes, Peter Sarsgard (The Batman, 2022) has some difficulty passing for innocent, and of course his character is not exactly saintly, so that muddies the waters, as I guess is the intention, while the casting of Mirielle Enos (best-known as the detective in the U.S. television adaptation of Nordic hit The Killing, 2011-2014) also suggests the director is hoping to mislead the audience.

Joey King (Bullet Train, 2022) is so sulky and petulant from the outset that you wouldn’t be remotely surprised that her teenage hormones could escalate into murder and then for her sit back and enjoy watching her parents try to deal with the consequences.

And you might nitpick and wonder exactly what kind of town this is when there’s not a single neighbour to appear at the sound of an argument or a fight or a car accident, and no cameras on the streets. But generally, this is a tight mostly three-hander with tension quietly building, wrong decisions taken by people who think they are cleverer than they are, a finely balanced pyramid of parental attitudes to children and vice-versa and throwing out the one question every parent hopes to avoid: how will your react if your beloved child commits a heinous crime? What lengths will you go to protect them?

So in the context of the shattering ending, everything makes far worse sense.

A very neat thriller and almost a made-for-streamer feel about it, in the old made-for-television sense.

Writer-director Veena Sud (The Salton Sea, 2016) keeps a keen grip on a tale that is a remake of German picture Wir Monster (2015).

On Amazon Prime.

The Infernal Machine (2022) **** – Seen at the Cinema

Enigma and irony are hard enough to pull off in a drama never mind an intellectual thriller that plays around with reality. So full marks for a terrific performance by Guy Pearce (The Seventh Day, 2021) holding together a relatively simple tale of paranoia, and writer-director Andrew Hunt (The Miles Between Us, 2016) for teasing it out.

Author Bruce (Guy Pearce) has written a bestseller that triggered sociopath Dwight Tufford (Alex Pettyfer) into carrying out a mass killing. Hiding out in a remote cabin away from any feeding frenzy, and drowning in alcohol, he’s nonetheless being stalked by obsessive fan William Dukent who sends him daily missives by post, conveniently attaching a contact number but infuriatingly never answering his phone. Aware how obsession can end (for example, in mass murder), he’s none too keen on meeting said fan, and is armed against intruders.

That his mental health is imperilled suggests some deeper psychological problem since beyond irritation there is no obvious threat. Ad bearing in mind he’s an alcoholic, there’s always a possibility his nemesis is himself. Before he achieved fame he was your standard creative writer teacher so we’re regaled in flashback or voice-over with some of the rules of writing, but what appears mere filler material takes on deeper meaning in the third act.

What makes this transparently different from your standard paranioa thriller is that Bruce is hardly equipped to hunt down bad guys, possessing none of the “particular set of skills” possessed by the likes of Bryan Mills (Taken, 2008), and no military background to call on. It takes him forever to even work out that the name of his antagonist is actually a clue.

Eventually, he is assisted in his endeavors by cop Officer Higgins (Alice Eve) but nothing makes much sense and he deteriorates further into an alcoholic haze. Even while every step forward turns into a step back, at least he is on the case. And then the twists come thick and fast.

I’m a pretty big fan of twists and because I generally watch twist-ridden pictures am inclined to go with the flow, though not without trying to figure the puzzle in my own mind. But when the final parts of this particular jigsaw unfold they are of the unexpected variety. If I tell you any more I’ll give the game away.

So, primarily, it relies on a somewhat incoherent fellow trying to find coherence in a world that has to all extents and purposes betrayed him. After years of rejection, he has finally grasped the brass ring (if that’s what you do with brass rings) filled with awards and a mass of cash (enough at least to fund this retreat and heroic alcohol consumption). Whatever his book has triggered in the mind of an assassin is never made clear; the novel is about a priest who disproves the existence of God. And given it’s impossible to understand the deranged mind, that could just leave him a victim of circumstance, in a perfect storm of angst, and all the while trying to determine how, as befits a writer, this chimes with his own personal narrative, every individual being the hero of his own tale.

*Except for the title, this has got nothing to do with the film under review but I was stuck for another illustration and this came to hand.*

As I said, it all hangs on the performance of Guy Pearce who’s been here before in Memento (2000) and he creates a believable contradiction, intelligent enough to try to make sense of his stalker but at the same time arguing with a telephone answering machine.

Only a couple of sections are questionable, how to engineer an escape from a super-maximum security prison and how Bruce would know the capabilities of a bullet when not fired from an actual gun. But by that time you’re already along for the ride.

Andrew Hunt doesn’t give much away until he has to and it’s to his credit that we care so much for an isolated character minus the standard wife or daughter there to generate audience empathy. Given the hero is not a particularly likeable character, it’s no mean feat to get us on his side, especially when he dips into philosophy and tips on writing. Hunt devised the screenplay from a story by Louis Kornfeld, who originated the source material, the wonderfully-titled The Hilly-Earth Society, for a podcast.

Violent Night (2022) **** – Seen at the Cinema

Just about hits the balls-eye (sorry, bulls-eye) but falls short through miscalculating its target audience. A little bit of rejigging in the inevitable sequel could see this shine. Roughly, Die Hard meets Home Alone. That’s putting it a bit crudely, but swap skyscraper for billionaire’s mansion and a little boy for little girl and you get the drift.

What gets this very much over the line are the little bits of magic, as appealing as they come, and Santa has a get-out clause (literally, and no pun intended) because in dire emergency he can vanish up any nearby chimney and though he’s aware there’s magic involved he has no idea how it’s done. Plus he has a scroll to hand, a cribsheet that separates the good from the bad.

*Bad moon rising? Less of the ho-ho-ho and more of the bah humbug and it just goes to show that a man and his hammer should never be parted.*

Home Alone defensive techniques have escalated since Macauley Culkin’s day, and though “You Filthy Animal” is referenced young Trudi (Leah Brady) has a mouthful of real cuss-words, plus nails her weapon of choice. It’s cleverly done how she links up with the inebriated self-pitying Santa (David Harbour) and there’s a grimace-inducing finale – the true spirit of Xmas and all – that sails close to the wind for a hardnosed thriller but par for the course for a soppy Xmas saga.

So that’s really the only problem. The picture can’t quite make up its mind in which direction it’s headed. Hard-ass with a soft center is clearly the aim, but there’s just too much gore to pull that off. Sure, some of the killings are comic, but they’re helluva bloody too. And there’s a weird backstory – even weirder than John Wick’s assassin commandments that shalt not be broken – involving (I think) something to do with Vikings and a guy who can’t die, not exactly a zombie because he’d already be dead, and thankfully he doesn’t need blood to slake his thirst, but still he’s been around for a millennium, though, truth be told, the actual date Father Christmas first appeared is not exactly set in stone.

On the other plus side, the family whose home is being invaded by villainous “Scrooge” (John Leguizamo) – color and city pseudonyms all taken by previous fictional gangsters – are just plain venal, toadying up to ruthless matriarch Gertrude (Beverly D’Angelo) whose vault bulges with gazillions of illicit dollars. Her potential heirs, Jason (Alex Hassell) and Alva (Edi Patterson), are a cringe-worthy pair. While Jason at least is attempting to sever connections to malicious mama, Alva has named her son Bertrude in a bid to curry favour. And when push comes to shove, most of that family will sacrifice every last one of their nearest and dearest.

So, basic story, family in the sh*t, drunken Santa and little girl to the rescue.

There’s some clever twists. Jason isn’t quite the dolt you think, Alva’s macho boyfriend-cum-actor turns out to have muscular chops while Jason’s partner Linda (Alexis Louder) is quite the vengeful one.

Endearing to the last, Trudi channels her inner Macauley Culkin with a side-serving of her grandmother’s ruthlessness and, taking Home Alone as her template, effectively slices and dices her opponents. And my guess is that’s the vibe the producers were chasing – fun slaughter. They don’t miss by miles, but they do miss. And an audience that would have happily lapped up the outrageously vicious Trudi will probably not relish the rest of the gory goings-on while a John Wick audience will feel hard-done-by that even a sliver of cuteness has penetrated their hardcore world.

And it’s that rarity, an action comedy with a good few belly laffs rather than the usual situation where you see what they’re trying to do but don’t actually burst out laughing.

David Harbour (Black Widow, 2021) isn’t left to carry the picture but his cynical manner, catchphrases, and surprisingly gentle approach certainly bring it home. Leah Brady, graduate of the Umbrella Academy (2022), is New Wave Cute, soft with a hard center. Beverly D’Angelo (National Lampoon’s Vacation, 1983) can;t believe her luck at sinking her teeth into such a vicious character.

Director Tommy Wirkola (Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, 2013) just about gets it right, especially unusual to be able to marry action and comedy, working from a screenplay by Pat Casey and Josh Miller who co-wrote Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) which was also a matter of getting the balance right.

Great fun all round. Not sure what the title would be for a sequel but look forward to it.

The Menu (2022) ***** – Seen at the Cinema

Hitchcock would have adored the apocalyptic flavour of this quasi haunted house psychological thriller. Setting aside its intellectual pretensions this is pure pedal-to-the-metal material. You never know what’s going to happen next in a tense environment created by dictatorial celebrity Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) in whose eyes the entitled are likely to get their just desserts.

In most thrillers of this nature, the assorted bunch of potential victims usually attempt some kind of fightback, and they’re usually younger and sexier, but this crew are trapped in the headlights because they find it impossible to believe they could possibly be in the middle of a revolution.

The beauty of their dilemma is that Chef is trapped, too, by his desire for fame, suffocated by pursuit of perfection, but yet, as they soon come to realise, accepting punishment for his own sins (attempted rape for one). You might be fooled by the trailer into thinking there is a way out, if only a perilous one, but that’s a bit of a red herring, and as the tension grows you realise it’s heading for an incredible conclusion.

Only the rich can afford to visit this expensive restaurant on a secluded island. Most of the guests aren’t even interested in the food – that’s one strike against them – but for the experience of having said they’d been there or to, as is the prerogative of the wealthy, be pampered within a whim of their life, or to find something minute to complain about, a niggle guaranteed to cause grief.

Creepy though they are, Chef’s thunderclapping hands that demand guest attention, the cries of “Yes, chef” from his slave-like adoring workers, the detail of high-falutin’ cooking, history and ecology lessons, a ramrod sergeant-major of a maitre’d Elsa (Hong Chau), and occasional ironic twists – a bread course that contains no bread for example – are mere hors d’oeuvres for the main event.

Chef knows a tad too much about his guests’ peccadilloes – infidelity, financial irregularity – for their liking and as the evening out begins to turn into a cul de sac and shocking incident follows shocking incident, cowardice and lack of the kind of retinue that could come to their rescue, the guests can only watch as they are served up on a platter to a madman’s ideology.

Certainly, the format is exceptionally cinematic, sequences chapterized as menu courses, and the intellectual discussion that divides the world into the servers and the served well observed, but driving the thriller engine is the most refined nutcase this side of Hannibal Lecter, a thin-lipped specter at a feast of his own devising , a creator at the end of his tether, seeking revenge on those who quibble with his talent. And yet there is something universal about this individual, a man scrabbling so hard to stay ahead of the game that he is almost on a par with Arthur Miller’s famed salesman. Is Chef doing much more than the culinary equivalent of “riding on a smile and shoeshine?”

The guests are the usual high priests of pamperdom, food critic Lillian (Janet McTeer), movie star (John Leguizamo) planning to revive his career by fronting a food show, simulating orgasm with every taste, a trio of young financiers, a couple who have come several times but can’t recall a single dish they’ve eaten, and foodie Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) accompanied by a mysterious woman Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy) who turns out to be in a different branch of the service industry.

British director Mark Mylod (Ali G in Da House, 2002, anyone?) has learned from helming episodes of Game of Thrones and Succession how to match reaction to incident. As much as Chef is in control in the restaurant, Mylod is in control of exactly what we see. There is none of the over-acting that appears to come with the territory, certainly no screams or titillation, not a whiff of cleavage, the usual recourse of a horror film run out of ideas, though, as with that genre, it is the sexually compromised who suffer first.

Mylod’s tight rein ensures shock is just an element of the overall effect, rather than its signature dish, and that all the ruffley-truffley culinary dialog only serves to heighten morbid sensation.

Ralph Fiennes (The Forgiven, 2021) may well have delivered a career-best performance it is so constrained. Given equally little room to manoeuvre, little time for eye-rolling or exacerbated action, Anya Taylor-Joy is back to her The Queen’s Gambit (2020) best, while Nicholas Hoult (Those Who Wish Me Dead, 2021) adds sly deviance to a screen persona that plays on innocence. It’s an astonishing screenwriter debut for television writers Seth Reiss and Will Tracy.

As it happens, I’m very familiar with the lives of chefs, having spent three decades working with them, initially as a cossetted observer, as journalists often are, being the fawned-upon editor of Caterer & Hotelkeeper, the hugely profitable industry trade weekly in Britain, with massive sales at a time when print was the dominant media, so much so that during my time we produced a world record (for a weekly) issue of 524 pages. But when I later set up the Scottish Chefs Association, whose board comprised all the top chefs in the country, and its offshoots the Scottish Chef Awards and a cookery school for chefs, I became privy to the fears and wonders of the cooking business. So I can attest to the fear and loathing for some customers and most critics, who seemed determined in the days before social media to spoil anything they could, or demand preferential treatment.

Certainly, the restaurant is a unique kind of business, food being cooked to order, “a la minute” as the saying went, and customers disrupting a tight ecology by simply turning up late, or early, or not at all. Customers were prone to theft, teaspoons in particular replaced on a titanic scale, and the litany of complaints could outweigh a Bible. Then, as now, reputation was everything, and could be destroyed by a food critic or word-of-mouth. It wasn’t just chefs who sought perfection, but customers, any deviation from expectation harshly dealt with.

Successful chefs with investors would find that somehow they saw little share of the profits. Chefs minus investors lived a precarious existence. Good reviews would bring in bad customers, the kind who pored over every detail, like Tyler wanting to share their paltry culinary knowledge with the expert, needed extra attention, and came to say they had been there. But I can sympathise with Margot who felt she was being experimented upon rather than fed and can recall several times buying fish and chips immediately after dining in a Michelin-starred establishment.

I remember, too, industry astonishment that celebrity-chef-du-jour Anton Mosimann began the day by walking round the kitchen shaking hands with every chef, no matter their rank, rather than starting off their day with a rant. Kitchens are organised on a brigade system, obedience imperative, no questioning of authority. But rather than derogating talent as occurs here, many top chefs proved apt talent-spotters. The Roux Brothers, for example, created a magnificent template, finding backers among their appreciative wealthy customers for the young talent in their kitchens, which resulted in a new generation of chefs setting up in business without the usual financial woes.

In Britain and Europe, however, perfection could be achieved. If you reached the highest standards set by the Michelin Guide inspectors and were awarded the coveted three stars, the highest culinary accolade that could be bestowed, you had reached the top of the tree. You couldn’t relax because one or more of the stars could be taken away, but the kind of personal obsession that afflicts Chef here would be lessened. However, since very few chefs hit the three-star mark you have hundreds if not thousands beavering away trying to achieve it.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022) **** – Seen at the Cinema

Another triumphant entry in the casebook of Benoit Blanc, self-style world’s greatest detective and easily the most flamboyant in the genre since Hercule Poirot. Writer-director Rian Johnson’s invention offered Daniel Craig an immediate opportunity to shed the typecasting curse of James Bond and the actor rises splendidly again to the occasion, some hints of his inner life offered, signs of depression and a cameo by Hugh Grant as flatmate, helpmate, whatmate.

But in the main it’s another twisty picture that plays with audience expectation even though, if only we were as clever as its creator, the truth is in plain sight, beginning with the title.

You have to peel through layer upon layer of an ordinary onion, but a glass onion you can see straight through. It would not occur to the audience, lured by mystery, arriving with a different sort of anticipation, counting on this glass onion to be a mere architectural folly atop a majestic building on a remote island off the cost of Greece, that everything could be actually straightforward and that the need for complicated crime is a figment of our own imagination.

There’s only one twist you may guess and the movie certainly takes a while to spark into life as we are introduced to a variety of unlikeable characters, ideal candidates you might think to be a victim, through the device of them all receiving an extremely puzzling puzzle in an apparently impenetrable wooden box.

Right from the get-go, the audience is sucked in. Are they the type of people who are determined to solve the riddle, with endless patience, or in collaborative effort expend energy and time on a fiendish enigma that seems to change shape every few minutes, layer by layer like a veritable onion? Or do we just work out that a box made of wood ain’t going to have no defence against something as simple as a hammer?

Anyway, enough with the philosophizing and on with the show. During Covid a bunch of disparate characters with no connection except a link to billionaire Miles (Edward Norton) are invited for a murder mystery weekend to his island home. Miles, being the show-off to top all show-offs, has invited Benoit on the basis that his mystery will fox the detective, score one for an uber-clever magnate.

He is so unbelievably wealthy and ridiculously endowed with genius from thinking outside the box that he has managed to secure a loan of the Mona Lisa painting from the Louvre in Paris, paid through the nose for it of course, taking advantage of the museum’s lack of income from the paying tourists, Covid having dried up that moneywell. The artwork will form the centerpiece of his cleverness as he presents to a posse of investors later on his newest invention, Klear, an idea that, however dangerous and untested, will solve the world’s energy supply problems.

Anyway, Benoit is way too smart for him and solves the murder mystery in a trice, only for there, as you might have expected, to be another real murder or two, leaving the private eye with the unusual accent a classic closed room mystery.

Under suspicion are Miles himself of course, plus one-time model turned fashion designer Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson), the dumbest cluck in the coop, aspiring politician Claire (Kathryn Hahn), Miles’ former business partner Andi (Janelle Monae), macho male Duke (Dave Bautista) and girlfriend Whiskey (Madeline Clyne), Miles’ sometime lover, scientist Lionel (Leslie Odom Jr) and Peg (Jessica Hanwick). What they share with Miles is vanity, an overweening sense of their own importance and entitlement.

Actually, one of them doesn’t qualify as a suspect because as you may have guessed that would be the victim. Two of them, since I’ve already kind of given away that there are two dead. Anyway, you’re not going to guess any of this since you’re all dupes to the infinite ingenuity of Rian Johnson.

Sure, the director takes pot-shots at the rich and the wannabe wealthy and the wannabes that trail along in their wake, but mostly he takes aim at the genre itself, turning the whole idea of the mystery picture on its head, that we expect something pretty intricate the moment we are presented with a movie puzzle, and motivation being the engine of all mystery start delving headlong into that morass without thinking the answer might be something a lot simpler.

Whatever Rian Johnson is doing he’s got the elan to carry it off. Sequels often disappoint. This won’t. Not quite the caliber of cast as Knives Out (2019) but that’s actually to the film’s advantage, no need for the star-stalking that afflicted the recent Death on the Nile (2022).

Thoroughly entertaining, ingenious and devious, what more could you ask for, apart from Netflix not having snapped up the golden goose, since this will be infinitely more enjoyable in the company of an audience responding en masse to the trickery, as I discovered when watching it on its brief foray to the cinema.

And there’s certainly a dichotomy here. What is the point of the Netflix sop to the movie theatre? Sure, it’s going to rack up a ton of reviews but they’re all going to be posted a month before the picture opens on Netflix rather than the weekend before. Anticipation may not last that long. Anyway, given all the turkeys Netflix has foisted on movie fans, this will be one Xmas when it delivers.

PS: Apologies for the goof on Behind the Scenes: “Bandolero.” That blog is coming on Saturday but I pressed the wrong button and sometimes when you press the wrong button there’s just no going back.

The Caper of the Golden Bulls / Carnival of Thieves (1967) ***

Just to be clear. Nobody is stealing a golden bull, though the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona in Spain is a plot element. No, this gang, led by former bank-robber Churchman (Stephen Boyd) is only going to break into an impregnable bank (par for the course) and steal priceless royal jewels.

There’s an audacious, certainly unorthodox, plan, tension throughout between Churchman’s sexy former lover Angela (Giovanna Ralli) and current more demure squeeze Grace (Yvette Mimieux), a couple of unexpected comedy sequences, a silent heist and a superb final twist.

*Just to be clear – there’s no bikini blonde with a pistol.*

Churchman is not your ordinary robber. He only hit banks to make reparation for, while a World War Two pilot, mistakenly dropping bombs on a French cathedral, donating the loot to the reconstruction. Angela, with no such ideals, has spent her share of the dosh and intent on a financial top-up blackmails Churchman, now a respected businessman, into the one-final-caper scenario.

Key to getting the jewels out is becoming involved in the annual fiesta, of which the bull-running is a minor part. The bull-running, too, shifts the dynamic of the job, and what appears an irrelevant sub-plot of former resistance fighters hunting a traitor provides an essential pay-off.

When moral Grace uncovers the plot she is inveigled to participate, ensuring some spicy bitchy dialog between herself and the more obviously immoral Angela. Unwittingly helping out is Spanish cop (Walter Slezak) and with Churchman committed the only person Angela needs use her wiles on is a giant, friendlier by the minute as he responds to her seductive smiles.

While this lacks the panache, guile or gloss of a Topkapi (1964) or Gambit (1966), it’s certainly well-done enough. It’s one of those films you appreciate more after you’ve watched it than during, the structure of the screenplay most of all, as all the little pieces of a finely-tuned jigsaw lock into place.

There’s a couple of excellent reversals, an ambush where firecrackers pass for bullets, imminent discovery of explosives thwarted by a quick-thinking Grace, and some split-second timing. Explosives, timed to match the firing of a cannon, allow a bystander cop to remark, “that cannon gets louder every time.” At first the fiesta appears standard time-filling tourist-fodder but both the parade and the bull-running are allocated genuine spots in the narrative.

The sensuous, devious Giovanna Ralli (Deadfall, 1968) is the pick, a femme fatale straight out of film noir, with a knowing twist in her main seduction scene. Fans of Stephen Boyd (Assignment K, 1968) will enjoy seeing him dally with conscience rather than rely on a straight down the line hardman, albeit with more than an ounce of charm. What Yvette Mimieux (Dark of the Sun, 1968) ultimately brings to the occasion is hidden until the end so her character has more depth than initially surmised.

There was a sense here, though, of three stars still trying to make their mark on Hollywood, establishing their marquee credentials. Although Boyd had enjoyed box office success in Fantastic Voyage (1966) and The Bible (1966) he was not seen as the main element in those film’s hitting the target. Other films relying on his star potential to pull in an audience had flopped.

Outside possibly of Disney confection Monkeys, Go Home! (1967) and The Time Machine (1960) Yvette Mimieux had yet to enjoy a proper hit. Giovanna Ralli was the latest in a string of European imports, a low-level gamble since they were cheaper than Hollywood alternatives even though most never made the grade or did so only fleetingly.

You wouldn’t pick this picture to put either of the trio back on the very top since for the sake of later twists the screenplay plays around with motivation and the very lack of gloss limits the movie’s potential. But although we’ve seen much of this before, it’s still suspenseful enough.

Russell Rouse (A House Is Not A Home, 1964) directs from a screenplay by David Moessinger (Number One, 1969) and Ed Waters, who had form in this area with Man-Trap (1961).

An engrossing enough matinee.

Midnight Lace (1960) ****

Works for the very reason that it shouldn’t – Doris Day’s off-the-scale hysteria. The actress junks her usual screen persona of spunky occasionally lovelorn heroine and channels her abundant physical energy into an exceptionally good portrayal of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

And, unlikely as it sounds, this a companion piece to David Miller’s later Lonely Are the Brave (1962),which equally presents a discordant character at odds with their surroundings whose inability to settle into the norm precipitates downfall.

Heiress Kit (Doris Day) is being hounded mainly over the telephone by a creepy stalker with a high-pitched voice, threatening to kill her. Before you can say Gaslight, you are casting a suspicious eye on millionaire businessman husband Anthony (Rex Harrison). But that only lasts for as long as it takes for a whole bunch of other suspects to hove into view.

The sinister man in black hat and coat appears too obvious a contender. Others have something off about them or appear at the wrong time and wrong place. Unemployed ne’er-do-well Malcolm (Roddy McDowell) who sponges off his mother, attempts unsuccessfully to tap Kit for funds and makes it plain he won’t be doffing his cap to her. Builder Brian (John Gavin) is over-friendly and, we overhear, makes a lot of phone calls.

And you wouldn’t count out gambler Charles (Herbert Marshall), an executive in Anthony’s firm, which, by the way, has uncovered a bit of fraud. Nor happily-married Peggy (Natasha Perry), Kit’s friend, who turns up in a bus queue the very moment Kit nearly ends up under the wheels of a London bus. And then there’s Aunt Bea (Myrna Loy) who’s arrived from America and seems determined not to take Kit’s side.

Naturally, nobody can allay Kit’s suspicions. The police are the first to suggest she’s going off her head, seeking attention because neglected by her husband.

But this is so well done, Kit jumping at the slightest noise, that you are pretty much convinced it’s going to be one of those films where every incident is imagined, especially since that would be a helluva coup to have an actress of the lightweight caliber of Doris Day to play her.

Whenever anyone else answers the phone it’s to an innocent caller. And when Kit persuades Peggy to pretend she heard the voice, discovery of that ruse appears to seal her doom.

When we’re not stuck in Kit’s head, there are sufficient tense moments to keep the plot ticking along, trapped in an elevator, shadows on a ceiling, faces glimpsed in windows, voices appearing out the fog, whispers behind her back, friends turning against her, every police ploy a dead end.

Quite why she’s such a giddy character to begin with is never explained, except of course being a millionairess, three months married, with nothing better to do with her time than waltz around in one stunning fashionable outfit after another, life a succession of expensive treats, and whisked off her feet, when he can spare the time, by adoring hubby.

So maybe it’s something as simple as a loved-up wealthy woman finding cracks appearing in her perfect life and in trying to ascertain the cause whirling round faster and faster. There’s certainly no sense of a solid character who could sit down and give herself a good talking-to or transform herself into an amateur sleuth. When the façade breaks, it’s a dam burst.

If at the beginning Doris Day seems already too-wound-up it doesn’t really matter, her lust for life turns very quickly into abject fear as the terrorization becomes only too real. This is a fantastic performance from the actress, woefully under-rated, and the scene where she collapses on the stairs is only too believable.

Rex Harrison (The Happy Thieves, 1962) is excellent in a custom-made role, handsome adoring husband, but every time he clasps her in a sympathetic embrace, the camera lingers on his eyes showing growing fear at her condition. The roster of supporting stars each brings something distinctive to their role, from the wheedling Roddy McDowell (Five Card Stud, 1968), in only his second movie role after eight years of solid television, the too-good-to-be-true John Gavin (Back St, 1961) and old-timers Myrna Loy (The Thin Man, 1934) as the doubting aunt and Herbert Marshall (The Letter, 1940) as the impecunious gambler.

Director David Miller (Captain Newman, M.D., 1963) moves the camera in disconcerting fashion. You think you’re settled in for a stage-style scene when suddenly the camera whirls away and focuses on one character. The scene in the elevator is exceptionally well-done as is the finale, but possibly his biggest attribute is encouraging Doris Day to just go for it rather than reining in her character the way Hitchcock did for The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956).

The team of Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts (Portrait in Black, 1960) put together the screenplay from the hit Broadway play Matilda Shouted Fire by Janet Green.

I came at this with low expectations, not imagining Doris Day could pull off such a difficult role, and I came away wondering why she had not in consequence been given other opportunities to show off her dramatic skills.