Crime/Thriller – Page 9 – The Magnificent 60s

Companion (2025) **** – Seen at the Cinema

Body Heat meets I, Robot in a film noir high-concept sci fi female revenge thriller. Such a contagion of ideas should skid off the rails but it works a treat as debut director Drew Hancock offers a highly intelligent adult movie. And might have been ideal Valentine’s Day counter-programming fodder to the more lightweight Bridget Jones: No More Please except that Captain America: Brave New World has already snapped up the counter-programming slot. Hopefully, this will pull in a deservedly wide audience that it’s still around to cause the other franchise operations some grief.

In my eyes sci fi and horror have to follow an internal logic, in other words create a world that can’t be twisted to suit an inconvenient obstacle. This is filled with them, but the best is when our heroine Iris (Sophie Thatcher) has discovered she’s a robot programmed to fulfil the needs of her owner but gains control of herself and plays around with her personality only to discover that the electric car in which she is trying to escape won’t respond to her new voice.

This is just so brilliantly done that when you get one twist after another following in logical fashion you don’t recognize these as twists but rather logic played out to the ultimate degree.

Three couples meet for an idyllic weekend in the country in a fancy pad beside a lake, owned by dodgy Russian multi-millionaire Sergey (Rupert Friend) who has brought along docile trophy mistress Kat (Megan Suri). Joining them are robot owner Josh (Jack Quaid) and Iris and gay couple Eli (Harvey Guillen) and Patrick (Lukas Gage), who, also, it transpires, is a robot.

The robots are programmed with highly believable meet-cutes, one involving a fancy dress party, the other the clumsy up-tipping of a stack of oranges in a supermarket. The robots are programmed to a) have sex at the drop of a hat; b) love their owners; c) be unable to tell a lie and d) follow the first rule of robotic development, as laid down by Isaac Asimov, of being unable to kill a human.

The last commandment ain’t quite so hard and fast and it turns out an owner, for nefarious purpose, can actually turn on the aggression control. As much as Sergey is probably, thanks to his wealth and perceived status as a thug, programmed to assume any woman is there for the taking, so a robot, aggressive instincts sharpened, can respond violently to attempted rape.

So, first of all, this looks like it’s going to be a tale of how do the other members of the holiday gang deal with Sergey’s murder and the more philosophical question of whether a robot can be held responsible for a crime or whether blame would lie with the owner for dickering around with the controls or for the inventor for allowing such a possibility.

You could have had a fair old time exploring any of these possibilities, and a fairly satisfying picture, given the detail of the programing and the examination of female dependency (Kat is as much under the thumb of Sergey as Iris of Josh) and male control and in low-key fashion the kind of guy who would otherwise most likely be an unwilling celibate. The movie poses another question that it doesn’t really go into, which is how our view of an otherwise unattractive male character changes when he has a beautiful woman on his arm, Hollywood the first to perpetuate such fictions.

Anyway, the story goes in a different direction. Turns out Josh is quite the sneaky conspirator. He has programmed Iris to take the rap for Sergey’s death while he and Kat make off with the $12 million the Russian keeps in his safe. But, like any heist picture, the theft is the easy part, the thieves inclined to fall out, and with a robot distraught at discovering she’s a robot and that her life is a fiction (and Josh’s to boot) then it’s only going to get murky.

But that’s without taking into account more logic. As the story develops, Patrick takes a programmed shine to Josh, acting as his protector, Josh discovers the makers of the robots have built in some safeguards, and Iris finds that the acquisition of greater intelligence (with little more than, ironically, a swipe right) more than makes up for losing the love ideals for which she is constructed and which constitutes the center of her understanding of her life’s purpose. Like M3GAN (2022), this is sitting up and begging for a sequel.

Top marks to Drew Hancock, who doubled up as writer, for exploring so many avenues and in contriving an interesting plot without cocking it up with easy solutions. Sophie Thatcher (Heretic, 2024) is the standout, but Jack Quaid (Oppenheimer, 2023), latest in the acting dynasty, essays well a difficult part, turning from clumsy charmer to needy controller. Lukas Gage (Smile 2, 2024), too, shifting up the gears from adorable to deadly.

Certainly, one of the most intelligent sci fi thrillers in a long time.

Flight Risk (2025) ** – Seen at the Cinema

At best, nifty piece of counter-programing, short on running time compared to the ballast-heavy bum-numbing three hours-plus of The Brutalist. At worst – where do we start? Maybe with the bald wig where you can see the join. Just part of the bombastic over-the-top zoppazaloola performance by Mark Wahlberg, deciding not to entertain a smidgeon of finesse or subtlety, not even of the John Malkovich (In the Line of Fire, 1993, Con Air, 1997) vintage, in his portrayal of a sadistic bisexual rapist murderer with a propensity for chopping off fingers and indulging in other anatomical atrocities.

The aim was, I guess, Narrow Margin on a Plane, though the confines of a cabin in a tiny plane leave little room for maneuver. And blow me down if the whole damn thing wasn’t shot over Alaska as the movie portends, but in Nevada, although I guess to the uninitiated one snow-capped peak looks very much like another. And blow me down number too, just when the tension (what tension?) should be ratcheting up to eleven, if we don’t take time out from chaining up the bad guy to allow our other more civilized bad guy to go all sentimental on us and want to do something good.

And that’s before we delve deep into a dumb back story about our cop being responsible for burning a prisoner to death after she went against all the rules of the profession and allow said female prisoner to take a shower, shackled to the bath to permit privacy, not expecting someone to lob a Molotov Cocktail into the bathroom. Your heart bleeds.

So, U.S. Marshal Madolyn (Michelle Dockery) in sore need of redemption after the prisoner-burning episode is escorting Winston (Topher Grace) from his hidey-hole near the Arctic Circle so he can appear as a witness in a Mafia trial, him being the mobsters’ accountant. Daryl (Mark Wahlberg) is their cocky pilot. Winston’s main job is to add laffs, by being just the kind of weak-minded entitled chap who took the easy route to riches rather than go to college and get a proper job. Madolyn has got other things on her mind beyond redemption and not liking the look of the cocky pilot.

She has sniffed out corruption in the department which might go as high as very high indeed, with a guy on the Mafia payroll, whom Winston, once he gets into his stride as a reformed criminal, is going to give up. All this by dint of her remote detection.

Or she could just be distracted by the rom-com elements of the plot. Did I mention there was romance? Our Madolyn is way too smart to fall for a dumbass like Winston and ain’t going to let a cocky hardhead like Daryl engage her in banter. But she’s a sucker for a sweet-talking off-stage fella who’s going to instruct her how to fly the plane once she’s incapacitated Daryl. He’s full of great information which I’ll bear in mind next time I’m on a plane coming in to land that’s run out of fuel. Guess what, it’s easier to land a plane if it’s run out of fuel. Phew, that’s a relief.

I’m generally all-in when it comes to hard-edged crime pictures with less-than-stellar casts as long as the action keeps coming and the plot makes some sense. This feels like they put out an all points bulletin for any idiotic plot handle they could find and when that didn’t work thought the casting would save them. Let’s get one of those top-class English lasses from Downton Abbey and put her through the mill and let’s get a fairly stellar action star and let him go off-piste.

In fairness, Michelle Dockery, who had already mined a tough streak in Godless (2017), isn’t bad, discarding all the girly girl prettiness in favour of no make-up no-nonsense toughness and twisting around seven ways to sundown to accommodate all the twists in the plot, even softening enough to indulge the romantic dreams of her off-stage lothario.

There’s maybe a chance this will turn into so-bad-it’s-good gold and if so it will be down to a demented performance by Mark Wahlberg (Father Stu, 2022), one of the few top stars, either by desire or financial necessity, to take risks with his screen persona. The problem is that his part is really a glorified cameo, the picture not so much revolving around his horrid horror-porn imagination, as the redemption-cum-rom-com focus of Michelle Dockery, the latest in a series of eye-gouging unlikely action heroines.

Directed by double Oscar-winning Mel Gibson (Hacksaw Ridge, 2016), no slouch himself, as an actor, in putting in a demented performance. Directed, without, I guess, the slightest notion of irony. Script by Jared Rosenberg in his screen debut.

But as I said, beats The Brutalist hands-down when it comes to lean running time (just 87 minutes).

In the Line of Fire (1993) *****

Outside of the top-billed trio of Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock and Meg Ryan, Rene Russo stole the limelight as the decade’s leading lady, bolstering the credentials of such supposedly superior marquee names as Dustin Hoffman (Outbreak, 1995), Mel Gibson ( Lethal Weapon 3, Ransom and Lethal Weapon 4, 1992, 1996 and 1998), John Travolta (Get Shorty, 1995), Kevin Costner (Tin Cup, 1996) and Pierce Brosnan (The Thomas Crown Affair, 1999) – an almost unprecedented, for a female star of the period, roster of hits.

Not only that, but she had also come to the game late, 35 at the time of her debut in Major League (1989) and therefore well into the most dangerous age for a female star in Hollywood, her 40s, by the time she came to work with some of the industry’s biggest names. By comparison Julia Roberts was 23 at the time Pretty Woman (1990) was released, Meg Ryan 28 when she captured hearts in When Harry Met Sally (1989) and Sandra Bullock 32 when she snazzed Sylvester Stallone in Demolition Man (1993).

It’s worth remembering that Eastwood, the previous decade washed away with insipid box office, was entering a late career halcyon period, his critical and commercial esteem boosted by the Oscar-winning Unforgiven (1992). Previous male superstars close to retirement age weren’t called upon to put in a sprint or two. Sure, John Wayne and James Stewart could land a good punch, but that was generally in a confined space and nobody was calling on their athletic skills. But, here, Eastwood set the tone for later pictures like Taken – and he was a decade older than Liam Neeson in that one.

Russo, an MTA, oozed class and maturity, never looked as if she was out of her depth or if she would come off second best to any of the macho males she was generally surrounded with. This isn’t her greatest role – her duel with Brosnan takes that accolade – but comes pretty close.

As Lilly Raine, she nurses ageing Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan (Clint Eastwood) over the line. Frank isn’t just perennially out of puff, but catches bad colds and makes such a basic error that he’s chucked out of the presidential protection elite, though kept on by boss Sam (John Mahoney) in a bid to track down assassin Mitch Leary (John Malkovich).

This is nuts-and-bolts action, a lot of time spent in basic detection, following up insignificant leads, but it’s also a classic hunter vs. hunted duel, with for the most part the assassin getting the upper hand, running rings round the entire Secret Service with his disguises and ability to remain more than one step ahead. Instead of a car chase, there’s a rooftop chase.

Horrigan is the kind of imperturbable cop who doesn’t mind partner Al (Dylan McDermott) being suffocated half to death if it gives him an edge on a villain. He’s got a chequered past, maligned by the Warren Commission in the Kennedy assassination report, feeling his age, but when life gets too tough tinkers away at the piano.

He has spicy exchanges with Lilly, taking sexism to what was an acceptable limit back in the day (now of course he’d be in the same dinosaur category as James Bond), and in due course, in quite oblique narrative fashion, wooing Lilly. The sex scene is treated as comedy, the first items to hit the carpet in the undressing malarkey are not panties and bra, but handcuffs and pistols. Hot romance is put on the back burner, which is just as well because Horrigan has his hands full not just with Leary but with a variety of superiors what with his inability to bite his tongue.

Meanwhile, we follow Leary as he coldly disposes of two men and two women in separate instances who have inadvertently caught him out. And he’s not going to make it easy for Horrigan. This isn’t the one-plan-man of previous assassin pictures, he doesn’t just have a back-up, instead employing all sorts of strategies to mislead and misdirect. And he’s not your usual nutter either. Clearly, he’s a worthy opponent, matching the enterprise, initiative and imagination of the anonymous killer of Day of the Jackal (1973). And in those days, what with developments in technology, an assassin can assemble his own gun rather than handing the task, as in Day of the Jackal, to a denoted weapons expert.

The stunning key sequence, astonishing in character terms, is when Horrigan passes up the option of shooting the assassin stone dead in favor of saving his own life – resulting in the irony (as Leary points out) of good guy being saved by bad guy. And in avoiding such action Horrigan condemns his partner to death. There’s as good a scene where I could swear Horrigan’s chin wobbles as he wonders if he could have prevented Kennedy’s death.

Sure, this is a variation on the serial killer trope of someone tormenting a potential victim, but the connections Leary attempts to build with Horrigan aren’t as far short as the cop would like to believe.

Director Wolfgang Peterson (Outbreak) is due considerable praise especially for his pacing, fitting in a complex narrative in a shade over two hours, building tension in myriad ways, but not being afraid to take a laid-back approach with the camera, long, lingering shots establishing mood and occasionally character. The sequence where Horrigan waits, somewhat wistfully, for Lilly to look back from a considerable distance after they have enjoyed an ice-cream together on a national monument is in many ways one of the finest nods to incipient romance ever put on celluloid.

Terrific acting all round. Written by Jeff Maguire (Victory, 1981).

Superb stuff. Top notch.

Pendulum (1969) ****

It’s better to come at this as a drama rather than the thriller it was marketed as. That the name of George Schaefer, the last to make a movie of the directors who shot to fame in television in the 1950s, should be indication that this is character- and issue- rather than action-driven. It’s more about people being sucked into the system, about the vulnerable members of society, who, whether cop or criminal, have no recourse to some kind of higher power to sort their lives out. As such, it’s a satisfying drama.

A-list male stars playing emotionally vulnerable characters was a growing trend in the late 60s. Think of Rock Hudson in Seconds (1966), Burt Lancaster in The Swimmer (1968), Frank Sinatra in The Detective (1968), Kirk Douglas in The Arrangement (1969) – all reviewed on the Blog, incidentally. Here top Washington detective Frank Matthews (George Peppard) goes through the personal and professional ringer, suspecting wife Adele (Jean Seberg) of an affair then becoming a suspect himself in a murder case. Underlying these plot-driven aspects is an exploration of the political issue of civil liberties, in particular the constitutional rights of criminals, setting this up as one of the earliest law’n’order movies, a trope that would take center stage in films like Dirty Harry (1971).

At a peak of professional success, having been awarded a medal and promoted to a consultant to a subcommittee on Law and Order headed by Senator Augustus Cole (Paul McGrath), Matthews’ ethics come under scrutiny when alleged murder/rapist Paul Sanderson (Robert F. Lyons), whom Matthews had arrested, is freed on a technicality thanks to the efforts of civil liberties attorney Woodrow Wilson King (Richard Kiley).

Matthews appears distracted much of the time trying to keep track of his wife’s whereabouts. After delivering a speech in Baltimore, he walks the streets in a fug of depression. Meanwhile, King is disturbed by the fact that a man he clearly believes guilty refuses to seek psychiatric help. The question in the audience mind is where he will strike next. There’s an excellent scene in King’s office where his secretary Liz (Marj Dusay), delighted at the lawyer’s success in overturning Sanderson’s case, instinctively pulls away from the freed man.

When Adele and lover are murdered in Matthews’ bed, he finds himself on the opposite side of the law, undergoing the treatment he has meted out to so many criminals, quickly aware that circumstantial evidence could find him guilty. Front-page news himself now, suspended from his job by a quick-to-judge senator, emotionally isolated and a laughing stock, he retreats further inside himself. Naturally, he evades subsequent arrest, setting out to track down the killer himself, that leads him into the murkier depths of society from which emotionally-abused villains easily spring.

Other issues are explored in passing, the independent woman for a start, whether it is wanting to have her own career and not play the stay-at-home wife or considering it fair game – as with Karen (Lee Remick) in The Detective or Gwen (Faye Dunaway) in The Arrangement – to upturn accepted morality and take a lover.

But the focus remains squarely on Matthews struggling to cope with life running away from him, falling deeper into despair and into the maw of the criminal justice system which has the knack of bending its own rules. He has never been the saintly cop and there are moments where violence seems the best option, although not the vicious kind later espoused by Inspector Callahan. It’s ironic that the only solid detection the cop does in the first part of the film is tracking down his wife’s whereabouts.

George Peppard (Tobruk, 1967), generally a much-maligned actor, excels in a part where he can neither charm his way to an audience’s heart, nor confide in someone else about his marital problems, nor resort to action to define his character. That his pain is all internalised shows the acting skills he brings to bear. Oddly enough Jean Seberg (Moment to Moment, 1966), a specialist in emotional pain, takes a different path, coming across as a devious minx, keeping Matthews on the hook while enjoying relations with an ex-lover, whose career, as it happens, has panned out a lot better than her husband.

I only knew Richard Kiley, an American theatrical giant and primarily in the 1960s a television performer, through that mention in Jurassic Park (1993), but he is solid as the attorney who has qualms about releasing a prisoner he knows is guilty. Robert F. Lyons, making his movie debut, brings jittery danger to the unbalanced criminal. Look out also for Charles McGraw (The Narrow Margin, 1952) as the cop determined to take Matthews down and Frank Marth (Madigan, 1968) as the subordinate who gives the suspect too much leeway – to his cost. Madeline Sherwood (Hurry Sundown, 1967) is excellent as the disturbed, needy mother.

George Schaefer, at this point a four-time Emmy award-winner, specialized in thought-provoking drama such as Inherit the Wind (TV, 1965) and Elizabeth the Queen (TV, 1968). This fits easily into that pattern. The title is a giveaway, too, referring to the pendulum swinging, “perhaps too far,” from all-powerful police to the rights of the accused taking prominence.

This was the only screenplay from Stanley Niss, who died shortly after the film’s release. He was also the producer. And better known as the writer-producer of television series like Jericho (1966-1967) and Hawaiian Eye (1959-1961).

Say hello to a different Peppard.

Uptight (1968) ****

While a misplaced attempt to relocate John Ford’s Oscar-winning The Informer (1935) to Cleveland, Ohio, after the funeral of Martin Luther King, director Jules Dassin more than makes up for it with his exploration of black militancy and racial conflict. The basic story of unemployed alcoholic Tank (Julian Mayfield) trying to regain the favor of local activist committee led by B.G. (Raymond St Jacques) is less interesting than the revolutionary backdrop.

Dassin was suited to uncovering the seamy side of life having helmed film noirs Brute Force (1947) and The Naked City (1948) and while mostly concentrating on dramas he remained best-known for heist pictures Rififi (1955) and Topkapi (1964) so it was almost a given that this movie would feature a robbery. Tank was supposed to be part of a team, led by Johnny Wells (Max Julien), hijacking guns, but he’s too drunk to help, and during the robbery after a guard is killed the finger points at Johnny.

Assailed for his lack of maintenance by Laurie (Ruby Dee), mother of his kids, who subsists on welfare and prostitution, Tank considers informing on Johnny and picking up the $1,000 reward. So the story becomes a question of whether he will succumb to temptation.

But that’s really just a MacGuffin for an insight into the problems facing the poverty-stricken black population and the armed response many feel is the only way to resolve such issues. Several outstanding sequences depict the raw emotions of people trapped in this lifestyle. The opening scene, showing the funeral of Martin Luther King, became a clarion call for violence. Laurie is humiliated by the welfare officer. Police attempting to arrest Johnny are met with a fusillade of bottles.

The case for armed insurrection is made abundantly clear. The black population is continually oppressed, not just by police violence, but being told they lack the skills for a rewarding job. “When you’re born black, you’re born dead.” B.G. rejects the offer of assistance of white civil rights activists.

Not all the locals are underdogs. Clarence (Roscoe Lee Brown), with an apartment lined with bookshelves and wearing fine clothes, does very well out of his arrangements with the police and the black welfare officer clearly gets a kick out of his power to possibly disbar Laurie from receiving welfare.

While it might have proved more incendiary at the time, it’s impossible to miss the injustice portrayed. It was almost a wake-up call for the ruling authorities that there existed a growing underground force determined to achieve equality through violence if necessary. The idea of an organized group, rather than a shambolic mob, is the other clear message.

Any actor would balk at the prospect of matching the Oscar-winning performance of Victor McLaglen in the Ford original and surely no director would entrust the task to an inexperienced actor like Julian Mayfield whose only previous screen credit was a decade before in Virgin Island (1958). Mayfield finds it impossible to conjure up the pathos required and mostly appears as a bumbling fool.

This is despite the movie going out of its way to make Tank appear more sympathetic. He could easily claim he was blackmailed into informing by wealthy stool pigeon Clarence who holds compromising photographs. But, equally, the brotherhood, should it become aware of Clarence’s activities, would surely come down on him hard. Johnny absolves Tank of responsibility for not participating in the robbery, recognizes that while the man’s bulk was useful in the past, he lacks the mind-set for robbery. And he must stay away from Laurie otherwise she will lose her welfare.

But the rest of the cast is outstanding. Raymond St Jacques (If He Hollers, Let Him Go, 1968) stands supreme as an imposing Malcolm X figure. Roscoe Lee Brown (Topaz, 1969) is persuasive as confident gay informer. Activist Ruby Dee (The Incident, 1967) is good, too. And there is strong support from Frank Silvera (Guns of The Magnificent Seven, 1969), Max Julien, best known later for The Mack (1973), and in her movie debut Janet MacLachlan giving a hint of the acting skills that would win her an Oscar nomination for Maurie (1973)

Perhaps the most important element of the picture was the screenplay, a collaboration between Julian Mayfield, Ruby Dee and Jules Dassin, the involvement of the first two ensuring that the main targets were well and truly hit. With Dassin at the helm, the movie never loses its way, tension kept high by the hunt for Johnny, the personal dilemma of Tank and the various confrontations with B.G.

This is a movie that still stands up, not just because of its fearless delineating of the times, but from the suspicion that not enough has changed in the abject poverty to which so many are condemned.

Delivers a social sting.

Missing You (2025) ***

A well-off good-looking couple trying to adopt a puppy are challenged by po-faced bureaucrat over the name they have chosen for said animal. Their purported good deed ends in disaster when he shows them a photo of the woman caught in a clinch with another man. We never see the couple again. But the prissy fella, Titus (Steve Pemberton) turns up. He’s some kind of farmer. But he runs a strange kind of operation. In his barn we catch a glimpse of a lot of guys in orange prison-style outfits kept in stalls and handcuffed to the ceiling.

And that would be wow and double wow except the algorithms have gone crazy and none of this gripping stuff occurs until episode two by which time you are bored to death by the insane amount of time devoted to Detective Kat Donovan’s (Rosalind Eleazar) woeful love life and her decade-old grieving for murdered cop father Clint (Lenny Henry).

We know more about Clint than anyone else for about every give minutes she gets all doe-eyed and we cut to flashbacks of the wonderful old dad all huggy and fun. And if that’s not enough every two minutes a colleague or relative or friend interrupts her doe-eyed contemplation to tell her to give up trying to find out why her father was murdered.

As to her love life, I can give you chapter and verse. After Josh (Ashley Walters) skipped out on her eons ago, she’s given up on commitment. She uses men for sex, pretending to be an air hostess in case the idea of dating a cop puts them off. She’s pulled up for the lack of commitment by buddy Jessica (Stacey Embalo) and various others, the same ones giving her grief about her extended grieving. But when Josh comes back into her life, albeit on a dating app, she goes all doe-eyed again – wouldn’t it be such fun to hook up again with that two-timing rat?

Luckily, Jessica is a private detective specializing in the honeytrap to expose errant husbands and even more fortunately one of her grateful clients is a prison guard who can sneak Kat into the prison where her father’s killer, doing life for two other murders, is dying. Although the killer was caught, Kat has driven herself crazy wanting to know why her father was fingered. And, luckily, there’s a prison nurse to hand who will dope up the killer with scopolamine – the old truth drug you might remember from The Guns of Navarone – so he will cough up about the murder, although we have already guessed, as our intrepid cop has not, that he didn’t kill her father just took the rap because he was already facing life for the other two killings.

In the old days, the chief cop either had no love life worth mentioning or had a different blonde/blond on his/her arm in every episode or was going through some hellish break-up, and audiences didn’t have to suffer having to empathize with the poor detective’s awry sex life. But in the old days all love life would have been shoved onto the back burner only popping up at a critical moment as some sort of narrative relief to the question in hand which was solving some horrendous case. Here, it’s the other way round, said case only pops up as a brief intermission to Kat’s awry love life and grief.

This is a Harlan Coban Netflix number but it seems very Coban-lite, a far cry from Tell No One (2006). I was a big fan of the books which seemed set in very realistic worlds with authentic plots and double-edged characters you could root for despite their failings. And mystery was the watchword. But proper mystery, a character caught up in some malfeasance, or the past coming back to haunt them, and rarely were his novels police procedurals.

The quality tailed off after a while but even then Coban knew how to hook the reader and generally the plots, though increasingly far-fetched, had sufficient spice to grip.

You are probably wondering when am I going to get to the juicy part – the case Kat is working on. Well, you see, I was wondering the same. When the heck are we going to get past all the personal angst and devote some time to the case of the missing bloke? He’s the guy who fell off a horse while riding in the lush countryside and after stumbling over said lush countryside is rescued by a fella in a tractor who stabs him with a taser.

As I said, it’s not until episode two that bad guy Titus turns up with his home-made prison and extortion racket but even then it’s hard to drag Kat away from her love life and her grieving.

Golly gosh, I just can’t wait to find out what happened with Josh and whether she will give him another chance. But is that what is meant to keep me going for the next three episodes?

Algorithms go home.

Sweeney! (1977) ****

The two-fisted trigger-happy cops that had changed the Hollywood landscape since Clint Eastwood burst onto the scene hadn’t found much correlation in the small-screen. Television producers were particularly averse to violence and even a new generation of sleuths were only a tad above the cosy crime of previous decades. Since James Bond easily covered the random killing aspect in British movies, there seemed little room for anyone else.

Sweeney! (1977), a speedy spin-off from a successful British independent television series, proved them wrong, the movie censor permitting considerably more leeway on the violence front. These cops are just itching to lay a hand on gangsters and, as if transplanted from Chicago, bring baseball bats and pistols to a fight.

The action only slows down when the subplot gets mired in delivering a political message about big business and corruption or when one of the characters has to take time out to explain the meaning of the title. Turns out there’s a sneaky high-end operator Elliott McQueen (Barry Foster) who runs a string of high-class sex workers to hook politicians like Charles Baker (Ian Bannen). When Baker’s girlfriend Janice (Lynda Bellingham) ends up in the mortuary – suicide the official verdict – McQueen applies pressure to get an oil deal done.

Baker’s gals are expert in what these days would be known as providing the “Girlfriend Experience” though the blokes they service aren’t the ones paying. But a police informant, soft on Janice, believes she was murdered and calls in Detective Inspector Jack Regan (John Thaw) to informally investigate.

When Regan treads on McQueen’s toes it triggers a spate of violence. First the informant is blown away by a machine gun from thugs disguised as coppers. Then a nosy journalist (Colin Welland) is blown up. Then Regan is stitched up and suspended from duty. Naturally, Regan persists with a surreptitious investigation. But the thugs aren’t so covert and he interrupts a gangland hit on Bianca (Diane Keen), another of the “girlfriends” who knows too much.

Not much detection required, really, when the criminals are so open about their criminality and even the most high-ranking politician or sanctimonious cop is going to find it hard to let machine-gun-toting gangsters roam through London. So there’s plenty bloody action and quite a clever pay-off.

The rampant violence in British cinema earlier in the decade had been confined to the gangsters of Get Carter (1970) and Villain (1971) and to pictures wrapped in halos of critical protection such as A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Straw Dogs (1971). Sweeney! ushered in a new era, when cops could adopt the same methods as criminals.

Regan was the rumpled cop, his sidekick Det Sgt Carter (Dennis Waterman) theoretically the more handsome, except his boss had as much success with women. What both were best at was riling superiors and arguing with everyone. You’d need a good grasp of the various policing departments to keep up – here we have Special Branch and The Flying Squad (The Sweeney) and ordinary coppers.

The predilection for selective use of Cockney rhyming slang was a feature of the British crime picture. Flying Squad translated as Sweeney Todd and was then truncated to The Sweeney. Oddly enough there was no rhyme for Special Branch and Scotland Yard, despite the advent of The Shard, has not made its way onto the rhyming dictionary.

British studios had increasingly turned to television as production levels tumbled, but generally in the comedy genre, Up Pompeii (1971), On the Buses (1971) and Steptoe and Son (1972), plus vaious sequels, registering the biggest box office.

John Thaw and sidekick Dennis Waterman proved to be long-term stalwarts of British television, the former heading up Redcap (1964), The Sweeney (1975-1978), Inspector Morse (1987-2000) and Kavanagh QC (1995-2001), the latter following The Sweeney with Minder (1979-1989) and New Tricks (2003-2015). Diane Keen starred in The Feathered Serpent (1976-1978), The Cuckoo Waltz (1975-1980), Rings on their Fingers (1978-1980), Foxy Lady (1982-1984), You Must Be the Husband (1987-1988) and various others. Lynda Bellingham, in a bit part as a naked corpse, would become a favorite through a long-running commercial.

By this time Britain had also produced a core of strong supporting actors, not of the quality of the previous generation of Laurence Olivier or John Gielgud, but with a considerable portfolio behind them, Barry Foster second-billed in Frenzy (1972), Ian Bannen Oscar-nominated in The Flight of the Phoenix (1966).

Directed with huge enjoyment by David Wickes in his movie debut from a screenplay by Ranald Graham (Shanks, 1974) and Ian Kennedy Martin (Mitchell, 1975).

Gotcha!

A Study in Terror (1965) ****

Excepting Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace (1962), the world’s most famous fictional detective had been absent from the big screen for over two decades so it seemed an inspired decision to set him on the trail of the world’s most infamous serial killer. The result is high-class comfort food, classic deduction coupled with barbaric murders in a fog-bound London replete with cobbled streets, Dickensian urchins and sex workers apop with cleavage and corset. Throw in sensitivity towards the abject poverty of the period, female exploitation and a nod towards an upper-class cover-up and you have a movie with a surprisingly contemporary outlook.

This is a tougher Holmes, handy with his fists, sporting a spring-loaded blade in his walking stick. The investigation draws in the Prime Minister (Cecil Parker) and the Home Secretary (Dudley Foster) as well as Sherlock’s pompous brother Myron (Robert Morley) and the ubiquitous Inspector LeStrade (Frank Finlay).

Pretty quickly it is Suspects Assemble. Due to a scalpel being the murderer’s instrument of choice, doctors are immediately implicated, the most likely candidate the philanthropic Dr Murray (Anthony Quayle) who operates s soup kitchen. Publican Max Steiner (Peter Carsten), with a sideline in blackmail, is another possibility. And there is the mysterious disinherited son of a lord, Michael Osborne, who has married sex worker Angela (Adrienne Corri).

As ever, the plot is complicated by red herrings and sleights of cinematic hand. But the highlight of a Holmes picture is the sleuth’s mastery of deduction based on clues missed by the ordinary mortal and every now and then the story grinds to a halt to allow time for the detective to demonstrate genius. Occasionally he dons a disguise. And thoroughly enjoyable these scenes are before he gets down to the main business of uncovering the killer.

A Study in Terror introduces social depth to the Holmes saga. When the crimes focus the media spotlight on Whitechapel Dr Murray draws attention to the constant “murder by poverty” ignored by the state. Female exploitation is of course the norm in the sex worker business and small wonder that such women are easy targets for the Ripper and although that is an overdone trope in this case a different angle comes into play.

Shakespearian actor John Neville (Oscar Wilde, 1960) handles the main character with considerable aplomb with Donald Houston (The Blue Lagoon,1949) as his often baffled sidekick Watson. Robert Morley (Genghis Khan, 1965) is a splendid Mycroft although Anthony Quayle (East of Sudan, 1964) fails to nail down his Scottish accent.

The considerable supporting cast includes Judi Dench making her second film appearance, Barbara Windsor of Carry On fame, John Fraser (Operation Crossbow, 1965), John Cairney (Jason and the Argonauts, 1963), Peter Carsten (Dark of the Sun, 1968), singer Georgia Brown (Nancy in the original stage production of Oliver!), Edina Ronay (The Black Torment, 1964), Corin Redgrave (The Girl with the Pistol, 1968), former British leading lady Kay Walsh (Oliver Twist, 1948) and future television comedy writer Jeremy Lloyd (Are You Being Served?, 1972-1985).

The picture was unusual in that it was not drawn from the existing Holmes stories but as an original devised by Derek and Donald Ford (The Black Torment), the former going onto a more extensive career as a director of British sexploitation pictures such as Suburban Wives (1972). Production company Sir Nigel Films had been set up to exploit the Holmes legacy.

Director James Hill (The Kitchen, 1961) had won an Oscar for the short Giuseppina (1960) and was a year away from his breakthrough Born Free. Given the low-budget this is a highly watchable picture.

A Twist of Sand (1968) ***

Initially promising, ultimately disappointing thriller that proves you should not go to sea without a big budget. Because he is the only skipper to have successfully negotiated the Skeleton Coast off Namibia in South Africa, smuggler Geoffrey Peace (Richard Johnson) gets roped into a scheme to collect stolen diamonds by Harry Riker (Jeremy Kemp) and Julie Chambois (Honor Blackman).

Peace knows his way around this area thanks to World War Two submarine exploits and that particular expedition is recalled both in a flashback and its repercussions form part of a plot. Also on board the boat are the goggle-eyed knife-wielding Johann (Peter Vaughn) and Peace’s shipmate David (Roy Dotrice).

Peace has to navigate through the treacherous waters of the Skeleton Coast before the team embark on a trek through the desert to find the diamonds, hidden in the unlikely location of a shipwreck, itself in imminent danger of being buried in an avalanche of sand that could be triggered by sudden movement or sound.

On paper – and it has been adapted from the bestseller by Geoffrey Jenkins – it has all the ingredients of a top-class thriller, but it doesn’t quite gel. For a start, the flashback, where Peace has to hunt down a new class of German submarine and not only sink it but make sure there are no survivors, gets in the way of the action.

The sexual tension you might expect to simmer between Peace and Julie does not appear to exist, the bulk of the threat coming from the villainous-looking pair, Riker and Johann, the former already known to be untrustworthy, the latter too fond of producing a knife at odd occasions. The trek into the desert takes way too long and rather than increase tensions slackens it off and there is no real explanation as to why the ship was lost so far into the desert without entering Clive Cussler archaeological territory.

Extracting the diamonds is certainly a taut scene, with the sand dunes threatening to collapse any moment but the climax you saw coming a long way off and although there is an ironic twist it is not enough to save the picture.

On the plus side, Richard Johnson (Deadlier Than The Male, 1967) shucks off the suave gentleman-spy persona of Bulldog Drummond to emerge as a snarly, believable smuggler. But Honor Blackman (Moment to Moment, 1966) is wasted and this is one of the least effective bad guy portraits from the Jeremy Kemp (The Blue Max, 1966) catalog. Roy Dotrice (The Heroes of Telemark, 1965) is better value while Peter Vaughn (Hammerhead, 1968), menacing enough just standing still, overplays the villain.

Set up as a thriller very much in the Alistair MacLean vein, this shows just how good MacLean’s material was, how great a command he had of structure and not just of action but twists along the way. A Twist of Sand wobbles once too often in its structure and never quite manages to build up the necessary tension between characters. Although the Skeleton Coast sea-scene falls apart due to defective special effects, the other two sequences at sea are well done, the opening section where Peace is chased by Royal Navy vessels, and the underwater attack on the German submarine where murky water manages to obscure the effects sufficiently they appear effective enough.

Don Chaffey (The Viking Queen, 1967) does his best with material that’s not quite up to standard. Marvin H. Albert (Tony Rome, 1967) doesn’t do as good a job of adapting other people’s work as he does his own.

Die Hard (1988) ***** – Seen at the Cinema

Kiss goodbye to your suicidal small town banker helped by a passing angel who had dominated the Xmas reissue horizon for half a century. There’s a new Xmas sheriff in town and he doesn’t play by any merry rules. Some marketing whiz has hit upon the notion that an action picture with a pretty vague Xmas background would be a better bet for the contemporary audience than James Stewart in the snowbound It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) that owed a great deal of its popularity to the fact that it was out of copyright and could be played on extremely inexpensive terms – a better Xmas present a cinema owner could not expect.

This is one of these moves that cries out to be revisited on the big screen. I saw it on Monday this week and was astonished to find that it had attracted a full house. You forget how much of a revelation this was, a complete rethink of the action hero. Sure, it owed something to the muscular heroics of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, but they always seemed like they were looking for trouble. Albeit that he’s a cop, Bruce Willis was a throwback to the kind of movie where a relatively innocent character gets caught up in mischief.

And it’s surprisingly contemporary in its attitude to romance, New York cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) left behind by careerist wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia), who reverted to her maiden name when she headed out to Los Angeles with the kids. He’s made the trip to try and stitch back their marriage, but only comes to terms with his failings as a careerist cop once he’s battered and bloodied in the Nakatomi tower where his wife and 30 other employees are being held hostage by heist merchant Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), posing as a terrorist in order to steal 600 million bucks from one of the most secure vaults in the world.

This isn’t one of those robberies where we’re told in advance of the plans, instead as the strategy takes shape we can only marvel at Gruber’s brilliance and ruthlessness. He’s not, as would be the norm, trying to hijack cash on the quiet, but instead needs the “assistance” of the FBI to complete his program.

Bruce Willis had been struggling to establish a big screen persona that took him away from the smirking quip-slinger of Moonlighting (1985-1989). Blake Edwards romantic comedy Blind Date (1987) and the same director’s Hollywood drama Sunset (1988) had signally failed to advance his marquee credentials. Donning a vest, losing his shoes, picking glass from his feet, blasting away at all and sundry, and using brains as much as bullets to outwit the robbers, set him on a new career path.

Director John McTiernan was a rising star having helmed Predator (1987) but this was a different kind of actioner to the Schwarzenegger sci-fi malarkey. There’s nothing trim about the timing – it comes in a just under two-and-a-quarter hours – but that allows not just for a proper three-act set-up and several twists, but, more importantly, through a series of clever devices, permits the character to breathe. Through intermittent contact with street cop Sgt Powell (Reginald VelJohnson), we learn a good deal more about McClane and, critically, his change of heart about his marriage.

Unusually, for an action picture it’s riddled with interesting characters, not just bureaucratic nincompoops and FBI gunslingers fully conversant with acceptable collateral damage, but two kings of smugness, one a television reporter (William Atherton), the other a high-ranking executive who has his eye on Holly.

And that’s before we come to the villains. For Gruber, British actor Alan Rickman was drafted in from the stage, no movie credentials at all, and created a silky supervillain every bit as memorable as those who challenged James Bond. In fact, in other circumstances his sidekick, former ballet dancer Alexander Gudonov, should have stolen the show as he had threatened to in Witness (1985). Perhaps the most surprising casting was Bonnie Bedelia. She’d been a female lead or top billed (The Stranger, 1987) for more than a decade, and what she brings to the role is the quiet skill of not over-acting.

If you weren’t particularly interested in the well-drawn characters, you would be more than happy with the extensive action sequences which set new highs for the genre. This should have revived Frank Sinatra’s career since he had first dibs on the character, a sequel to The Detective (1968). And Clint Eastwood for a time had the rights. Screenplay by Jeb Stuart (The Fugitive, 1993) and Steven E. de Souza (48 Hrs, 1982) from the novel by Roderick Thorp.

But yippee-ki-yay, it sure made a star out of Willis.

Top notch.