Five-Star Review – The Magnificent 60s

The Ipcress File (1965) *****

Stylish take on the espionage genre when it was still in its infancy and could accommodate stylish directors like Sidney J. Furie (The Appaloosa, 1966). Eschewing the bombastic effects and villains of the James Bond series, relying more on intrigue and the elements of betrayal that other practitioners of the dark arts such as John Le Carre espoused, this is as much a character study and presents in some cases a fairer picture of the class struggle in Britain than most kitchen-sink dramas. So it’s either going to put you off entirely or make you appreciate the film more when I tell you that my favorite scene is the fistfight between Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) and shaven-headed thug Housemartin (Oliver MacGreevy) outside the Royal Albert Hall in London that is shot entirely through the windows of a traditional red telephone box. You can’t say bolder than that.

The credit sequence, more famously ripped off by William Goldman for private eye saga Harper/The Moving Target (1966), is equally inspired. An alarm clock wakes Palmer, he reaches out for the girl who shared his bed last night to discover she is gone and then punctiliously and as if time-shifted to the twenty-first century when it would be the norm proceeds to grind fresh coffee beans, fill a cafetiere with only as much liquid as would constitute a small espresso, dresses and last but not least searches among the disturbed bedclothes for his gun.

Palmer is transferred from dull surveillance duties to a team hunting for missing scientists. Given both his insolent and insubordinate manner, he is not expected to fit in to a service riddled with the upper-classes. His new superior Dalby (Nigel Green), a “passed-over major,” owes his present situation to Palmer’s former boss Colonel Ross (Guy Doleman) and both sport three-piece suits, bowler hats and umbrellas and speak in those clipped tones that invariably carry undertones of menace. Where James Bond’s front, the import-export business, is rather more upmarket, here the background is considerably downmarket, Dalby masquerading as the owner of an employment agency and distributor of fireworks. It is insatiably bureaucratic, reams of forms to be filled in. What Palmer has in common with James Bond, beyond fisticuffs, is the ability to think outside the box and in this case picks the brains of a policeman friend to track down the wanted villain, code-named Bluejay (Frank Gatliff)

As in the best post-Bond espionage, there are traitors everywhere, and the departments employing spies tend to employ other spies to spy upon them, though in this case Palmer has the luck to draw the sexy Jean (Sue Lloyd). When Palmer picks up the trail of Ipcress, the plot thickens. There is no shortage of action, a gun battle, fisticuffs, but it presents a different approach to modern espionage, with a properly rounded hero – one who can cook (as did author Len Deighton who wrote a cookery column) for a start – while the ladies, with whom he shares a roving eye with Bond, are not required to turn up in bikinis.

There is deft employment of that favorite British cultural emblem – irony – and one wonderful scene takes place in a park where Dalby taps his cane in appreciation of a brass band. Throw in a bit of brainwashing and it’s a completely different proposition to Bond who could escape such a dilemma in a trice. There is a clever ending.

Michael Caine (Hurry Sundown, 1967), complete with spectacles, is superb as Palmer, making enough of an impression that the series ran for another four episodes. The stiff-upper-lip brigade have a field day in Nigel Green (Jason and the Argonauts, 1963) and Guy Doleman (Thunderball, 1965), the latter shading it with his purported sense of humor. Sue Lyon (Corruption, 1968) is excellent as the seemingly unattainable gal who falls within Palmer’s purvey but not entirely due to his charm. The villains, too, are not from the James Bond school of cut-outs, but come across as equally human, and the chief rascal you could argue has the most finely developed sense of humor of the lot. Throw in Gordon Jackson (Danger Route, 1967) and Freda Bamford (Three Bites of the Apple, 1967) as the bureaucratic attack-dog Alice and you have a very well cast movie.

Sidney J. Furie divided critics. Some believed he was ahead of his time, others that he was in thrall to arty French directors, and a reasonable number who didn’t give a stuff as long as he delivered the goods. But his predilection for odd angles here proves a strength, his compositional excellence also spot-on, one scene in particular where in a library Palmer looks down on the villain with Housemartin on a landing between. And he takes great delight in emphasizing the class distinctions, both bosses have huge offices with a small desk in the corner, and when Ross places briefcase, umbrella and bowler hat on the desk of Dalby it could not be a more clear invasion.

And you can’t forget the score by espionage doyen John Barry (Goldfinger, 1964). W.H. Canaway (A Boy Ten Feet Tall, 1963) and James Doran, making his movie debut, adapted Len Deighton’s classy bestseller but a fair amount of polish was added by thriller writer Lionel Davidson (Hot Enough for June, 1964), Johanna Harwood (Dr No, 1962), Lukas Heller (The Dirty Dozen, 1967) and Ken Hughes (Arrivederci, Baby, 1966).

A spy classic.

None but the Brave (1965) *****

Frank Sinatra’s sole stab at direction is an astonishing piece of work and deserves to be revisited in a more positive frame of mind than it encountered on original release. Maybe critical acclaim depends on your name, and most critics were already tearing into Ol’ Blue Eyes because his acting in the 1960s scarcely matched his work in the 1950s – From Here to Eternity (1953), The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), Guys and Dolls (1955), High Society (1956) and Pal Joey (1957).

On the other hand critics were all over themselves when John Boorman and Clint Eastwood went down a similar route in Hell in the Pacific (1968) and the double header Flags of Our Fathers (2006) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), respectively, and American audiences griped about the even-handedness of Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970).

Not only is this primarily presented from the Japanese point-of-view, opening and closing with scenes involving the Japanese, but it is not so much even-handed as presenting the opposing sides in exactly the same manner, so that the “enemy” is never viewed as such but as a rag-tag collection of ordinary men thrust into warfare.

While there’s certainly courage on show, there’s also more than a war movie’s normal share of rashness and stupidity, disobedience, the flouting of orders, the challenging of the line of command and that taboo subject – death from friendly fire. There are clever maneuvers and outwitting the opposition.

The composition of both sides could be echoes of each other. Both have calm leaders in Capt Dennis Bourke (Clint Walker) and Lt Kuroki (Tatsuya Mihashi) who both struggle to keep in line intemperate subordinates, Second Lieut Blair (Tommy Sands) and Sgt Tamuro (Takeshi Kato) who tend to issue orders at a scream and in the latter instance with a slap in the face. Both lieutenant and sergeant, career soldiers, bristle at having to accept orders from less experienced officers.

None of the recruits are worth a button as soldiers. On the Japanese side we have a Buddhist priest, on the American side guys who wouldn’t recognize a trap even when they fell into it. Bourke also has to contend with loudmouth Sgt Bleeker (Brad Dexter), itching to start a fight.

The Americans have one trump card – and it’s not weaponry. They have someone with the medical skill to save a badly wounded Japanese soldier. And although he’s only a pharmacist (Frank Sinatra) he’s got enough knowledge to carry out an amputation. The Japanese have their own trump cards – food and water. And the two leaders effect a truce. You know it won’t last, of course, which leads to a savage ending, though a touching climax.

There’s plenty action, more than you might expect, since generally in this kind of war movie we spend ages getting to know the soldiers long before there’s any reason to fire a shot or explode a bomb. All we know about the Americans is that they shouldn’t be here, they were flying elsewhere when their plane crash-landed on a remote island they believe is unoccupied. All we know about the Japs is that they’re trying to get off the island by building a boat.

Foolish soldiers on either side upset the leader’s strategies so the bullets soon fly. The Japanese on sighting an American warship cruising close by have the cleverest notion, running up a Japanese flag, which the sailors take to mean the island is under Japanese control and begin a bombardment which kills Americans. The Yanks, on the other hand, manage to steal the Japanese boat, but only for a short time before a grenade puts paid to any notions of escape.

In most war movies that pay any attention to the lives of the soldiers, that usually concentrates on sentiment, women left behind, families abandoned and so forth and while this strays into that territory once, the bulk of the time we see character revealed by current action, which is a more difficult thing to achieve, but far more rewarding.

Given his duties behind the camera, Frank Sinatra (Robin and the 7 Hoods, 1964) wisely plays a largely supporting role, restricted to the occasional wisecrack, but allocated one big central scene so that audiences don’t feel they’ve not had their money’s worth. But, actually, he relinquishes the most important scene to someone else. An armed American soldier coming across an unarmed half-naked Japanese who has been catching fish can’t bring himself to shoot him because you shouldn’t shoot a good fisherman.

There’s not much in the way of visuals or composition to write home about, but this film didn’t require such virtuosity, the director more than makes it work by sticking to the knitting, and concentrating on the humanity and refusing to allow the enemy to be portrayed as such.

Clint Walker (Sam Whiskey, 1969) and Tatsuya Mihashi (Tora! Tora! Tora!) carry the picture effortlessly while their rebellious underlings, singer Tommy Sands (Ensign Pulver, 1964) and Takeshi Kato (Yojimbo, 1961) do their best to steal the picture. Look out for Brad Dexter (The Magnificent Seven, 1960) and future producer Tony Bill (The Sting, 1973).

Written by John Twist (A Distant Trumpet, 1964), Katsuya Susaki (Way Out, Way In, 1970) and the film’s producer Kikumaru Okuda.

Not to be missed. A war classic.

Project Hail Mary (2026) ***** – Seen (Three Times) at the Cinema

Excited as I was at the prospect of another film from the author of The Martian (2015), which I’ve seen at least half a dozen times, I was wary at the idea of spending so much time watching just one actor on screen, having been subjected to the hubris of Chris Pratt a few weeks back in Mercy (2026) where I was bored out of my skull with staring at his visage for the best part of two hours. Sure, Tom Hanks managed to hold our attention virtually single-handed in Cast Away (2000) , but he’s a double Oscar-winner and if you can’t rely on someone of that stature to hold your attention, who can. Ryan Gosling has come nowhere near the Oscar circle though this bravura performance may change his fortunes.

Since I don’t have a scientific bone in my body I’m a sucker for these space pictures where astronauts have to tinker with all sorts of technology to save their lives or the world, the two are often inseparable. Here, the object of the exercise could not be bigger. Non-astronaut and unwilling volunteer Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) has to save the sun from being gobbled up by pesky microbes. Turns out our sun isn’t the only one at risk. Another sun in a distant galaxy is also at threat and Grace has to buddy up with an alien, whom he nicknames Rocky, to come up with a scheme to save both suns.

So, there’s a lot of science, but it made sense to me (though I’m no expert), and plenty setbacks and it’s touch-and-go whether our heroes will meet with success, bearing in mind that this is a suicide mission and the best Grace can hope for is a peaceful death because he knows he’s got no chance of reaching home nor surviving in space beyond a few years.

But, actually, at the core of the picture is the kind of relationship that would replicate that seen in Spielberg’s E.T. (1981) except that little Rocky is more of a big brother to Grace than a hapless alien.

Every now and then we flit back to Earth for a flashback which explains how high-school teacher Grace came to be selected for the mission and, given I’m not such a mean plot-spoiler, sets a high bar for humanizing our hero, explaining exactly how when he wakes up in the spaceship he doesn’t know why he’s there. Grace and Rocky are, for whatever reason, the only survivors of the crews of their respective spaceships. I’m not sure how to describe the alien spaceship, it seems to be made of something and nothing, while Rocky is capable of cladding himself in what resembles multi-sided plastic and can construct a steel fishing rod four miles long in the twinkle of an eye.

Just as Matt Damon learns how to grow potatoes on Mars, so our intrepid pair embark on a series of unusual activities in order to win the day. Back on Earth sour-faced boss Eva (Sandra Huller) has, literally, a show-stopping scene when she picks up the mic and warbles a karaoke tune.

You might quibble at the running time (157 minutes) but in an era of overblown over-long self-indulgent epics, this makes every minute count and I didn’t look at my watch once. Andy Weir knows his stuff, or can invent enough of it to make us believe in his concepts, so part of the process of this picture is going through what works of the technology and what doesn’t and alighting on the equivalent of the sling shot to see us home free.

And in an era of the overblown etc, how welcoming to find genuine emotion so underplayed back on Earth, the connection between Grace and Eva barely tickling along until she picks up the karaoke mic.

I’ve not been a huge fan of Ryan Gosling (Barbie, 2024) of the floppy hair and stupid grin, but when he’s thrown into a serious picture that lightweight personality works wonders. Rocky, too, is a great creation, a completely new idea of an alien.

Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (22 Jump St, 2014), this is a terrific experience. Written by Drew Goddard (The Martian).

The last time science met feel-good was E.T. and this doesn’t fall far short.

Three Days of the Condor (1975) *****

My belated tribute to the recently-deceased Robert Redford. He’s made a bunch of worthier films and his pair with Paul Newman – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and The Sting (1973) – take some beating. But this is the one I go back to the most because it combines worthiness with thrills and two stunning performances.

Outstanding thriller in the paranoia vein with Robert Redford delivering one of his best performances. Never mind the terrific score by Dave Grusin (Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, 1969), the soundtrack to this tale of political chicanery involving the C.I.A. is the chattering of computer printers.

Joe Turner (Robert Redford) is an amiable geek – beanie hat, unfashionable Solex moped – working in an obscure department of the C.I.A. (although one where the receptionist has a gun in her desk drawer) looking for codes in novels. He doesn’t quite conform to type, irritating his rules-conscious colleagues, late for work, illicitly using the back door instead of the front. On returning from collecting lunch, he finds the entire department massacred. His Washington boss Higgins (Cliff Robertson) promises to bring him in but instead arranges an ambush.

On the run, unable to return to his own apartment, his girlfriend Janice (Tina Chen) among those murdered, he kidnaps photographer Kathy (Faye Dunawaye) at first content to find somewhere to hole up but then using her to help him resolve the issues. It’s soon apparent that Turner, in his desk job, has stumbled upon a secret organisation deep within the C.I.A. In a touch of the Hitchcocks, director Sydney Pollack (The Scalphunters, 1968) lets the audience know what Turner does not, that Higgins and his bosses Wabash (John Houseman) and Atwood (Addison Powell) are out for his blood, assassin Joubert (Max von Sydow) the triggerman.

But as Joubert points out, Turner is an amateur and that makes him unpredictable. The killers believe Turner will easily be dealt with. But he’s not as stupid or unresourceful as they might expect. The opening section reveals just how handy he is: fixing a computer, knowledgeable about plants and for some reason the weather, working out an insoluble murder in a book, and most important of all has learned to trust nobody especially his bosses. It turns out he’s got a few of his own tricks up his sleeve, not least how to work a telephone exchange to his advantage and how to flush out his adversaries.

There’s a terrific game of cat-and-mouse and in possibly the only picture in the early cycle of conspiracy pictures the first character capable of harnessing technology.

You often read about character-driven movies but that’s only usually in the sense of dramatic flaws or preferring exploring personality to action. This is character-driven in an entirely different way. Turner’s life depends on him being able to read character, to notice what’s wrong or false in a given situation, to assess the qualities of those around him. For much of the dialogue, Turner is observing as much as listening, watching for behavioural clues.

*Original title of “Six Days of the Condor” “wasn’t snappy enough for Hollywood.*

Even without the presence of Kathy, this would have been a highly satisfactory thriller. But the tentative romance takes it to another level. Unusually, she is a loner, whose photographic metier is loneliness. That they bond at all is surprising, that they do so with such touching emotion brings unexpected intimacy.

There’s a very contemporary feel to the politics, not just American authorities doing what they want but the idea that liberal values will vanish the moment there is genuine threat to loss of the high living standards citizens enjoy or, worse, oil or gas rationing or famine. “Do we have plans to invade the Middle East?” Turner demands of Higgins. You can’t get more contemporary than that! And at one point Turner uses unsuspecting people as a human shield.

For such a fast-moving picture, time is taken out to understand the characters involved, Higgins not quite as far up the espionage tree as he should be, Joubert’s hobby the meticulous painting of model soldiers. A peck on the cheek is all the information we are given that Tina, a work colleague, is Turner’s girlfriend.

As Kathy moves from indignant captive to welcome participant, you can see that she represents the desire of many liberals to give the authorities a bloody nose. There is one brilliant moment at the end where Turner’s fears overcome his feelings and the devastation of what she perceives as emotional betrayal is seen on her face.

But this is Robert Redford’s picture. He was on an almighty box office roll – Jeremiah Johnson (1972), The Sting (1973), The Way We Were (1973), The Great Gatsby (1974), The Great Waldo Pepper (1975) and on the horizon All the President’s Men (1976). Every minute of the movie his face or body are working hard, eyes constantly involved in the character observation I mentioned. He goes from being light-hearted and handsome at the start to serious and deadly at the end. And there are some superb bits of business. When the rain stops, for example, he checks his watch to see it has ended when he predicted. When he returns after lunch, he peers down over the steps to see that his moped that earlier some kids had tried to steal was still there.

This is probably the quietest you’ll ever see Faye Dunaway (A Place for Lovers, 1968). She is an enigma, the puzzle only uncovered in her photographs. But as a photographer, she is also an observer, and she soon likes what she sees in Turner. The strong supporting cast includes Cliff Robertson (Masquerade, 1965), Max von Sydow (The Quiller Memorandum, 1966), John Houseman (Seven Days in May, 1964), Tina Chen (Alice’s Restaurant, 1969) and Addison Powell (The Thomas Crown Affair, 1968).

Sydney Pollack does an exceptional job, cutting between the pursuers and the pursued. The opening sequence itself is quite superb as the director sets up the massacre which is carried out in silence, machine guns fitted with suppressors, while providing insight into Turner. Based on the bestseller Six Days of the Condor by James Grady, the intelligent screenplay by Lorenzo Semple Jr.(Fathom, 1967, and The Parallax View, 1974) and David Rayfiel (Castle Keep, 1969) keeps everyone on their toes.

More straightforwardly enjoyable than Coppola’s self-conscious The Conversation (1974) and Pakula’s occasionally opaque The Parallax View (1974) with computer surveillance, giving this another contemporary edge, a key factor in the way the tale that switches between pursued and pursuer

The Sting (1973) *****

There was a time when movies had charm. An easy grace. A fluidity. The ability to hold an audience in the palm of their hands with the simplest of narratives. Sadly, that time is long gone. I doubt if any Hollywood director – so raddled now by self-indulgence and self-importance – would even know how to make this kind of souffle.

I haven’t watched this movie in decades. And I fully expected to dismiss it as having aged badly. Instead, I just adored it. In part that is due to what is surely the greatest male screen partnership ever. It wasn’t uncommon then and now for two top stars to be paired together, but usually the narrative had them in conflict. That’s not the case here. There’s a reason why Paul Newman and Robert Redford were credited in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) with inventing the buddy movie. Their screen personas just dovetail and they appear so comfortable with each other.

Sure, the story is a cracker, and the direction is impeccable, what with using long-gone techniques like the wipe, and the chapter headings, and, of course, the adaptation of the Scott Joplin music and audience exposure to the techniques of pulling the “big con” and the secret nose-stroking by which fraudsters identified each other. But while this premise would surely have worked with another duo, it would not have worked half as well.

This was Robert Redford’s annus mirabilis. It’s impossible these days to comprehend his impact, for the simple reason that stars rarely release two movies in the one year. Following Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Redford had been there or thereabouts without quite taking the final step required to become a box office sensation, indulging himself in worthy pictures like The Candidate (1972) and Jeremiah Johnson (1972), but the latter was decidedly under-performing until Warner Bros sent it long after initial release down the “four-wall” route that would prove pivotal to The Exorcist (1973), whereby a studio hired theaters to show a movie, paying a flat fee that covered an exhibitor’s costs and some profit rather than splitting the proceeds on a percentage basis.

But the double whammy of The Way We Were (1973) and The Sting sent Redford’s marquee value into the stratosphere. And he’s not the big romantic lead that he was in the Streisand picture, if anything he comes up short in the romantic department, dumb enough to seduce a female assassin. He’s always one way or another needing to be rescued from a self-induced calamity rather than the confident gunslinger of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with an adoring woman hanging on his every word.

There are a couple of other memorable pieces of acting that I’d like to draw to your attention. The first is Reford’s thumbs, which always seem to stick out, the reason for which is never explained and possibly they’ve been beaten by previous malfeasance into that position. The second isn’t Robert Shaw’s pronounced limp, but his menacing catchphrase “You follow?” which must be the toughest two words outside of swearing ever spoken by a gangster.

Seeking revenge on underworld kingpin Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw), on-the-run con man Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford) teams up with the more experienced Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman). The plan is to rook Lonnegan of half a million dollars. They’re going to do it with a racing scam, where they know the results of a race before anyone else.

But first Gondorff needs to find finance and needle Lonnegan enough to bait the hook. He achieves both by stealing Lonnegan’s wallet before using that cash for his wagers and cheating better than Lonnegan at poker.

Then Hooker has to pretend that he’s fallen out with Gondorff and willing to work with Lonnegan to screw two million bucks out of Gondorff. Meanwhile, to spice up the plot, maverick cop Snyder (Charles Durning) is on the trail of Hooker and the FBI are on the trail of Gondorff.

The payoff is so brilliant that audiences at the time reputedly cheered and I have to say I felt like doing so myself.

Robert Redford was nominated for an Oscar but I think the acting honors were even with Newman. The movie won the Best Film Oscar and Best Director for George Roy Hill (Hawaii, 1966) and usually when you come to re-evaluate Oscars you tend to mark down many of the choices because they don’t really hold up. This was up against The Exorcist, American Graffiti, Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers and the comedy A Touch of Class, so it wasn’t as though there was another better contender.

I like to think it won for bravura. Elan. In every department. Fresh and innovative, oozing charm and with the greatest double act in American cinema.

Director George Roy Hill (Hawaii, 1966) was on a roll and the screenplay by David S. Ward (Steelyard Blues, 1973) hit a home run.

There’s hardly been a more enjoyable Oscar-winner.

True Grit (1969) *****

An old-style western with a modernized anti-hero in Rooster Cogburn (John Wayne), nearly as “rapaciously brutal” as the same year’s The Wild Bunch, a script with language that captured the period, a heroine Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) who falls into the robust Barbara Stanwyck/Maureen O’Hara mold, humor and action in equal measure, and an unfussy director (Henry Hathaway) who loved the panorama even more than John Ford.

Although still critically rated as not as good as The Wild Bunch, and still mostly disdained by academics, I would argue that it has been grossly under-rated and fully deserving of a re-evaluation. In the first place, despite direction very much in the old school, Hathaway exhibits many stylistic flourishes, not least the very long shot which has rarely been used to such effect. He also utilizes the shaky-camera point-of-view in a much more effective manner than Mackenna’s Gold (1969) to record Cogburn’s charge at the outlaws and there is even a zoom, to pick out the villain Tom Chaney.

Also, you know exactly where you are in a Hathaway picture, not just in the narrative sense, but in terms of how people lived and where the towns and farms were in relation to each other (the Ross farm is 70 miles from Fort Smith, the hamlet of McAllister 60 miles from the villains’ hideout). He liked to show many aspects of a town, so we see where the courthouse is in relation to the jail and the stable by the simple expedient of having the characters walk past them. And the movie is littered with sound effects of the most ordinary kind (blacksmith’s hammer, train whistle, footsteps). The film is as much about progress as Once Upon a Time in the West and The Wild Bunch, the name of the town, Fort Smith, where much of the initial action takes place, indicates it was once a frontier town.

Rooster Cogburn feels crowded out by a new generation of lawyers challenging swift justice, and Mattie Ross, hunting the killers of her father, is well schooled in argument, winning many a confrontation with apparently more experienced and wily men by being more adept at negotiation and like a chess player always one move ahead. The aftermath of the Civil War lingers in the background, demonstrated by Mattie’s weapon and Cogburn’s antipathy to Texas Ranger LaBeef (Glen Campbell). But the story strikes an even balance, no matter how assured Mattie Ross comes across in civilization she almost comes apart in the wilds and without the protection of Cogburn would have met the kind of fate at the hands of men undergone by female characters in The Stalking Moon (1969), Mackenna’s Gold and The Wild Bunch.

It should be said here that the movie is full of audience direction, we are always told where Mattie will go next or where Cogburn is intending to go, with accompanying plausible reason, especially when later Cogburn calls off the hunt for the outlaws. There is no exploration of mystery, the characters are always upfront, and where characters express regret is it minus the self-pitying of The Wild Bunch. Nobody is defined by something they should have done instead, so, in that respect, the narrative is as clear as the overall direction.

We hear Cogburn’s voice before we see him, as if the director is preparing us for a different John Wayne. This is the actor in a new timbre, the usual slow drawl replaced by a raucous bark. And it is a different Wayne, one eye covered in a black patch, giving him a piratical look. He hustles the prisoners out, kicking one straggler viciously in the butt. Wayne walks differently, too. Instead of the famous slow walk, Cogburn is a man in a hurry, pushing forward with purposeful stride, ignoring Mattie as she comes racing after him, slamming the basement door in her face.

LeBeef is another dreamer, “nobody yet” but aiming to “marry well”, in this case “a well-placed young lady in Waco” who would “look with favor” on him for bringing back Chaney who has also killed a senator. His charm fails to convince Mattie to join forces. She sees right through him: “I have no regard for you but I’m sure you have enough for yourself to go around.”

Then comes a four-minute Mattie tour de force as she confronts Col Stonehill (Strother Martin) and demands $300 in reparation for the loss of her father’s saddle and for selling him dodgy horses. She threatens him with the law in the shape of Daggett, her secret weapon, and she knows enough about legality to beat Stonehill at his own game. Even better, this is no meek woman. It is one thing to be able to score points off an old lawman like Cogburn, who would have been putty in the hands of any capable woman of the Stanwyck/O’Hara variety, but another to outwit a wily old horse-dealer like Stonehill (his title a hangover from the Civil War and one which ensures a measure of respect). Even better again, she knows she will win, so confident that she has already drawn up the papers to sign.

Now neither Cogburn nor LeBeef are witness to this demonstration of her capability, so they will, naturally, treat her as a young girl, “baby sister” in Cogburn’s dismissive term. But Hathaway is setting a trap for the audience. Having witnessed this display, we think she will be able to hold her own in the wilderness, mistaking her willfulness for sagacity, and so are on her side in her attempts to win over the two men, when, in fact, she will prove to be so out of her depth as to endanger herself and others.

The pursuit is dogged, and everyone at some point is found wanting. Cogburn smokes the villains out from their cabin and would kill the others without warning except LaBeef objects out of principle and Mattie wants Chaney alive.

At Mattie’s prompting, we hear Cogburn’s mostly unvarnished, but never maudlin, history, he lost his eye in the war, committed a robbery to fund the purchase of an eating place that had a billiard table, married a grass widow, until she left him for her first husband, taking their son, Horace, hiding his sorrow at the boy’s departure in a grumpy “he never liked me anyway” and berating him as “clumsy.” When she lies down to sleep, he gazes at her fondly for the first time, perhaps prompted by memory of his loss.

In the climactic shoot-out, in the most famous John Wayne image since his character’s introduction in Stagecoach (1969), first in long shot then from his point-of-view with a shaky camera, he grasps the reins in his teeth and fires two-handed. He kills two but Pepper shoots his horse from under him and Cogburn, in a sign of his age when otherwise traditionally cowboys leap free of a falling horse, is trapped on the ground under the weight of the animal, unable to reach his gun or to shift. The wounded Pepper advances. He towers over Cogburn until LaBeef, whose marksmanship had previously been in question, saves his life.

And that should pretty much have been the end of the picture, roll credits with Chaney being hung, but there is still nearly 15 minutes to go. Returning to collect Chaney, LaBeef is ambushed, cracked on the head by a rock. Mattie shoots Chaney but the recoil sends her into the snake pit. Cogburn arrives in time to kill the wanted man, also sending him into the pit. She has damaged her shoulder and cannot pull herself up on a rope so Cogburn has to descend. He shoots a rattlesnake but another bites her.

She still had enough presence of mind to demand he first collect her fallen gun and her father’s gold piece from Chaney’s corpse. As he hauls himself up, a dazed LaBeef, mounted on a horse, pulls on the tope to ease their ascent, but the effort is too much, and he keels over and dies.

Mattie strokes his head, the first sign of her changed feelings towards him. Alternatively, this could be guilt because it was her wrong-headedness that caused his death, but that seems unlikely, she is not one to covet regret. Cogburn slaps saliva on the wound (rather than, as we might expect from watching other westerns, sucking out the poison), puts her arm in a sling, and sticks her on Blackie, her horse, despite her protests about the little horse carrying such a weight. Cogburn is ruthless, riding the horse so hard it dies. Then he carries her and finally steals a buggy.

Where previously most of the journey had been rendered in long shot, now Hathaway reverts to medium shot and close up of the haggard Cogburn racing desperately to save the girl’s life. When we cut to Cogburn and Chen Lee instinctively we know she has been saved. The lawyer Daggett appears to pay Cogburn what he is owed plus $200 for saving her life, though, typically, she has prepared a receipt for him to sign.

Then she is home. It is winter. Snow lies on the ground. Cogburn explains there was no woman waiting for LaBeef, though the marshal has collected the reward. She shows him her father’s grave and wants Cogburn, the father she has adopted, to be buried in the same burial ground. She gives him her father’s gun and in a final triumphant moment the “fat old man” gloriously rides over a four-bar fence waving his hat in the air.

John Wayne received just reward with his Oscar, Glen Campbell (The Cool Ones, 1967) does better than we might expect from a singer. Kim Darby (Bus Riley’s Back in Town, 1965) was ignored by Oscar voters but she certainly holds her own. Terrific direction by Henry Hathaway (5 Card Stud, 1968) from a script by Marguerite Roberts (5 Card Stud) based on the bestseller by Charles Portis (Norwood, 1970).

Unmissable.

Landman (2024) *****

The blue collar worker has not taken up much of Hollywood’s time. There was a movie disdainfully called Blue Collar (1978) but the best pictures about people doing actual physical hard work was Five Easy Pieces (1971) about a fella who was putting in the long yards to spite his old man and The Molly Maguires (1968) which was more about politics and anarchy. The British did it better, but concentrating on the monotony, in such ventures as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and Gold (1974). though images of anyone getting their hands dirty was fleeting

Generally, films about work are movies or television series about management (Wall St, 1989 or Succession, ) and/or a soap opera (Dallas). Most commonly, there’s a picture about farming – Grapes of Wrath (1940), The River (1984)– but there’s very little farming involved. You get a better idea of what it’s like to till the earth from the recurrent image in Gladiator (2000) when Maximus smells the soil.

Until Taylor Sheridan came along and realized the immense dramatic potential of actual hands-on dirty work and rode Yellowstone (2018-2024) to enormous critical success and sufficient commercial endowment to be able to write his own ticket. I rarely buy DVDs these days, not because I’ve already got thousands of themd, but because that old impetus is long gone, the days when we desperately waited for a movie to turn up at the video rental store, one that you couldn’t otherwise get your hands on or missed on its cinema release, one that you wanted to own so you could watch it again and again.

Now I tend to buy DVDs if I don’t have a subscription to a particular streamer. I did it for Yellowstone and I did it for this Taylor Sheridan enterprise Landman.

On the face of it, this might seem like another oil or big business venture where the emphasis is on wheeling and dealing and heirs fighting over money and how to spend it and everyone just the hell arguing because that’s instant drama. The element devoted here to wheeling and dealing is negligible, restricted to oil tycoon Monty Miller (Jon Hamm), one whisky away from a heart attack, at the other end of a phone getting agitated and taking out his frustration on anyone in sight.

Instead, it’s about very dirty work, the kind where workmen come home saturated in filth and the kind where you could in a flash lose your hand or your life. There have been four instantaneous deaths so far and I’m only at episode six of Series One. We’re not in the all-action Hellfighters (1968) business of quelling fires, but in the dull maintenance part of ensuring that wells with 35 years accumulated wear and rust are kept going.

*I might have to buy into Paramount+ to catch the second series.*
*Don’t think I could wait for the DVD.*

It’s the job of Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton) to make sure these wells keep producing and all it takes is a stray spark or a moment’s lack of concentration and the coffins are mounting up. Along the way, we are brought up to speed on how the oil business works – or doesn’t.

Exposition used to be a hell of an issue for screenwriters until those Game of Thrones dudes invented “sexposition” where acres of naked flesh kept the audience awake through the dull stuff. Here, however, Sheridan manages something of a coup by having Monty or Tommy gush like oil wells while setting others right about the business.

This series kicks off with an oil tanker tearing along at 60mph crashing into small airplane that’s parked on a road to disburse its cargo of drugs. And that triggers two increasingly fraught, sometimes thrilling, elements. First, we’ve got the drug dealers seeking revenge and recompense. Secondly, you’ve got legal repercussions in the shape of the all-time Jaws of a lawyer Rebecca Falcone (Kayla Wallace) and how Tommy has to snake through the vagaries of the law, not, for example, pursuing thieves who steal the company’s planes or tankers to shift their ill-gotten gains because the law will invariably impound such items of transport for the couple of years it takes to get a case to court and because the drug dealers are only borrowing them for a short period and return them after use.

On top of that, Tommy is trying to blood son Cooper (Jacob Lofland) into the business, starting off as a roughneck, while turning up out of the blue are glamorous ex-wife Angela (Ali Larter) and daughter Ainsley (Michelle Randolph), who views philanthropy as a tax dodge.

There’s some terrific humor from Tommy’s housemates Dale (James Jordan) and, mostly in reaction shots, Nathan (Colm Feore).

You won’t have seen any of these storylines before, not even the returning wife and daughter, because all the characters are so original and the performances so powerful. Billy Bob Thornton (Bad Santa 2, 2016) has eschewed all his acting tropes, dumped the sarcasm and temper tantrums, and instead plays a weary debt-laden foreman who fails to resist the lure of his trophy wife.

I remember Ali Larter from such unchallenging fare as the original Final Destination (2000) so she is something of a revelation. While Angela is as vapid as any other trophy wife, majoring on shopping and looking good, actually she’s an education in how an ageing trophy wife stays the course. She is a fabulous cook, for starters, and she puts in the hours at the gym to keep trim. But she’s also a manic depressive and so her emotions spin on the toss of a coin, extremely charming, not to mention endearing, one minute, a venomous snake the next. This is a performance reverberating with depth that should qualify for an Emmy.

Jacob Lofland (Joker, Folie a Deux, 2024) is Gary Cooper reborn. The stillness, the reticence, and yet when necessary, taking no prisoners. He’s way out of his depth not just with the crew he’s landed with, but in unexpected romance with young widow Ariana (Paulina Chavez). But that’s not the last of the star-making turns. Kayla Wallace (When Calls the Heart series, 2019-2025) is phenomenal as the ball-busting lawyer eating up misogyny for breakfast and heading for a showdown with anyone in sight. Sassy Michelle Randolph (1923 series, 2022-2025) has many of the show’s best lines.

And that’s before we come to Jon Hamm (Mad Men series, 2007-2015) and Demi Moore in a more believable role than The Substance (2024). And the simple earworm of a score by Andrew Lockington (Atlas, 2024).

Truly original and riveting.

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They (1969) *****

Fans of reality television shows will be only too aware how participants volunteer for ritual humiliation, but swallowing a few locusts and being stuck with a couple of snakes has nothing on the realities facing individuals during the Great Depression who would literally dance non-stop for days on end with a ten-minute break every two hours. It’s impossible to imagine that anybody could think of dreaming up such a degrading circus to take advantage of the desperate. But then this is America, land of opportunity and the MC Rocky (Gig Young) continues to spout aphorisms and continues to promote the American Dream even as it disintegrates in front of him.

When the partner of Gloria (Jane Fonda), out-of-work actress and one of the more physical and cynical of the candidates hoping to scoop the $1,500 first prize (no prizes for coming second, of course), is ruled out through bronchitis – in case he passes it on to others rather than more any humane consideration – she pairs up with dreamer Robert who initially wanders in as spectator rather than participant. Glamorous platinum blonde aspiring actress Alice (Susannah York) is already coming apart. Sailor (Red Buttons) is a former war hero and James (Bruce Dern) drags his heavily pregnant wife (Bonnie Bedelia) around the dance floor.

There is not a great deal of story except to watch everyone grow mentally and physically incapacitated. There is betrayal and lust and survival instinct leads characters into sexual situations. When Alice seduces Robert, in retaliation Gloria dumps him and then has sex with Rocky, while attempting to retain control of that situation, but clearly needing at the very least consolation and confirmation of her attractiveness and at best some sign of favoritism.

As well as non-stop dancing, Rocky throws in stunts to keep the audience, who can sponsor a pair, interested. So there are 10-minute races, the last three to be eliminated. So determined are some of the competitors they will even lug their dead partner over the finishing line. Another of Rocky’s wheezes is to have Gloria and Robert marry, worth $200 in terms of the gifts they will receive from a sentimental audience, in the middle of the dance floor.

They are literally dancing for hours, over 1,000 in over 40 days so gradually the dance floor becomes less crowded as dancers collapse from exhaustion or cannot take it anymore. The spectators, we are reminded, are only there because “they want to see someone worse than them.” Just when you think nothing can shock you any more, it is revealed that the first prize is minus the cost of feeding, sheltering and looking after the winner.

Those who think they are tough find that the demands of mental and physical endurance are beyond them. This is a shocking film and there’s no doubt it will stay with you for a long time. I saw it first when it came out but not again until now and thank goodness for forgetfulness otherwise I doubt if I would have chosen to sit through it again.

It’s doubtful if any actress had achieved such a speedy transition from glamorous leading lady to serious actress as Jane Fonda. From stripping in space in Barbarella (1968) to stripping away the last vestiges of her humanity here. Suddenly, she appears in a brand-new screen persona with the grating voice, the chip on the shoulder, the feistiness and worthy inheritor of father Henry’s acting genes. It’s also a bold role for Susannah York, in an extension of the weak character she essayed in Sands of the Kalahari (1965) but far more delusional, believing in a rainbow that will never appear. Michael Sarrazin (In Search of Gregory, 1969) initially appears out of his league but his character calls for a gentle innocence that is well within his scope.

Gig Young steals the picture, offered the opportunity to bring alive a multi-faceted character, as big a spiel-merchant who ever crossed the screen, but engaging in a marathon of optimism, and at some points, such as when coaxing a demented Alice out of the shower, earning our sympathy. Red Buttons (Stagecoach, 1966), Bruce Dern (Castle Keep, 1969) and Bonnie Bedelia (Die Hard, 1988) also put in sterling work.

The movie received nine Oscar nominations but was ignored in the Best Picture category. Only Gig Young won for Best Supporting Actor. Jane Fonda and Susannah York both received their first Oscar nominations, for Fonda the first of many, for York the one and only. It was also a debut nomination for Pollack, a future winner.

Sydney Pollack directs with simplicity, concentrating on the indignities of the event and focusing mostly on the personalities draining away, and even the drama is undercut, most of those scenes directed in straightforward style. However, Pollack plays around with the innovative fast forward – flashes into scenes that have not yet taken place. James Poe (Lilies of the Field, 1963), at one time down to direct, and Robert E. Thompson, a television writer making his first venture on the big screen, wrote the screenplay from the Horace McCoy novel.

Check out the Behind the Scenes article on this one.

The Long Good Friday (1980) *****

Got two predictions correct – that the conversion of London Docklands into upmarket housing was a potential goldmine and that London would become the beating financial heart of Europe. Though I would have thought everyone, even as arrogant a character as gangster Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins), would have known not to tangle with the IRA. Of course, he hasn’t done this deliberately, that’s just the sting in the tail, unravelling the complex mystery of who’s got it in for him.

This would be a fitting addition to the 1970s trilogy of British gangster pictures par excellence – Get Carter (1971), Villain (1971) and Sitting Target (1972) – except you could argue it’s better than the lot. Here we’re on The Godfather Part II territory, the big-time hood who’s gone legit. Harold already owns a casino, upmarket restaurant and pubs, and swans around in a luxury yacht but he’s got his eye on bigger game, investment in the Docklands, an ideal money-laundering concept, and he’s hooked a potential partner in American Mafia chief Charlie (Eddie Constantine).

Much as Harold would like to show off his svelte businessman side, his attempts to ooze class disappear at the first sign of trouble and soon he is working those teeth so hard he could be auditioning for Jaws. We’ve got an inkling of what’s going on but it takes a good while for everything to add up and even then Harold is convinced someone’s got their sums wrong since he’s ruled the London underworld for a decade and nobody with any sense would take him on.

The businessman façade falls away when his close aide and longtime buddy Colin (Paul Freeman) is murdered and his Rolls Royce and a pub are blown up. And it takes virtually the whole picture for Harold to discover just why a woman on her way to a funeral stopped the car long enough to spit in the face of one of Harold’s top henchmen, Jeff (Derek Thompson).

So mostly what we’ve got is Harold reverting to old-style violence, presumably using the methods that got him to the top in the first place, as he tortures and terrifies everyone in sight. Some of the brutality is inventive stuff as movie torture goes, one fellow having his naked backside sliced open by a machete, the rest of the top gang leaders rounded up in an abattoir as if they were sides of beef awaiting slaughter.

Meanwhile, wife Victoria (Helen Mirren), a version of what used to be known as “posh totty”, tries to keep the deal active by charming the pants off every male who comes within a sniff of her, some so driven by temptation they declare they “want to lick every inch of her.”

So, on the one hand, it’s big business and all the jiggery-pokery that goes in the legitimate world even among illegal contenders, and on the other hand it’s all the jiggery-pokery that goes on in the illegal world among all the illegal contenders.

*Incredible score by Francis Monkman. Why he wrote so few is a mystery.*

While there are many standout moments – and you’d be hard put to beat the climactic scene of Harold in the back of a taxi facing his demise – and director John MacKenzie wields his camera with considerable verve, his ace in the hole is always the expressive face of Harold. Whether he’s practising his bonhomie, or stiffening at the latest outrage, or letting loose physically and verbally it’s a fabulous acting tour de force as if James Cagney had met Al Pacino. And like Oliver Reed in Sitting Target, simmering rage is smoothed over by feminine companionship, the close bond between Harold and Victoria one of the key ingredients.

Turned Bob Hoskins (Zulu Dawn, 1979) into a star and had the British end of the industry been in better shape he had might made a smoother transition to the top echelons instead of waiting for Mona Lisa (1986) to polish his credentials.

Although we Brits like to think the acting of “national treasure” Helen Mirren was always being recognized on the domestic front, long before she achieved unquestionable credibility from pocketing an Oscar for The Queen (2006), in truth by this point her movie career was in limbo. Hardly any screen work since her breakthrough in Age of Consent (1969) and three of her last four pictures – Caligula (1979), S.O.S. Titanic (1979) and The Fiendish Plot of Fu Manchu (1980) – counting as calamities. This was a fresh take on an actress who, too often for her own good, had been seen as better naked than clothed.

It was almost a homage to cult to employ Eddie Constantine (S.O.S. Pacific, 1960) but it was surprising how many of the supporting cast came good including future James Bond Pierce Brosnan as a gay killer, Paul Freeman (Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981), Derek Thompson (nearly 40 years on BBC series Casualty), and future director Dexter Fletcher (Rocketman, 2019).

Original screenplay by Barrie Keefe on his debut.

Still stands up as a gangster great.

From Noon Till Three (1976) *****

Charles Bronson in a feelgood movie? Charles Bronson the romantic comedy lead? Charles Bronson’s character impotent? The hell you say!

Certainly, Bronson’s boldest role, and if the original concept had played out the way audiences might have expected, the star’s career might have taken the kind of pivot afforded Arnold Schwarzenegger when he took on Twins (1988). But a third act which probably baffled audiences half a century ago plays straight into the hands of the contemporary filmgoer and spins such a twist – almost a horror version of “print the legend” – that nobody has ever invented a better one.

This isn’t just Bronson as you’ve never seen him before but it’s also Jill Ireland in the role of her life, proving not just that she can act but putting on a brilliant performance.

So, this isn’t like any Charles Bronson character you’ve ever seen, light years away from the monosyllabic justified or unjustified killers he had hitherto portrayed for most of the decade. He’s not even the leader of the gang of outlaws and has a decidedly cowardly streak. And this isn’t Jill Ireland, his wife, either, in some punched-up supporting role. Here she essays her inner Katharine Hepburn or prissy Maggie Smith and engages in the kind of male-female verbal duel that hasn’t been seen since The African Queen (1952).

When his horse pulls up lame Graham Dorsey (Charles Bronson) decides not to accompany his four outlaw buddies on a bank robbing expedition and despite the prospect of “borrowing” a horse from rich widow Amanda Starbuck (Jill Ireland) he goes along with her pretense that no such beast exists because he’s had a presentiment that the heist will go awry. The gang agree to pick him up on their return at a tension-sodden three o’clock – hence the title, a mild play on High Noon (1952).

Amanda is more than capable of dealing with his kind despite him spinning her a tale of having lost a similar mansion to her grand three-storey affair after the Civil War and being widowed for seven years and so depressed at his impotency he’s contemplating suicide.

In the way of opposites attracting, one thing leads to another and soon they are waltzing, dressed up to the nines, in her elaborate rooms and taking a dip au natural in a lake. When word comes back that the robbers have been caught and are all set to hang, much against his natural inclination not to jeopardize his newfound love, he agrees, at her behest, to go save them. Although he intends doing nothing of the sort and simply lying low, he is pursued by a posse and only evades capture by swapping clothes with a dentist he captures.

And then the tale deftly switches. The posse kills the real dentist. Seeing only his blood-drenched clothes at a distance, Amanda believes it’s Graham. Meanwhile, he’s locked up after being convicted of the dentist’s crimes. She’s so enthralled by the unlikely romance that she writes a book about it that turns into the kind of publishing phenomenon that triggers tours of Graham’s grave and the house where it all happened.

When Graham is released, you expect the sting in the tale will be that she’ll have gone off and married someone else. But she hasn’t. Except she doesn’t recognize him. Because in the writing she transformed him into a much taller more handsome figure and her imagination can’t deal with reality. Any time he reminds her of an intimate moment, she cries out “it’s in the book.” Finally, somewhat rudely, he does convince her but then, afraid of letting down the millions of fans captivated by the legend, rather than reviving their romance, she kills herself so the story cannot be challenged.

Worse, nobody believes Graham and he is accused of being a fraud and ends up in a lunatic asylum. Charles Bronson the madman, you didn’t see that coming I bet.

As you can tell from the posters, United Artists had no idea how to sell it and it lacked the single immediately visually-appealing gag of Twins, so it was a rare flop at this point in Bronson’s career. But a third act that was viewed as somewhat deranged satire has, in the half century since, now come into its own when questions about identity and point of view and “your own truth” and “recollections may vary” and imposter narrative and reality reinvention and fake news are endemic. In this case “print the legend” comes to haunt Graham.

But what was a flop in 1976 deserves reassessment and should be welcomed by a contemporary audience more able to deal with the sudden shift in tone. It might also put to rest the notions that neither Charles Bronson (Once Upon a Time in the West, 1969) nor Jill Ireland (Rider on the Rain, 1970) could act. This is a wonderfully spirited double act and had the movie been remotely successful might have set them up as a latter-day Tracy-Hepburn. I should note in passing a wonderful tune, “The Trouble With Hello Is Goodbye,” lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman and music by Elmer Bernstein. Had the movie not been so quickly dismissed, that had all the making of a torch song.

Writer-director Frank D. Gilroy (Desperate Characters, 1971) has produced some scintillating dialog as well as bringing out the best in the couple. As clever on the spoofery front as Blazing Saddles (1974) and Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) but with a harder satirical edge.

I chuckled all the way through. It was a delight to see Bronson and Ireland playing such refreshing characters and the rom-com element worked out really well. So two bangs for your buck – a reinvented Bronson in the kind of role you never thought he could manage, and the kind of satire that hits home today.

Put aside all thoughts about what Charles Bronson and for that matter Jill Ireland can do or should do and sit back and enjoy this unexpected gem.

You can catch it on Amazon Prime.