car chase – The Magnificent 60s

The Burglars (1971) ****

First half pure Walter Hill of The Driver vintage – virtually silent heist, blistering car chase – second half rachets up tension with corrupt cop, femme fatale, getaway stymied and a payoff you won’t see coming.

French jewel thieves led by Azad (Jean-Paul Belmondo) using electronic wizardry crack open a safe in Athens full of emeralds while the owner is away. Passing cop Abel (Omar Sharif) happens by but after conversing with Azad, who claims his car has broken down, seems to be satisfied nothing untoward is going on inside the house. But getaway plans are momentarily foiled when the ship they are due to leave on is unexpectedly berthed for repairs, leaving them with five days on their hands.

Azed’s disappointed girlfriend Helene (Nicole Coffen), who acts as watch for the gang, lolling about a swimming pool with too much time on her hands, attracts unwanted male gaze. Azad, followed by the cop, decides to outrun him, fast car style, and soon they are hurtling through the streets of Athens. Thinking that he’s shaken off his pursuer, and seeking a bit of relaxation himself, Azad chats up glamor model and night-club stripper Lena (Dyan Cannon) without realizing she is in cahoots with Abel. The cop wants in on the action and is willing to trade by letting Azad off scot-free while dumping the crime onto his confederate Ralph (Robert Hosein).

So, mostly, it’s cat-and-mouse stuff between Azad and Abel, as the latter closes the doors, and the former is unaware of just how cunning a corrupt cop can be. There’s some hair-raising action as Azad has to jump between two buses, and a pursuit in a fairground, Abel naturally on horseback, and as if this was one of those cheap films that always had a shoot-out in a quarry, Azad ends up in one, though, thankfully, not for climactic reasons. The climax takes place in a wheat warehouse (I guess the makers of the later Witness, 1985, took a few clues from this.)

Mostly, it’s the character interplay. Two big stars in one film often results in scenes involving both kept to a minimum – think Paul Newman and Steve McQueen in The Towering Inferno (1974) or Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in Heat (1995) – but here’s it’s the opposite and watching Belmondo and Sharif dancing around each other, one or other always in the ascendancy or with a neat trick in the back pocket or a get-out-of-jail-free card for later, works a treat.

Sharif, especially, had widened his scope, running away from the matinee idol tag and this came at the end of an impressive stint that included the villain in Mackenna’s Gold (1969), The Appointment (1969), The Last Valley (1971) and The Horsemen (1971). As shabby as Columbo, but with a bit more chic, he knows he’s got to keep one step ahead of Azad, though he could indulge in a few smirks, since he’s so far ahead of the criminal, Abel won’t know what hit him when he realizes he’s been played for a dupe by Lena.

Dyan Cannon (Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, 1969) plays her role to perfection, hints of sadness that her life is not as glamorous as she might want, possibly considering betraying her real partner, but as seductive as all-get-out. This was a bold career choice, because she had mostly been allotted wife/girlfriend parts rather than, as here, central to the machinations.

Jean-Paul Belmondo (Breathless, 1960) never appealed as much to the American audience as countryman Alain Delon, mostly because he refused to take the Hollywood coin, preferring to do his own thing in France, but he is excellent here and he would have been ideal in plenty mainstream U.S. pictures.

Hats off once again to Henri Verneuil (Guns for San Sebastian, 1968). The heist is deftly done, running a full 24 minutes, give or take a few moments for tense conversation with the nosey cop. The second unit filmed the chase, of course, but Verneuil is a master at this particular tune. He co-wrote the script with Vahe Katcha (Two Weeks in September, 1967) from the novel by David Goodis (Shoot the Piano Player, 1960). Bonus of an Ennio Morricone score.

Sizzling set pieces, cracking characters.

Ambulance (2022) **** – Seen at the Cinema

High-octane non-stop adrenalin rush that crams in a heist, car chase, street shoot-outs, high-risk surgical procedures, some neat characterisations, helicopters (of course) and slam-bang technical wizardry. Director Michael Bay (The Rock, 1996) is back on form with this pulverising pedal-to-the-metal thriller through the streets – and river – of Los Angeles and even finds time for a couple of sly jokes, including a reference to one of his own pictures, a paint job and a dog that (literally) stops the astonishing action.

Bank robber Danny Sharp (Jake Gyllenhaal) organising the heist of a lifetime – $32 million – ropes in brother Will (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) sorely in need of a mere $300,000 for a life-saving operation. Not only does lovesick cop Zack (Jackson White) jeopardise the operation but an elite cop division headed by Captain Monroe (Garret Dillahunt) is lying in wait. Cue shoot-out carnage forcing the siblings to hijack an ambulance containing paramedic Cam (Eiza Gonzalez). Her passenger, a wounded cop, ensures the pursuing flotilla of cop vehicles and fleet of helicopters remains at bay.

But only for a time because Monroe is a master of drawing his victims into a trap. But that will only work with lesser villains because Sharp has not one, but two, plans up his sleeve. To rack up the tension, FBI Agent Clark (Keir O’Donnell) joins the hunt while in the ambulance, tearing along at top speed, causing more carnage during rush hour, Cam is called upon to dig out a bullet in her patient’s spleen and Will realizes he needs to be a good bad-guy.

While the action is buckled up and buckled down, there is excellent savvy background as we learn just how top cops go about snaring their victims and for all that Monroe is pumped up with arrogance Clark is there to take him down by filling us in on just what a rapacious opponent he is dealing with. Despite the film’s pace, without slowing the picture down, Bay manages to seed the characters well. Sharp’s iconic gangster – cousin to Heat’s Neil Macauley in the ruthless stakes – still takes family seriously. Will brings his military training to bear to assist Cam, a closed-off loner who blew a promising medical career on drug addiction and is easily one of the toughest females recently seen on screen.

Characters are established in a few lines – the gay Clark in couples therapy, the tougher-than-tough Monroe still a sap unwilling to sacrifice his dog, Danny not quite as psychotic as his father. And there are some great supporting characters, sassy helicopter pilot Dzazhig (Olivia Stambouliah), a stressed-out gangster and another thug who wears the wrong shoes to a robbery.

Although it’s virtually all a set-piece, the action hardly straying from the ambulance, there are still some awesome sequences, the automated attack on the cops for a start, two surgeons whisked off the golf course to guide Cam through a tricky op. The camera races around with abandon, up and down skyscrapers like a hyperactive drone.

A remake of a Danish thriller of the same name, Bay has pumped up the action, brought believable characters to the fore, and hopefully given audiences something to whoop for outside of the comic book hero. In his movie debut Chris Fedak, best known for television work like Prodigal Son (2019-2021), sticks in the occasional zingy one-liner and treats the characters as human beings.

Only Jake Gyllenhaal’s second starring role in three years, his first action film in nearly a decade should thrust him back on top of the box office after a series of more arty pictures. He’s been creepy before, most notably in Nightcrawler (2014), but Danny is more a straight line gangster. Eiza Gonzalez (Godzilla vs. Kong, 2021) is the pick of the actors, in a difficult role confined for the most part to the ambulance. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (Candyman, 2021) does well in what in other hands could have been a thankless role. Garret Dillahunt (Army of the Dead, 2021) and Keir O’Donnell (The Dry, 2020) are names you might hear more of in the future.

The Rock (1996) *****

Amazingly, there’s been no 25^th anniversary razzamatazz for this pulsating piledriver of an action movie, a stone cold classic. Instead of the standard breaking out of Alcatraz, a brilliant reversal sees a crack military team of U.S. Navy SEALS trying to break in to stop maniac martinet General Hummel (Ed Harris) devastating San Francisco with stolen missiles containing nerve gas. Notwithstanding his iconic turn as James Bond and Oscar acclaim for The Untouchables (1987), this is surely Sean Connery’s best, if not boldest, performance, the calm at the heart of the storm, exuding a riveting screen persona. No other star of his calibre would have allowed themselves to be seen at the start with such lack of dignity, not just shackled but with dirty exceedingly long hair.

Not only is it a brilliant entrance but such is director Michael Bay’s mastery of his material that he makes audiences wait 25 minutes for it while he sets up the terror that awaits the city from a rain of terrifying gas, Hummel as a ruthless legendary officer with a point to prove and allows Nicolas Cage to break out of his initial geek. Backed by a classic battering ram of a score by Hans Zimmer and Nick Glennie-Smith and an outstanding battalion of supporting players, Bay never lets up the high-pitch tension, finding his stylistic way with slo-mo, helicopters swaying in the sky, brutal stand-offs.

Former British spy John Mason (Connery), the only man alive who has broken out of Alcatraz, is released from prison to lead the break-in, Hummel holding hostages as well as his weaponry. Never has a star done so much with so little, using a coin to discover his nemesis F.B.I. director Womack (John Spencer) and with nothing more than a piece of string engineers his own escape from a San Francisco hotel that leads to a riveting car chase ending in wanton destruction and a touching scene reuniting Mason with a long-lost daughter (Clare Forlani). That such a cracking movie bothers with emotional hooks – academic FBI chemical expert Stanley Goodspeed also has his girlfriend in harm’s way – shows the screenwriter skill in bringing greater character depth. Except for his daughter, Mason would have made another escape from Alcatraz at the first opportunity.

What appears mission impossible becomes mission impossible too far when Hummel’s men slaughter the military invasion leaving the unlikely duo of Mason and Goodspeed to save the city – and their own lives when the equally ruthless operation overseers determine it’s better to completely liquidate Alcatraz rather than risk the missiles being fired.

And without Cage as the mild-mannerd scientist stepping up to the action plate, this would be a different picture, over-dominated by Connery. Cage delivers a multi-layered performance, from the emphatic strum of a guitar string to his flickering fingers and the brilliant delivery of the humdrum line “in the name of Zeus’s butthole.” He shifts from fearful geek who has left his gun behind to determinedly hunting down Mason in a car chase and then finding a true action mojo on the rock.

Given this top-notch performance, it’s proof of Connery’s star power that he easily steals the picture. Suspicious, clever, ruthless, soft-hearted when it matters, he mentors Goodspeed, though not always gently, “losers always whine about their best, winners go home and f*** the prom queen.”

Odd as it might be to say about a Michael Bay picture, this is layered too. From the conflict between Mason and Womack, the nuanced performance by the essentially honorable Hummel, brilliant character development – like Hilts in The Great Escape Mason the loner eventually persuaded to help the general cause – the transition of Goodspeed from goofy oddball to saviour, speedy edits, some cracking images, a script dipped in paranoia (references to Roswell, the Kennedy assassination, black ops and secret military slush funds) and a stack of one-liners. All this delivered in passing as this high-speed train of an action blockbuster thunders along the line.

The whole enterprise is bolstered by a top-notch supporting cast led by the Mason-hating John Spencer (stepping up from a supporting role in L.A. Law, 1990-1996), David Morse (The Green Mile, 1999), eternal heavy William Forsythe (J. Edgar Hoover in The Man in the High Castle, 2018-2019) getting the chance to lighten his load, Michael Biehn (Aliens, 1986), John C. McGinley (Any Given Sunday, 1999) and Bokeem Woodbine (Queen and Slim, 2019). Two young actresses show tremendous promise – Clare Forlani capitalised on this break with Meet Joe Black (1998) but it proved less of a Hollywood calling card for Vanessa Marcil (Goodspeed’s fiancé), her best work coming in television (Las Vegas, 2003-2008). This was Mark Rosner’s only screenplay from a story by Douglas Cook and David Weisberg. who collaborated on Double Jeopardy (1999).

It was also Michael Bay’s calling card to enter the high-octane world of big-budget blockbusters like Armageddon (1998). While his career had as many ups as downs, this is unquestionably his action masterpiece, a no-holds-barred non-stop adrenaline spike.