What the *&#! Is This About?
Emerging from his home on the southside of Dublin, Martin Cahill (Brendan Gleeson) is shot in his driveway. Moving back in time, a young Cahill (Eamonn Owens) is chased home by police after nicking groceries for his family. Cahill’s petty robberies land the boy in a Catholic reformatory. 18 years later, he’s released from prison for his latest offense. His wife Frances (Maria Doyle Kennedy) notifies him that the flat where they grew up and still live is being demolished to make way for a new development. Cahill files suit and refuses to budge, even as crews tear the building down around him. He holds out for a replacement flat in Rathmines, which prompts exasperated authorities to ask if he’d rather live closer to his own kind. “No, I’d sooner live closer to me work. All the big houses.”

Cahill supports his family of four as a burglar. When Frances urges him to buy a house, Cahill deposits $80,000 in a bank, which his men Noel (Adrian Dunbar) and Gary (Sean McGinley) promptly steal back for him. To establish an alibi while his gang is at work, Cahill hangs around the police station waiting for Inspector Kenny (Jon Voight). The cop fails to compel Cahill that there’s only one way that things can end for him if he keeps this lifestyle up. Arrested for robbing coins from an arcade, Cahill plots a heist big enough to support his family if he’s convicted, as well as humiliate the police in the process: O’Connor’s Jewelers. “Two million in gold and jewels, waitin’ for us.” So heavily fortified that even the Irish Republican Army walked away from the score, Cahill’s ingenuity results in the biggest heist in the history of Ireland.

While Cahill fathers a child with his sister in law (Angeline Ball) – with his wife’s blessing – he also studies enough Irish penal code to win an acquittal at his highly publicized trial. Even after nailing one of his men (Eanna MacLiam) to a pool table believing he stole, loyalty in his circle remains strong to the man the press calls “The General.” When the IRA demands half of the O’Connor’s loot, Cahill refuses, “There’s nothin’ as low as robbin’ a robber!” Though he manages to stay ahead on the law, twenty-four hour police surveillance takes its toll on Cahill’s health. Stealing priceless works of art proves to be his downfall when Cahill finds a buyer in the Loyalists, sworn enemies of the IRA.

Who Should Be Held Responsible?
Wanting to make a film about contemporary Ireland, filmmaker John Boorman arrived on the tale of Martin Cahill, the infamous Dublin robber who was shot and killed by the IRA in 1994. Boorman was familiar with the exploits of the General because in 1981, Boorman’s home was burglarized. Among the objects lifted was a faux gold record the director had been presented for the soundtrack to Deliverance. He was notified that Cahill was likely responsible. Boorman recalled, “At that time, he was really just a cat burglar – he wasn’t doing any of these big things, but he was very audacious then, and provocative. The police recognized his modus vivendi, but also he always wanted to be known when he pulled off these things. He wanted the credit for them. It was also a challenge, you know: ‘Well, OK now try and prove it. I did that, now prove it.’”

Crime reporter Paul Williams chronicled the details of Cahill’s life in his 1995 book The General. When Boorman and his producing partner Kiernan Corrigan inquired about the film rights, they discovered that producer P.J. Pettite had already scooped them up. Receptive to working together, contract negotiations dragged on for so many months that Boorman turned his attention to a film version of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. He spent nine months in pre-preproduction before Paramount balked at Boorman’s $85 million budget for Narnia. He was set to direct A Simple Plan for much, much less when a dispute between producer Scott Rudin and Paramount’s financing partner scuttled that film two weeks before shooting was to begin.

Returning to Ireland, Boorman learned that Pettite was ready to sell the rights to The General. Optioning them out of his own pocket, the filmmaker discovered that a rival Cahill project already had a script and was out to financiers. In March 1997, Boorman plunged into a script of his own. With Paul Williams on hand to provide information not covered in his book, Boorman wrote, “The gang members were shadowy enough and I simply invented a group of characters and gave them the names of people in my village. Cahill himself sprung to life on the page. I had heard his voice. I knew his wiles. Frances Cahill and her sister Tina were a more difficult problem. They were not involved in criminal activities … I considered contacting them. Paul Williams advised against it. He said they would refuse contact with anyone outside their world. This was to be a fiction based on fact. The frameworks would be built of incidents that occurred. Beyond that I would rely on the truth of the imagination.”

Finishing a first draft in three weeks, Boorman had a script – titled I Once Had A Life – and a budget ready to present to buyers May 1997 at the Cannes Film Festival. Gabriel Byrne and Gary Oldman were both suggested as potential leads, but Boorman had settled on Irish character actor Brendan Gleeson to play the General. Financiers were even more skittish about the tone of the project. Boorman recalls, “Because of the way Hollywood is, people are led to expect that the heroes are people you can root for, they’re sympathetic. When I was trying to finance the picture, Americans all said two things. One was, ‘Well, put a star in there.’ The other was, ‘Well, does he have to do these brutal things, and why does he have to die?’ They could see it as a kind of Robin Hood thing, but they didn’t want the complexity and they didn’t want the tragedy. I always said when I was making the film that this has to have a tragic dimension. If it’s not seen as a tragedy, it’s not going to work.”

Taking out bank loans in order to get production off the ground, Boorman opted to shoot The General in black & white. Apart from his stylistic preference for the dreamlike nature of black & white film stock, the director felt that an unsaturated look would give audiences safe distance from events that had transpired so recently. A casting director, a production manager and cinematographer Seamus Deasy were each hired. Soon – with a budget of $13 million USD – an eleven week shooting schedule commenced August 1997 in Dublin. In a concession to potential buyers, Boorman had agreed to shoot on color film stock so that a color version of The General could be sold to television. Theatrical prints, however, would be struck on a black and white negative. A distribution deal was at last reached with J&M Entertainment; The General would be released by Warner Bros. in the U.K. and Sony Pictures Classics in the States.

As the film’s May 1998 release grew near, many in Ireland already had an opinion on The General. Boorman recalls, “There was something in this picture to offend everybody. The police weren’t very happy about it being made. We were nervous as to how the criminal community would take to it, or not take to it, and whether they would take action against us. It attacks the church, and the government, and corruption, and hypocrisy. So there was a lot of controversy. Then the press started to dig up victims of crimes, people who felt offended just by the act of us making the film. This was all before it came out. When it came out, all the controversy disappeared. All the bits I was being accused of, like glamorizing crime. Clearly, the film doesn’t do that. It’s a balanced picture of the guy.”

Critics greeted The General warmly upon its release in December 1998. Derek Elley, Variety: “With The General, his first feature in three years, the 65-year-old Boorman has not only come up with a pic that puts many British New Wave filmers half his age to shame in its energy and ’60s esprit, but he has poured all his love of his adopted homeland, Ireland, into a movie that says more about the rebellious Irish psyche than any heap of overtly political pictures.” Janet Maslin, the New York Times: “And he presents this film (photographed by Seamus Deasy) in such seductively beautiful black and white that it has the visual precision of a photo essay. The black and white tones (shot on color stock) are so rich that the ski masks of the burglars wind up looking like velvet.” But despite hope for Academy Awards nominations, The General never expanded beyond 41 screens and was completely ignored by the industry. It grossed only $1.2 million in the States.

Why Should I Care?
John Boorman – who wrote, produced, directed and comes as close to being an “auteur” here as you get – has had a gloriously erratic career, celebrated for Point Blank and Deliverance, mocked by some for Zardoz and Excalibur and generally ignored for everything since the mid-1980s. He makes up for the absence with this film. The General works beautifully in so many different modes: as an independent film, cops versus robbers flick, foreign film, tragedy, social satire. It’s brilliantly acted, impeccably photographed, scored superbly well and acutely written, comically exposing the hypocrisy of various institutions in the state of Ireland and affectionately celebrating the character of the country Boorman has called home for 30 years, in the humor, intelligence and resiliency of its people. So I guess I liked it.

While Boorman does frame the cunning Cahill as something of a folk hero, The General doesn’t escape scrutiny for lining his pockets at the expense of his community. Brendan Gleeson – who became heavily in demand as a supporting player in Hollywood after this film – is so real that he made me forget Gabriel Bryne or Gary Oldman were ever suggested for the role. Boorman’s decision to shoot in black & white – the DVD features both the theatrical version and the colorized one – gives the film a noble, elegant sheen unmatched by most movies from directors far younger and supposedly more vigorous than Boorman. Irish jazz saxophonist Richie Buckley composed the sensual musical score, while Van Morrison’s “So Quiet In Here” and “It Was Once My Life” add considerable panache to an already class production.

© Joe Valdez

Where Are You Getting This *&#!?
“A Personal Account on the Making of The General” By John Boorman. The General – Production Notes. Sony Pictures (1998)

“Safe haven” By Charles Taylor. Salon, 1998 December 17

“John Boorman” By Joshua Klein. A.V. Club, 1999 January 20

Synopsis
Upon completion of a ten year prison sentence, the “world’s greatest cat burglar” Eddie “Hudson Hawk” Hawkins (Bruce Willis) emerges from Sing Sing to reunite with his buddy Tommy Five-Tone (Danny Aiello). Hanging out at their old neighborhood bar – which has been turned into an upscale Yuppie dive – Eddie is coerced by two-bit mafia hoods the Mario Brothers (Frank Stallone, Carmine Zozzora) to break into an auction house and steal an antique horse. Easily completing the score with Tommy’s help, the Leonardo Da Vinci sculpture Eddie steals becomes property of a sinister English butler with sword blades up his sleeves. Snooping out the auction house, Eddie meets a mysterious Vatican art expert (Andie MacDowell) and narrowly escapes death from a bomb left by the Mario Brothers.

The next assortment of colorful characters to intercept Eddie are a fiendish CIA goon squad with candy bar code names – Snickers (Don Harvey), Kit Kat (David Caruso), Almond Joy (Lorraine Toussaint) and Butterfinger (Andrew Bryniarski) – led by old school spy George Kaplan (James Coburn). Abducted and taken to Rome, Eddie next meets the Mayflowers (Richard E. Grant, Sandra Bernhard), obnoxious billionaires hoping to obtain pieces of a mechanism Leonardo Da Vinci built 500 years ago with the power to turn lead into gold. The Mayflowers coerce Eddie into stealing the final piece from the Vatican. Double crosses, a crotch sniffing mutt, curare darts, a Da Vinci glider and many explosions ensue.

Production history
Hudson Hawk originated with Robert Kraft, a Harvard grad who in 1979 was knocking around Manhattan as a piano man. Kraft befriended a bartender named Bruce Willis when he heard the 23-year-old blowing a harmonica at one of his gigs and invited him onstage. Kraft was reading about jazz great Coleman Hawkins – The Hawk – as well as Chicago, whose lakeshore winds were sometimes referred to as “the hawk.” After encountering a similar gust while walking west on 86th Street from Central Park, Kraft came up with a tune. “I didn’t know if it was going to be a song or a bassline. Whatever. But somewhere in that period, Bruce had the idea that there was a character, there was maybe a story. And he said at one point – either that afternoon or many weeks later or something – ‘Someday I’m gonna make a movie called The Hudson Hawk.’ And I thought, ‘Yeah, sure. I mean, you’re working in a bar, I’m trying to get a record deal, and you’re already making this movie.’”

Circumstances changed six years later when Willis went from obscurity to celebrity starring in the screwball detective series Moonlighting. When he wasn’t selling wine coolers for Seagram’s, Willis still had Hudson Hawk on the brain. “It kind of started out as a more of a serious action movie. One of the first things we said was that it was like James Bond before he became James Bond. What was James Bond like when he was 20 years old? Sean Connery, like, what was that guy doing? Like if he was stealing, he was a good thief. We got about that far.” Willis approached Moonlighting writer-producers Ron Osborn & Jeff Reno to pen a script. Reno recalls, “He had a character in mind that he wanted to do, this ex-con who had just gotten out of jail and got caught up in some kind of international situation. Ron and I came up with an idea, ran it by him, and he loved it, and everything was good, so we spent a lot of time then with him just kind of developing this.”

With a first look deal at TriStar Pictures, Willis also took his pet project to Joel Silver, who ultimately brokered a commitment from the star to do Die Hard 2 first in exchange for Silver producing Hudson Hawk. Steven E. de Souza had written the latest draft of the script and to direct, Silver brought in Michael Lehmann, director of two dark cult comedies, Heathers and Meet the Applegates. Lehmann recalled, “Steve de Souza wrote a draft that was very funny, very lively and very much a kind of fun action-adventure comedy. But I felt it was a little too close to home and that it was a little too much like other movies, and people had seen enough of this stuff without being reflective on it, and it would be fun to take the genre and turn it on its head.” Daniel Waters – author of Heathers – was hired to rewrite the script. Among his many contributions was the movie’s best idea: Willis and Danny Aiello belting out tunes in an effort to subvert burglar alarms.

Hudson Hawk commenced shooting July 1990 in New York on a budget of $42 million. As production moved to Italy, then Hungary, then England, that amount climbed. Interviewed by the New York Times in May 1991, co-producer Michael Dryhurst explained, “Hudson Hawk was conceived on a very broad canvas. The moment you put people into airplanes and hotel rooms, you’re into money. We were supporting a cast and crew of 100 people in Italy for 12 weeks and Budapest for 4 weeks. You’re paying for hotel rooms, location, food and per diems. And support costs in Europe are much higher.” Daniel Waters bluntly assessed some of the overruns: “The Italians were great people, but everybody has wine at lunch, and lunch never seems to end. American crews will work 48 hours straight if you pay ‘em enough. You can pay an Italian crew all the lire in the world and they won’t work past 10. Their lives are too important. We’d be saying, ‘Wait a minute, where are you going?’”

In his memoir You’re Only As Good As Your Next One, TriStar chairman Mike Medavoy diagnosed the real problems with Hudson Hawk: “(1) the star is the co-writer, (2) the producer is more powerful than the director, and (3) the director had never done a big film. Within the first three weeks of shooting, the film was over budget, so I flew to Rome to see what could be done. As soon as I saw the first dailies, I was certain Hudson Hawk would be, to use the popular Hollywood euphemism, ‘a total fucking disaster.’ While there was no way to stop the train wreck, I was hoping there was a way to minimize the damage. The performances were uneven. While it is admittedly hard to tell in dailies what is funny and what isn’t, everyone in the film seemed to be ‘acting funny’ but no one was funny.”

In a bid to speed up filming after six weeks, Silver replaced Dutch director of photography Jost Vacano with Dante Spinotti, an Italian. Maruschka Detmers – who had been cast as the female lead – was also let go after back pain prohibited her availability; Andie MacDowell was flown to Rome to take her place. Due to a schedule that was constantly shifting, MacDowell waited three weeks to get in front of a camera. Dryhurst rationalized the impending wreck to the New York Times: “One of the problems we had was the script, which had a number of changes as we went along. That’s always a recipe for difficulty, because you can’t plan. The script was being adjusted right up until the middle of November, when we were within three weeks of completion. It’s basically extra cost, because the script wasn’t locked in.”

While Joel Silver attempted damage control by claiming that Hudson Hawk barely exceeded its scheduled 81-day shoot, the New York Times reported that the show went on for 106 days. Daniel Waters described watching dailies with Silver and hearing the larger than life producer change his assessment of what they had on a day-to-day basis: “It’s like a Hope-Crosby picture,” “It’s like The Pink Panther,” “It’s a 90’s James Bond movie.” Pitching the movie to the readers of Entertainment Weekly on the cusp of its release in May 1991, Bruce Willis crowed, “This film is anything goes, in the classic comedy vein of It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. It’s Cary Grant meets James Bond meets Our Man Flint meets The Flintstones meets Dorothy Lamour meets Miles Davis. Did we leave anything out? The film also has a jazzy cool feel to it, as opposed to rock & roll or country & western or polka.”

Whatever the hell the end product was, critics drop kicked it out of the park. Daily Variety: “Ever wondered what a Three Stooges short would look like with a $40 million budget? Then meet Hudson Hawk, a relentlessly annoying clay duck that crash-lands in a sea of wretched excess and silliness. Those willing to check their brains at the door may find sparse amusement in pic’s frenzied pace.” Julie Salamon, the Wall Street Journal: “Despite all of its failures of wit, sense, and pace, the film does most effectively flaunt the millions spent on it. The inane action takes place in splendiferous settings.” Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: “This may be the only would-be blockbuster that’s a sprawling, dissociated mess on purpose. It’s a perverse landmark: the first postmodern Hollywood disaster.”

While some in the film industry conjectured that Hudson Hawk cost as much as $70 million, sources close to the production told the New York Times that the bill was closer to $51 million. At any rate, the movie did a spectacular belly flop at the box office, grossing only $17.2 million in the U.S. Hudson Hawk seemed to play better on the small screen; when released on VHS, it even developed somewhat of a cult following. Recording a commentary track for the 1999 DVD release, Michael Lehmann stated, “Now the thing is, when this movie came out, a lot of people I think were expecting a solid, hard action movie along the lines of Die Hard or Die Hard 2. And we were attempting to provide a little bit of action and a lot of the kind of pyrotechnics you see in those movies, but this is, was and is meant to be a comedy.”

Talking Hudson Hawk with Robert Kraft in November 2005, Willis mused, “The thing that I think should be said about the film is that it was special to us for a lot of different reasons, but it was vilified I think more than any film of its time, of its decade. They had been trying to tear down, you know, come after me I guess since the first Die Hard. And, you know, the films were successful anyway, but they had started to review this film long before anybody saw any of it. So it was just my time to catch a beatin’ in the press. But the film is in profit now and it’s, you know, paid for itself and it’s makin’ money … I still laugh at it, I think it’s funny. There’s stuff in the movie that makes me laugh. I mean, it’s just so silly. And that was the whole point. We were just trying to make people laugh. It might have been a little too hip for the room at the time.”

Opinion
With so much going so wrong in so many departments – the story is MIA, staging clunky and visual palette downright shitty – finding amusement in Hudson Hawk comes down to how you feel about the jokes and about Bruce Willis. While the irreverence of Daniel Waters is reduced to a trickle in the big action flicks he normally rewrites (The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, Batman Returns, Demolition Man), in Hudson Hawk, Waters’ acidic pop culture wit gets sprayed around with a high-pressure hose. Some of it is quite special: a CIA master of disguise and mime whose sentiments magically appear on cards he hands out probably takes the cake. The banter and movie references fly back and forth at the speed only a video store clerk can process and demands the movie be seen two or three times to absorb it all.

Hudson Hawk becomes too painful to endure more than once in a lifetime due to its star, who struts his way through empty scenes so assured of his own cuteness that instead of enjoying the movie, you want to take it out back and smack the grin off its face. Hudson Hawk isn’t a character, he’s Bruce Willis celebrating Bruce Willis, and that cocktail plows the movie head on into Stoker Ace and Rhinestone. Willis at least appears comfortable letting better actors try to help him. Andie MacDowell is in on the joke and turns in a funny performance, while James Coburn is as sharp as ever. But painting on such a big canvas only shows how impaired Michael Lehmann – who went on to direct My Giant and Because I Said So – is when it comes to anything involving ingenuity or wit.

© Joe Valdez

Sources
The Story of Hudson Hawk. Bruce Willis-Robert Kraft interview. November 2005

Hudson Hawk. DVD audio commentary track featuring Michael Lehmann. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, March 1999.

“Why The Hudson Hawk Budget Soared So High“. By James Greenberg. The New York Times, May 26, 1991

“Bruce Willis On the Level“. Entertainment Weekly, May 24, 1991

Synopsis
In the city of Hermosa Beach, gun smuggler Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson) entertains dim-witted prison buddy Louis Gara (Robert DeNiro) with his knowledge of the firearms trade. Ordell’s girlfriend – an insolent, bong loving beach bunny named Melanie (Bridget Fonda) – is hardly impressed. “He’s just repeating shit he overheard. He ain’t any more of a gun expert than I am.” Ordell receives an urgent phone call from Beaumont – an associate who’s been arrested for drunk driving with a pistol. Ordell hires competent bail bondsman Max Cherry (Robert Forster) to post bail. A freed man, Beaumont (Chris Tucker) receives a visit from Ordell, who lures the compromised employee to his death using Roscoe’s Chicken ‘n Waffles as bait.

Meanwhile, stewardess Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) is intercepted returning from Mexico by an LAPD detective (Michael Bowen) and a high charged ATF Special Agent named Ray Nicolette (Michael Keaton). Caught with $50,000 and a bag of cocaine, Jackie remains mum on who the contraband belongs to. Hired by Ordell to bail the stewardess out of County, Max falls for Jackie at first sight. Ordell drops by Jackie’s apartment with the intent of silencing her as well, but Jackie is ready for him. Faced with a year in prison if she stands mute, or a walk if she rats on Ordell, she demands $100,000 for each year in prison she’s given. In return, she convinces Ordell that she’s worked out a plan to retrieve half a million dollars he’s amassed from an airport locker in Cabo.

Confiding to Max that she actually intends to cooperate with the authorities and set Ordell up, Jackie reveals her biggest fear: “And if I lose this job I gotta start all over again and I ain’t got nothin to start over with. I’ll be stuck with whatever I can get.” With Max making up his mind that he’s tired of the bail bond business, he agrees to help Jackie scam not only Ordell, but get away with his money under the nose of the ATF. When the carefully orchestrated sting at Del Amo Mall culminates with Ordell’s half million disappearing, Ordell first blames Louis and Melanie, who the smuggler entrusted with making the pickup. To stay out of jail, Jackie has to convince Nicolette that she’s on his side. To stay alive, Max has to convince Ordell that Jackie was protecting him, and that she’s waiting to give him his money face to face.

Production history
Elmore Leonard was the first novelist Quentin Tarantino ever read. According to legend, Tarantino was caught shoplifting a copy of The Switch from K-Mart when he was 15 years old and was almost taken to jail. Appearing on The Charlie Rose Show in 1994, Tarantino revealed, “I love Elmore Leonard. In fact, to me True Romance is basically like an Elmore Leonard movie that he didn’t write, you know. And like, actually, I actually owe a big debt to like, kind of figuring out my style from Elmore Leonard because, you know, he was the first writer I’d ever read – and, but also like Charles Willeford did it as well – but he was one of the first writers I had ever read that just let mundane conversations actually inform the characters, you know, and then all of a sudden, ‘Boof!,’ you know, you’re into whatever story you’re telling.”

Published in 1992, Rum Punch was Leonard’s 29th novel. Recalling its genesis, the celebrated author stated, “I decided I wanted to do a book about a bail bondsman because of the kind of people he’s involved with every day. A story has to come out of that situation. My researcher found a bail bondsman for me who understood what we wanted to do. He was very willing to cooperate. So I learned about his business and started to write the book about a bondsman doing his job. I realized not too far into the book that he wasn’t my main character. The woman, Jackie, was the main character. The plot was happening to her. And then the other characters fall right into place on opposite sides of her. She’s caught in the middle and how does she get out?”

Tarantino and his producing partner Lawrence Bender read Rum Punch in galleys as they were getting ready to make Pulp Fiction. Bender attempted to option the book, but was rebuked by Leonard’s publisher. The situation changed once Pulp Fiction became a critical and commercial sensation. Miramax Films optioned four Elmore Leonard novels for the filmmaker: Bandits, Freaky Deaky, Killshot and Rum Punch. At one time, Tarantino envisioned adapting, producing and co-starring in Killshot opposite Robert DeNiro for director Tony Scott, but the film was ultimately directed by John Madden with Joseph Gordon Levitt and Mickey Rourke (it first wrapped in 2005 but as of November 2008, still hasn’t been released by the Weinstein Company).

Lawrence Bender referred to Tarantino’s affinity for Rum Punch as “The thing that sort of rose to the top I think in terms of his consciousness, and I was really happy because I’ve always loved the book and I’ve always wanted to make it.” In his adaptation, Tarantino made key alterations. The action shifted from South Florida to the South Bay of Los Angeles – Hermosa Beach, Carson, Torrance – where Tarantino grew up. “I don’t know Miami at all, but I know South Bay like the back of my hand. This was a way for me to make this movie personal to myself and to be confident that I could keep it real. In a South Bay context I knew exactly where each of these people would live, how they would dress, what their apartments would look like. Shooting in Miami I would not have come to those things as naturally.”

Tarantino also changed the lead character from a white airline stewardess named Jackie Burke to a black stewardess named Jackie Brown, with Pam Grier in mind to play her. Grier had auditioned for the role in Pulp Fiction that ultimately went to Rosanna Arquette, but Tarantino had promised her they’d work together on something else. After Samuel L. Jackson and Bridget Fonda joined the cast, Tarantino was trying to settle on who would play Max Cherry, the bail bondsman. “I had Paul Newman in mind; I had Gene Hackman in mind; I had John Saxon in mind; and I had Robert Forster in mind. I was always leaning more towards Robert Forster than the other guys. I didn’t have to cast him right away. I had my options open.”

Robert Forster had gained notice starring in the 1969 cult classic Medium Cool before descending into short-lived TV series like Banyon and – with the exception of Alligator – one forgettable B-movie after another. The actor recalled, “The past five years, I hadn’t gotten a job for more than scale; and terrible, junky stuff that you take when you’ve got a kid in college and an ex-wife. Then Quentin comes along and says, ‘You’ve waited long enough. Now you’re going to work again.’ I can’t describe the feeling.” Receiving membership privileges in what Variety critic Michael Fleming referred to as “Tarantino’s Rediscovery Network,” Forster would receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and like John Travolta and David Carradine, never have to look for work again.

With a $12 million budget from Miramax and Guillermo Navarro serving as director of photography, Tarantino’s third film commenced shooting May 1997 in Los Angeles. “My cinematographer and I watched two movies: Hickey and Boggs, which was directed by Robert Culp and was shot in the 70’s – it’s a really good movie. And then we watched They All Laughed, by Peter Bogdanovich. Both were perfect for Jackie Brown. They All Laughed is a masterpiece, I think. It captures a fairy-tale New York. It makes New York look like Paris in the 20’s. It makes you want to live there. And we kind of used it. And then we watched Straight Time, one of the best L.A. crime movies ever. But I wanted Jackie Brown to look more like a movie than that. Straight Time is too gritty.”

With Tarantino and editor Sally Menke working on the film up to December 4, Jackie Brown snuck into theaters Christmas Day 1997. Critics responded coolly. Elvis Mitchell, the New York Times: “But for all its enthusiasm, this film isn’t sharp enough to afford all the time it wastes on small talk, long drives, trips to the mall and favorite songs played on car radios.” Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: “Each scene is staged methodically, overdeliberately, as if it concealed some payoff zinger. But the zingers don’t arrive. All we see is a reasonably clever Elmore Leonard caper that needed to be treated as fast, trashy fun.” Kenneth Turan, the Los Angeles Times: “A raunchy doodle, a leisurely and easygoing diversion that goes down easy enough but is far from compelling.”

Jackie Brown grossed $39.6 million in the U.S., but compared to the $213 million Pulp Fiction made all over the globe and the celebration that followed in the press, Tarantino felt disconnected from his follow-up. In an interview with Sight & Sound in February 2008, he commented, “One of the things that is fun about reading books is it puts you in a complete different environment. If you read one of Ian Rankin’s books and you think you got a good excuse to go to Edinburgh and shoot this big Scottish thing that could be really fun. But I lost my stamina in the last quarter of the last lap of Jackie Brown and part of the reason was I wasn’t taking something I created from scratch from a blank piece of paper and turning it into a full project. When I finished the edit and got my cut the way I wanted, I was emotionally done. I believe people could say it’s my best movie, but there’s a slight once-removed quality, located somewhere in my balls where that doesn’t live.”

Opinion
For every member of the “Quentin Tarantino Is a Hack” Society, there’s probably something to dislike about Jackie Brown. Samuel L. Jackson is once again allowed to do too much and draws a spotlight on how pleased some of Tarantino’s dialogue is with itself. And at a notch above 2 ½ hours, it is too long. While Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill warranted epic running times, here, the story barely seems to warrant the excess. What ends up being so remarkable about Jackie Brown is that, while using the Blaxploitation genre of the ‘70s as a touchstone, Tarantino refuses to populate the film with pimps, prostitutes or private dicks and in a stunner, composes as subtle, mature and self-assured a modern love story as any director at any stage of his career.

Like all great cult classics, Jackie Brown offers little in the way of instant gratification. Four shootings each happen just out of frame. Instead of bullets, words are the primary weapon of choice. Plot device and style are almost invisible; it’s character and performance that take center stage and on that count, the film is brilliant. Pam Grier’s moments with Robert Forster soar. Bridget Fonda gives the performance of a lifetime as one of the goofiest vixens ever seen in a caper. Samuel L. Jackson’s scenes with DeNiro are monumental. While a remake of The Big Bird Cage might have passed for daring by a less gifted filmmaker, Tarantino demonstrates remarkable taste by recognizing what makes an Elmore Leonard novel special: human beings expressing their fears and desires, while stealing lots of money.

Richard Booth at DVD Times writes, “Jackie Brown is not over-indulgent or flawed, in fact it’s almost as good as his first two efforts. The more times you watch it, the more engrossing it gets, until there comes a point where it can proudly stand alongside Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. It may not be quite as good, lacking the hip edge that defined his first two films, but the few flaws in the film actually shape it, and the more mature approach taken show that Tarantino possesses layers as a filmmaker.”

Dawn Taylor at The DVD Journal writes, “A more leisurely paced, less-violent film than his first two, Jackie Brown is a movie that improves with age. The performances are top-notch, the setting, clothes, music and other details are timeless, and the writing dazzles. However, at two hours, 31 minutes it’s far too long and starts to wear out its welcome before QT finally ties all of the pieces together. But despite that, there’s some moments of sheer genius in the picture, most notably when the climactic money exchange is shown from three different perspectives — each new version offers delicious, important details that were missed from the other characters’ point of view, and the sheer fun of it all reminds us of why we go to the movies in the first place: to be surprised, thrilled, and entertained.”

© Joe Valdez

Synopsis
Emerging from Folsom State Prison after six years, Max Dembo (Dustin Hoffman) returns to Los Angeles. He spends his first night of freedom eating a hot dog and wandering the city streets. Checking in the next day with his parole officer, Earl Frank (M. Emmet Walsh), Max is verbally reprimanded for failing to show up at the halfway house and for exhibiting what the parole officer considers an attitude: “My friend, I see you’re going to force me to deal with you.” With juvenile offenses dating back to when he was 12 – including auto theft and burglary – Max pledges that he’s no menace to society and just wants to be like everybody else. Earl allows Max to skip the halfway house if he finds work and a place to stay in a week.

An interview with a young career placement clerk named Jenny (Theresa Russell) not only gets Max a job at a can company, but a dinner date as well. A visit to his buddy Willy (Gary Busey) gives Max a glimpse of the family life he’s been dreaming of, but Willy’s wife (Kathy Bates) tells Max she doesn’t feel it’s a good idea for him to be around her husband. When Earl drops by Max’s apartment for a surprise visit, the parole officer finds matches Willy left on the floor while he was shooting up. He violates Max back to jail. The ex-con is eventually released, but on the ride home, Earl keeps at him about whose matches those were. Reaching the end of his rope, Max attacks the p.o. and leaves him handcuffed in the middle of the freeway with his pants yanked down.

Max seeks out another friend, Jerry Schue (Harry Dean Stanton), a heist man settled down with a wife in the suburbs. Jerry misses the adrenaline rush of scores and it doesn’t take long for the pair to fall back into old habits. They first attempt to stick up a high stakes poker game in the Valley, but when a third accomplice fails to show up in time with a shotgun, Max drives his fist into the man’s jaw. A bank robbery is successful, but Max demonstrates an alarming tendency to take too long getting himself out the door. He comes clean with Jenny about what he does and what he is, and she seems to accept it: “I’ll stay with you as long as I can handle it, but when I can’t, I’m gonna go.” She even comes along as Max cases the inside of a jewelry store.

Production history
In 1951, Eddie Bunker became the youngest man “elected” to San Quentin State Prison. A ward of the state from the time he was 4 years old, Bunker was 17 when handed a four-year sentence for delivering hash and escaping L.A. County Jail. He was ultimately inspired by Caryl Chessman, whose bestselling autobiography was written on death row. Incarcerated at the federal correctional institution on Terminal Island in 1975, Bunker recalled at the time, “I wanted to be a writer and they told me – I was in the state prisons then – they told me that was unrealistic and I should learn to be a plumber or a carpenter or something like that, but I’m pretty stubborn. And I felt I had something to say, that I could salvage something out of my existence, out of the misery of my existence, by writing. Out of mud grows the lotus, or something.”

Bunker was serving time in Marion, Illinois for attempted bank robbery in 1973 when the sixth novel he’d attempted – No Beast So Fierce – was published to wide acclaim. Director Ulu Grosbard felt the book had a gritty, genuine feel and gave it to his friend Dustin Hoffman. The actor had recently joined Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Barbara Streisand and Sidney Poitier in a production shingle called First Artists. Warner Bros. had committed to greenlight any project the stars were interested in, provided they work for scale, and kept their budgets below $3 million. In return, they could do anything they wanted. Hoffman wanted to direct. Optioning the book, the actor spent two years researching Max Dembo, going to prisons, hanging out with ex-cons, and talking at length with Bunker.

Hoffman recalled, “And the more I hung out with Eddie Bunker on a daily basis, it was like watching a documentary every day in terms of the firsthand information I got. And certainly I started from Eddie Bunker because many times during the script writings and everything Eddie would just shake his head and say, ‘Naw, man. That’s bullshit.’ And I’d say, ‘Well tell me the way it was.’” With an actor friend named Stanley Beck serving as producer, Hoffman commissioned several screenplays. Alvin Sargent worked with Bunker on a draft in the waiting room at Terminal Island. Michael Mann wrote sixty pages under Hoffman’s supervision, but it ended up being unusable. Many months spent rewriting the script and assembling a cast and crew ended with the studio pressing Hoffman to start shooting.

Hoffman’s directing career began and ended outside Folsom State Prison, where he was hampered by uncooperative weather, as well as chronic indecision. Without the advent of video playback, the actor had to rely on the advice of cinematographer Owen Roizman and editor Sam O’Steen, who often contradicted each other over whether a take was good. “Anyway, so I saw the rushes and felt disgruntled and fearful and I said, ‘I’m firing myself.’ ‘Cause I couldn’t perceive going through that experience, asking two different people after takes, ‘How was it? How was it?’” Hoffman turned to Ulu Grosbard for help. Grosbard had worked with the actor off-Broadway, and directed him in Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?

Grosbard recalled, “When Dustin called me, I said, ‘Okay, let me go out and take a look at what’s going on.’ He was a good friend, he was in very serious trouble and because I’d liked the story I thought, let me check it out. When I looked at the script, I did not see any kind of a storyline that had any appeal to me. So I said, ‘I don’t know. One of the options is to cut bait and take the loss.’ And then I had an afterthought and I said … ‘Let me go back and read Alvin’s draft.’ And I went back and read Alvin’s draft. It was a 180 page draft, but I saw a movie in it. I mean, there was a storyline in it, it was clear to me, and suddenly it was something I felt would really interest me. ‘Cause I saw a possibility of telling a story of someone – a criminal – who just simply throws his life away.”

Alvin Sargent was by this time six months behind schedule writing Ordinary People for Robert Redford, but over three days, whittled his epic draft down to 120 pages. Grosbard brought in Jeffrey Boam to polish it, but as he commenced shooting March 1977, still had no script. “The problem of course is when you do that kind of thing – cutting out characters – and you leave a lot of gaps. And that is something we had to address in the middle of shooting literally day by day and it is something where Dustin was extremely helpful. I mean, he’d gotten into the character in a really remarkable way and what we ended up doing is very often improvise the scene the night before – the actors – the scene we were going to shoot the next day. It would be recorded, it would be typed up, and then the next morning we’d go on location and rehearse the scene and shoot.”

Arriving on the title Straight Time, Grosard wrapped filming in September. His first disagreement with Hoffman occurred outside the editing room, where Grosbard was working on an assembly and let it be known that the actor’s input was not welcome. Hoffman took four weeks of work on the film Agatha, which as soon as Hoffman came on board in a supporting role, underwent massive rewrites for the star and turned into a twelve-week commitment. Expecting Warner Bros. to honor its commitment to First Artists and allow him to deliver a final cut of Straight Time, Hoffman learned the studio intended to dump the film into theaters. He filed a breach of contract lawsuit and demanded $66 million in damages, publicly disowning the film in the process.

Opening March 1978 without an advance press screening, Gene Siskel would rank Straight Time #1 on his list of the year’s 10 best films. Other critics were not as appreciative. Charles Champlin wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “Hoffman’s Max has less dimension than some of his earlier characterizations.” Writing for Time Magazine, Frank Rich added: “Hoffman works hard and well to create a man who lives in a state of constant punishment. It’s an admirable job, but one sadly wasted in a film that punishes the audience as much as it does the people on screen.” The film grossed $4 million in the U.S. and while ignored at the box office, became an influence among some filmmakers. Quentin Tarantino studied it at the Sundance Film lab, and cast Bunker as Mr. Blue in Reservoir Dogs. Michael Mann was so inspired by Bunker’s fiction that Jon Voight’s character in Heat was modeled after the writer.

Recording an audio commentary for the film’s release on DVD in 2007, Grosbard recalled, “I love the underbelly of Los Angeles, and this movie dealt with the underbelly of Los Angeles. I mean, it’s a Los Angeles that isn’t Bel Air or, you know, Beverly Hills, it is the real Los Angeles so to speak, and it’s everywhere, God knows. Dustin had to hire a production designer named Stephen Grimes, who had a wonderful track record – he’d worked for John Huston – he’s a wonderful man, but he’s an Englishman. And when I came in I thought to myself, ‘What an odd choice, and how is this guy going to handle this, I mean, what does he know about Los Angeles? Less than I do.’ As it turned out, he was brilliant … and had a genuine sense for the grittiness of what I was looking for, and so of course was Owen Roizman, who was absolutely terrific.”

Opinion
The latest generation of Los Angeles crime sagas – Reservoir Dogs, Heat, L.A. Confidential – embrace stark dialogue and some of the finest visual gloss that money can buy. Straight Time has neither of those, but is the bedrock those modern classics were built on. More vividly than any movie made before or since, Eddie Bunker’s source material takes us through the life and times of a criminal as he suffers the humiliation of parole, the difficulties of holding down honest work, the temptations, and the inevitable slide back into old habits. The great thing about the film is that it never asks us to feel sorry for Max Dembo, revealing him to be a creature of instinct, but poor instinct, resigned to getting caught and sent back to the only place he knows how to function.

To watch Hoffman work with M. Emmet Walsh, Hoffman with Gary Busey, Hoffman with a young Kathy Bates, as well as Theresa Russell is to watch an All-Star caliber lineup of the finest character actors of the late 1970s. Russell in particular brings serenity to what might have otherwise been the thankless role of girlfriend. Another graceful note here is Ulu Grosbard’s decision not to come on strong with the style, to hold the camera back and simply permit scenes to unfold in master shots as if we were there. The film ends on a note that’s as honest as it is technically proficient, anchoring Straight Time in the vanguard of great ‘70s films. David Shire composed the snappy urban score.

Gary Couzens at DVD Times writes, “Straight Time is very much a Seventies picture: a low-key slightly grainy look, with a character-led storyline, an anti-heroic lead character, taking advantage of contemporary licence for strong language. (It’s not graphically violent.) It’s certainly of interest for quite a few reasons, and does have something of a cult following, though an undersung masterpiece it isn’t.”

Adnan Tezer at Monsters and Critics writes, “Straight Time, after nearly 30 years, has lost none of its impact and still remains the most authentic, realistic portrayal of a criminal ever put on screen. It ranks along side the best of the less popular/heralded 70s films that portrayed working class people or people outside the boundaries of contemporary society (i.e. criminals) in a gritty, raw and uncompromising way that had never been seen before or since including Paul Schrader’s Blue Collar, Arthur Penn’s Night Moves and Jerry Schatzberg’s Scarecrow.”

© Joe Valdez

Synopsis
On a typical, stifling summer day, three men shuffle into the “First Brooklyn Savings Bank” as it closes. Stevie (Gary Springer) is a kid. Sal (John Cazale) is a dim, quiet type who holds the manager at gunpoint. Sonny (Al Pacino) struggles just getting his rifle out of a box, then suffers a major setback when Stevie decides he can’t go through with the job and leaves. Sonny knows bank procedure, but takes so long getting the robbery going, the NYPD surround the building. The head teller, Sylvia (Penelope Allen) gets upset at the would-be robbers. “Did you have a plan, or what? What did you do, just barge in on whim?” Detective Eugene Moretti (Charles Durning) phones from a barbershop across the street. Sonny bluffs that he’ll start shooting hostages if the police come in.

As Sonny tries to figure out what to do next, the sidewalks fill with onlookers. The 250 cops outside the bank grow as nervous and blundering as the robbers inside. Sonny gains the upper hand by leading the crowd in chants of “Attica! Attica!” Doing his best to attend to the needs of his hostages, Sonny gains their support as well. One of his demands is to talk to his lover, Leon Shermer (Chris Sarandon), a nervous wreck wacked out on sedatives he’s been given at the mental hospital. It comes out that Sonny staged the robbery to pay for a sex change operation for Leon. Sonny asks for a jet to fly him, Sal and the hostages to a foreign country, but FBI agents Sheldon (James Broderick) and Murphy (Lance Henriksen) ultimately prove to be one step ahead of the would-be robbers.

Production history
P.F. Kluge was a Los Angeles based journalist dispatched by Life Magazine in August 1972 to cover a bizarre bank robbery unfolding in Brooklyn. With Tom Moore, Kluge interviewed hostages, NYPD officers, FBI agents and onlookers who had gathered to watch the event. Their article – “The Boys In The Bank” – ran in September. When budding producer Robert Greenhut read it, he brought the material to Martin Bregman, a one-time talent manager producing a movie – Serpico – starring a former client, Al Pacino. Bregman recalls, “What was wonderful to me about it is it portrayed a life or a lifestyle that nobody had ever seen before. It was about a guy who’s in love with another man; it was a gay relationship, but without the dirty jokes, and the extent that one character went through to prove his love. And it was a first. It was different.”

Screenwriter Frank Pierson was hired to adapt a script. “Nothing was ever quite the same in the way the police handled hostage situations after Dog Day Afternoon. It became and still is part of police training for dealing with similar kinds of situations where crowds are out of control … Was that what it was about? Was it the teller’s story, was it the policeman’s story, who has to struggle with the situation and deal with something he doesn’t understand? Many of the police were morally offended when they discovered the issues of sexuality involved. And after a while I decided that the best way to tell the story was from the point of view of the bank robber himself; why he went there, how he conducted himself and what the results were for that character, and made the decision that we would tell it entirely from inside the bank.”

In the real incident, a Chase Manhattan bank in Brooklyn had been held up by John Wojtowicz in order to afford a sex change operation for his lover, a pre-operative transsexual. Wojtowicz was serving twenty years in Lewisburg and withholding cooperation from the producers over how much they would pay him. Pierson instead poured over testimony from those who knew Wojtowicz – his wife, his mother, hostages – but each eyewitness contradicted the last. Pierson considered dropping out of the project, but had already spent his advance. “So I went back to see if there was one element in common that everybody had about John. Well, basically he would be looking at you and he would say, ‘I’ll take care of you. I’ll make you happy.’ And then he’s going to fail. And that’s the story of the bank. Now I knew I could write it.”

Just after Christmas 1973, Pierson had finished a script for Dog Day Afternoon. He accompanied Bregman, producer Martin Elfand and Al Pacino to London, where Sidney Lumet had transitioned from Serpico to direct Murder On The Orient Express. Pacino had agreed to play “Sonny Wortzik” – as the bank robber was now named – but was having second thoughts. The actor recalled, “It basically, I really didn’t want to work. Because I knew with Sidney Lumet, you sort of have to work, he really puts you in there and works you. And at the time I just thought, ‘Why would I want to do this now? I’m tired, I want to go back on the stage eventually.’ So they understood that and they were very gracious and I thought it was over.”

Bregman called Pacino and implored him to read the script again. “So, I read it. And it became so clear to me, I thought – especially having been reading the script – I keep getting scripts all the time and they’re never up to that kind of quality, that intensity, that writing and characters and all of these characters in this piece. And I just put the script down and said, “Marty, I’ll do it. I’m there.’” Lumet recalls, “I think that Al was as concerned if not more concerned than I was about the subject matter. He was the one with the greatest risk. By the time this picture had come out, he was now a major star. And no major star that I know of had ever played a gay man. He kept looking for disguises. So he grew a moustache and it looked terrible. We shot the first day and Al is one of the few actors I know who is wonderful at rushes … And he leaned over to me and said the moustache has got to go.”

During a three-week rehearsal, Lumet worried whether audiences were going to accept the gay content of the film, or revolt against it. His decision was to make Dog Day Afternoon feel as real as possible. The cast was asked to show up in their personal wardrobe. Other than fake sweat, there was no makeup. Lighting on the set was practical, mostly the fluorescents that were inside the real bank, and for the first time in his career, Lumet permitted actors to supply their own lines. Improvisations during rehearsal were taped and Pierson injected them into the shooting script. On three occasions, Lumet allowed Pacino and Charles Durning to improvise on camera, resulting in Pacino roaring “Attica, Attica!” to the crowd.

Opening September 1975 in the U.S., Dog Day Afternoon was embraced by critics. Writing in the New Yorker, Pauline Kael called it “One of the best ‘New York’ movies ever made.” Gene Siskel ranked the film #4 on his list of the year’s 10 best, while Roger Ebert notched it at #10. In Hollywood, the staff of Daily Variety raved, “The entire cast is excellent, top to bottom. Dog Day Afternoon is, in the whole as well as the parts, film-making at its best.” It was nominated for six Academy Awards in an extraordinary year which saw five masterpieces vie for Best Picture: Barry Lyndon, Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws, Nashville and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Only Pierson received an Oscar, for Best Original Screenplay. The industry overlooked Pacino’s performance to award Jack Nicholson for his portrayal of R.P. McMurphy.

While many consider Dog Day Afternoon a modern classic, others criticize Lumet for lack of a signature visual style. On an audio commentary for the film’s two-disc DVD in 2006, he stated, “I hate the word ‘style’ because it’s misused so much because most people don’t know what they’re talking about really when they’re talking about style, that the important thing in style is stripping away everything except what that picture needs. So style is one of the most misused words in movies. It’s easy to talk about style when you see a picture like A Man and a Woman, the Claude Lelouch movie. I’m not picking on that. But it does look like a Ford commercial. And so they think, ‘Oh that’s style.’ Well, it’s not style, it’s just a long lens, that’s all it is. Using 150mm, 300mm lenses, it’s not style because it doesn’t belong only to only that movie.”

Opinion
Unlike a lot of the great films of the 1970s, journeyman cinematographer Victor Kemper doesn’t move the camera all that much, and “Attica! Attica!” aside, the movie doesn’t make sweeping social statements or teach its characters any lessons; they start the story tired and end up exhausted. But Dog Day Afternoon is a minor masterpiece and still holds up as the best movie ever made about a hostage event because of Al Pacino’s harrowing performance, as well as its documentary immediacy, capturing the social decay, shifting attitudes and funky fashions of one of the all-time great settings for a movie, New York of the 1970s. With the exception of Taxi Driver, no movie of its era is as gritty, comical or tightly wound as Dog Day Afternoon.

Lumet’s decision not to feature a musical score – Elton John’s “Amoreena” during the opening credits is the only music – strips any artificiality that the cops and robbers tale might have been saddled with right off the screen. By documenting how the police, the press and the public over-react to the events inside the bank, the film has a terrific black wit to it. The presence of the late, great John Cazale and the revelations of Sonny’s personal life give the film even more edge, and in the middle is a ceaseless performance by Al Pacino. This is my favorite performance of his because when it’s all done, you feel almost as drained physically and emotionally as Sonny. Along with the mid-‘70s vibe the film bottles for all time, Dog Day Afternoon is unlikely to ever be topped.

Mike Sutton at DVD Times writes, “Dog Day Afternoon is renowned as one of the definitive film portrayals of New York life and that reputation is well deserved. Perhaps only Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing has done as good a job at catching the combination of lazy indolence and near hysteria that the summer steam heat and humidity can create, and while the intentions of the directors are very different both are surprisingly indulgent of the flaws of their characters and both are willing to find the difficult, messy truth of an initially straightforward situation.”

Christopher Null at Filmcritic.com writes, “Today Dog Day Afternoon is an unabashed classic, a template by which other movies are based and a formula which is periodically tweaked and refined. There are few things you can complain about in Dog Day — a second act that relies on a few too many variations of the same ‘the cops are scheming’ bit, and that’s about it. But Pacino’s fiery performance and Sidney Lumet’s perfect direction does more than create a great crime movie. It captures perfectly the zeitgeist of the early 1970s, a time when optimism was scraping rock bottom and John Wojtowicz was as good a hero as we could come up with.”

© Joe Valdez

Synopsis
Three factory workers – Zeke (Richard Pryor), Jerry (Harvey Keitel) and Smokey (Yaphet Kotto) – struggle to make ends meet at an auto plant in Detroit. Zeke blows his cool with the union shop steward (Lane Smith) because his locker door has been broken for months. At a bar after their shift, a college instructor (Cliff DeYoung) asks the men questions about their union. Smokey recognizes him as an FBI agent. The fed asks the men why they let their union rip them off as much as management does.

At home, Zeke is paid a visit by an IRS agent who notifies him that due to false deductions on his tax returns – claiming a batch of his neighbor’s kids as his own – he now owes Uncle Sam over two thousand dollars. During a trip to his union local to complain about his locker, Zeke notices a walk-in safe. With Jerry needing money, Smokey wanting to stick it to the union, and Zeke wanting both, they don Halloween masks and swipe what they can from the safe.

Their score nets $600 and a notebook. Studying the notebook, Zeke discovers a list of loans with unusually high rates of interest. Jerry wants to get rid of the notebook. Zeke wants to use their evidence to change the union. Smokey doesn’t think politics makes any difference at all and that they should do something to help themselves. He suggests extortion, but once the union finds out who stole the notebook, the mens’ real problems begin.

Production history
Screenwriter Paul Schrader didn’t feel he had enough creative control of his career. With the option of either writing books or directing movies, he chose to become a director. He was approached by an aspiring writer named Sidney Glass, who told Schrader an idea he had about his father, an auto worker who committed suicide. Schrader said he had a better idea: auto workers who rob their own union.

The screenwriter called his brother Leonard Schrader and told him about the idea. Schrader didn’t think Glass was going to do anything with it, and suggested his brother write it with him. After Blue Collar was financed, Glass resurfaced and alleged that he had come up with the idea. To resolve the issue, Glass received $15,000, 1.5% of the net profits and an unusual screen credit: “source material suggested by”.

Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto joined the cast. Schrader realized he had “hired three bulls and asked them to come into a china shop.” He had separately promised each actor that their role would be the lead. Reporting to work, it became apparent to each that this was not the case. They refused to read lines to each other off-camera, and the mood became so volatile that not a day went by without Pryor involved in some type of verbal or physical confrontation with the cast and crew.

The film was distributed by Universal Pictures, who not only marketed it as a Richard Pryor comedy, but recycled their ad campaign for Which Way Is Up? Schrader was quoted as saying the studio had employed a “dumb nigger” campaign, to see how many black people they could fool into thinking this was a Richard Pryor comedy. Not many people were fooled, but while the film was ignored at the box office, it was well received critically and launched Schrader’s career as a director.

Opinion
With the exception of his screenplays for Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, Blue Collar is the finest work Paul Schrader has ever done. The edges of the film explore all that was not right with the working class in the late ’70s – inflation, unemployment, corruption – while at its center is a brilliant performance by Richard Pryor. Aside from his role in Lady Sings The Blues, the pioneering comedian never showed he could act – really act – the way he did in this film.

This is a heist movie with thieves who figure out they’re the ones being robbed. Ambition, loyalty and greed play as much a role in their fates as they might in a great novel. It’s apparent that Schrader isn’t that comfortable behind the camera, but the rawness of Blue Collar works in its favor. It stands up as one of the best social documents of the time. As for Pryor, whether he’s holding court in a union hall, or confiding his new view of the world to his friend, each moment he’s on screen is nothing short of remarkable.

Norman Short at DVD Verdict writes, “I can vouch for the realism of the film from my own upbringing. I myself worked in a similar plant as these characters for some time in the late ’70s, and the feel is true to the industrial setting and the men who work and live within it.”

“The film is not flawless, but the treatment of the material is so dark and effective that it makes Seven look like a Disney musical. Keitel, Kotto, and Pryor … deliver career high-point performances. The opening credit sequence is one of the best around and the ending is just as good,” writes Gil Jawetz at DVD Talk.

Mike Lorefice at Raging Bull Movie Reviews writes, “Blue Collar is a powerful and in most cases highly enjoyable piece of social realism that actually does make a serious attempt to deal with the day to day problems facing the average US worker. Its messages may be as mixed up as its characters, but if you try to deal with a problem honestly, even if you are wrong, at least you create a debate.”

© Joe Valdez

Synopsis
“Gal” Dove (Ray Winstone) – a London expat retired in Spain – suns himself poolside in his villa. He’s almost squashed when a boulder rolls down a hill and lands in his pool. Otherwise, Gal lives the good life, with his wife (Amanda Redman), best friend Aitch (the late Cavan Kendall) and Aitch’s blonde wife (Julianne White). Aitch comes bearing the worst news any of them could hear: Don Logan wants Gal for a job and is flying in from London to get him.

Don (Ben Kingsley) is a loathsome thug with the impulse control of a Rottweiler, quite possibly the angriest man alive. He’s been tasked with assembling a crew to break into an impenetrable safety deposit vault in London for a fearsome gangster named Teddy Bass (Ian McShane). Gal – a thief who kept quiet while serving nine years in prison – insists he’s retired now. He summons the courage to turn down Don’s offer to his face.

This only motivates Don. He intimidates, threatens and even smacks Gal around. His answer is still no. Don finally gives up, but is kicked off his plane for refusing to put out his cigarette. He returns to Gal’s villa in a rage. Gal next turns up in London to go through with the job. But Teddy grows suspicious when Don fails to return from Spain. The job is a success, but before Gal can return safely home, he has to answer for Don’s disappearance.

Production history
Louis Mellis & David Scinto had written their first play – Gangster No. 1 – and seen it open to strong reviews in London. The writers adapted it into a screenplay and sent a copy to Jonathan Glazer, hoping he would direct it. Glazer was well known in England for directing a popular ad campaign for Guinness, as well as music videos for Radiohead (”Street Spirit”) and Jamiroquai (”Virtual Insanity”). He was named MTV Director of the Year in 1997 and was looking to direct his first feature film.

Glazer felt the duo’s writing was “extraordinary” and signed on. But the trio became locked in a dispute with the film’s producer over casting; Malcolm McDowell and Paul Bettany ended up in the movie, released in 2000 long after Glazer had dropped out, and even Mellis & Scinto took their names off the film. They had a script they felt was way better called Sexy Beast. They sent it to Glazer, who thought it was “dynamite” and agreed to direct it.

Filming commenced in December 1998 around Almeria, Spain. Glazer wasn’t given time to rehearse, but when Ben Kingsley ran behind schedule working in L.A., the cast ended up with two weeks to prepare for the arrival of Don Logan. Sexy Beast was largely dismissed in the U.K. when it opened in January 2001, but received rave reviews in the U.S. in June. Kingsley’s performance earned him an Academy Award nomination for Supporting Actor.

Opinion
I went into the movie expecting business as usual, with Sir Ben Kingsley – joining a long line of British hoodlums played by Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins, etc. – putting his foot in the arse of some unfortunate Londoners. Instead of Sir Kingsley, Sexy Beast actually revolves around the equally charismatic Ray Winstone. Along the way, it shatters the mold of all the hard boiled crime pictures that have come before it.

Mellis & Scinto’s script – performed word for word by the cast – has a droll wit that floats through it. Winstone is immensely likable, and his relationship to the other characters feels honest, not based on those in other movies. The writers invented their own language here too; characters talk like none in any other film. It’s also tense, and even surreal, with a recurring nightmare that’s one of the best conveyances of approaching doom that I’ve ever seen.

Sexy Beast is one of those movies that becomes more rewarding the more times you process it. The casting of Winstone, Kingsley and McShane is a nirvana for any gangster movie fan, while Amanda Redman and Julianne White do equally impressive work as the wives. Even a 12-year-old Spanish kid who plays Gal’s loyal helper is perfectly cast in this. Director Jonathan Glazer deserves a lot of credit, delivering one of the most original debut films of the ’00s.

Neil Young at Jigsaw Lounge writes, “As the man behind the Guinness ‘white horses’ advert, it’s no surprise Glazer delivers on the visuals but, crucially, he’s disciplined enough to put his talents at the service of a good script – slangy, slightly surreal, bracingly economical, brutally bare-bones.”

“Oh my, how I liked this movie. It’s always fun to find a flick that really catches your attention and makes you get excited once again over the medium of celluloid,” writes Patrick Naugle at DVD Verdict.

Edward Copeland at Edward Copeland On Film writes, “The movie turns out to be an odd hybrid of crime drama, dark comedy and terse conversation reminiscent of playwright Harold Pinter. First-time director Jonathan Glazer keeps the film moving, though it does suffer when Kingsley isn’t on the screen. However, Don Logan’s presence reverberates even when he’s not there in person and makes Sexy Beast worth a look.”

© Joe Valdez

Synopsis
Jack Foley (George Clooney) storms out of an office building in Miami. He enters a bank across the street, and using the right words (”Is this your first time being robbed? You’re doing great”), gets the teller to hand over all her cash. He doesn’t get far. Incarcerated in “Glades Correctional Institution,” Foley notices fellow convict Chino (Luis Guzman) jogging, and learns the prisoner is digging his way out of prison after dark.

Foley phones his ex-wife, a magician’s assistant (Catherine Keener) and arranges for his guilt obsessed, ex-con friend Buddy (Ving Rhames) to be waiting with a car. Meanwhile, federal marshal Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez) is dispatched to Glades to serve a process. She ends up in the middle of the prison break. Foley disarms Karen and hides out with her in the trunk of the getaway car.

After being up close and personal, the couple is separated when Karen convinces Foley and Buddy’s stoner accomplice Glenn (Steve Zahn) to ditch his pals and drive her away. In a flashback to Lompoc Federal Penitentiary two years previous, Glenn informs Foley and Buddy that a Wall Street crook interned with them named Dick the Ripper (Albert Brooks) has $5 million in uncut diamonds at his house in Detroit. Dick has bought protection from a convict named Snoopy (Don Cheadle), who has his sights set on bigger ambitions.

Back in the present, the marshal and her fugitive can’t get their minds off each other. Karen tracks down Chino, earning a spot on the hapless FBI team hunting Foley. She trails Glenn to Detroit, where Foley and Buddy intend to go through with their diamond burglary of Dick the Ripper’s mansion. Glenn has let Snoopy and his cohorts Kenneth (Isaiah Washington) and White Boy Bob (Keith Loneker) in on the score. Buddy wants to walk away, while Foley locates Karen at her hotel and asks her to dinner. She accepts.

Production history
Barry Sonnenfeld – who had directed Get Shorty, widely considered the best adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel up to that time – was attached to direct a screen version of the author’s 1996 novel Out of Sight. Get Shorty screenwriter Scott Frank had adapted the script. Sonnenfeld asked him what other movies he thought this one was supposed to be like. Frank couldn’t answer that.

Sonnenfeld preferred to direct something he was familiar with, and dropped out. Cameron Crowe and Mike Newell were offered the job and turned it down. Universal Pictures production chief Casey Silver thought of Steven Soderbergh next. Soderbergh had shot to success at age 26 when his first film – sex, lies and videotape – won the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival in 1989.

Soderbergh’s recent efforts – the Spalding Gray monologue Gray’s Anatomy, and the super low budget Schizopolis, which the director starred in himself – had been unwatchable. But Silver knew the director was a talent, and fiscally responsible. Soderbergh read the script, liked the material, and said no.

Silver urged him to reconsider. Soderbergh realized he had marginalized himself by only making small, idiosyncratic films, and agreed to helm the $48 million studio project, which George Clooney was attached to star in. Sandra Bullock read for the role of Karen Sisco, and while she and Clooney had great chemistry, Soderbergh felt it “wasn’t Elmore Leonard energy.” Jennifer Lopez had the verve Soderbergh was looking for, and won the part.

Universal planned to release Out of Sight in the fall, but when their tentpole event Meet Joe Black ran into production delays, Out of Sight was moved into multiplexes June 1998. Despite rave reviews, the unconventional, character driven caper did not catch on with summertime audiences, grossing $37 million in the U.S. The film’s creative pedigree got the attention of the industry, and Soderbergh was elevated to the status of A-list director.

Opinion
In contrast to the cream puff Ocean’s Eleven films Soderbergh would later direct Clooney in, to watch Out of Sight is to realize you’re sitting at the grownups table. The movie offers little in the way of instant gratification, but rewards the patience of the audience with an audacious story structure, intricate and sophisticated wit, great casting and a kinky, electric current that makes me grin whenever I watch this.

The film unfolds in a fractured timeline, starting in the middle, occasionally shifting back to the beginning and moving forward again, until someone recalls something we weren’t shown the first time. The colorful characters and sharp dialogue Elmore Leonard is renowned for are on full display here, but Scott Frank deserves a lot of credit for capturing the complexity of a good novel in his script, which challenges the audience, instead of catering to them.

Almost every character has a memorable scene, or flurry of terrific dialogue. The A+ cast – which also includes Dennis Farina, Viola Davis, Nancy Allen and reprising his role of Ray Nicolette from Jackie Brown, Michael Keaton – is more than game. Out of Sight is a must-see for Quentin Tarantino fans, but what distinguishes it is the kinky electricity that courses through the film. Clooney and Lopez’s sex scene is a highlight, as is the fantastic retro musical score by David Holmes.

Lisa Skrzyniarz at Crazy For Cinema writes, “Out of Sight will not be remembered in a listing of greatest films of all time, but it sure is one of the most enjoyable ones I’ve seen all year. Not everyone is smart, but they all have something to say. The dialogue in this film is clean, crisp, funny and honest.”

“Sensual cinematography, a retro-beat soundtrack, a diverse time-line and flattering freeze-frames effect a silky cadence, transgressed only by an underlying wit. The idiosyncratic characters clinch the tone,” writes Elspeth Haughton at Apollo Movie Guide.

Harold Gervais at DVD Verdict writes, “Out of Sight was one of the best films of 1998. It is sexy and funny. It has great acting on every level and inventive direction with very smart writing. Since it is also one of Universal’s best discs, I see no reason why this one should not be on every collector’s shelf.”

“I’ve vertically integrated myself. Now I’m into the occasional grand larceny, home invasion.” View the 1998 theatrical trailer.

© Joe Valdez

31 days of October. 31 articles devoted to the screen’s maestro of suspense and the macabre, Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980). I’ll be jumping back and forth through five decades in this series. More than half of the films I’ve never seen before, but even the ones I have seen were viewed, researched and written about this month.

Synopsis
In Phoenix, Arizona, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) gets dressed after a lunch hour tryst with Sam Loomis (John Gavin) in a hotel. Marion is a woman of conflicted morals who is tired of meeting her lover in secret. She wants to get married. Sam is a hardware store owner being bled dry by alimony to his ex-wife. Returning to her job at a real estate company, Marion is handed $40,000 to deposit. Instead, she packs her bags and flees town with the cash.

After falling asleep by the road, Marion is spooked when a highway patrolman wakes her. He follows her to a used car lot as Marion hurriedly pays for a new vehicle in cash. Heading to her boyfriend in Los Angeles, Marion’s conscience nags her, and she pulls out of the rain to spend the night at the isolated Bates Motel. The manager is Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), a socially awkward young man who lives with his ill mother in a mansion overlooking the motel.

Norman invites Marion to dinner, but his possessive mother so objects to this that Marion can hear her yelling at him from the house. Instead, he brings dinner to his guest. By talking to him, Marion realizes that she’s placed herself in a trap just like Norman is trapped with his mother. She decides to return the stolen money, but while taking a shower, Norman’s mother appears on the other side of the shower curtain and stabs Marion to death.

Norman cleans up the murder scene and disposes of Marion’s body and car in a swamp. In Los Angeles, Marion’s sister Lila (Vera Miles) confronts Sam about the disappearance. A private investigator named Arbogast (Martin Balsam) also shows up, hired by Marion’s employer to find her and return the money. Arbogast pays a visit to the Bates Motel. Norman’s stories don’t add up, and the sleuth is rebuked when he asks if he can speak to Norman’s mother.

Arbogast phones Lila with his information, then sneaks into the mansion to talk to Norman’s mother. He gets a butcher knife for his curiosity and Norman once again covers up the crime. Lila and Sam go to the sheriff, who notifies them that Arbogast couldn’t have gone to talk to Norman’s mother. “Norman Bates’ mother has been dead and buried in Greenlawn Cemetery for the past ten years.” To solve the mystery, the couple checks into the Bates Motel as guests.

Production history 
In February 1959, galleys of a novel by Robert Bloch called Psycho made the rounds at Paramount. Its title character was based loosely on Ed Gein, the Wisconsin farmer who had skinned his female neighbors and decorated his home with the body parts. Gein was later found to have had a difficult relationship with his mother. The studio found all of this too grisly, but the novel was praised in the crime fiction column of the New York Times. That got the attention of director Alfred Hitchcock.

Hitchcock’s agents at MCA quietly paid $9,000 to obtain the novel’s film rights for the director. Hitchcock saw Psycho as a simple low budget “shocker”, a big screen episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which would be a break from his big budget, star studded studio vehicles. He even planned on using his TV crew and shooting in black and white to shave costs.

With its violence, nudity and ghoulish subject matter, Psycho was shaping up to be the most blatant challenge to the Production Code anyone at Paramount had ever seen. Hitchcock offered to defer his salary in exchange for 60% ownership of the film. MCA chairman Lew Wasserman had just bought Universal, and eager to retain Hitchcock’s future services, suggested he could shoot the film on the Universal lot.

Emmy winning writer James Cavanaugh was hired to adapt the novel in May 1959. Before there was even a script, Hitchcock wanted to cast Anthony Perkins in the title role. Cavanaugh turned in a draft that was so dull, Hitchcock didn’t bother reading all of it. A young songwriter turned screenwriter named Joseph Stefano was suggested by MCA as a replacement. Stefano followed Bloch’s novel closely, while fleshing out the characters.

For the role of Marion Crane, Hitchcock told Stefano they were writing for Janet Leigh. Vera Miles, John Gavin and Martin Balsam rounded out the cast. For his crew, Hitchcock chose his cameraman from TV – John Russell – while George Tomasini, Bernard Herrmann and Saul Bass would once again provide the editing, musical score and titles, respectively. Shooting commenced in November 1959, wrapping two months later.

Once Production Code officials saw the film, they went “berserk” over the infamous shower murder. They demanded that Hitchcock remove all the nudity. The director notified them that there was none. The scene was screened again, and the censors who hadn’t caught any nudity the first time swore they had seen some now. The director kept submitting the film to the board and eventually, their shock wore off. Today, the 1960 film carries an “R” rating.

Hitchcock had begun promoting Psycho before even shooting a frame. He trumpeted his lurid “shocker” to the press, then closed his set to reporters. Critics were banned from advance screenings – forced to see the film on opening day with a paying audience – while advertisements warned, “No one … but NO ONE … will be admitted to the theater after the start of each performance.” This prompted moviegoers to form lines around the block.

The release of Psycho on June 16, 1960 was a media event. It became the highest grossing movie of the year, with $9 million in the U.S. and another $6 million overseas. Critical reaction swung like a pendulum between adulation and scorn. Today, the film is regarded as a cinema masterpiece, #14 on the AFI’s list of the 100 greatest American movies of all time, considered by many to be the most influential horror film ever made.

Opinion 
While Jaws may be more influential – and more terrifying – Psycho absolutely belongs in any debate of the scariest films of all time. Its construction has been part of college curriculum for some time now, but the genius of this film is how Hitchcock took everything that had made his TV series a success – stripped down aesthetic, little known actors, shocking twists – and adapted that format to film. This resulted in a movie that doesn’t just break convention. It shatters it.

Anthony Perkins gives perhaps the strongest performance of any actor in a Hitchcock film, while Janet Leigh performed her career best work as the tragic heroine. As with Jaws, the film soars to another level whenever the musical score – which Bernard Herrmann insisted would be composed only of strings – cuts in. The bottom line is the movie is scary. Perkins and Miles returned for the surprisingly good Psycho II in 1983, while Gus Van Sant directed an oddly conceived, much maligned remake in 1998.

Lisa at Crazy For Cinema writes, “It’s a toss up between Psycho and the original Halloween over which has caused me more sleepless nights. Jaws may have kept me out of the ocean, but Psycho has affected my adult habits more than I’d like to admit.”

“Psycho is the first film that involved me so much that I became completely hooked on the magic of movies. I have seen this film over 40 times, and it continues to hold my interest,” writes John Nesbit at Old School Reviews.

John Puccio at DVDTown writes, “Whether he intended the film to be so pioneering a work is still up for grabs, but it is. It’s a landmark film in the use of realistic violence, shock, humor, and surprise. Today, virtually every horror film and thriller owes its allegiance to Psycho.”

“Here we have a quiet little motel, tucked away off the main highway and as you see, perfectly harmless looking. When in fact, it has now become known as the scene of a crime.” View the 1960 theatrical trailer, with Alfred Hitchcock giving us a tour of his new motion picture Psycho.

© Joe Valdez

31 days of October. 31 articles devoted to the screen’s maestro of suspense and the macabre, Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980). I’ll be jumping back and forth through five decades in this series. More than half of the films I’ve never seen before, but even the ones I have seen were viewed, researched and written about this month.

Synopsis
When a jewel thief strikes the resorts of the French Riviera, the man everyone suspects is responsible is John Robie (Cary Grant). Once known as “The Cat,” Robie was France’s most notorious jewel thief, until he was jailed and then lent his expertise to the Resistance during the war. He now devotes his time to growing grapes and flowers at his hilltop villa, but when police come to question him, he goes on the run.

Robie is now persona non grata among his former partisans, who were granted pardons after the war and want nothing to do with a fugitive. Robie’s former comrade (Charles Vanel) – operator of a catering business – puts him in contact with an insurance agent (John Williams), who provides Robie with a list of the most valuable jewels currently in the French Riviera. In exchange, Robie agrees to catch the copycat.

The top target on the list is an American widow Jessie Stevens (Jessie Royce Landis), on holiday with her headstrong daughter Frances (Grace Kelly). Robie’s up close and personal time with Frances draws the jealousy of a French girl (Brigitte Auber) helping Robie out in the hope he’ll run away with her. Frances is suspicious of Robie as well, but attracted to him. She agrees to sneak him into a costume ball, where Robie hopes to evade police capture long enough to catch the copycat red handed.

Production history 
To Catch A Thief was a project that director Alfred Hitchcock had developed through his production company Transatlantic Pictures. Producer Sidney Bernstein had obtained the screen rights to the 1952 adventure mystery novel by David Dodge, with a tentative agreement from Cary Grant to star. When Hitchcock moved to Paramount, he sold the story rights – which Bernstein had obtained for $15,000 – to the studio for $105,000.

The novel concerned a famed cat burglar named John Robie, alias Le Chat, who puts his criminal past behind him to aid the French Resistance during the German occupation. After the war, he retires to the French Riviera, but when a spree of burglaries ensues, he reunites with his old confederates to nab the copycat and clear his name. Intrigued by setting a film on the French Riviera, Hitchcock hired John Michael Hayes to adapt a script in early 1954.

Hitchcock notified Hayes which stars they were tailoring the lead roles for. Grace Kelly turned down On The Waterfront to go to the South of France with Hitchcock, while Cary Grant took longer to get on board. He had announced his retirement after Dream Wife in 1952 and hadn’t appeared in a movie since. Hitchcock’s promises that the film would be a return to the sophisticated comedy Grant epitomized – and 10% of the gross – brought the icon back to the screen.

While Hayes raced to finish a script, location shooting commenced in June 1954. The script was still being tweaked over the summer as interiors were being shot on the Paramount lot. Hayes clashed with the director as he felt the film was becoming increasingly far fetched. Hitchcock didn’t mind that at all. Audiences didn’t seem to either. To Catch A Thief was almost as popular as Rear Window, grossing $4.5 million in the U.S.

Opinion 
The film boasts two of the most glamorous movie stars of the 20th century, but if you’ve seen Cary Grant or Grace Kelly standing around, looking glamorous, it gets tiring after about two minutes and unfortunately, there’s little to nothing else to write home about To Catch A Thief. This was a project loaded with potential to bait and switch the audience, but instead of offering thrills, it’s as sophisticated as a picture postcard, and about as flat.

If the novel featured anything about the French Resistance, jewel thieves, or double crosses, none of that made it into the script, which coasts on the charm Grant and Kelly bring to their flimsy roles. There’s some visual wit here or there, and a gorgeously lit seduction scene between Grant and Kelly with fireworks symbolically popping in the background, but the movie feels like a paid vacation for Hitchcock. It’s not bad, but it may be the most vapid he ever made.

Terrence Brady at Dial H For Hitchcock says, “Even if you’re not a fan of the murderous story lines of a Hitchcock film, you may be surprised by To Catch A Thief. It is an enticing script, set in a utopian setting, displaying a great on-screen couple.”

“This is a lovely piece of romantic fluff full of eye-candy and chock full of enjoyment. It has just enough suspense to keep the pace moving, but nothing so speedy as to detract from the romance. The softer side of Hitchcock,” writes Lisa Skryniarz at Crazy For Cinema.

Vince Leo at QWipster’s Movie Reviews writes, “To Catch a Thief is definitely worth a look for all fans of Hitchcock and Grant, but it’s a must-see for all of Grace Kelly’s admirers, as she has never looked lovelier. Somewhere amid all of the film’s biggest assets, the story gets lost, but that’s not likely the reason someone would ever watch this, now is it?”

“The scandalous romance that shocked even the blase international set, between this restless thrill hunting American heiress and the notorious man of mystery the French underworld called The Cat.” View the 1955 theatrical trailer.

© Joe Valdez