I’m back!!!!

At least I sincerely hope so!

On my end things are looking quite good after suffering some serious issues following an upgrade to wordpress’ jetpack feature.  Doing so mercilessly killed the blog site and forced me to do some major tech upgrades before even getting close to where I was before.

As I said, I sincerely hope I’m back.

We’ll see!

The Killer Elite (1975) a (very) belated review

Its been said that if you work in the creative field, it is often more instructive to look at fellow artist’s failures versus their successes; that you can learn more about what not to do and, therefore, avoid those pitfalls.

For me and as a writer, I often find myself reading a book or seeing a film not only to get enjoyment out of them (their primary goals, obviously!) but also to scrutinize their strengths and weaknesses.  And to that extent I agree strongly with what I wrote above, that sometimes seeing what does not work in a movie/book/story/etc. is more instructive than seeing what does.

Which brings us to the 1975 film The Killer Elite.  Here’s the movie’s trailer (sorry for the quality, its the best I could find):

I’ve seen the film before and found it a fascinating failure.  Directed by the legendary -and controversial- Sam Peckinpah, it can be argued that after achieving a high level of both praise for his at times incendiary works (The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs), The Killer Elite marks the moment his career first began to falter.  Those who know of Mr. Peckinpah know he was a very heavy drinker and combative writer/director who had many run ins with the studios.  Following the release of 1978’s Convoy, he all but burned every bridge he had within the Hollywood establishment.  Including that later film, Mr. Peckinpah would direct only three more films following The Killer Elite before passing away in 1984.

The Killer Elite, as the above trailer indicates, concerns Mike Locken (James Caan, quite good) who, along with his partner George Hansen (Robert Duvall, also quite good) are wetworks specialists who work for an agency that the CIA contracts when they need someone to do that “special” job.  By hiring this agency, the CIA keeps their hands clean should anything go wrong.

Following a mission presented in the film’s opening, things do indeed go very wrong.  Hansen turns on Locken and, as the trailer shows, cripples him with two well placed bullets.  Down and seemingly out, Locken doesn’t give up on himself even as his employers do.  He trains and strengthens himself as best he can with his limitations.

Meanwhile, a dissident Chinese national arrives in the US and is instantly targeted for assassination.  This national is an asset to the US and therefore the CIA.  The CIA goes to Locken’s employers and wants to hire them to protect the National.  The agency, stung by Hansen’s betrayal and suspicious the CIA might have secretly sanctioned it, at first rejects the job.

They instantly change their mind when the CIA operative reveals it is Hansen who was hired to assassinate the Chinese national and they not only want to protect this national, they also want Hansen taken out.

Because of his intimate knowledge of Hansen, Locken is brought back into the fold to take on this job but as the movie progresses, it becomes clear there is even more intrigue hiding beneath the surface.

As I re-read my description, I can’t help but think this film is just so in my wheelhouse.  Assassins, betrayal, intrigue.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, based on what I wrote in the very first paragraph of this review, plenty.  As I said before, The Killer Elite marks, in my opinion, Sam Peckinpah’s first major misstep following creating a string of classic and cult hit movies.

The reason The Killer Elite fails, despite some really good acting by both James Caan and Robert Duvall (sharing the screen together for the first time since the classic The Godfather), is in the fact that Sam Peckinpah seemed unable to take the material seriously.  The moment the Chinese national appeared, and then the ninjas coming after him, things turn mighty silly and tongue in cheek.

Further, the action sequences, while decent, aren’t quite up to the classic nihilism found in The Wild Bunch.

And then there are the scenes that, frankly, are complete head-scratchers.

One of the bigger ones is presented in the above trailer above, the “bomb planted under the taxi” scene.  I don’t want to spoil too much, but during the course of the film the taxi’s driver, one of Locken’s men, suddenly stops his cab.  He’s asked, in voice over, why he’s stopped the cab and replies -also in voice over- that he hears a strange rattling.

This after a major car chase and slamming the taxi against another car!  I’d find it strange if he didn’t hear any strange rattling!

Anyway, he goes under the cab and, voila, finds and removes the explosive device, which as you see in the trailer he then gives to a motorcycle cop and -hilarity!- the motorcycle cop runs away with it to dump it in the bay.

That whole sequence, it seems to me, was a very late add-on/fix-up to the film.  First off, there’s the fact that important information is given via voice over.  If the scene was originally meant to play out as it was, why not show the characters saying these words?  After they get away from the motorcycle cop and drive off, they stop their cab elsewhere and get out.  As they do, you hear the distant sound of the explosion yet don’t react to it at all.  It was as if that whole bomb and explosion was something created in post-production!

Why?

I truly don’t know.  Perhaps the sequence was more “serious” initially.  Could it be the motorcycle cop was a bad guy in disguise and our heroes had to kill him to get away?  Is it possible that as filmed, this sequence was too confusing and maybe audiences thought our “heroes” were forced to kill a real cop?  Perhaps they originally did kill a “real” cop to get away?

I truly don’t know but the scene, as presented, is a mess and feels like the product of some very hasty last minute work.

Later in the film, when the ninjas appear, any attempt at hard-hitting realism is thoroughly flung out the window, but not before we get one really odd scene involving James Caan’s Locken talking with the Chinese national’s daughter, who talks to him about sex and then, bizarrely, confesses she’s a virgin.  I suppose it was meant to be a humorous scene as the bewildered Locken tells her to go away.

More bewildered was I as to the inclusion of the scene, which was not only silly but completely unnecessary.  It added absolutely nothing to the film and felt like something you would expect would be clipped and discarded well before the film is released to the theaters.

But perhaps the film’s biggest sin is that even as it builds up the confrontation and cat/mouse struggle between Hansen and Locken, it subsequently deals with it well before the film’s climax.

Unforgivable!

I obviously can’t recommend The Killer Elite to anyone yet it still fascinated me.  A failure, certainly, but an interesting one that features some interesting actors in a film that should have been a lot better than it ultimately was.

Ah well!

POSTSCRIPT: In 2011 Jason Statham, Clive Owen, and Robert DeNiro stared in a film called Killer Elite.  While it looks like its a remake/reworking of The Killer Elite, it appears not to be.  Here’s its trailer, if you’re curious…

Doctor Strange (2016) a (mildly) belated review

When I was very young I was a voracious reader.  Almost any book and comic I got my hands on I would read.  In time the first “adult” book I read, a meaty 500+ pager, turned out to be Clive Cussler’s Vixen 03.  I was entranced by the book’s cover and, to this day, still love the image…

Related image

The book, my younger self thought after reading it, was terrific.  So impressed was I with it I quickly looked up and read all the other Clive Cussler books available out there, which at the time amounted to only four, including the also terrific Raise The Titanic!

As the years passed and Mr. Cussler released more books, I read them as well.  However, after a while I came to realize that every one of his books post-Raise The Titanic! were curiously similar, plot-wise.  It was as if Mr. Cussler hit upon a successful formula and was determined to repeat it…over and over and over again.

Sometime into the 1980’s I gave up on Mr. Cussler’s novels and this was due completely to that repetition.  Mr. Cussler (and his various co-writers) have continued making books up to today and I honestly have no idea if he continues to present the same general plots (I would hope not), but the damage was done and I completely lost interest in reading any of the man’s works.

When Doctor Strange came out last year, I was curious to see it.  I like actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays the good Doctor, and have found the Marvel movies, at least until roughly last year, to be by and large pleasant entertainment even as the more I saw of them, the more I realized they were, like Clive Cussler and his novels, works that followed a certain formula.

(There is one big exception, the wonderful, and I would argue best Marvel film, Captain America: Winter Soldier)

Worse, many reviews of Doctor Strange released concurrently with its release noted the film was essentially a magic themed remake of the film that started the whole Marvel movie industry rolling, the original Iron Man.

As good as Iron Man was, that film’s fingerprints have indeed been all over just about every Marvel film since.  Robert Downey Jr. was terrific as Tony Stark, the troubled, arrogant, and brilliant head of his self-named company who, thanks to a personal misfortune and a near death experience (his heart is very weak), devises the Iron Man armor and essentially makes himself a hero.  But this hero, unlike others on the screen to that point, retained his cockiness and glib attitude even in the face of death.  And, I repeat, Robert Downey Jr. was terrific in the role.

Unfortunately, not everyone fits that type of role as well.

Subsequent Marvel films have featured the “glib” hero in various stages, even if they don’t have the same arrogance.  It seems with every new Marvel film released, we have heroes -and villains!- offering jokes in the middle of what should be life and death situations.  Sometimes this works but, increasingly, it doesn’t.  At least not for me.

I was not blown away by Captain America: Civil War, though in my original review (you can read it here) I thought it was an enjoyable enough confection whose main problems lay in too many characters running around and too broad -and incomprehensible- a plot.  My opinion of the film, I must say, has taken a bit of a downturn since that original review.  While I still think the airport fight was good and Robert Downey Jr.’s meeting with Aunt May was fun, today I feel the film was more of a wiff than a success.  The very best films are those you are willing to come back to and see again and I seriously doubt I’ll ever watch CA:CW again.

With Doctor Strange, I hoped for the best but, frankly and based on those reviews I mentioned, anticipated the worst.  I feared the critics were right and the film would indeed be Magic Iron Man and I’d turn into my younger self and decide I’d had enough of the Marvel movie universe and their repetitive nature.

Doctor Strange starts with Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen, sadly underused), breaking into an ancient library, killing the man in charge of securing it, and stealing pages from an ancient tome.  He is then pursed by a mysterious figure who, we find, is the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton, easily the film’s best element).  Despite the Ancient One’s pursuit, Kaecilius nonetheless gets away and we then cut to…

Doctor Stephen Strange, neurosurgeon/surgeon extraordinaire.  The Iron Man comparisons are apt as he is glib, ultra-wealthy, arrogant, and, shortly after we’re introduced to him, has a life changing accident which destroys his hands and, therefore, wipes out his ability to be a surgeon.

His girlfriend, Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams, truly and sadly wasted in a thankless role) tries to make Dr. Strange see that his life isn’t over but the arrogant and bitter man will not listen to her.  He chases her away while spending all his remaining money on experimental procedures to try to fix his hands.

While in rehab, Dr. Strange hears the story of a man who overcame what should have been paralysis and meets up with him.  The man tells Dr. Strange of a trip he made to the orient and Dr. Strange follows the man’s path, eventually coming upon the Ancient One and her/his (I’m not sure what his/her sex is supposed to be) magic arts study group.

It is there that the skeptical Stephen Strange gains knowledge of the magic arts and not a moment too soon as Kaecilius -conveniently- has waited all this time and politely allowed Dr. Strange to become reasonably proficient in the magic arts before making his move and attempting to destroy Earth.

I’ll get to the bottom line here: I didn’t like Doctor Strange all that much even as I’ll acknowledge it is a perfectly acceptable Marvel film and far from the stable’s worst (I know I’m in a very small minority here, but I really didn’t like Guardians of the Galaxy and feel it is easily the worst of the Marvel films).

The problem with Doctor Strange winds up being similar to the problem I had with the books of Clive Cussler.  I’ve seen this stuff before and, while there are new wrinkles here and there, the repetition is becoming tiresome.

Worse, though, is that the film never engages as much as one would hope.  The direction and editing never give us any big rush or sense of breathless action. The effects, good as they are, also become repetitious after a while.

As good as Robert Downey Jr. was/is at playing the Tony Stark role, even a great actor like Benedict Cumberbatch looks a bit lost trying to emulate that glib/arrogant-yet-funny/heroic type.  The others around him with one notable exception don’t really contribute all that much either.  Chiwetel Ejiofor is only OK as Mordo and his character’s change in the last minutes of the film feels like a plot contrivance rather than something his character logically earns.  I’ve already noted that I felt Rachel McAdams was wasted and Mads Mikkelsen was also underused and presented in a silly way.  He too engages in the glib/”funny” dialogue in inappropriate moments and this further destroys whatever threat levels we should have to the confrontations between Strange and he.

The big exception, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, is Tilda Swinton’s Ancient One.  She’s just enigmatic and stern enough to be intriguing but, when all is said and done, she’s in the film for no more than perhaps 15 minutes.  Nonetheless, I enjoyed just about every scene she was in and it says a lot that I would have rather seen a film about her/him than Dr. Strange!

In the end, while Doctor Strange isn’t a total disaster, it was just…there.  It was only okay.  Perhaps a little above mediocre.

Now that I’ve seen it, I seriously doubt I’ll ever bother watching it again.