AT CLOSE RANGE (1986)

The breakdown of the family unit is one of the more disturbing themes at play in cinema, only because it's inherent in us to desire a close relationship to those with whom we share a history, bloodline, and hereditary traits. To be born among people with whom we'll eventually have a falling out, or worse, is one of those fears that's always simmering beneath the surface. Because if we can't rely on our family, on whom can we rely? That's a really scary concept to posit, and unfortunately, it's something that happens more often than it should. It's starting to become more commonplace to pick up a newspaper and see a headline about a father killing his son, or a son killing his father, or a father and son going out and killing people together, as if it's part of a sick and twisted bond they share. Based on a true story, At Close Range, which one might describe as a southern gothic crime noir (the film takes place in Tennessee, but the actual events occurred in Pennsylvania), due to its appropriate amount of shadows, smoky rooms, and darkness, asks if a person's character can be stronger than their lineage - if a person can overcome his inherited physical and hereditary traits and prove he's much more than a genetic duplication of the family tree that preceded him.

Sean Penn and Christopher Walken as Brad Jr. and Sr., respectively, play an uncanny son and father, down to their piercing eyes and their hard features (screaming sandy blonde hair notwithstanding). Even when the film begins, and before they are reunited after years of estrangement, the film suggests  Brad Jr. is already proving  the apple may not fall far from the tree, engaging in the kind of reckless behavior that supersedes teen hijinks and instead suggests  he's a kid with very little to lose. But once father and son are reunited, and the former begins taking the latter under his wing, involving him in the more nefarious parts of his crime-filled life, the bond that initially forms between them takes a pretty devastating turn halfway through. Brad Jr. realizes  the bond between father and son can be easily overcome by the desire for self-preservation. Meaning, there's nothing Brad Sr. won't do if it means keeping himself out of prison.

Like De Niro, the modern-day Walken is barely an indication of how good he used to be, and how effortlessly he could play unhinged and disturbing characters. His Brad Sr. is clearly the villain, but only from an audience perspective. We know he's bad because of our omniscient view of everything ongoing. But Brad Jr. is blinded by his familial ties to his father, while also being somewhat blinded by wanting more for himself - his own fair slice of the American Dream - besides working overtime every week in a supermarket or a garage. Brad Sr. doesn't exude villainy; he doesn't come across as an obvious antagonist. He smiles at his son and buys him a car and invites him into his line of work - one which has the potential to pay off big time. Walken has the uncanny ability of pulling off likable villains because as an actor he's naturally likable.

Penn, too, delivers an excellent performance, and this during the early part of his career. Though he teeters a bit too close to going over the top in some of the more dramatic scenes (including the final confrontation between father and son), At Close Range was an indication he was going to be an actor to watch. It's also cool, since this is a film about the family unit, to see him share the screen with his real-life brother, Chris Penn (most famous for having played Nice Guy Eddie in Reservoir Dogs, and who died in 2006 of a drug overdose), who plays his on-screen brother. Obviously the knowledge that they're brothers, but also their clear resemblances to each other (along with the fact that the boys' real-life mother, Eileen Ryan, plays their on-screen grandmother), lends a sincerity to a film emphasizing the impact of a family in turmoil.

At Close Range is a tough film to watch - entirely all to do with the effectiveness of the conflict and the realism of the performances. Director James Foley, whose films (and television episodes) are well-known for their rapid fire and cutting dialogue (his most well-known is certainly Glengarry Glen Ross, which your annoying co-workers who have never touched hands with sales probably quote every day), dials back the character exchange and relies more on mood and that earlier mentioned inherent fear of the destruction of the family unit. Take all that, add a remarkable supporting cast (David Strathairn! Crispin Glover! Tracey Walter!), and you end up with a film that's now thirty-five years old, but whose themes of betrayal and the familial bond will be forever ageless.

James Foley has the dubious honor of being one of the most underrated filmmakers working today. Insiders, thankfully, know this, as he consistently gets some pretty high-profile gigs (Netflix's House of Cards for one), but considering he has the skills behind the camera and has mastered the spoken word like Quentin Tarantino but without all the flamboyance, it's kind of a shame  he's not a household name. One day that could all change, but for now, as his back catalog drips slowly to Blu-ray, here's hoping his work becomes even more appreciated by newer generations.

ROMEO IS BLEEDING (1993)

Filmmaker Peter Medak (Zorro, the Gay Blade; The Ruling Class) isn’t the only director who would have been capable of telling a story like Romeo is Bleeding, but he is likely one of the few whose sensibilities and aesthetic would have resulted in the film being worthy of discussion more than twenty years after its release. Romeo is Bleeding has been described as neo-noir, which is a good starting off point, but if other films, like Memento or Blade Runner, are referred to as the same, then Romeo is Bleeding deserves another class entirely.

How about insane-noir? 

Psycho-noir? 

Kitchen-sink-noir?

I’m not good at word play, but you get the idea.

Whatever term we concoct, Romeo is Bleeding blows the doors off the film-noir genre as we know it, injecting a European-style level of debauchery usually reserved for either art-house fare or 42nd Street. Many of the typical aspects of noir are heightened; the damaged lead in over his his head, he trouble in which he finds himself, and the femme fatale who may or may not figure into the main conflict--it's all so turned up beyond eleven that it comes dangerously close to coming off as satire, but Medak keeps things evenly keeled so that the wheels only threaten to come off, instead of doing so.

Sidestepping the plot (because it can barely be addressed without giving away its best twists and turns), Romeo is Bleeding is a film brought to life by its phenomenal cast. 

Gary Oldman's Grimaldi isn't just a flawed man looking for redemption--he's a slimy scumbag who can do all manner of questionable things as a husband, a man, and a cop, but still go home at the end of the night to his wife (Annabella Sciorra) who it would seem he really does love. But that love doesn't keep him from the arms of his on-the-side girlfriend (Juliette Lewis), or from taking on-the-side work from the mafia by giving away the locations of protected witnesses for $65,000 a pop. Giving Grimaldi life is the consistently watchable Oldman, infusing his performance with certain shades of bombast, the full dose of which we wouldn't experience until his very next film, Léon. At this point in his career, he was riding high on a series of well-received films and/or performances, with True Romance, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and JFK in the immediate past, and with Immortal Beloved and Murder in the First soon to come. There's possibly never been a better streak of strong performances.

Whomever coined the term “femme fatale” never in his or her wildest dreams could have ever predicted that it would lead to Lena Olin’s Mona Demarkov. The closest thing on-screen to a female Hannibal Lecter, Olin is madly seductive to watch, her willingness to display brazen sexuality equally matched by the level of insanity she’s obviously delighted in achieving. Watching her squirm across car hoods or snap on rather revealing leather harnesses leaves you with the sense that very few of her female colleagues would have ever been brave or daring enough to dedicate themselves entirely to such a role. Olin, who has played similar (though very watered down) versions of this character in The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Ninth Gate, oozes sensuality alongside danger, presenting the two as if to suggest one cannot exist without the other, which is appropriate, being that Romeo is Bleeding goes out of its way several times to explore themes of duality and the natural balance of the universe.

More typical femme fatales of the past preyed on the loneliness and isolation usually exhibited by our flawed but well-meaning heroes. This time, however, Olin senses that Oldman’s Grimaldi isn’t lonely or isolated so much as he possesses a self-destructive appetite for sex and danger, which leads him into the beds of other women. Olin’s Mona is the femme fatale of the ’90s, fully exploiting her own sexual nature to lure Grimaldi into the type of danger that usually befalls the many men who should know better in the noir universe.

One might accuse Romeo is Bleeding of being overstuffed to the point of powder-keg status, and of offering the false indication that the conflict has resolved itself before introducing the next unseen development, but that doesn’t dare come close to ruling out Romeo is Bleeding for unworthy proper examination and respect. As modern noir goes, it hits the tropes beat for beat, right down to the cynical narration by Oldman and the horn-driven musical score by Mark Isham, but along the way it adds a gonzo amount of sexual aberration and violence that students of more classic noir might not fully stomach. Think of Romeo is Bleeding as a gender-swapped, crime-thriller version of The Silence of the Lambs and maybe you're on the right track.

Film noir newbs should stick Romeo is Bleeding at the bottom of the pile until their feet are a bit wetter. Celebrated tropes of the noir movement are certainly on hand, but have been transformed under Medak's eccentric eye; he gleefully embraces the crazier aspects of Hilary Henkin's screenplay to present a take on noir that hasn't been topped probably ever, and whose closest competition is Robert Rodriguez's Sin City. Romeo is Bleeding might be a bit too overstuffed for its own good, but when the events that come out of this excess are this insane, and when they enable one of Gary Oldman's best and most reckless performances, well, it's easy to forgive. 

AMERICAN BUFFALO (1996)

Michael Corrente's adaptation of David Mamet's 1975 play of the same name was released four years following James Foley's own searing Mamet adaptation, Glengarry Glen Ross, which likely remains the quintessential Mamet play realized for the screen. Though the two films retain quite a bit of similarity, mostly having to do with the state of the human soul and relationship when corrupted by the poisons of capitalistic schemes - either unethical or downright illegal - American Buffalo is a much more intimate affair, relegating the number of characters to a mere three (and not just on-screen at one time, but in the entire film). And it wouldn't really be unfair to these characters to describe them as scumbags, because they kind of are. Donny (Denis Franz) is the pawnshop owner with the "brains" to concoct the potential robbery, Bobby (Sean Nelson) is his quite young but willing accomplice, and Teach (Dustin Hoffman) is the scummiest of them all, inserting himself into the scheme at the expense of Bobby's involvement. The plot is a simple one: to rob a recent customer of Donny's pawn shop - of the rare American buffalo nickel, and the dozens of other rare coins Donny assumes the man to have in his possession.

While it's only felt like somewhat recently - perhaps with the advent of The Sopranos - that never before have there been so many prominent films and television shows told from the point of view from the quite flawed and even villainous main character, this has actually been a prominent device in storytelling devices for a while now, going back as far as The Godfather and likely even farther back into cinema history. Now more than ever it seems that audiences are rooting for the bad guy, or the bad motorcycle club, or the bad meth-cooker/chemistry teacher - people that our consciences tell us are not to be sympathized with, but yet with whom we do so, anyway. What the human mind does with law-breaking characters is reset our expectations. To make those characters relatable, we reevaluate human morality; because it's the human brain's instinct to compartmentalize, we compare ourselves against those being presented to us, and we all draw our own lines as to which of these characters goes too far. These three men - well, two men and one boy - are all complicit in their hackneyed plot to rob a man of at least one rare coin (the value of which doesn't seem to exceed $500 - a lousy goal when split among three participants), as well as many other theoretical coins that Donny can't even confirm the man possesses. These men all choose to take part in illegality, and all for their own reasons - Donny out of a sense of retribution, Bobby out of legitimate need, and Teach out of pride and misplaced anger. On the surface, all three men are guilty, but it's the strength of Mamet's script and Corrente's direction that the audience comes away feeling a certain way about each of our heist men. Donny may be the mastermind, and the fact that he's soliciting the involvement of a young kid too stupid to think for himself initially paints him as the worst of the three, but the more Teach manipulates Donny in a bevy of ways - and all, of course, which benefit Teach to some degree -  and after every one of his profane tirades erupts within the small tinny walls of Donny's pawnshop, our dislike for Donny decreases, and it's all placed on Teach. But then as we're approaching the third act and the two men being throwing shadows of doubt on Bobby's behavior, as he comes and goes to the pawnshop, bringing with him suspicious behavior and eyes that stay firmly planted on the floor, that audience perception changes sides yet again. Each of the men we'd previously condemned in our minds suddenly had our sympathy and our support. ("Oh no, they'll be caught!" etc.) Yes, all three are complicit, but it's their personalities that determine which character gets our sympathies, and which do not, and that's a pretty ballsy manipulation to commit upon your audience.

Thomas Newman's funkified and quirky score is used only very intermittently, and with the majority of the film taking place inside an old pawn shop, the audio environment is very limited and very basic. This is to be completely understood, given that American Buffalo is essentially a story written for the stage that happens to be before cameras. Probably the best use of scripted dialogue comes during the third act in which the dynamic between our characters change. The script starts off rapid fire between Donny and Teach, the latter who spits a record number of dialogue, peppered with all kinds of colorful 'fuck' uses, before the audience can even tell where the plot is headed. But once an ugly confrontation occurs, the dialogue slows, slooows, sloooows down, almost painstakingly so, instead of their rambunctious dialogue filling the silence, it's the oncoming thunderstorm soaking the entire world outside. It's in the long silences between our character's exchanges that the thunder and rain becomes increasingly prominent, and it sounds subtly fantastic.

David Mamet is an interesting and quirky individual, and both of those straits show through in his writing. If you've seen at least one of his plays or subsequent film adaptations, his style and his prose will always be recognizable. His involvement in some more higher-profile films might come as a surprise to those who assumed the man always stayed under the radar - (He wrote The Edge! Yeah, the killer bear movie!) - but there is no mistaking a David Mamet screenplay. He's one of the most unique and talented voices working today (though he would tell you there is no such thing as talent - only perseverance); he's uncompromising, furious, and both fascinated by and disgusted with the human condition. American Buffalo is a David Mamet vehicle through and through.

THE IRISHMAN (2019)

“I heard you paint houses.”

“Yes, I do. I also do my own carpentry.”

A friend of mine once said that Martin Scorsese makes the same movie over and over, and I had to do everything in my power to avoid picking up a nice-looking pen off a bar and kick-stabbing him in the throat until he was a bloody mess on the ground. (I’m kidding.) (Or am I?) In a really superficial way, one could believe this was a sound observation: it’s not just because the most well-known portion of Scorsese’s filmography has taken place in the world of the Italian mafia (though relegated to only four films, including The Irishman), with a single detour into the world of Irish crime in The Departed, but also because Scorsese’s own style and techniques carry over from film to film, giving them an almost brand-like feeling. There’s the first-person narration, the “crime is awesome” montages, the Rolling Stones soundtrack, the gorgeous spot-lighting, the frenzied smash-cut editing, and an ensemble of familiar faces like Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel, the somewhat obscure Frank Vincent, and pretty much the entire supporting cast of The Sopranos. “I liked it the first time I saw it…when it was called Goodfellas,” a mid-90s SNL oddity known as David Spade once said about Casino. Gestating since at least 2008, The Irishman was predictably lobbed from the start with the same kind of shallow proclamations that Scorsese and De Niro were going to make yet another version of Goodfellas, even before a single frame had been shot. Once the film finally made its long-awaited debut on Netflix, twelve years after it was first announced, the camp was still split on what kind of film The Irishman was vying to be. Was it just another Goodfellas riff, or was it something decidedly different?

In case you haven’t deduced it for yourself during one of my typically elongated lead-ins, The Irishman is, indeed, something decidedly different. Is it about the mafia? Yes, it is. Does it involve a fair number of Goodfellas et al. cast members? Yes, it does. But where Goodfellas was a Scarface-ish allegory about opulence, power, and the eventual fall from grace, The Irishman is an Unforgiven-like examination of a misspent life immersed in dirty tasks for dirty people at the expense of one man’s family. That the film is headlined by an aging De Niro wasn’t just the result of the film being in pre-production for a very, very long time, but it’s also the point of The Irishman entirely. It’s about sin, regret, mortality, and legacy. And yes, De Niro, as one tends to do, has aged. For lack of a more respectful word, De Niro is now an old man. His elderliness has crept into his take on Frank Sheeran that both benefits and handicaps his performance, guiding him in his role of a soft-spoken, somewhat slowwitted boob eager to please his masters like a loyal dog, but which is also occasionally at odds with the visual technology being employed to shave decades off his real age. In a way, De Niro’s appearance and performance sum up the experience of The Irishman as a whole – still engaging, still artfully made by one of cinema’s remaining old-school masters, but maybe, perhaps, a couple decades too late.

Based on prosecutor Charles Brandt’s “non-fiction” book I Heard You Paint Houses (I say “non-fiction” because it was based entirely on Sheeran’s version of events, which many have claimed to be dubious), The Irishman is a sprawling epic where genuine history and possible artifice intermingle in ways that, regardless of the film’s ultimate dance with reality, is still a compelling story. The Irishman weaves a complex narrative of many characters, many conflicts, and many intersecting timelines. With a running time of three and a half hours, that’s not surprising. What is surprising is how quickly those three and a half hours go by. Surrounding the main cast of De Niro’s hired hitman Frank Sheeran, Joe Pesci’s mob boss Russell Bufalino, and Al Pacino’s Jimmy Hoffa is an extensive ensemble cast who bring to life many of Philadelphia’s crime figures, including infamous mob boss Angelo Bruno (Harvey Keitel), Felix “Skinny Razor” DiTullio (Bobby Canavale, sporting a “rescinding” hairline), and an unexpectedly excellent Ray Romano as attorney Bill Bufalino. (In a weird bit of my family’s history, The Irishman makes brief mention of crime figure Frank Sindone, who helped plan the hit on Bruno and was later found dead in an alley with three bullets in his head. My Philadelphia-born father once unknowingly shared a car ride with Sindone and others from the neighborhood and later described him as “pretty fuckin’ intense.” My father also had a cousin [for whom things didn’t end well] who worked at the Latin Casino, which is featured during Sheeran’s “Appreciation Night” after he becomes President of the teamsters’ local union 326. I keep telling him he needs to write his own book about 1970s Philly because he’s seen some shit.)

In a way, even though any film should consider a comparison to Goodfellas extremely flattering, The Irishman works much better as its own beast. The gliding cameras, the eclectic oldies soundtrack, the voiceover: sure, those things are all present and accounted for – but The Irishman is measured, calm, patient, and mature. It’s a film that stands on its own, of course, but it’s also an acknowledgement of the long and very successful careers of those who made it. It’s Scorsese touching base with audiences and gently reminding them that his on-screen mafia tales are what’s attracted the most eyes, garnered his best critical notices, and punctured pop culture in ways that many of his other films didn't. And let’s face it: Scorsese wouldn’t have gone back to this same well so many times if he, himself, wasn’t so fascinated with a life of crime. What began on a small scale in something like 1973’s Mean Streets, made with a guerilla-style, low-budget scrappiness, has culminated forty-five years later with The Irishman, a two hundred-million-dollar epic that likely hit more eyeballs in its first day on Netflix than did his 2016 Jesuit priest drama Silence during its entire theatrical run. Indeed, Scorsese trots out many of his trademarks, though the occasionally abrupt editing by longtime collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker is much more restrained, in keeping with The Irishman’s slower pace. Though Scorsese still falls back on voice-over from a few characters, now they directly address the camera like they’re confessing their sins to us, the audience. As for his new bag of tricks? Yes, the controversial de-aging technology, which landed with audiences in extremely polarizing ways. “It looked great!” versus “It looked terrible!” flooded reviews and talk-backs. Snotty backseat drivers uploaded their own “deep fake” videos to Youtube to show how it could’ve been done cheaper and with better results. But here’s the thing: the de-aging technology itself actually looks fantastic, removing the deep creases and weathered appearances of our charming older men. The problem, however, is that those brand-new youthful faces are then pasted over their still-old dumpy bodies, and the additional decision to have De Niro wear blue contact lenses to “look Irish” (even though he played an Irishman in Goodfellas and wore no such thing) only does a disservice to the millions of dollars spent on those faces. Despite what the actors and choreographers tried, old men can only move like old men, and when it comes time for De Niro to knock down and kick-stomp the local grocery store owner, he kicks like an old man, and it’s hard not to notice.

Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran is an atypical performance for the De Niro we’ve come to anticipate from a Scorsese film, but perfectly appropriate and in line with not only the real Frank Sheeran, but the work De Niro has been doing as an actor since the early 2000s. Throughout his collaborations with Scorsese, or during the “nod” roles he’d play after the fact that painted him as a mob boss of sorts, De Niro was always in a position where he wielded power and influence (or in the case of Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables, baseball bats). Audiences have spent the last several decades affiliating themselves with De Niro the boss, from Goodfellas’ Jimmy Conway to Casino’s Sam Rothstein. This time, however, he’s the bag man, the hired gun, the administrative assistant who just so happens to steal and kill. Hell, he’s not even comfortable pulling the car over unless someone else says it's okay. “I was a working guy,” Sheeran says early on before he made his way into the crime world, but even after that, he was still a working guy – it’s just that the things he did are what changed. Sheeran, as presented, is a pathetic figure, only finding worth in the eyes of the crime figures who want him around while barely making time for his own family. One gets the impression that De Niro, for the first time in his life, is actually wanted around, and it renders him a purposely toothless presence, putting him into certain situations to perform acts he doesn’t have the guts to refuse. When Sheeran retreats to an empty bedroom to make a private phone call he’s been dreading, it’s the most pathetic De Niro has made one of his characters look in his fifty years of acting – even more than his famous scene in Taxi Driver where he’s being consistently rebuffed over the phone by Cybil Shephard’s Betsy, whom, after a disastrous date, wants nothing to do with him. “What kind of man makes a phone call like that?” Sheeran later muses during one of the film’s final scenes. De Niro, the boss who stomped on Billy Bats’ skull, who tore through the pimp underworld to save a young girl, who refused to be knocked down by Sugar Ray Robinson, has become a spineless, subservient slave, and he was the one who let it happen.

Sharing the screen with De Niro for the first time since 1995’s Casino is Joe Pesci, who makes a welcome return to Scorsese and co.’s world, his last high-profile project being his good friend De Niro’s 2006 directorial project, The Good Shepherd. Let me just say this: he was incredibly missed, and he offers up the film’s best performance. Gone are the days of the volatile Tommy DeVito and Nicky Santoro. Though his Russell Bufalino is “the boss,” he exacts that title almost manipulatively in soft-spoken but firm tones. He never, once, goes big, mirroring De Niro’s more neutered approach, and it’s quite honestly one of the best performances in his career. But don’t worry! Al Pacino is definitely ready to take on everyone’s yelling for them. Speaking of, though Pacino offers a fine performance as Jimmy Hoffa, he seems to be playing just another version of Pacino instead of the real man; if we must compare, it doesn’t come close to Jack Nicholson’s take from 1992’s Hoffa, directed by Danny Devito.

Though The Irishman is about ugly things, it doesn’t glamourize them in the same ways as Goodfellas and Casino. In some respects, The Irishman feels like the thematic third part of a trilogy that includes those two titles. It’s the end result of long lives spent creating and depicting stories of crime, but also of the real lives that inspired those stories, the toll taken from living on the wrong side of the law, and that no matter what one’s calling in life may be, eventually, everything comes to an end. And if, at the end of your life, you’re haggling with the salesman over the price of your own coffin – when you’re the one making the arrangements for your funeral because your family won’t do it – you know that’s a life that was lived selfishly, cruelly, and deeply alone.

As much as I loved to see the likes of De Niro, Pacino, Pesci, and Keitel sharing the screen together again, it pains me to say that The Irishman could’ve been a flawless endeavor if our primary trio of actors had been relegated to playing the last two time periods depicted in the film, while falling back on younger actors for the previous two. (Hey! Like they did in Goodfellas!) Having said that, The Irishman is still top-tier filmmaking for everyone involved and showcases a director who, despite his age, has no intent on slowing down. 

[Reprinted from Daily Grindhouse.]

DILLINGER (1973)

In 2009, Michael Mann had hoped to tell the definitive story of the most famous bank robber ever—Public Enemies. With Johnny Depp as the John Dillinger, Marion Cotillard as his love, and Christian Bale as “G-Man” Melvin Purvis, the potential was there for not just another solid crime thriller from the director of Heat and Collateral, but for a new classic to stand alongside the great period crime films like The Untouchables, Road To Perdition, and more. Unfortunately, Public Enemies proved to be, er...the nice way of putting it would be an underwhelming disappointment, when taking into account the pedigree involved in bringing it to the screen.  It’s hard to gauge how much of Public Enemies’ audience was aware that the story of the John Dillinger Gang had already been told nearly forty years prior, written and directed by John Millius. It’s also hard to gauge how many people realize just how much better Dillinger is. The film opens with a sequence which sees this version of John Dillinger, played by Warren Oates, ordering a bank teller to make with the cash, even though he’s at this moment breaking the fourth wall and directly addressing the audience. “Nobody get nervous, you ain’t got nothing to fear,” he tells us. “You’re being robbed by the John Dillinger Gang—the best there is!” This opening scene alone is better than the best parts of Public Enemies.

Back-to-back viewings of Dillinger and Public Enemies will tell a pretty similar story, though in different ways, and utilizing a different timeline of events. Like Public Enemies, however, Dillinger presents its title “character” as a charming, lively, no-nonsense bank robber more interested in stealing from the federal government than from the pockets of the individual. Oates’ take on Dillinger might be a bit more true to life, presenting him as someone who takes what he wants—including women—by force. The start of the union between himself and Billie Frechette (Michelle Phillips) ain’t exactly romantic, as it’s more akin to a kidnapping, and the black eye she later sports is dismissed as a “marital disagreement,” The usual suspects are there: Homer Van Meter (Harry Dean Stanton), Harry Pierpont (Geoffrey Lewis), Pretty Boy Floyd (Steve Kanaly), Baby Face Nelson (an irascible Richard Dreyfuss), with Melvin Purvis (Ben Johnson) pursuing them all.

Dillinger unfolds in a docudrama fashion similar to Roger Corman’s period Chicago gangster flick The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, relying on voice-over to provide fact-based narration that propels the narrative forward (supplied by Johnson’s Purvis). Being that more time is spent with the gang than with the FBI agents hunting them down (very little time is spent on investigatory techniques; mostly these confrontational scenes begin with the agents already at the scene), it’s easy to determine that Millius was infatuated with these criminals and less so with “the law.” 

Ben Johnson offers a gruff performance as Purvis—one punctuated with glee each time he takes the life of a criminal and lights a cigar in celebration. In fact, one of his final scenes has him promising the woman who ultimately gives up Dillinger's location that “no harm” will come to him, with Pruvis stating he wants to take him in peacefully. Whether this is something the real Purvis had promised and subsequently defaulted on, or was a cinematic creation to heighten Millius’ seeming skewering of the FBI of that time period, that moment pushes Johnson’s Purvis from a relentless law agent to an Ahab-like figure pursuing a personal vendetta. (Historically, Purvis does not fire the fatal shot.) (Also, interesting, two historical accounts slightly differ in Dillinger’s final moments—some claim he realized the agents were there and attempted to pull a gun from his coat pocket; another claims he did successfully retrieve his gun and ran into a dark alley, intent on shooting his way out of the situation. Both Dillinger and Public Enemies have him being shot down in the street with no attempts to take him alive. This, likely, leans closer to history than what “history” claims.)

Dillinger’s post-Little Bohemia shootout finale takes a bit more time to draw to a conclusion, as we see each of the Dillinger Gang’s surviving members disperse and attempt to elude authorities, and it slows the film’s pace somewhat, but the before mentioned theater assassination punctuates the film and allows it to end on a somewhat somber (and violent) note. (The whole film, in fact, boasts much more violence than Public Enemies—with no cheap CGI blood to offend the eye.)

The John Dillinger Gang story has been told numerous times already, and it’s safe to assume Public Enemies won’t be the final word on the subject, all the Depps and Bales notwithstanding. Dillinger, however and so far, is the best attempt. Historical inaccuracies and somewhat broad character archetypes aside, it’s a captivating, violent, well-made, and mostly accurate account on the John Dillinger Gang—the best there is.

SUPER FLY (1972)

In the pantheon of the Blaxploitation movement, Super Fly was considered a top-tier title, boasting the most recognition and all around favorable reputation second only to Shaft, which was rebooted once in the early 2000s and again last year. A remake, Superfly, was released in 2018, produced by Joe Hollywood himself Joel Silver, and featuring a cast of actors who, outside of Michael Kenneth Williams, I’ve never heard of. 

Super Fly follows that age-old tale of a criminal/hero, in this case the bad-assedly named Youngblood Priest (Ron O’Neal), as someone tired of the game and looking to secure one last big hit before retiring from his life of crime for good. Of course, such things are never so simple.

Super Fly’s plot isn’t wholly engaging, and its effort to look raw, gritty, and realistic leads to scenes going on too long in an effort to capture their authenticity. (In fact, a real New York City pimp who lent the filmmakers his “tricked out hog” to use on screen eventually made his way into a scene playing…a pimp. His unpolished acting skills are prevalent, but, again, it lends to the authenticity.) And as far as the grit and rawness, one of the first scenes sees Priest chasing a would-be robber all the way back to the robber’s apartment where a woman and several small children cower in a corner on top of a mattress sat on the floor. Priest retrieves his cash and brutally kicks the man several times in the stomach, causing him to vomit — all the while, the chipped, peeling paint and dingy gray interiors of the apartment imbue that kind of New York nastiness that permeated much of 1970s cinema.

There’s also an emphasis on showcasing New York black culture with the appearance of Curtis Mayfield in a small, smoky club where our characters gather at one point. Long, unbroken takes of Mayfield performing one of his most well-known songs, “Pusher Man,” make up a large portion of the scene, with the entire club — including our hero — rapt with attention. In fact, “Pusher Man” is such a dominant presence in Super Fly that it’s used three different times.

Ron O’Neal is a striking looking actor, and his mixed heritage lends him an atypical look that was usually bestowed upon most of the male Blaxploitation characters of that era. It’s easy to dismiss his performance at first as uninspired and flat, but as time goes on you begin to see that O’Neal is manufacturing an almost untouchable mythical figure who knows only one emotion: fury. Cross him and he’ll make you pay, and in the scenes where he’s laying to waste a character who needs a furious verbal reprimand, he absolutely commands the screen.

Super Fly has rightfully earned its place in Blaxploitation history; it’s one of the few from the sub-genre that was able to transition from the screen and permeate pop culture, inspiring a long line of actors, hip-hop artists, and even halfhearted, big-budget reboots.

SEXY BEAST (2000)

An aging group of retired criminals are enjoying their life under the Spanish sun when that old adage comes calling: the one last job, the one big score, the one final hurrah. Only it's not coming to them through one of their own, but rather through a man whose reputation proceeds him; a man who has the ability to cause grown hardened British gangsters to tremble in fear just at the utterance of his name, or to repel direct eye contact when he's in the same room.

Gal (Ray Winstone), a prominent safe-cracker, has no choice but to host the arrival of Don Logan (Ben Kingsley), the man with the plan, to hear him out and find a way to decline his latest robbery scheme. Agonizingly, Gal refutes Don's plan repeatedly, explaining over and over that he's retired and he's out of the life and frankly, doesn't even know if he's capable of such things anymore. Don won't hear of it, and each time he refuses Gal's no, he becomes more and more unhinged, exploding into tirades of threats, physical violence, and heinous, putrid condemnations. Despite Gal's every attempt, things don't go according to plan, and he eventually finds himself taking part in Don's scheme - whether he's up to it or not, and all the while keeping a very big secret.

A film perhaps best described as the U.K.'s answer to Goodfellas, 2000's Sexy Beast is a force. It is chaos cinema with a nailed-down camera. It's near unconstrained madness somehow comprised of still shots and the misleading sense of safety brought on by its cast of middle-aged British thespians. It has all of the humor and non-hip hipness of a Tarantino film with none of the pretentious swagger. It has, straight out of your nightmares/Roger Corman's desk drawer of unused concepts, a screaming, hurling, hairy, mutant bunny-beast that lives entirely within the confines of Gal's imagination - his worst fears realized in a storybook monster grasping MP5s and shrieking in the desert.

And...it has one more thing: one mega storm within the reckoning force that is Sexy Beast.

One unassuming face wearing gaberdine slacks and your father's shirt.

Ben Kingsley as Don Logan, who delivers an absolutely maniacal, show-stopping, awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping, magically unhinged performance.

To watch his iteration of Don Logan is to witness the embodying of sociopathy. To know that this is coming from the same man who gave a career-defining and Oscar-winning performance as Mahatmas Ghandi - a man who was peace personified - only bolsters the appreciation you have for how completely off the rails Kingsley is capable of going. Dishwashers, heed my warning: if you see Don Logan coming, run, very fast, the other way.

Even Kingsley himself says on the commentary track on the flick's various video releases:

Acting with one's self in the mirror is something that I've never, never done in my life, and it was very disconcerting to see the monster that I'd created, the monster Don, staring back at me. The first time I came to the mirror to do that sequence I completely dried up on my dialogue. I was so scared of my own face - [of] that psychopath looking back at me.

Say the words "British gangster" and inevitably people think Snatch, and maybe Lock, Stock, & Two Smoking Barrels, which is a shame. Though the U.K. hasn't produced a lot of notable modern crime thrillers (much like Hollywood, their cinema scene has certainly softened since the '70s), at the very least it can fully claim ownership of Sexy Beast, not just one of the all-time greatest, but the best crime film from across the pond since 1980's The Long Good Friday.

THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE (1974)

To lean on an overused expression, they really don’t make films like The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three anymore. The remake from 1998 with Vincent D’Onofrio, and the other remake from 2009 with Denzel Washington and John Travolta and directed by Tony Scott, proved that with ease. Because the uniqueness of the original is very much a product of the time in which it was made.

As has already been proven, the future has a bad memory. Over time, individuals who were once prominent actors, or filmmakers, slip into the ether. Names like Walter Matthau or Robert Shaw, celebrated during their time, may or may not survive the pop culture purge that’s currently in progress with the generation just below our own. Names like James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, who died young, beautiful, and tragically, will always live on, while some of their colleagues will become trivia in board games and movie theater screens just before the ads for Hyundai. For some, those names are already forgotten, but for those who still remember, it might still come as a surprise that Walter Matthau, best remembered for his lifelong friendship and multiple on-screen couplings with Jack Lemmon, did his fair share of roles in the 1970s where he played kind of a badass. Not Schwarzenegger or Stallone levels of badass, mind you, but a different kind of badass. With his roles in The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three, or Charley Varrick, or The Laughing Policeman, the lanky and limber Matthau exuded that 1970s version of a badass without the egocentricity of ridiculous musculature or an array of militaristic weapons. Matthau could be a badass only with a look, or a wry smile, or a perfectly timed cutting remark. His resistance to authority, his disdain for bureaucracy, and his insistence on always getting his man made him a less showy but just as effective “action” hero.

As for the villain (well, the lead villain), Robert Shaw’s menacing, icy, and subtly funny take on Mr. Blue (yep, Tarantino steals from all over) is a perfect foil to Matthau’s Lt. Zachary Garber. He is very much no-nonsense, at times treating the hostages in his subway car with more respect than his fellow heisters (brought to life by the likes of Martin Balsam, Hector Elizondo, and yes, Earl Hindman, aka Tim Taylor’s neighbor, Wilson, in nine years of Home Improvement). When one uses the term effortlessly cool for actors from this era, the names Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood come to mind, but Robert Shaw out-cooled them all. Perhaps best remembered as Quint from JAWS, followed by his villainous turns in The Sting and From Russia with Love, his untimely death at 51 is one of the worst tragedies to befall the art of cinema, as it robbed us from so many more potentially great roles from the underrated British actor.

Two strong lead actors aside, The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three’s greatest strength is its screenplay, based on the novel by John Godey (Johnny Handsome) and adapted by Peter Stone (Charade; 1776). Channeling Die Hard before Die Hard existed, the majority of Matthau and Shaw’s scenes together are shared via radio between the New York City subway operations hub and the taken train car, and despite this, the men manage to show a tremendous rapport, anyway. Helping this is the cracking, sharp-witted dialogue, which comes off as both cinematic and realistic at the same time. Add to that a slice of political incorrectness (it’s true—in previous eras, it was okay to laugh at the things that made us different) and a ground-zero look at how different facets of city culture react to a terrorist event (topical!), and the end result is The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three—one of the only times domestic terrorism was fun.

Director Joseph Sargent (White Lightning; JAWS: The Revenge) matches the thrills with the laughs, presenting an old-fashioned good time with one of the best, ironic, and expertly executed endings of all time. And to forgive another overused expression, The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three’s DNA lives, breathes, and bleeds New York – to the point where the city is not just another character but the main character. In fact (move over, Spike Lee), The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three just might be the most New York film ever, from the emphasis on local actors for bit parts, to bigger-than-life New York attitudes, to iconic city geography, and to how ably Sargent captures the city, warts and all. The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three takes place in several not-so-glamorous environments. Much of the film, understandably, is subterranean, spent in gritty and dank locations like malfunctioning train cars or subway tunnels and platforms, but this only adds to the film’s appeal. Having set The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three in any other city would have stripped away its identity, its wryness, and most importantly, its sense of humor.

Much of The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three is dialogue driven, but composer David Shire’s musical score complements the subtler and less bombastic moments outside of scenes of gunplay or car chases. (Shire has amusingly described his earlier attempts at scoring The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three as “bad Lalo Schifrin” and “bad flute jazz.”) Scenes set underground on the subway tunnels or platforms benefit from echo and station ambience, exuding the New Yorkness of New York, and working perfectly alongside Sargent’s intent to make this a New York story.

The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three is a classic of the genre, the sub-genre, or however you want to catalog it. It exists in a simpler time, both historically and cinematically, when all you needed for something to go so wrong was a handful of homegrown men with a plan, and all you needed to right that wrong was someone on the opposite end of the radio to ensure those men never reach the last stop.

BLU-RAY REVIEW: GRINDHOUSE RELEASING'S 'THE TOUGH ONES' (1976)

One of the most popular European cinematic sub-genres of the ‘60s and ‘70s was the giallo — a hyper-stylized approach to filmmaking pioneered by Italian filmmakers Mario Bava and Dario Argento, and largely credited as the inspiration behind the slasher sub-genre. Another movement also came to prominence during this time, spearheaded by European filmmakers less interested in depicting the ghastly crimes and more in the ensuing police investigations that looked into them—poliziotteschi: dark and gritty cop and crime thrillers that often offered the same kind of pulpy thrills and graphic violence, but in far less amounts. In American terms, films like Dirty Harry and The Laughing Policeman would fall under the poliziotteschi label, even though they were less graphic than their European colleagues. While poliziotteschi weren’t necessarily graphic with horrific imagery, they often could be.

Enter 1976’s The Tough Ones (aka Rome Armed To The Teeth – god I love Italian movie titles), directed by Umberto Lenzi (the giallo Seven Blood-Stained Orchids). Leaning back on the prior example of Dirty Harry, The Tough Ones tells your typical story of a police detective making it a personal mission to stop a killer while skirting “official channels” and “the book” in order to make that happen. Detective Leonardo Tanzi (the Frank Nero-looking Maurizio Merli) is that official channels skirter, furious with a system that coddles instead of punishes, and will absolutely, positively get his man -- by any means necessary. That man? The very Scorpio-ish Vincenzo Moretto (Tomas Milian), a hunchbacked slaughterhouse worker involved in much bloodier business than merely slicing cows down the middle, and who somehow manages to out-ooze Dirty Harry’s Andrew Robinson. (“I shat this out just for you,” he tells Tanzi at one point, holding up a bullet that Tanzi forced him to swallow in a total act of male dominance earlier in the film. Talk about having explosive poop! I’m sorry!)

The Tough Ones is hard-hitting and angry. Everyone is angry at everyone else. Tanzi hates Moretto, who hates him back. Tanzi and the police chief share an equal and mutual hatred. Tanzi, at times, even seems to hate the very woman he’s dating (Maria Rosaria Omaggio), as she basically represents the liberal society that releases all of the criminals he arrests on a daily basis. Like other films from this time period, and especially with it being an Italian production, The Tough Ones is very much indicative of its era. It’s impatient and cynical like lots of ‘70s cinema, with the added discomfort of pure misogyny, perpetrated against every single female character, and often at the hands of our lead hero. At the worst of them is a random rape attack committed by a group of thugs, most of which is thankfully left to the imagination, along with a disturbing insinuation that, post-rape, the victim was additionally sexually assaulted with a tree limb. There’s more than one instance of a woman being slapped, or talked down to, or outright threatened – not a single female character walks away unscathed in some form or another. Most cinephiles already well versed in this era of filmmaking likely won’t be surprised or turned off by this, but for those of you just getting started, best prepare yourself now.

Most importantly, Lenzi knows how to stage exciting action sequences, with the standout being an extended car chase that directly leads into the finale. The chase never reaches the heights of the graceful automotive ballet Bill Hickman achieved during his stunt driving in the likes of The French Connection, Bullitt, and The Seven-Ups, but only because Lenzi wants the car chase to look manic, gritty, and very dangerous instead. Leading up to that is an impressive barroom fight, which sees Tanzi taking on a Van Damme level of henchmen and reigning supreme. (A punk gets his head smashed through the glass top of a pinball machine and it’s the most satisfying thing.) The shootout during the climax, also, gets that blood pumping – that fun, unrealistically bright kind not seen since Romero’s Dawn Of The Dead. Like most Italian genre flicks, the plot doesn’t fully gel, and the editing can sometimes make the film’s events hard to follow, but, like Bullitt, the plot of which is near incomprehensible, Lenzi’s visceral way of presenting the story and the action make up for the weak cohesiveness. 

From a technical perspective, The Tough Ones looks and sounds fantastic, lovingly restored for a 4K presentation. The release comes with both English and Italian audio tracks, along with English subtitles for the Italian track only. You can attempt to watch English with English, but the subtitles barely match; the intent is the same, but the dialogue is always different. (One of the best examples of this is when someone calls someone else a “dummy” onscreen, but the subtitles replace it with “proletarian,” which I found very amusing.)

As typical for a title from Grindhouse Releasing, this new edition of The Tough Ones comes absolutely packed to the gills with special content, not the least of them being a third bonus CD of the film’s soundtrack by Franco Micalizzi. Most viewers will likely start with the new interview with director Lenzi, which runs 55 minutes in length. Lenzi starts at the beginning of his career, talking about how he got started, along with his admitted comfort in working in the crime genre over horror, despite his having contributed several titles to the latter. But if there’s a must-watch supplement on this release, it’s the 90-minute(!) interview with Tomas Milian. He explores similar ground as far as his start in filmmaking and acting, but his interview begins with a deeply personal and sad account of his childhood at the hands of loveless and abusive parents. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be hooked on his every word following this stunning admission.

The complete list of special features included on this release is as follows:

• NEW 4K RESTORATION OF THE UNRATED AND UNCENSORED DIRECTOR'S CUT OF THE FILM
• Optional Italian language soundtrack with optional English subtitles
• Audio commentary by Mike Malloy, director Of Eurocrime! The Italian Cop And Gangster Films That Ruled The 70s
• NEW in-depth interviews with director Umberto Lenzi, actors Tomas Milian, Maria Rosaria Omaggio, Sandra Cardini, Maria Rosaria Riuzzi and Corrado Solari, screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti, and composer Franco Micalizzi
• Special tribute to Maurizio Merli with appearances by Enzo Castellari and Ruggero Deodato
• Vintage VHS intro by cult movie superstar Sybil Danning!
• Original international theatrical trailer
• Liner notes by Italian crime film expert Roberto Curti
• Deluxe embossed slip cover
• BONUS CD – original soundtrack album by Franco Micalizzi – newly remastered in stunning 24 bit/192khz sound from the original master tapes
• AND OTHER SURPRISES...
• LIMITED BONUS - Custom 30-Caliber Metal Bullet Pen – Strictly Limited to 2500 Units

The Tough Ones is now on Blu-ray from Grindhouse Releasing. 

[Reprinted from Daily Grindhouse.]