Films Catch Up May - 3
I have finally come to the end of the films I watched in 2023. Please enjoy these last five six reviews before I get into the films I watched this year at the weekend.
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At the end of Casino Royale James Bond shot Mr White in the leg. We return a little later to discover Bond being chased by cars, ending up in historic Sienna where Mr White is dragged out of the boot to be interrogated by M, Bond’s boss. Unfortunately M’s bodyguard Mitchell turns out to be a traitor; in the confusion of a spectacular chase Mr White escapes and Bond kills Mitchell.
Following a very tenuous lead to Haiti, Bond kills a man and impersonates him going to a meeting with Camille Montes, only to discover he was a hitman trying to kill her. Following her to the docks he sees her confront Dominic Greene, eco-businessman, who is meeting with exiled Bolivian dictator General Medrano. He rescues Montes, only to learn that she was a roaring rampage of revenge as Medrano killed her family. He follows Greene to Austria where there is an opera; it’s being used as cover of the shadowy criminal organisation QUANTUM*. Bond interrupts their conference call, causing most of the members to scatter and Bond taking pictures. Bond fights a man sent after him; it turns out he’s Special Branch, the bodyguard of a Special Adviser of the Prime Minister.
Having killed a policeman and got involved with British politics Bond is taken off the case. He sneaks into Bolivia with Matthis from Casino Royale, to be met by Fields, an MI6 agent, who tries to send him home. He convinces her to go to a party that Greene is holding, where Montes confronts Greene. Things go wrong; Matthis and Fields end up dead and M arrests Bond only for him to immediately escape and go rogue**.
Everyone’s been thinking this is about oil, but in fact it’s about water. QUANTUM, fronted by Greene, have bought up the land with most of Bolivia’s water supply, and intend to finance/arrange a revolution to put General Medrano back in charge. Bond and Montes uncover this and end up in a fiery confrontation.
After the strong start of Casino Royale, this film keeps getting pulled in two directions. One is the new Bond, a man masking his deep sense of pain and loss after the betrayal of the first film, who blunders through a conspiracy, out of his depth, escaping only through violence. The other is old Bond, seducing and discarding women, suavely sliding through the world untouched by it other than a momentary raise of the eyebrow and a quick quip. That’s the film’s strength, and also it's weakness.
Watch This: Action packed spy thriller with one or two
moments of real emotion
Don’t Watch This: Bond charmlessly causes trouble for
everyone
* The Qommittee for Unbridled Anarchy, Nuclear Terrorism and Unlimited Mayhem.
** M condones this, but it’s unclear if she’s making the best of a bad situation or if she intended for Bond to escape, and therefore have several of her team beaten up by him.
2. Rocky II
At the end of Rocky, Heavyweight Boxing World Champion Apollo Creed beats Rocky Balboa, the fight going to the judges and being a split decision. They both go to the hospital, where initially Apollo says they’re not going to fight again. That’s fine with Rocky, who may have a detached retina. Rocky retires from fighting and marries his girlfriend Adrien, who swiftly becomes pregnant. Rocky spends his money profligately. Initially there’s interest in him doing sponsorship and endorsements but he's very bad at acting. Rocky doesn’t want to go back to collecting for the loan shark he worked for; his brother-in-law Paulie gets him a job at the meat packers.
Meanwhile Apollo is haunted by the hate mail he gets, accusing him of fixing the fight, letting this nobody go fifteen rounds (presumably as a betting scam). When he and Rocky met in the hospital he told Rocky he gave his all. But now he thinks he didn’t take it seriously. He gets back into training and has his team call out Rocky, trying everything to get him to agree to fight.
Rocky gets fired, last in first out, and goes back to his trainer Mickey to see if he should fight. After some back and forth, Apollo’s insults convince Mickey. To protect Rocky’s eye, Mickey trains him to fight right-handed rather than his usual southpaw stance. Now a celebrity, everyone cheers Rocky when he goes on runs through the city.
Adrien doesn’t want Rocky to fight; when Paulie confronts her about this she collapses and goes into hospital. Rocky and Adrien’s baby is born prematurely; although he (Robert aka “Rocky Jr”) is healthy Adrien falls into a coma. Eventually she wakes up to discover Rocky hasn’t left her side. She gives Rocky her blessing to fight.
Ever the showman, Apollo has picked Thanksgiving for the fight, in Philadelphia again. Despite the best efforts of Apollo and the press to make it a grudge match Rocky is unfailingly mild-mannered and polite about Apollo.
Rocky was a great boxing film because although it revolved around the boxing, it was more interested in the people involved in it. In the ambivalent ending, the actual result of the match is almost obscured. Rocky’s victory is getting in the ring and standing up to Apollo, a smarter, stronger fighter who moves gracefully and fluidly. This film is a perfectly fine sequel, in that it asks, what next? Yet already we’re seeing how this series will exhaust itself. Rocky probably shouldn’t get back in the ring, but he’s compelled to – as much by his own sense of self, his masculinity, his pride than by the external pressures. Which is a different pride than Apollo’s, Rocky needs to prove himself to himself first, and his loved ones; Apollo needs the world to watch. We know they’re going to get back in and fight. Which of them is the better boxer, which one of them can stand up and get hit? Anyway, it’s good if you want to see a guy struggle with success and then with failure.
Watch This: Rocky keeps getting knocked down, gets up again
Don’t Watch This: Still the underdog, Rocky can’t face
success any better than failure
3. Passenger 57
John Cutter (Wesley Snipes) trains airline staff in security, is haunted by his wife who was killed when he intervened in a robbery. His friend Sly Delvecchio arranges to get him a chief of security job with the airline he works for, and he has to fly out to Los Angeles to meet the board. The flight he’s on (as passenger 57) has a stewardess he had a run in with at the start.
Also on the flight is Charles Rane, notorious international terrorist and ex-British aristocrat, being brought to Los Angeles to stand trial, escorted by two US Marshals. Unfortunately also on board are a bunch of Rane’s terrorist gang, who try to take over the plane.
Cutter is the unexpected element, the spanner in the works. He gets the word out, fights some bad guys, dumps the fuel so they have to land in a small Louisiana airfield next to a fair. On the ground Cutter gets out but runs foul of the local police who aren’t especially competent.
The film itself is competent with some tense scenes, a couple of moments where Rane’s ruthlessness gets him out of trouble, and others where it gets him in more. All the soft drinks are Pepsi for some reason, especially notable when they inevitably go into the fair. There’s some lowkey acknowledgement of racial tension, with the white Louisiana police very willing to believe Cutter is doing something wrong. Sadly the iconic line where Cutter tells Rane that you should always bet on black is rather awkwardly brought up entirely by Cutter. A couple of lines about Rane being a gambler would have set it up much better! “I think I’ll take my chances on that one Mr Cutter, take another spin of the wheel.”
Watch This: Exciting thriller, that introduces new
complications every time it seems to be about to run out of steam
Don’t Watch This: You’ve seen plenty of 90s action thrillers
and another seems inessential
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Sergeant Neil Howie (Edward Woodward) flies out to Summerisle in the Hebrides. He’s received an anonymous letter saying that a girl, Rowan Morrison, is missing. Everyone says he should talk to Lord Summerisle, who owns the island. He attempts to investigate but no one will admit that Rowan ever existed.
Howie, a devout Christian, is dismayed and shocked to discover that the minister has left and the islanders are all pagans (generally a Celtic version though they are very syncretic). Some of them are practicing rites in the nude. At the pub, The Green Man, where he takes a room, the innkeeper’s daughter Willow (Britt Eckland) shows an interest in him, but also everyone else as they sing a bawdy song about innkeepers' daughters.
Howie eventually meets Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee) who explains that his grandfather brought new ideas on agronomy to the island, which is blessed with a fine climate and volcanic soils. He also converted them to paganism rather than explaining the science. Summerisle is well known for it’s apples. Howie spots photographs of the harvest festival, with overflowing crates and one girl in front. There’s one missing; when he finally tracks down a copy he sees it’s Rowan in front of a bad harvest.
The island is also very free sexually, which Howie, unmarried and a virgin, finds especially disturbing. He attempts to leave to get help but his plane has been disabled. It’s May Day with a festival, and he believes they will sacrifice Rowan so searches the village, before deciding to disguise himself and join the parade.
The secret at the heart of the island is the darkness of this folk horror, how despite the free and easy life the people there live, there is something terrible. With some great performances and attention to detail (in some scenes Lord Summerisle’s hair sticks out to resemble the lion/sun mane that is one of the recurring symbols) a good tense film that stands up even when you know what’s going on.
Watch This: Classic folk horror that transforms as it goes
along
Don’t Watch This: Howie may be small-minded but it’s his
virtues that bring him down
5. Shazam: Fury Of The Gods
In Shazam teenage Billy Batson was given SHAZAM powers in an act of desperation by the Wizard; to defeat the villain he gave Shazam powers to his foster family, also broke the Wizard’s staff. The staff ended up in a museum in Athens from where it is taken by the daughters of the Titan Atlas. Having kidnapped the Wizard they force him to repair it.
The Shazam family are drifting apart. Billy’s worried that he’ll have to leave when he turns eighteen. He insists that when they superpower they go out as a group. Despite their best efforts they keep making mistakes, possibly making things worse – although they are supposed to have the Wisdom Of Soloman they act like teenagers (and younger for one of them).
Freddy Freeman, Billy’s brother, befriends a new girl at school. In an attempt to impress her he shows off his superhero form. This is inevitably a trap. The staff steals Freddy’s powers, and they kidnap him, taking him to the realm of the gods, which is a dying, ruined place. The rest of the family try to figure out how to rescue him, using a magic pen that writes for them (scribing exactly what they say in a moderately amusing sequence) and then sends the letter to Atlas’s Daughters. They are again outplayed; the whole point of Atlas’s Daughters’ plan has been to access the Rock Of Ages (where the Shazam power comes from) and take something from there.
The Daughters disagree over what to do and an apocalyptic end sequence begins, one which requires the Shazam kids to reveal their secret to their foster parents. This is all competently if not quite ever reaching for anything other than heart-warming or amusing. One of the Daughters has the power of Axis; able to spin and stretch reality in a way distinctive from (say) Dr Strange, which is pretty cool. I never really saw or read any Captain Marvel/Shazam, so I don’t know how the Wisdom Of Soloman thing is supposed to go, obviously it’s at odds with Billy Batson being a not especially smart or insightful teenager. I think if anything they are all less sensible in their super-form, but maybe it’s just grown adults playing that part and their powers giving greater scope for that.
Watch This: Charming but foolish superheroes stand off
against creatures with the power to wreck the universe
Don’t Watch This: A lot of effort and talent turned to a
story that adds little
6. Allan Quartermain And The City Of Gold
A sequel to King Soloman’s Mines. Allan Quartermain (Richard Chamberlain), legendary African explorer, is planning to marry Jesse Huston (Sharon Stone) in America. Before they can leave a man stumbles out of the jungle, delirious. Allan recognises him; he was last seen on an expedition with Allan’s brother Robeson, who vanished looking for the City Of Gold. He gives some clues and then is killed by masked men.
Allan abandons Jesse to form a party to find his brother and the City. Jesse forgives him and goes after him. The party has Umplopoglas (James Earl Jones) a warrior and old friend of Allan, Swarma, a mystic, and a handful of unnamed Askari warriors to be superstitious and scared of things, and to die to show the peril. They then head into the interior on a perilous expedition.
They find the city and… look this is based on a 19th century novel and it’s a mysterious white tribe in the jungle, who’ve built a city. They gloss over it a bit, with white people and black people living alongside in harmony. Bits of the original keep coming out; the two queens who rule the city are both white women (one of them is Cassandra Peterson better known as Elvira) and the evil priest who both fear is a white guy.
There is plenty of gold, a big molten pit of which they throw people into sometimes. A rather silly adaption, the set and locations are good, right up until they have to do some special effects, which spoil many of the stunts.
Watch This: Fast-paced African adventure
Don’t Watch This: Too late to be un-self-conscious about
colonial adventures, it awkwardly ignores its own implications making Africa a
silly playground for Quartermain and his friends
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