BITE-SIZED: Magnum Force (Ted Post, 1973)

 Criminals are dying and Dirty Harry (Clint Eastwood) is not the perpetrator. Who is?

The last couple of reviews I have written have been exercises in nostalgia, checking back in with movies that have - for whatever reason - stuck in my brain. After Lalo Schifrin's music was re-used in Copshop, I wanted to go back and check out the source, 1973's Magnum Force.

I remember watching scenes from this movie when I was younger. For some reason it was always on some TV channel, and I would catch another scene, and it was always the scenes featuring the motorcycle cops massacring people. 

I know I saw more but those images of dark glasses beneath white helmets are very effective. Terminator 2 has really taken the iconography of the motorcycle cop, so there may have been some influence.

I watched Dirty Harry later, and while Magnum Force is not as good as that movie, it is pretty compelling.

Ted Post is the credited director, although apparently Eastwood held a tight leash on the production. Post is no auteur, but he has directed a couple of sequels which are memorable for their bleakness and violence.

While it might not be to the level of Peckinpah or Clockwork Orange, the violence in Magnum Force is still disturbing 

There is an excessive quality to the movie - the set pieces are bigger, more people die, and the manner in which they do feels more unnecessary(?)

While Dirty Harry is considered an early action movie, Magnum Force feels closer to the real form - it’s story is pretty simple but it is mostly a collection of set pieces. 

We even get the cliche of a villain killing someone in a despicable way so that we hate him more

Does the movie want us to identify with the cops, or Harry?

The movie is a reaction to the first movie, by having Harry against a group of cops who are more arbitrary in their execution of criminals. 

The differences are threadbare, but the movie makes no real attempt to explore how Harry and the cops are similar or different. The reveal of the vigilantes identities does not lead to any greater conflict for Harry.

Magnum Force is a pretty sloppy movie, but the filmmaking and Lalo Schifrin’s score ensure it moves past the narrative bumps

The scenes of the vigilante cops are the selling point - as a daylight horror movie, Magnum Force is really good 

Post/Eastwood frame the cops with tight closeups of their helmets or over their shoulders.

- the shots recall the looming close-ups of the highway patrolman Marion Crane runs into in Psycho, only more depersonalised. With Schifrin’s martial theme, they feel like robots coldly executing their mission.

These scenes pop the most in the movie - there is a care and attention to composition that the movie does not sustain in the other sequences. 

There is a sense of focus and tension to Don Siegel's original that this movie cannot reach.

But in its own scattered way, Magnum Force retains a certain power - there is plenty of memorable moments and it benefits from the action genre's propensity for excess in the number and variety of action sequences.

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OUT NOW: Thor - Love and Thunder

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) returns to Earth on the trail of a new threat: the god-slaying Gorr (Christian Bale).

After Gorr kidnaps the children of Asgard, Thor, Korg (Taika Waititi), Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) and his former flame Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) join forces to rescue them.

Watching Black Widow, I felt like I had hit a wall trying to write about Marvel movies. 

If you liked Ragnarok like I did, there is much to enjoy in Love and Thunder. 

The biggest problem I had with it was that nothing had stuck in the brain. The story is kind of a combination of a couple of promising threads, but when it was all over it felt like nothing had happened.

For a good portion of the first act it feels like a rerun of the previous movie’s jokes. That’s great if you loved Matt Damon and Sam Neil’s appearance as actors - they are back.

I was looking forward to Natalie Portman’s return - she is great but like everything in the movie it felt like she was barely in it.  

The movie’s plot is also odd. Christian Bale plays a man betrayed by his gods who is determined to slay all the deities in the universe. Maybe because the threat is so focused on godlings I felt no real stakes.

The film tries to make the threat stronger by having Gorr kidnap New Asgard’s children but they just feel like a plot device. The threat is also diminished by the humor and the fact that Thor keeps interacting with them via a psychic link.

One issue I have with the film is that I do not think it threads the needle between the dramatic component and its comedic sensibility. 

The humour is poking fun at the ludicrousness of Thor juxtaposed with everyday reality but so much of the movie takes place in formless cosmic spaces. Ragnarok benefited from being set in one place (that was represented by physical sets).

The story also feels like a different movie from the tone.Neither tone nor content fully negate each other, but they feel at odds throughout the movie, meaning that big emotional moments do not connect.

 It is a pity because I think there is some potential here.

The way Jane is dealing with her cancer is interesting - it is nice to see a character who is not treating it as a death sentence. Jane wants to carry on living.

I could not help having the sneaking suspicion that Jane’s plotline was the filmmaker’s way of giving Portman something weighty to chew on. 

 

Portman and Hemsworth work well together and it is a pity that the movie around them feels so formless. I feel like the movie would be more interesting without the villain or his scheme. A  looser plot structure would have served Jane and Thor’s story more effectively. 

As is, it feels like we have been dropped into a single issue where a thousand different plots are happening.

Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie is dealing with being the king of New Asgard - she is basically reduced to a supporting role. Waititi’s Korg also returns, but he feels like a callback to the last movie.

I have seen some criticism that these later Marvel movies lack a sense of an overarching arc. I am glad they do not, but it feels like this movie could have lost the need to hit all of the tropes. 

Ragnarok felt like such a breath of fresh air and so it is disappointing that Love and Thunder feels more rote - it feels more like a traditional comedic sequel, with repetition of a lot of jokes, familiar bits (if you enjoyed ‘Immigrant Song’ in Ragnarok, you get a medley of 80s metal songs here, to lesser effect) and a few celebrity cameos. 

As with almost all Marvel movies, the bad guy role is thankless. Christian Bale joins the list of heavyweights who have appeared in the franchise and made almost no impression - he is good but he is barely in the movie.

A few beats stick in the mind - Thor’s tense relationship with his ex Mjolnir and current weapon Stormbreaker is hilarious - but overall Love and Thunder is not as memorable as its title would suggest.

OUT NOW: The Princess

 Imprisoned for an arranged marriage with an evil nobleman (Dominic Cooper), the Princess (Joey King) has to draw on her warrior skills to escape her tower prison and save her family.

Released on Hulu, The Princess is my kind of genre movie. I am a fan of action movies and thrillers that take place in a confined location. I also like genre fare that is stripped down to the essentials. It is also 94 minutes long.

This is a very simple movie.

It is so simple and narrow in focus, I am not sure it would work on the big screen. But on its own terms, The Princess is a fun time.

Joey King is great in the lead - she brings a convincing physicality and some real emotional weight that adds to the stakes. 

With its minimal dialogue, the movie feels more like a silent movie, and, King, with her large eyes and open face, feels like a silent movie performer - the movie lives and dies on her performance, and she conveys a lot without saying anything.

The movie is directed with a cheerful focus on narrative and spatial economy. There are some visual effects work but most of it is exteriors and backgrounds. I have seen some criticism of them but for me the slightly fuzzy environments and sky added to the sense that this takes place in a fairy tale setting.

Director Le-Van Kiet is most well-known for Furie, a solid action film starring Veronica Ngo.

Ngo appears here as the Princess’s mentor and friend Lin - she gets some great showcase moments, but not as many as Furie. I didn't love that movie but she is worth seeing it for. 

 

The best thing about The Princess is its confidence in its concept - there are no jokes poking fun at the scenario or the fairytale trappings. 

It also has such a strong handle on what the movie is, that the filmmakers are willing to give up some potential standout scenes. The biggest example of this is that it cuts away from the fight between Ngo and Olga Kurylenko’s whip-yielding henchwoman, Moira.

The cast are all solid, but this is a movie about momentum and action. The best I can say is that they all buy in and play it earnestly.

Because the scenario is so slight, pacing is important. To its credit, every time it feels like the action is about to get repetitive, a new variable or environment is introduced that keeps the story moving.

If The Princess has a weakness, it is a familiar one - the third act is a bit rote and the final fight is not the best one. To its credit, that fight is very brief.

Overall, The Princess is an enjoyable programmer and shows that mid-level genre movies are out there. Hopefully it is also an entree for Joey King and Veronica Ngo as action stars.

White House Down (Roland Emmerich, 2013)

When the White House is taken over by a group of administration insiders and white supremacists, it falls to John Cale (Channing Tatum) to save President James Sawyer (Jamie Foxx) and the world.

I really like this movie but time and repeat viewings have laid bare things that do not work (or are just out of date).

When I first watched the movie, my hot take was that it felt like an action movie from 1996.

1996 is the year that Independence Day came out, and it is also dead centre in the middle of the nineties economic boom. There is a sense of optimism and non-winking flag-waving that feels totally of the time - completely divorced from reality and superficial in its understanding of how American democracy works.

It is also awash in the faux observational one-liners that its director’s movies are famous for - not particularly funny asides that are supposed to offset whatever serious business is going on.

In 2013, I took these elements as part of the deal - I rolled my eyes at some of the gags and ignored the naive optimism of its portrayal of Washington DC.

I remember thinking the film’s focus on far right activists overtaking the White House because of the policies of a Black president was a dramatic escalation of what was simmering in the far right space during the Obama years.

In 2022, this element of the film has probably aged the best - I cannot say the same for the film’s tone.

As the blockbusters of the 90s seems hopelessly naive in the new millennium, this movie suffers from a similar sugary idealism that feels completely insulated from reality.

The best parts of the film are the script (by James Vanderbilt) and the cast.

The script is a solid Die Hard clone - Olympus Has Fallen has the tone and the R-rating but I was more onboard with the story of White House Down.

Tatum’s character is your familiar flawed action hero who becomes a better person by taking licks and killing dozens of people. Every other character feels like they contribute to the story, and the film’s twists provide a slight riposte to the film’s gilded view of American power structures. 

The script is better than the movie, and to their credit the filmmakers do not mess around with it, at least in terms of the structure or characterisation. lt is all familiar stuff, but it is executed with originality and wit.

 And while its portrayal of American institutions is lacquered in sentiment, it does not feel as faux-ironic as the filmmaker’s other films. The filmmakers seem to recognise the strength of the script and so the familiar observational jokes and one-liner-spewing side characters are kept to a minimum. 

Craft-wise, the filmmaking is clean and clear, with little of the shaky handheld camera or over-cutting. In contrast to Olympus, which takes place in near-darkness, White House Down takes place in daylight. This distinction makes it feel even more like a relic from the mid-nineties. 

The acting by the key cast is solid: Tatum is great as Cale - he balances the stakes and the goofiness without negating either, and he has a good rapport with Foxx.

Jamie Foxx is a tad too studied as the earnest Sawyer, particularly in the early section of the film, where he leans hard into evoking Obama’s vocal and physical specifics. It is a strange performance at first, almost as if the filmmakers wanted to fix in the viewer’s mind the connections with the real-life president. Once his introduction is over, that sense of impersonation dissipates. 

As with Tatum, he handles the film’s tone, underplaying the various gags and foregrounding the character’s empathy. The idea that any president would want to go against decades of US foreign policy is laughable, but Foxx makes Sawyer’s earnestness believable. I cannot understand how someone like him could make it through a primary without hiding his hand, but for this story, I buy it. 

James Woods is great as the film’s villain - the script gives him clear motivations which differentiate him from the financial imperatives of other villains in this film. Even at the time it was impossible to not see the film as a comment on Woods’ trajectory, but now it just feels like an obvious in-joke and a blast of reality. 

The MVP of the movie, and the element that makes it unique in Die Hard terms, is Cale’s relationship with his daughter, played by Joey King. Kids in action movies can be a bad sign, but Emily is a smart character who contributes to bringing down the villain. Her dad may kill people but she foils their plan and ultimately saves the day with the only flag-waving scene I cannot roll my eyes at. 

King’s performance is not winsome or one-note - her skepticism at her dad avoids feeling cliche and the character’s obsession with the history of the White House never feels like a joke. 

I have not watched anything else King has been in, but she is making a return to action this year with two films, The Princess and Bullet Train. Look out for reviews of those films soon.

White House Down is an underrated flick. Its failure at the box office and the success of the Mike Bannon franchise have done the most to bury it, but it is not the disaster that some people make it out to be. If you can stomach its idealized view of the American presidency, on its own terms it is a fun time. 

The Saint (Philip Noyce, 1997)

Simon Templar (Val Kilmer) is a world-renowned thief who makes a lucrative living stealing industrial secrets. 

One of these jobs puts him in the crosshairs of Russian oligarch Ivan Tretiak (Rade Šerbedžija), who wants him dead.

To draw him out, Tretiak dangles a job with a massive payday.

The job requires Templar to steal the formula for cold fusion from an eccentric scientist, Dr. Emma Russell (Elisabeth Shue).

One thing Templar does not plan for is falling in love with his target.

Soon the pair are on the run from Tretiak, while he enacts a scheme to bring Russia to its knees… 

I have never read any of Leslie Chateris’s books or the Roger Moore TV series - thus the 1997 iteration of The Saint is the version the name conjures.

This is one of those movies that I watched several times as a kid. I have not seen it in years but I can remember huge chunks of it.

I was worried it would not stand up on this viewing, but I think this is the most I have enjoyed it.

Noyce has a sure hand with these kind of thriller mechanics.

There is none of the process or focus on family drama of the Jack Ryan movies, but Noyce has a no-frills approach that makes the ridiculousness come off.

With its supervillain and charming anti-hero, the movie is closer to the globe-trotting of Bond.

While I had never considered it before, it made me wonder what Noyce’s Bond movie would look like. 

With years of distance, this film’s proximity to Bond is even more clear - ironic, considering Bond’s debt to Templar.

This movie was released two years after the Bond franchise relaunched, and it feels like an attempt at a similar franchise, with a few key differences: While he travels the world and seduces women, Kilmer’s Templar is a master of disguise and he avoids violence. 

Strengthening the connection is the fact that The Saint is a GoldenEye reunion of sorts - cinematographer Phil Meheux and editor Terry Rawlings carry over. 

Ironically, the element which felt the most Bondian is the score by Graeme Revell.

Combining orchestra and electronica, it is contemporary without feeling locked to it’s time. It gives the movie a sweep and sense of romanticism that the movie needs. It throws in a few stings of The Saint theme, but they are not the backbone of the movie.

With hindsight the most interesting aspect of the film is watching Templar as a representation of Kilmer himself - someone who is always wanting to play other people but when stripped of a disguise he is a blank. 

Kilmer is having a great time, and his various characterisations are a big part of the movie’s appeal.

What also helps is the chemistry he shares with Elisabeth Shue.

On paper this story is a pile of hokum - nothing wrong with that because it is all in the execution.

Shue plays Dr Russell as a nerd - she comes across as slightly distracted and eccentric. She manages to make this character - and her attraction to the mysterious Templar - work.

Heck, if Kilmer and Shue were not playing these characters, the movie would not work.

The villains’ plot draws on the nineties obsession with post-Glasnost Russia. With two decades distance, this aspect of the plot is both relevant (the villain is a billionaire oligarch who wants to make Russia great again) and naive (the level of trust Templar’s final scheme depends upon is ridiculous). 

Rade Šerbedžija is great as the villain. He is such a familiar face from my childhood, and it is always fun when he pops up in things. He brings a charm and ruthlessness to what could have been a cardboard villain.

The movie falters in the third act - it was re-shot and recut late in the day, and it feels slightly undercooked. 

It is not dire, but it feels like the movie is trying to set up an arc for the Saint to find his own identity. Ending with the thief giving up a fortune for altruistic reasons is fine, but it lacks the punch that was perhaps intended.

Still, while the ending is damp, the journey makes The Saint worth a look.

The Ghost and the Darkness (Stephen Hopkins, 1996)

 Engineer John Henry Patterson (Val Kilmer) has been sent to Africa on a special mission - to oversee the building of a bridge in Tsavo, Kenya.

Soon after he arrives, the workers’ camp is attacked by a pair of man-eating lions.

Despite Patterson’s efforts, the lions continue their attacks around the camp.

 As work on the bridge falls behind, Patterson’s backers enlist a famous hunter, Remington (Michael Douglas), to kill the lions.

Will the pair be able to end the menace? Or will the lions make dinner out of the colonizers? 

I watched the third act of this movie over twenty years ago and it always stuck with me.

Every time I saw or heard the title, the same images would flash across my brain: Patterson (Val Kilmer) running toward his wife (Emily Mortimer) as a lion attacks her; Patterson discovering Remington’s (Michael Douglas) body; Patterson scrabbling for his gun as the wounded lion crawls toward him.

Even though I had never seen the whole thing, The Ghost and the Darkness existed in the same childhood nightmare space as Jaws.

The Ghost and the Darkness is based on a true story. Screenwriter William Goldman refracts these events through the Jaws narrative template, by focusing on Patterson and a fictional hunter (ala Robert Shaw’s Quint) hunting the killers down. 

While I have seen some criticism of his Irish accent, that is the least of my problems with Val Kilmer’s performance. To his credit, he underplays that aspect of the character.

More importantly, Kilmer seems lost as the straight-shooting Patterson. I have not read Goldman’s script, but it feels like he should have leaned more into the Jaws template and made Patterson more of an everyman ala Sheriff Brody (Roy Scheider).

Kilmer would make more sense if Patterson was more weak-willed. The movie might have worked if Kilmer underwent more of a breakdown as the lions’ rampage continues. There is a flatness to his portrayal that throws the movie off.

Michael Douglas was - according to Goldman - poorly cast as Remington. The screenwriter envisioned the character as more of a mythical figure, an almost supernatural figure whose sudden death would increase the stakes as an unprepared Patterson has to take charge.

Goldman felt Douglas could not play that kind of role, and said the star demanded rewrites to make the character more human. I can see his point.

Like Kilmer, Douglas is always at best in roles that play against his looks, particularly as greedy, immoral villains. Consciously or not, his whole persona is a revisionist take on traditional images of white American masculinity. 

Remington is meant to be an archetypal white hunter, a white man who has mastered the terrain. Goldman intended this character as a misdirect - Remington is not the expert he is set up as, and he ends up catnip.

I am not convinced Douglas is as poor a fit as Goldman thought.

Douglas brings more energy than Kilmer, and there is something compelling about his manic performance. At times his neurosis works - his Remington feels like a veteran who has been through numerous scrapes.

Other times, he plays into Goldman’s misgivings - whenever Remington has to play the tough-minded mentor, Douglas comes off as a posturing fool. Hence his death lacks the gut punch that was intended.

 

I still think the bigger flaw is the conception of Patterson - if Patterson was more unready and traumatized (and if Kilmer played those qualities with more intensity), then the movie would have more of a sense of progression when Remington is killed and he has to step up. 

I would like to read Goldman’s script because I think the movie was fumbled in the execution. 

The big problem is that The Ghost and the Darkness lacks a sense of escalation - there are moments of tension, and plenty of gorey deaths - but it never feels like the world is falling apart.

Events happen which should feel important but they just pass by - Tom Wilkinson is terrific as Kilmer’s terrifying boss, but as Patterson’s failures mount up, it never feels like he is in danger - either of losing his job or his life.

Part of the problem is the context - Patterson is a British colonist overseeing a massive workforce of Africans and Indians.

While parts of the film feel like they are almost about to make a serious point about imperialism, the movie also wants to be an earnest jungle adventure, racial politics be damned.

It is hard to empathize with Patterson -  he is here to build a bridge. The biggest thing he has at risk is his reputation.

When worker Abdullah (Om Puri) organizes a shutdown over the lion attacks, it feels like the movie has miscalculated in terms of who has the strongest motivation in this situation.

The film benefits from being shot in Africa, and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond makes it look lived-in, but the movie always feels at a remove.

The movie used real lions but their effect only really comes into focus at the climax - they add a certain verisimilitude, but not much else.

 

Director Stephen Hopkins has a spotty career as a genre filmmaker (Elm Street 5, Predator 2 and Lost in Space), and he seems most at home with the suspense sequences. The movie looks slick, but there is no sense of a throughline - the action is covered and that is about it.

I left the movie disappointed.

As a revisionist take on the ‘african adventure’ movie, it is damp squib. As a monster movie it is passable. It always feels like the movie has some higher ambitions but it is never clear what they are. The movie feels like it should have leaned into its pulpy origins and just focused on being a scary movie about man-eating lions.

Ultimately, The Ghost and the Darkness feels like a remake waiting to happen.