This Gun For Hire (Frank Tuttle, 1942)

After he is betrayed by his current employers, hired killer Raven (Alan Ladd) ignores the police manhunt after him and goes after his former paymasters.

A spiritual forebear of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai, John Woo’s The Killer and the John Wick franchise, This Gun For Hire made a star out of unknown Alan Ladd as the cold-blooded hitman Raven.

Ladd’s performance - emotionally contained, terse and cynical - laid down the template for all the tightlipped hard men of Hollywood, like Marvin, Bronson and Eastwood.

In its basic outline and chase structure, This Gun For Hire lays out a basic plot that would be taken up by every rote action movie into this century.

Despite taking place in the middle of World War Two, Raven is not interested in who he works for. And despite his profession, Raven is the only one who follows a code. 

As the movie illustrates, patriotism is meaningless, justice bends toward the money, and supposedly upstanding citizens are solely obsessed with their own enrichment: it is revealed that the film’s villain has been selling his products to the Japanese.

Since it is the height of the Hays Code, the unrepentant Raven has to meet his maker, but not before he has sent the people who betrayed him to meet theirs.

What gives the movie - and its central character - heart is the rapport that builds between the fugitive killer and a young club performer, Ellen (Veronica Lake), who is able to get some humanity out of him.

One could perhaps read some kind of romantic tension to their dynamic, but that feels a step too far. It takes up enough of Raven’s bandwidth that he can acknowledge her humanity.

Lake gives the character a world-weariness and toughness that complements Ladd’s minimalism. 

With little backstory, the two characters come together because of their hard won wisdom about the way the world works.  

Outside of the central duo, the rest of the cast are serviceable.

Despite top billing, Robert Preston is completely overshadowed as the cop (and Ellen’s boyfriend) on Raven’s tail.

Laird Cregar would play many villains in his short career - his role as Raven’s slippery employer Willard Gates is fine if familiar - a mastermind too cowardly to face his enemy, he is willing to backstab anyone who gets in his way.

Based on the novel by Graham Greene, This Gun for Hire would be the first of four collaborations between Ladd and Lake. Its influence on the noir and action genres would continue for decades afterwards. 

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In space, no one can hear Shakespeare: Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country (1991)

In this season of The James Bond Cocktail Hour podcast, we are covering the six year gap between Licence to Kill and GoldenEye, covering everything James Bond-related, from books to comics to video games, to non-Bond properties which tried to fill the gap.

On the latest episode of the podcast, our journey through the 1989-1995 Bond drought continues this Wednesday with the end of the space Cold War in Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country with special guest Agent Scott of the SpyHards podcast!

Check out the episode at the link below, and let us know what you think!

Links to this season's episodes:

No Time To Die (review)

No Time To Die (commentary)

Pierce Brosnan - The Bond In Waiting 

GoldenEye & Spymaker - The Secret Lives of Ian Fleming

Nikita

Total Recall

Fire, Ice and Dynamite & Bullseye!

The Russia House

BrokenClaw

Lethal Weapon & Die Hard

If Looks Could Kill

Hudson Hawk

The Rocketeer

Black Cat

Timebomb

Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country

Cherry Falls (Geoffrey Wright, 2000)

 A killer is stalking the small town of Cherry Falls.

As the bodies pile up, the killer’s MO becomes clear - whoever it is is targeting virgins.

As the town descends into a moral panic, the local student body decides to have a giant party to get themselves off the killer’s list of victims.

Meanwhile, the sheriff’s daughter Jody(Britteny Murphy) follows a trail of clues which could either lead to the killer’s identity, or her own doom…

A cult horror film from the tail-end of the slasher revival of the late 90s, Cherry Falls is a wild ride.

It might not have the meta aspect of Scream, but there is a thick vein of irony running through Cherry Falls that makes it singular.

Sex is a running theme of slasher movies but Cherry Falls takes it to another level.

Outside the antics of the student body, there are the knowing looks between the school principal and his young secretary, the male deputies harassing their lone female colleague.

Most significantly is the oedipal subtext between Jody and her father, played by Michael Beihn.

Every embrace lingers too long, every dialogue exchange carries an undercurrent of unspoken feeling… 

 

In Cherry Falls, everything is layered with an underpinning of lust and hypocrisy.

That hypocrisy is key - when the killer’s MO is revealed to the community, parents react with outrage.

The publicity of killings reveals the undercurrent of misogyny to this town, not just in the parents’ reactions, but in that of the teens.

In order to thwart the killer, they decide to have an orgy. Before this finale, we get an extended sequence in which we crosscut between the girls taking part in a crash course in sexual education, while the boys are shown sitting in a car bullshitting about what they are going to do. One of the film’s best jokes, it lays out the stark divergence in how the different groups view concepts of pleasure and intimacy. 

Sex and gender assumptions are an important part of the film’s villain. 

It is revealed that the killer’s mother was a teenager who was assaulted by four of the most popular kids at the highschool, including the future principal and Jody’s father. When he was growing up, she rejected him - torturing him for his resemblance to Jody’s father.

The killer dresses as his mother to align himself psychologically with her rage, and murders virgins in order to punish the generation of students who excluded and shamed his mother. 

While it is laced with irony the film is effective as a horror movie. Indeed, despite the music and style of costuming, Cherry Falls feels the most like a traditional 80s slasher.  The killing sequences are gory and the film’s central chase - as the killer follows Jody through the bowels of the school - is tense.

In the lead role, the late Brittany Murphy is a delight - bringing intelligence and empathy to what could have been a cookie cutter final girl, she is the standout of a solid cast.

Cherry Falls may not have the name recognition of Kevin Williamson’s oeuvre or other slashers from around the turn of the millennium, but it is worth checking out.

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Presumed Innocent (Alan J. Pakula, 1990)

When his colleague Carolyn Polhemus (Greta Scacchi) is murdered, prosecutor Rozat "Rusty" Sabich (Harrison Ford) is put on the case by his boss District Attorney Horgan (Brian Dennehey).

What his colleagues do not know is that Rusty had an affair with Carolyn.

When evidence points toward Rusty as the killer, he is abandoned by the DA.

Despite enlisting the services of rival attorney Alejandro "Sandy" Stern (Raul Julia), Rusty is in deep trouble.

What will he do to prove his innocence? And what will be left of him if Rusty prevails?

A Harrison Ford vehicle from Alan J. Pakula, director of All The President's Men?

With Gordon Willis (The Godfather) providing his signature heavy shadows to highlight the moral vacuum of powerful people doing terrible things?

Sign me up!

Presumed Innocent is a legal thriller where the tension comes from exposing the limits of the legal system and the ways in which people will manipulate it to their own ends.

It is a movie of strategy and tactics, not only of law, but investigation, the judicial process, and politics. It even extends to gender roles, and how Rusty’s assumptions about his mistress and his wife lead to his undoing. 

The case does not end with a verdict - it is tossed out because the prosecution bungles the case.

It then turns out Sandy has blackmailed the judge, and Rusty’s investigator (John Spenser) had a missing piece of evidence the whole time.

Rusty’s defining weakness is how he trusts people too easily - he trusts his boss, he falls in love with Carolyn, and he does not even suspect his wife, despite his own betrayal of her trust.

In the main role, Ford is terrific.

Guarded, interior, always watching and evaluating, his performance as Rusty plays to his strengths.

The victim, Carolyn (Greta Scachi), is a phantom - a sign of Rusty’s guilt and his naivete.

Raul Julia brings an equal level of restraint to Sandy, with a hair touch of irony as he watches his opponents squirm.

 

Bonnie Bedilia is also great  as Rusty’s wife, Barbara.

Reminiscent of Gone Girl in her planning of the crime, Barbara is a woman who put her life on delay. She proves her abilities in the most horrific way imaginable.

In smaller roles, Paul Winfield and John Spenser are also terrific - Winfield as the presiding judge, and Spenser as the detective who assists Rusty in his investigations.

One thing that stands out about Presumed Innocent is its simmering understatement.

The finale, with its major twist, could have been overblown, or tipped over into unintentional comedy.

When Rusty discovers the murder weapon among his tools, he goes to the cellar and washes it off.

The confrontation with Barbara is filled with emotion, all the more powerful for the performer’s lack of release.

Ford’s response to Bedilia’s whispered confession is silence and tears.

Dark and ambiguous, the film then cuts to a shot of the empty courtroom. In a reversal of the opening shot, the camera pans from the jury seats to the court bench, as Rusty repeats his opening lines about the importance of the legal system and his role in it.

However, now the context is inverted - Rusty Savage is trapped in his own private prison, forever compromised. Whatever ideals he had about the law are gone.

Lisa (Gary Sherman, 1990)

14-year-old Lisa (Staci Keanan) is obsessed with meeting older men.

Lisa is able to disguise her voice to sound older over the phone, and maintains the rise of being an adult to entrance men.

When Lisa runs into a new neighbour (D.W. Moffett), she develops a crush and wants to add ‘Rick’ to her collection.

What she does not know is that ‘Rick’ is a serial killer and he is also anxious to add her to his…

A cautionary tale about adolescent sexuality, Lisa is a strange blend of thriller and teen movie, with a mistaken identity subplot straight out of a romantic comedy. 

Co-written and directed by Gary Sherman (Deathline and Vice Squad), Lisa is currently his last feature film as a director. 

The film’s politics are simplistic on the surface - a teenager follows her urges and almost gets herself and family killed.

As with Sherman’s other works (at least the ones I have seen), there are more complications to this reading.

There is a level of realism to the relationship between Lisa and her mother. While Lisa and her mother have an established Bond of trust and self-reliance. Maybe it is growing up with a single mother, but there is an ease to their relationship that feels real.

While the ending could be read as a punishment for Lisa’s lust, the film acknowledges the sense of power Lisa gains from her role-playing - while Lisa entertains dreams of her crushes, she keeps them locked away in a scrapbook, and at the other end of the phone line. While her friend keeps trying to hook her, Lisa still follows her mother’s rule of not dating until she is 16 years old.

Lisa is increasingly taken with how Richard responds to her over the phone - there is no implication that she wants to meet him in person. It is all about the confidence she gains from being at a remove. 

Lisa remains completely unaware of the danger she is in until she decides to play matchmaker and set Rick up with her mother.

As a suspense picture, the film is effective - the scene where Lisa locks herself in Richard’s car has some good tension, and the finale in which Lisa and her mother battle  Richard is brutal.

Most of the film’s tension comes from our awareness of Richard’s true nature, which lends the film a sense of dark irony as Lisa draws him in. 

The film has the simple story logic of a fairy tale, and this extends to the way the killer’s modus operandi fits with Lisa’s romantic fantasies - he breaks into his victim’s houses, lays out candles etc to create a romantic setting, and leaves a message on their answering machine, which he then waits for them to check before attacking.

The film’s scope is small, and largely set in various interiors, but this is where Sherman’s gift for conveying meaning through mise-en-scene comes to the fore: for example, all we see of the killer’s home is an empty living room with a couple of leather chairs - it looks like a corporate waiting room rather than somewhere where a person would live.

The acting all around is solid. Cheryl Ladd is excellent as Lisa’s down-to-earth mother, and despite looking disconcertingly like Adam Scott, D.W. Moffett’s killer is effectively anonymous. Unlike most Hollywood portrayals of serial killers, his killer lacks any flare or personality - he is a handsome blank.

While its simplicity is compelling, there are moments where Lisa feels compressed and televisual - it is limited to a few locations, and the film’s cast of TV names makes the film feel slightly small. 

It is not Sherman’s best outing as a director, but it is worth a look.

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Magic Mike XXL (Gregory Jacobs, 2015)

 Years after he left, Mike Lane receives a call that brings him back together with his old friends.

Having been abandoned by Dallas and the Kid, the troupe are looking for a new purpose.

With Mike onboard, they come up with a plan to attend the annual stripper convention in Savannah, Georgia.

Opening on the classic seventies WB logo, Magic Mike XXL signals its shift from the original from the outset.

Gregory Jacobs takes over helming duties, while Steven Soderbergh stays as cinematographer (as ‘Peter Andrews’) and editor (as ‘Mary Ann Bernard’).  

Despite that continuity, this is a very different beast.

In classic sequel fashion, the movie cycles back to zero: No more Dallas or the Kid (they’ve dumped the crew for a new venture), no love interest (Mike has been dumped before the movie begins), and instead of a club, the action shifts to a road trip format.

In contrast to the original, where the characters keep their emotions contained, XXL is a movie about men stripping down to their most raw desires and feelings. 

 

This is a story of male friendship - the guys expose their feelings, confess their dreams, take comfort from each other, and support each other. There is no shame or homophobia to their interactions.

In contrast to the original, this is a proper dance movie, with setpieces as character expressions. 

Take the scene where Mike rediscovers his passion.

Mike is framed in a wide, working in his workshop with the radio playing. Ginuwine’s ‘Pony’ starts playing (his song from the original) and Mike starts snapping back into his old routine, until he has turned his workshop into a stage.

When Mike has to prove himself to the group, this is shown when they take part in a drag show; When Joe Manganiello’s Richie loses his confidence, he regains his mojo by dancing to Backstreet Boys for a gas station attendant; Mike proves himself to Rome (Jada Pinkett-Smith) by dancing with two customers at her club.

The focus on the group’s love for each other means the romantic subplot with Amber Heard feels unnecessary.

The real resolution is when the whole group is reunited and embraces each other.

We do not even know if they won or if they have plans for the future - the movie ends with the group enjoying the moment in a scene that feels like a deliberate quotation of Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven. All that matters is that they accomplished something together.

Tatum is great, but one of the main pleasures of Magic Mike XXL is the opportunities it gives to the other characters, particularly Manganiello and Matt Bomer as aspiring singer Ken.

Jada Pinkett Smith adds some class as Rome, a club owner who used to have a relationship with Mike. Smith and Tatum have real chemistry - there is an unspoken history to their dynamic that is fascinating.

This movie is great - the cast, the set pieces, the soundtrack. Check it out.

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