Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) is back!
After equalizing a compound of bad 'uns, Robert finds himself near death and stranded in Italy.
Brought back to health by a local doctor, Robert spends his time rehabilitating his body and reconnecting with his humanity through his interactions with the town locals.
On his latest job, Nemo finds himself sealed inside a hi-tech penthouse apartment.
Without food or water, and with no escape route, Nemo is trapped.
Following defeat in the desert, Sgt. Joe Gunn (Humphrey Bogart) leads a group of survivors across the Sahara back toward Alexandria.
Arriving at an oasis, the survivors find themselves under siege by a larger German unit who want to secure the precious source of water for an advance on Egypt.
Can Joe and the others hold them off?
Maybe it was the bad aftertaste of Across the Pacific. Maybe it was the heavy signalling of the ideological conflicts of the WW2 epic. Whatever it was, it took awhile for me to warm up to Sahara.
It is a WW2 movie made and released during WW2, which makes it more interesting. This is made for a wartime audience as a moral booster, so there are certain elements that feel a tad obvious: the characters break down into a cross-section of different participants in the conflict. The German pilot they capture (Kurt Kreuger) is pure evil, a duplicitous killer who refuses to accept his fate. He is contrasted with the Italian prisoner, J. Carrol Naish’s Giuseppe, who is given a family, and eventually sacrifices himself for his new friends.
There is a slight melodramatic undercurrent to the character dynamics, but that is just a feature - the characters might be archetypes, but they are all solidly constructed, and well-played.
Once the film turns into a siege narrative, we have spent enough time with these characters that their actions (and deaths) carry real weight.
While Bogart is reliably taciturn as the reluctant leader, the real standout is Louis Mercier as Jean Leroux, "Frenchie". He brings a charisma and humour that - while it works for this movie - felt like a tip toward the men-on-a-mission adventure ensembles of the sixties.
The film is well-photographed by Rudolph Maté, highlighting the actors’ burned, exhausted faces.
Directed by Zoltan Korda (brother of British writer-producer Alexander Korda), Sahara is more nuanced than it initially appears - the desert is unforgiving to everyone in the movie. The Germans are the antagonists, but by the end of the film, they are presented as pitifully human - crumpled against the sand, blearily staring at our heroes’ fortifications while the cries of their wounded fill dead air.
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Captain Harry Morgan and his friend Eddie run a fishing boat out of Fort-de-France, the island’s main port. The port is also a hotbed of violence as the Vichy officials battle with rebels who support the French French and the Allies.
Harry tries to remain neutral, but he finds his status harder to maintain when economic hardship forces him to accept a fee to get French resistance fighters onto the island.
As he romances an American stranger, Slim (Lauren Bacall), Harry is drawn deeper into the war effort.
Can he survive?
Proof that a movie featuring a small cast talking in a hotel can be exciting, To Have and Have Not is easily one of the best movies in the festival.
While there are similarities to Casablanca - as there have been with the other films in the Academy’s schedule - To Have and Have Not stands out.
Like the 1942 film, the dynamics of friendship, love, and loyalty are key to the film’s action and suspense.
The introduction of Lauren Bacall adds a welcome addition of sex to the familiar romance. The catalyst for the duo’s legendary on and offscreen relationship, Bacall’s chemistry with Bogart is palpable throughout.
Set in 1940 but released four years later, the film is a parable for America’s position between the Allies and the Axis at the outset of the war. Harry Morgan is a professional who minds his business and tries to keep out of the spheres of either the Vichy authorities or the rebels trying to unseat them.
This movie is great, but watching it after Sirocco highlighted its strengths. This movie is less interesting for its plot than its focus on the relationships between the characters - and how the pressure of outside forces brings out their true selves.
Unlike Bergman’s angelic Ilsa, Bacall’s Slim is a born schemer - she has had to find her own way in the world, and bears no guilt or divided loyalties. She also sees through hypocrisy and personas, sizing up Harry as soon as they catch sight of one another.
In a neat reversal, it is Bogart who is the object of desire - although Bacall’s performance ensures this view is imbued with a little more lust than Rick’s.
Most of the film’s action takes place in tight interiors - or interiors rendered claustrophobic by crowds of people. There is a constant sense of surveillance, and of benign under siege. There is also a sense of community, of the bustle of everyday life, of people finding solidarity, joy and romance together.
On paper, To Have and Have Not might come across as stagey, but the finished film has the pace and dynamism of an action movie - except the characters trade barbs instead of bullets.
There is a subset of movies which I love where the world of the movie is so vivid, you would want to hang out and marinate in the ambience. To Have and Have Not is now one of those movies.
I wish I had caught it sooner.
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