Year: 2017

The Killer Elite is a wild and crazy, late-career actioner from Sam Peckinpah that combined spy plotting, sort-of-insane-kung-fu, bloody shoot-outs, wild car-chases, and seemingly every other genre ingredient under the sun. Fronted by James Caan and Robert Duvall and surrounded by a terrific ensemble cast including Burt Young, Bo Hopkins, Mako, Arthur Hill, Gig Young, and many others, the plot involves CIA skulduggery, double-crosses, violent showdowns, political assassinations, and the kitchen sink. Jerry Fielding’s peppy and lively musical score perfectly accentuated all of the various action set-pieces, while the great cinematographer Philip Lathrop (Point Blank, The Driver, The Cincinnati Kid, Hard Times) called the shots behind the camera, making great use of San Francisco and other physical locations. Legendary filmmaker Monte Hellman served as editor. Distributed by United Artists in 1975, The Killer Elite has taken on cult-classic status among action movie lovers and Peckinpah enthusiasts, despite mixed reviews and not making a big dent in the box-office. A decent-enough remake was released in 2011 with Robert De Niro, Clive Owen, and Jason Statham, but the original contains that special brand of Peckinpah craziness that he brought to his action scenes; few have done slow-motion shoot-outs and macho confrontations the way he did. The Killer Elite is available from Twilight Time, and contains Peckinpah’s 1966 TV film Noon Wine, which had been previously unreleased on home video platforms.

Predestination is a gloriously trippy and constantly surprising time travel movie that plays by its own set of mind-bending rules (as all the best time travel narratives do), constantly busting out twists and tricks, and is refreshingly story-focused and character-centric as opposed to being obsessed with empty flash and CGI-spectacle. Despite what appears to have been a modest budget, the film has been made with extreme smarts and lots of style. Directed by The Spierig Brothers, an Australian duo who previously helmed the solid B-movie Daybreakers, this one is a huge step forward for them as filmmakers, as they confidently crafted a tight and exciting and constantly shifting sci-fi piece based on the Robert Heinlein short story.

The journey of the gun bobs and weaves through Hollywood history with expected gusto; from Westerns to Hitchcock thrillers to Eastwood and Bronson, time and again they’ve helped define heroes, create villains, and put bloody ends to countless fictional conflicts.  Growing up watching Mel Gibson, Sylvester Stallone and a horde of wannabe toughs shoot their way through a two hour narrative I figured they’d define heroics onscreen forever, but a funny thing happened—as Sly himself pointed out not long ago, Michael Keaton showed up with that damn cape in 1989, and the comic book revolution was on.  It took another decade for the effects to catch up to the ideas, but by the time X-Men came out in 2000 it was clear that the multiplexes were undergoing a sea change.  Not that the guns have disappeared, but they tend to get incinerated by laser beams from Iron Man’s hand before they can do much damage.  Two years ago, a scrappy Keanu Reeves vehicle steeped in 70s and 80s tough guy cinema and decidedly against the superhero grain called John Wick became a surprise hit, and this past week saw the inevitable sequel roll out.  No capes to be found in either of these movies.  To quote RoboCop baddie favorite Clarence J Boddicker, we get plenty of guns, guns, guns.

First, a spoiler alert:  No animals are harmed onscreen in John Wick Chapter 2, unlike with the PETA revenge porn story of the original.  John has a new dog who briefly provides companionship, not drama, this time around.  Unlike the slow and occasionally mystifying  burn of the opening of the first movie, JW2 kicks off with several bangs and crashes as a loose end you may have forgotten gets tied up, then we get down to the business of once again dragging the noble hitman out of retirement to vanquish small armies of men in black suits sporting walkie talkie earpieces and large rifles.  The contrivances by which this takes place are more or less effectively laid out, delivered by a deft confluence of new baddies and old friends from the original.  To go into details wouldn’t necessarily spoil the fun, but it would also be beside the point.  We’re here to see Reeves run around kicking, punching, stabbing and oh yes, shooting his way through Europe and New York City, everyone knows it, and the filmmakers provide it in spades.  The cheeky alternative universe of crime and very special hotel rules is on full display, with several fun new layers and, by the end, an easy to adopt idea that in the Wickverse, Uber and Lyft side gigs have been replaced by the occasional assassin job.

Perhaps the unintentional strength of a film charged with delivering over the top murderous mayhem is that, this time around, we don’t get the puppy excuse.  In fact, in a key scene involving John’s return to work as well as the film’s denoument (which yes, fans, doesn’t just leave the door wide open for a third chapter, it demands it) both pause to remind you that Wick isn’t a hero, he’s a devil.  From the very beginning of John Wick Chapter 2, we see the lead try to once again exit his life of crime by employing the one thing he’s good at, murderous ultra violence.  The clear contradiction is an honest one and the filmmakers don’t flinch from it; John’s a bad man, and he doesn’t get the happily ever after that the first movie briefly tricked us into thinking he’s due.  I don’t want to make it sound as if Chapter 2 is a leaden antihero slog, because the primary goal remains action packed entertainment, and we get plenty of it (some of it quite funny, in keeping with the original’s often glib meta tone).  But living in an age where gun violence has gone from a gleeful gallop across the movie screen to horrid true crime stories on the nightly news, it wouldn’t quite sit right to have John get to have his cake and it eat too, and one gets the sense from this latest installment, not to mention the direction it’s heading, that director Chad Stahelski and writer Derek Kolstad understand this as well.

The Untouchables is a stone-cold classic. Brian De Palma’s bravura direction amounts to a clinic on how to make a supreme piece of studio funded entertainment, with showboating performances from a massive cast, all filtered through the elegant and stylized dialogue courtesy of David Mamet; his vulgar poetry really sets this one on fire. It’s been documented that both De Palma and Mamet had a contentious relationship during production, and that both have issues with certain aspects of the film. And that’s fine. I get it. I wasn’t there, and those guys are world-class artists. But as a finished product, this movie kicks ass in ways that most movies could only dream of doing. It seems like all the great directors need to try their hand at a gangster movie, and De Palma really aced it in terms of bringing all of the ingredients together with his sprawling imagining of Elliot Ness vs. Al Capone in 1930’s Chicago. Cinematographer Stephen H. Burum’s flamboyant camera moves have a sinewy quality, with De Palma clearly relishing his chance to stage some violent shootouts and confrontations, with a very memorable death scene from one particularly famous actor.

Everyone in the ridiculous cast had fun with the material, and because each character was distinct and memorable and given something important to do within the jam-packed narrative, everyone felt equally important. Ennio Morricone’s big and blustery Oscar nominated score was a perfect accompaniment to the fully-loaded visuals, while the fabulous production design, which also received an Academy Award nomination, was handled by the prolific Patrizia von Brandenstein, William Elliot, and Hal Gausman, and went a long way in evoking a very specific time and place. Well reviewed by critics and a solid box office hit (it opened to $10 million before legging its way to $75 million domestic), The Untouchables has become a staple cable item throughout the years, with various sequences, most notably the Battleship Potemkin-inspired staircase shootout, becoming iconic cinematic touchstones. I could watch this film any day of the week with zero qualms.