Gentlemen, there are five thousand million dollars at stake. Of course there are risks.

Gold

(1974)

Strange to think there was a time when Alistair MacLean and Wilbur Smith novels were regularly adapted for the big screen. It would be unfair of me to take swipes at their literary abilities, as I studiously avoided their page-turners as a lad. I have seen a fair few of the movies based on their works, however, and I suspect I’m not missing all that much. In most cases the finished articles have been forgettable, workmanlike productions, indistinct except to all but the fiercest devotees (okay, everyone knows Where Eagles Dare). Gold’s greatest claim to fame is closer to one of infamy; the production made the dubious choice of filming in South Africa under the apartheid regime.

Smith’s plot (he shares the screenplay credit) concerns a dastardly plan to flood a gold mine. The resulting shortages will send the stock price sky high. Since we find this out during the first 10 minutes, there’s still another 90 minutes to trudge through before the plan gets results. Most of that is taken up by Roger Moore’s dalliance with delectable Susannah York (particularly so in tennis whites and pigtails). Moore is Rod Slater, the mine’s general manager. Rod Slater is just the kind of inevitably dull, square-jawed name that heroes in yarn of this ilk always labour under. But Moore plays Slater as he plays all his roles; charm personified, with a smirking wit. Unfortunately, the part as a whole doesn’t play to his strengths. As the straight romantic lead he’s on the starchy side, even though he and York have a jolly chemistry (does Moore ever not have a smooth rapport with his co-stars?) His bedroom shenanigans leave little time for heroic stuff until the finale (action stylings have never been Rog’s strong point either) so he must make a virtue of cuckolding his boss Bradford Dillman. That’s okay, as Dillman represents the inhuman corporations, ready and willing to sacrifice a few 100 (or 1,000) mineworkers in the name of profit.

Moore made this between Live and Let Die and The Man With the Golden Gun, and the Bond connections don’t end there; Peter Hunt, former Bond editor and director of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, makes his sophomore feature while the Bond helmer throughout the ‘80s, John Glen, is the editor and second unit director. It’s clear that a sense of 007 adventuring is intended; this is a widescreen affair, introduced by a Don Black-penned theme song with Maurice Binder titles and featuring a Machiavellian plan not very far removed from the ones seen in Goldfinger and the later A View to a Kill. It also shares a feature with fellow Bond Connery’s ex-007 one-word movie titles from the period (Cuba, Meteor); it’s a bit crap. Any commentary on the status quo in South Africa is oblique, personified rather than posed as a political challenge. Not really all that surprising that they refrained from insulting their hosts.

So Slater is nominally positioned as the good (white, British) slave master, considerate of workers’ rights and butting heads with hateful racist (white, South African) Kowalski. This isn’t a film for subtle shadings, and Bernard Horsfall (who also appeared in Hunt’s solo Bond feature) manifests his intolerance through savage beatings rather than abusive language (the film is free of racist slurs, as far as I recall, so there’s no danger that will be on the side of realism; Moore even speaks of it’s apolitical qualities as if it should be a badge of pride, which is very strange).

Predictably then, black South Africans get short shrift. The one significant supporting role goes to Simon Sabela as Big King, a noble fellow who receives a gold mining helmet for bravery and gets involved in staging traditional dance numbers for the white masters (it’s very nearly that stereotypical; presumably the producers thought they needed to advertise that they’d shot on the continent by including some Zulu garb, as that’s the first thing everyone equates with Africa?) Being noble, he is also consigned to noble self-sacrifice. Moore obviously felt he was making a positive statement by shooting pictures under apartheid, as he would return to South Africa for several more features. His autobiography is equivocal over the issue, but you wouldn’t expect Rog to present a discerning examination of the moral and ethical issues involved. He appears to consider his greatest Gold achievement to be a financial one. He forwent part of his salary in order to cover the costs of a remount of the mine flooding sequences at Pinewood,. When he received no royalties as recompense, the legal wrangles that ensued resulted in his ownership of the picture. When his character claims to hate lousy gold, you can be certain it’s a sentiment Moore doesn’t share.

Hunt stages the climactic action with some aplomb; it may be set-bound, but there is a visceral quality that even Moore’s man of inaction can’t neuter. Both in the opening cave-in scenes and the finale, Hunt doesn’t stint on the ketchup. Moore’s arm is mashed into a bloody mess, there are amputations and miner’s head looks like it has been pulped (just the sort of thing to show during a Saturday afternoon on Channel 5, then). He less sure of himself during the protracted romance, clearly kicking his heels and trying to find some way to remain alert. Hence Moore and York at diner, shot through a wine glass. Or York’s leaving Moore’s house signalled by the removal of her foregrounded hat. And York’s left nipple (well, it distracted me).

The supporting cast are mostly a bunch of rotters, and their strong showing belies that they aren’t too well-served by the script. Bradford Dillman has a slight Anthony Perkins vibe, and does good work showing Steyner’s masked insecurities. He’s the reluctant underling to boss man Ray Milland (the “good” corporate, cigar-chewing and ignorant to price-rigging plan), but it’s the shot of him sitting in his car outside the hotel where Moore and York are canoodling that speaks loudest of his weaknesses. Still, he’s quite willing to let the affair continue if it means more greenbacks. The magnificent Tony Beckley (Camp Freddie in The Italian Job) plays Dillman’s Number Two, Marais. He gets the best line, “Just run along and get Santa Claus, and I’ll give him his instructions about going down the chimney”. John Gielgud picks up the cheque for a couple of days work as the ringleader. Also on the conspiratorial board is an Arab sheikh, complete with sunglasses.

The movie (which was released in December) takes place at Christmas, although it is thoroughly unfestive. The most striking scene takes place at the home a syndicate member who gets cold feet. A parcel arrives and the children gather round to discover what the present is. Then it explodes. Gold could have done with more of that sort of ballsiness and fewer longueurs. But, to an extent, it doesn’t disappoint. It’s exactly the sort of non-Bond movie you expect to see Roger Moore in during the ‘70s.

Comments

I just hope my death makes more cents than my life.

Joker (2019)
(SPOILERS) So the murder sprees didn’t happen, and a thousand puff pieces desperate to fan the flames of such events and then told-ya-so have fallen flat on their faces. The biggest takeaway from Joker is not that the movie is an event, when once that seemed plausible but not a given, but that any mainstream press perspective on the picture appears unable to divorce its quality from its alleged or actual politics. Joker may be zeitgeisty, but isn’t another Taxi Driver in terms of cultural import, in the sense that Taxi Driver didn’t have a Taxi Driver in mind when Paul Schrader wrote it. It is, if you like, faux-incendiary, and can only ever play out on that level. It might be more accurately described as a grubbier, grimier (but still polished and glossy) The Talented Ripley, the tale of developing psychopathy, only tailored for a cinemagoing audience with few options left outside of comic book fare.

You guys sure like watermelon.

The Irishman aka I Heard You Paint Houses (2019)
(SPOILERS) Perhaps, if Martin Scorsese hadn’t been so opposed to the idea of Marvel movies constituting cinema, The Irishman would have been a better film. It’s a decent film, assuredly. A respectable film, definitely. But it’s very far from being classic. And a significant part of that is down to the usually assured director fumbling the execution. Or rather, the realisation. I don’t know what kind of crazy pills the ranks of revered critics have been taking so as to recite as one the mantra that you quickly get used to the de-aging effects so intrinsic to its telling – as Empire magazine put it, “you soon… fuggadaboutit” – but you don’t. There was no point during The Irishman that I was other than entirely, regrettably conscious that a 75-year-old man was playing the title character. Except when he was playing a 75-year-old man.

So you want me to be half-monk, half-hitman.

Casino Royale (2006)
(SPOILERS) Despite the doubts and trepidation from devotees (too blonde, uncouth etc.) that greeted Daniel Craig’s casting as Bond, and the highly cynical and low-inspiration route taken by Eon in looking to Jason Bourne's example to reboot a series that had reached a nadir with Die Another Day, Casino Royale ends up getting an enormous amount right. If anything, its failure is that it doesn’t push far enough, so successful is it in disarming itself of the overblown set pieces and perfunctory plotting that characterise the series (even at its best), elements that would resurge with unabated gusto in subsequent Craig excursions.

For the majority of its first two hours, Casino Royale is top-flight entertainment, with returning director Martin Campbell managing to exceed his excellent work reformatting Bond for the ‘90s. That the weakest sequence (still good, mind) prior to the finale is a traditional “big” (but not too big) action set piece involving an attempt to…

Poor Easy Breezy.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

You're skipping Christmas! Isn't that against the law?

Christmas with the Kranks (2004)
Ex-coke dealer Tim Allen’s underwhelming box office career is, like Vince Vaughn’s, regularly in need of a boost from an indiscriminate public willing to see any old turkey posing as a prize Christmas comedy. He made three Santa Clauses, and here is joined by Jamie Lee Curtis as a couple planning to forgo the usual neighbourhood festivities for a cruise.

She was addicted to Tums for a while.

Marriage Story (2019)
(SPOILERS) I don’t tend to fall heavily for Noah Baumbach fare. He’s undoubtedly a distinctive voice – even if his collaborations with Wes Anderson are the least of that director’s efforts – but his devotion to an exclusive, rarefied New York bubble becomes ever more off-putting with each new project. And ever more identifiable as being a lesser chronicler of the city’s privileged quirks than his now disinherited forbear Woody Allen, who at his peak mastered a balancing act between the insightful, hilarious and self-effacing. Marriage Story finds Baumbach going yet again where Woody went before, this time brushing up against the director’s Ingmar Bergman fixation.

We’ll bring it out on March 25 and we’ll call it… Christmas II!

Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)
(SPOILERS) Alexander Salkind (alongside son Ilya) inhabited not dissimilar territory to the more prolific Dino De Laurentis, in that his idea of manufacturing a huge blockbuster appeared to be throwing money at it while being stingy with, or failing to appreciate, talent where it counted. Failing to understand the essential ingredients for a quality movie, basically, something various Hollywood moguls of the ‘80s would inherit. Santa Claus: The Movie arrived in the wake of his previously colon-ed big hit, Superman: The Movie, the producer apparently operating under the delusion that flying effects and :The Movie in the title would induce audiences to part with their cash, as if they awarded Saint Nick a must-see superhero mantle. The only surprise was that his final cinematic effort, Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, wasn’t similarly sold, but maybe he’d learned his lesson by then. Or maybe not, given the behind-camera talent he failed to secure.

It's their place, Mac. They have a right to make of it what they can. Besides, you can't eat scenery!

Local Hero (1983)
(SPOILERS) With the space of thirty-five years, Bill Forsyth’s gentle eco-parable feels more seductive than ever. Whimsical is a word often applied to Local Hero, but one shouldn’t mistake that description for its being soft in the head, excessively sentimental or nostalgic. Tonally, in terms of painting a Scottish idyll where the locals are no slouches in the face of more cultured foreigners, the film hearkens to both Powell and Pressburger (I Know Where I’m Going!) and Ealing (Whisky Galore!), but it is very much its own beast.

On a long enough timeline, the survival of everyone drops to zero.

Fight Club (1999)
(SPOILERS) Still David Fincher’s peak picture, mostly by dint of Fight Club being the only one you can point to and convincingly argue that that the source material is up there with his visual and technical versatility. If Seven is a satisfying little serial-killer-with-a-twist story vastly improved by his involvement (just imagine it directed by Joel Schumacher… or watch 8mm), Fight Club invites him to utilise every trick in the book to tell the story of not-Tyler Durden, whom we encounter at a very peculiar time in his life.

He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
(1982)
(SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek, but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog