John Frankenheimer directs Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield and Jeanne Moreau in this wartime thriller where a resistance saboteur must risk the lives of his men to save a train full of modern masterpieces as the Nazis retreat from Paris.
Exaggerated from a true story and all the better for it. One of the last big Black And White releases of the Hollywood era and it looks beautiful. Steam engines racing and crashing for reals. Lancaster, the bureaucrat of action, reluctantly pulling out every con and bunging every wrench into the works to stop a train whose cargo he does not care about. Scofield, superb as the blinkered Nazi whose mission becomes both personal and obsessive. A little bit of Moreau – for the ladies, for the sexiness, to let us all know how futile all this boy-ish fanaticism is. Even though most of this movie never travels more than 50 miles outside of the Parisian city limits it is exciting and expansive. One of those “they don’t make em like this anymore” marvels. The ending feels like the first time a main character walks away from their victory utterly disgusted by the cost of the action, dejected from their old way of life. It is a conclusion that would become a staple of manly character arcs through the Seventies.
John Boorman directs Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds and Ned Beatty in this adventure thriller where a group of weekend kayakers find themselves fighting for their lives.
On the year of its release Deliverance was the fifth highest grossing film at the American box office. Wow! I’ll just let that sink in. Last year, the movie to reach that milestone was Jurassic World Dominion. Two moments from the seminal film reached into the western world’s shared psyche and became permanent parts of the cultural lexicon: the phrase “squeal like a pig” and the duel of the banjos. This year it’s “Hi Barbie” and… err… A nightmarish, adult movie that preys on male fears. One that has deeper things to say about the fragility of the environment and just how thin the line is between civilisation and insect politics which we all walk. The set pieces are gruelling, the location work is almost timeless. And there are no heroes. OK… so I’ve hidden the fact that Oppenheimer will occupy the same ranking in this year’s box office charts to make a point. But Oppenheimer for all its strengths is a movie driven by a well defined protagonist. Deliverance is motored by failure, fuck up and mistrust. Nobody achieves anything, everybody leaves shattered.
Rowdy Herrington directs Patrick Swayze, Ben Gazzara and Kelly Lynch in this action movie where a star bouncer cleans up a dive nightclub and then goes after the corrupt town patriarch.
The epitome of a guilty pleasure in that it really is a bad movie, with awful script choices and minimal reality yet it proves always Friday night pleasurable and not solely for reasons of camp or schadenfreude. Swayze is full of zen, one beat per minute swagger. His body, which is often shirtless, is undeniably sexy. He offers a different action tonality than the pure muscle of an early Arnie, van Damme or Stallone but shies away from the glib zaniness of Gibson, Willis or later Arnie. There is nothing sophisticated about Swayze – he is a body, a pretty face, a big hairdo, a discipline, a blank philosophy, a soul within an action. It is no surprise his best on-screen chemistry was when he handed over his (until then) unique mantle to Keanu in Point Break. The movie is sleek but erratic. It forgets its core hook after the bar is conquered and the girl is won. Gazzara makes for strange but always enjoyable villain. I wouldn’t say he goes at the role with relish but his half baked nastiness proves a decent counterweight to Swayze’s more soulful hero. The third act goes off the rails with spectacular trailer moments and essentially remakes Shane with muscle cars and titties. The big fight between Swayze and a chickensweat Jack Palance wannabe is homoerotic as fuck. “I used to fuck guys like you in prison.” In your dreams, pal. Say goodbye to your throat.
Aaron Blaise and Robert Walker direct Joaquin Phoenix, Jeremy Suarez and Rick Moranis in this Disney animated adventure comedy where a Native American teen is turned into a bear.
Beautiful backgrounds but overly worthy and maudlin. The Disney doldrums start to take their toll. Not enough comedy Canuck moose action.
Farhad Safinia directs Mel Gibson, Sean Penn and Eddie Marsan in this historical drama about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary and the murderous inmate who became a valuable if controversial contributor.
A really rich ensemble, good period location work yet just seems to be missing something binding in the direction. Maybe Rob Reiner, Frank Darabont or even Mel might have made this fascinating story sing more sweetly. Penn’s performance is a bit all over the shop but Mel is dialled back and quite warmly eccentric. A near miss.
Fireworks 7 / Puce Moment 5 / Eaux D’Artifice 6 / Inaugaration of the Pleasure Dome 7 / Scorpio Rising 6
Flies are unzipped and fireworks flop out. Sailors duff you up. Dresses shimmer in a Busby Berkley chorus number. Water ejaculates over an ornate garden. Freaky satanic loops excised out from a Powell & Pressberger fantasy. Biker prep. Mustard arse. James Dean is Jesus is Hitler. Let it wash over you, don’t think on it too hard. Unmatched in the soundtrack selections. Very transgressive but kinda scuzzy cute.
Albert Pyun directs Jean-Claude van Damme, Vincent Klyn and Deborah Richter in this low budget sci-fi where a man takes on a band of post-apocalyptic thugs who have kidnapped a cyborg with vital information in her head.
I never thought I’d type these words – too nasty, too bleak, too violent. Just grim. Cheaply filmed across scrubland and abandoned buildings, the script and props were repurposed from the Masters Of the Universe sequel Cannon couldn’t afford to make. It is 50% incoherent flashbacks, 50% running and kicking to no objective, and a whole lot of grunting. So much grunting.
Hirokazu Kore-eda directs Masaharu Fukuyama, Lily Franky and Machiko Ono in this Japanese drama where two families learn that their sons were swapped as newborns in the hospital and thus need to decide whether to re-swap their children back before they grow oldenough to comprehend.
Gentle drama full of spacious room for rather touching character work from all involved. The ultimate message is pretty predictable but it’s hard not to spiral off into all the considerations and emotions the dilemma creates. Will leave you hungry for Japanese food.
A firm family favourite in my London Irish house as a child, third only to The Quiet Man and Into The West. Haven’t watched it as an adult and, accents aside, it held up tremendously well. Strong, patient romance. Kidman leans into Katharine Hepburn in her fish-out-of-water role. Tom’s full of boyish sparkle and sincere determination. They have their best on screen chemistry here. The bursts of action are pretty rousing; pistol duels, brutal bare knuckle boxing and the big Land Race finale. It has beauty, it has sweep. DP Mikael Salomon’s shoot the shit out of his locations. Like Titanic, it is overly simple yet it makes my heart sing. Like The Quiet Man, in that it makes me yearn for a fictional, mythic homeland when I’ve only spent less than a month of my life treading the soil of the real island. Go on, stake your claim.
I go pretty in-depth on Star Wars, Indy and Blade Runner here, here and here. These iconic roles in seemingly unkillable franchises would dominate any Harrison Ford Top 10. Leaving room pretty much only for Witness and The Fugitive in your personal rankings. Yet the gruffly handsome All American has a rich and varied career. Sure, like other childhood faves Arnie, Eddie and Costner, the shine started to erode from his box office assuredness and ability to pick a hit around the late 90s. But he kept churning them out… and if anyone can see the irony of brands trumping star power out there in the general public tastes, it should be the man who broke more IPs than any. In the 21st century, he is more infamous for his terse attitude towards his back catalogue, his family Halloween outfits and telling Sasha Baron-Cohen’s Bruno to “FUCK OFF” with that trademark Jack Ryan point of the finger. He has starred in more out-and-out entertainments than anyone in my lifetime, always adding class and a world weary dignity to even the ropiest studio projects. Here are some outliers from his enviable Hollywood career.
Air Force One (1997)
Wolfgang Petersen directs Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman and Wendy Crewson in this action thriller where the President’s plane is hijacked and he has to go all Die Hard on the terrorists.
Summer of ‘97, this was the big one. A multiplex splash that had full houses the world over whooping and hollering. “Get Off My Plane!” Popcorn everywhere. Ford as the President who kicks Russian separatists butt (oh…). Take my money. 25 years later and it diminishes with every revisit. The High Concept is pretty much the whole deal. Oldman’s baddie is, of course, delightfully hammy but you can see that done better throughout his Nineties filmography. It is also as an action flick so stodgy and fixed. As much a boardroom thriller as a bullet fuelled game of cat and mouse. The First Executive rather than a White House Die Hard. The sneaking around baggage areas and conference calls aren’t exactly a bus ploughing through LA at top Speed. It can all feel a little po-faced and lacking self awareness. The gun toting patriotism of a 24 episodic double bill mired with the walking and talking of a lacklustre West Wing spin-off. All perfectly fine. But hard to see now what that fuss was about? The blocky CGI stinks. Ford notes: he’d make a great figurehead prez and it is nice to see how his wives are always cast age appropriate in this kinda fare.
6
Morning Glory(2010)
Roger Michell directs Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton in this comedy drama where a struggling young producer takes over a glossy but failing morning news show.
A sweet enough Devil Wears Prada rip-off that showcases McAdams well. Ford plays a principled but ornery serious journalist who McAdams has to soften and hand hold into his new unwanted role as anchor of a magazine show. And he’s really quite wonderful in the part. The mandatory romcom aspects feel secondary, and a distant second, to the fading star and the hungry go-getter’s love/hate professional thawing. It is very easy to read this as Ford playing a heightened version of himself… the former big deal having to slowly realign his talents to dumbed down products that want to capitalise on his mature standing but fail to exploit those strengths with any understanding.
6
The Conversation (1974)
Francis Ford Coppola directs Gene Hackman, Frederic Forrest and Harrison Ford in this sparse thriller where a surveillance expert for hire records a private conversation with deadly import.
Dry as a bone. Essentially a character study with paranoia melted over every surface of the drama. The opening set piece of trying to capture the conversation on hidden tape recorders, sniper targeted radio mics and a surveillance van is sequence of genuine thrall and education. Then later we have the oily conference and its depressing after party. The putting together of three recordings into a viable document pretty much recreates Coppola and Walter Murch’s painstakingly methodical process. But as often as it gripping and revealing as a mystery, The Conversation really is just putting a sad, lonely, broken man through a microscopic interrogation. And he is so obstinately private that this is torture. The passion of the snoop.
Hackman’s Harry Caul turns 44 the day we meet him. Exactly the same age as me watching this for the fifth or so time. The usually masculine, twinkling character actor who became a sure thing lead in the late 20th century here downplays all his bullish charisma and becomes a background man. His raincoat is weakly transparent, his voice a whisper, even the business circles he is an infamous star within don’t recognise him on first meetings. He is a man full of guilt, a man who wouldn’t know what a decisive action is, he has closed himself off from the world and his ultimate realisation of his role within that world leaves him with nowhere to hide. A baby sucking on a brass dummy. The cast is uniformly fantastic. Teri Garr’s sad girl in waiting, Cazale’s sad protege and Allen Garfield’s sad, jealous and destructively competitive competitor. Ford is low down in the credits but has, to my mind, the third biggest role. The slightly camp, preppy assistant to a very powerful man. It is a proper acting turn with a few small but telling choices. Interesting to note that Ford, once he became the biggest name in the movie stratosphere, adopted a persona much similar to Hackman’s default settings in big budget entertainments. Confident, somewhat grumpy and smartly invincible. Neither of them play into that powerful type here.
The Conversation is a juicy film to unpack. You can read many different meanings into Coppola’s deep well of soulful bleakness. This watch, on seeing that birthday card with my own age on it, I walked away noticing something new. This is a story about the old guard realising their day is over and the next generation is grabbing power or moving on from their value system. The ultimate conspiracy sees the fresh faced “victims” of the plot pulling the rug out from everyone. Caul loses his two most meaningful relationships as he won’t let his protege or younger lover in. He is too stuck in his ways, too beaten by the world to allow either of the people who truly care from into his life fully. That’s understandable but the young need to make their own mistakes and the old need to listen more closely to the conversation if they want to understand what’s coming next. New Hollywood to corporate takeovers. The Conversation is a movie documenting an insidious but needed generational shift.
10
*42(2013)
Brian Helgeland directs Chadwick Boseman, Harrison Ford and Alan Tudyk in the sports biography of Jackie Robinson’s difficult but revolutionary first year breaking into the all white major baseball league.
Surprised how hard and heavy the scenes of overt racism are here. Feels like it pulls no punches for such a glossy crowd pleaser. Boseman is solid, Ford plays against type and tries an accent. A decent one-watcher.
6
K-19: The Widowmaker (2002)
Kathryn Bigelow directs Harrison Ford, Liam Neeson and Peter Sarsgaardd in this Cold War nuclear submarine thriller based on the true story of a Soviet crew who had to stop their reactor from going thermonuclear at sea with minimal resources.
A grim tragedy from the history books is recreated with little of the director’s trademark flair for immersive action. The catalogue of errors over the first half can feel almost comical. Every scene brings a new bureaucratic or human fuck up. There’s no downtime from impending calamity. It can to often feel like a post-mortem enquiry or a spoof Health & Safety video. Ford and Neeson mostly bicker rather than get to do anything particularly heroic. Noteworthy only now as it marked the start of Bigelow’s cinematic fascination with recent history. Far better movies within this mode were to come from her.
5
Random Hearts (1999)
Sydney Pollack directs Harrison Ford, Kristin Scott Thomas and himself in this romantic drama where two people discover in their grief that their respective dead spouses were cheating with each other.
Strange one this. Features Ford’s most committed acting turn but he plays an ugly character in spite of himself. A cuckolded Internal Affairs cop whose obsessive grief poisons his chance at new happiness and leads him to extremes of stalking. Complex but often unattractive, I’m not sure that’s what anyone was aiming for. This is a cold, cynical anti- romance. Well made but ponderous. Kristin Scott Thomas is luminous as the widowed congressional candidate thrown together with this dogged disruptor. She looks fantastic but I’m not sure her character’s political subplot has the same care as Ford’s dirty cop case. Random Hearts is a more mature, digestible take on the themes of Eyes Wide Shut. Just as frosty, just as snail paced though. Kubrick gave us glacial camp, this somehow makes Miami look drab. Both films share Pollack. I will say the finished product does have “something” about it, I can definitely see me trying it again another twenty years down the line. I can also imagine an alternative reality where this was one of the biggest releases of its year. Oscars, sleeper box office, the works. It’s airport novel shape and deep, deep quality cast just feel like it needs to catch you in the right mood. Maybe 64 years old will be “the right mood”?
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 