Charlton Heston’s Union cavalry officer recruits scumbags, drunks and Confederate prisoners to serve as a large posse and hunt down an Apache war party along the Texas-Mexico border. It was never going to end well. Good photography at least makes us share in the awe of the Mexican landscapes, but there is little else on show to please us.
Heston’s Major Amos Dundee is a driven, single-minded Indian hater, softened by the arms of whores and bitter towards anyone who disapproves of his relentless militaristic ideals. Richard Harris plays an Irish Southern gentleman who clashes with him at every turn, not least because he’s under threat of a hanging. Many compare the film to Moby Dick; I felt it served as a template for all those war films like The Devil’s Brigade, Play Dirty and The Dirty Dozen, where renegade platoons become heroes by being brutally nasty. There is a lot of brutal nastiness here and also a lot that fails to gel.
The film was hacked to bits by the film studio – an original cut stretched to over four hours – but eventually most of the blood and guts was done away with and so too most of the explanatory character scenes. There are two unnecessary love stories bolted on towards the end and another left unresolved. Time passes very slow, then exceedingly fast. For such a strong, macho story frame there is remarkably little action; mostly the film’s all talk and several important violent incidents occur off screen. The editing and the continuity is very poor. The beginning feels abrupt and the ending is equally sudden. A voice over narrative has been introduced, I assume to paper over cracks in the story, but it doesn’t help much. The music score is appalling, including an entirely inappropriate sing-a-long title tune.
I watched the shorter roadshow edition; subsequently an extra 13-minutes has been restored and a new score written to replace the old and while I understand the longer version solves some problems, it doesn’t solve them all. Reappraisals are very kind. I am not so forgiving. Better was to come from director Sam Peckinpah. Several themes he introduces here, particularly the life-weariness of the protagonists, reappear in his masterpiece The Wild Bunch, so I was interested, but only from a cinematic and historical point of view.
John Wayne is a Yankee colonel who turns horse drover and, with his ex-cavalry volunteers, herds 3000-head into Mexico for $35 an animal. Rock Hudson is the Confederate renegade whose troops, families and friends have embarked on the same trail to start a new life as soldiers in Emperor Maximillian’s army. The local bandits want the booty. The revolutionaries want the horses. Wayne wants to be paid. Wayne’s adopted Indian son wants Hudson’s daughter. Hmm. Nice scenery.
For three-quarters of its length, The Undefeated is genial and interesting. It’s framed well, with many early scenes almost reviving that fifties ‘3-D’ look – lots of foregrounds, views through windows and doors or up wagon trails – and the story, while flat, is well-played by the cast. McLaglen’s usual broad humour is mostly eschewed, which is a change, excepting a comedic brawl at the midpoint, and latterly the theme turns to blackmail and execution, which is rather dark considering the pleasantries in the run up. One wonders if there wasn’t a simpler, more homespun movie crying to escape from the confines of the cowboy genre because the socially edgy situation, the romance and the themes of trust and truth seem to deserve something more [or less, if you like] than shootings and stampedes.
then you’ll know what to expect. A lot of liminal images with a whisper of a plot to hold them together, this film actually holds up quite well until a major reveal or two perhaps halfway through when it descends into the sort of monster-chases-girl movie we all know, then ends with a bit of technobabble to give it a weak scientific rationalisation.
They used to make these kind of slick capers with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, or Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway, you know the kind of pairing. Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones seem an ill-matched pair. Their criminal romance is dealt with gently. You still don’t believe it; although I vaguely remember my girlfriend saying she quite fancied Sean Connery – not sure which Sean she meant, this one or the Bond one, or the fat one in Cuba.
Anyhow, Entrapment is alright. It is an inoffensive reasonably thrilling heist movie with good photography, a nailed on plot and a lot of hi-tech hi-jinks. It works and the [yes] good-looking stars help. Jon Amiel directs efficiently.
I enjoyed Guillermo Del Toro's FRANKENSTEIN (2025), which I saw for the first time yesterday at BFI Southbank. The film is reasonably close to Mary Shelley's novel (1818/ 1831), including its structural use of changing narrative viewpoint, while also incorporating nods to James Whale's Universal movies (1931/ 1935) and Hammer's take (1957 ff). There are even visual echoes of Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein illustrations of the 1970s-80s. Del Toro's overall approach, with this multi-layered allusiveness and his highly stylised cinematic flourishes, is comparable to Coppola's in 'Bram Stoker's Dracula' (1992).
The film is full of interesting images. An example of the little nods I have in mind is when Mia Goth's Elizabeth contemplates a fluttering butterfly in a cylindrical jar, a moment which connects with the scene in 'Bride of Frankenstein' with Dr Pretorius's restless, tiny people kept in jars. It's a shame that del Toro doesn't pursue the Bride storyline and let Goth do the full Elsa Lanchester, but given the film's already long running time I can understand why that opportunity wasn't taken.
Oscar Isaac plays Victor as something of a showman, occasionally verging on comic extravagance, while Jacob Elordi's Creature becomes the articulate, philosophical character of Shelley's novel. If anything, the Creature is rather too empathic at times, somewhat Netflix-y. To my mind, Christopher Lee's version in 'The Curse of Frankenstein' is more disturbing, because Lee plays the character as horrifically empty and soulless. Of course, Boris Karloff remains the most iconic Monster, and 'Bride of Frankenstein' is, in my view, the best of all Frankenstein movies.
Bond fans will have enjoyed the casting of Charles Dance (a heavy in FYEO) as Victor's father; Christoph Walz (Blofeld) as Victor's arms-dealing enabler; and, of course, Elordi himself, touted as a prospective OO7. Elordi does an undeniably impressive job performing the Creature's physicality. For me, his craggy features are better suited to this context of gothic excess than they would be to Bond's classic version of handsome. (That said, Daniel Craig has, I suppose, normalised cragginess as a Bondian look.) Oh, and it's nice to see David Bradley cast as the blind old woodcutter, even though his halting delivery of his lines reminds me overmuch of his ersatz First Doctor in 'Doctor Who' (2017/ 2022).
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
If you want to see a modern cinematic performance that’s as natural, becoming and inspiring as a genuine human being, I urge you to watch Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich in Steven Soderbergh’s award winning biographical film. Here we see Julia Roberts, leggy, smiley, one-dimensional, whatever the critics wanted to frame her, interpreting a real life character with all the gusto and pizzazz, the empathy and intelligence, the mind behind the eyes, that you would expect to see from one of those RADA trained Dames.
In the early days of sound movies, ‘talkies’, actors still seemed demonstrative; ‘stagey’ you’d call it. They shuffled past that, only to be confronted with ‘the method’ and a host of brooding, inward-looking performances. Naturalism came next, all that mumbling and ‘acting the part for real’. As Laurence Olivier put it to Dustin Hoffman: “Why don’t you just act, dear boy?” What Julia Roberts delivers here is interpretive physical empathy, a skilful combination of all the good works she did before. Humour from My Best Friend’s Wedding, sass from Pretty Woman, sympathy for Steel Magnolias, trepidation from Sleeping with the Enemy, motherhood in Stepmom, anger from The Pelican Brief, romance from Notting Hill – it is all on display here piecemeal, intermingled and loaded on a cut-price cinematic plate. She’s astonishingly good as the untrained paralegal who brought a negligence case against the chemical company PGE, a firm who had knowingly poisoned a California town’s water supply for over three decades. Whether dealing with shady corporate lawyers, reluctant plaintiffs, her neglected kids, her grumpy boss, her awkward boyfriend, her disdainful work colleagues, Roberts makes us believe her interpretation of Erin Brockovich is definitive, all-encompassing and non-negotiable. There’s steeliness and righteous anger, yet also tenderness, frustration and understanding. Her character features in every scene, so the film succeeds through the force and sustained calibre of her performance, one which is as cheeky and likeable as it is impulsive and objectionable. I have no idea if this is how the real Erin Brockovich behaved, and that doesn’t really matter, the brilliant script [by Susannah Grant] and Roberts’s interpretation makes you believe it is.
Casting aside the wider corporate litigation process, the film sensibly stays within the human dimensions of the sufferers and thus allows Roberts in particular to shine. Biting her lip, for instance, when informed that a terminally sick child wants to return to school, in full knowledge it simply won’t happen. Or watching a mother’s children play in a paddling pool full of contaminated water, no words, simply a watchful glance. Or an accusing speech of specific horrific detail to three hot-shot lawyers which ends with an untactful invitation to drink the local water supply. Or resigning herself to losing her supportive partner, a small sigh, a clutch at a box of earrings, no tears, no histrionics. Practical. Sensible. Emotionally understated, then impactful, occasionally graceful. Roberts packs every trick she learnt in the previous fifteen years to inhabit Erin Brockovich and make her a three-dimensional individual. People may say the performance lacks depth, by which they mean it doesn’t have ‘quiet moments’ or ‘hidden emotions’ but the point about Brockovich [as she is written here] is that she reveals so much of herself upfront and unafraid, accepting the kicking disappointments, moving on, regardless, relentless, until the good comes to the top, driven by her own personal moral idealism. The court case barely gets a look in.
This is true biopic territory. Excellently presented, willingly and brilliantly acted – Albery Finney is starchily good too as her boss, lawyer Ed Masry – and condensed into a series of one-to-one discussions and confrontations, Erin Brockovich has heart and mind in its favour and a lead actress quite simply at the very, very top of her class.
As co-written and directed by Shane Black, the man behind the Lethal Weapon series, The Nice Guys shouldn’t hold any surprises. However the fact it is just about enjoyable is surprising. Russell Crowe plays an enforcer who teams up with Ryan Gosling’s useless private detective in an attempt to locate the missing porn star Misty Mountains, who it appears is being impersonated by her co-star, Amelia Kutter, daughter of the head of the Los Angeles Justice Department. Car manufacturers, hit men, lies, double-crosses, prat falls, adult movie makers and a winning turn from Angourie Rice as Gosling’s smart and competent daughter make this watchable and for the most part the script is satisfyingly twisty and quite humorous. Where is falls down is an over-reliance on brutality to resolve all conflicts. There are so many senseless, stupidly enacted gun fights, beatings and chases – some of them resembling children’s cartoons when the proceedings are deadly serious – that the film, instead of being an intense 70s set neo-noir becomes a dull pastiche of any old action flick, just with glam threads and tits. They should have cut all the violence out and utilised the interestingly played characters and intriguing situations to drive the story forward. Andie McDowell’s daughter Margaret Qualley plays Amelia. They share the same smile. Good, but sadly not as good as it should be.
The problem with Entrapment was always The Thomas Crown Affair with Brosnan which came out in the same year: that film was just so much more stylish and elegant and dealt with a very similar situation between a thief and insurance investigator and made Entrapment look rather tacky and basic. And then Entrapment desperately tries to make itself seem more interesting with a rather hard-to-swallow twist in the final reel.
Plus there's that bit where Connery mysteriously vanishes in CZJ's hotel room, but he can only be hiding behind the chair. Which leaves the audience with a rather sad mental image of an old man crouched behind a hotel chair for an entire night...
The Nice Guys is absolutely brilliant; wonderfully funny in so many places. The car show gag with Gosling on the revolving dais is superb, and the moral lesson at the end about alcoholism leaves me howling. I think it's the film where Ryan Gosling cemented his winning movie star ability with excellent self-effacing qualities, leading to his status today as perhaps the best male lead around.
Comments
MAJOR DUNDEE (1965)
A muscular western of dubious moral intent.
Charlton Heston’s Union cavalry officer recruits scumbags, drunks and Confederate prisoners to serve as a large posse and hunt down an Apache war party along the Texas-Mexico border. It was never going to end well. Good photography at least makes us share in the awe of the Mexican landscapes, but there is little else on show to please us.
Heston’s Major Amos Dundee is a driven, single-minded Indian hater, softened by the arms of whores and bitter towards anyone who disapproves of his relentless militaristic ideals. Richard Harris plays an Irish Southern gentleman who clashes with him at every turn, not least because he’s under threat of a hanging. Many compare the film to Moby Dick; I felt it served as a template for all those war films like The Devil’s Brigade, Play Dirty and The Dirty Dozen, where renegade platoons become heroes by being brutally nasty. There is a lot of brutal nastiness here and also a lot that fails to gel.
The film was hacked to bits by the film studio – an original cut stretched to over four hours – but eventually most of the blood and guts was done away with and so too most of the explanatory character scenes. There are two unnecessary love stories bolted on towards the end and another left unresolved. Time passes very slow, then exceedingly fast. For such a strong, macho story frame there is remarkably little action; mostly the film’s all talk and several important violent incidents occur off screen. The editing and the continuity is very poor. The beginning feels abrupt and the ending is equally sudden. A voice over narrative has been introduced, I assume to paper over cracks in the story, but it doesn’t help much. The music score is appalling, including an entirely inappropriate sing-a-long title tune.
I watched the shorter roadshow edition; subsequently an extra 13-minutes has been restored and a new score written to replace the old and while I understand the longer version solves some problems, it doesn’t solve them all. Reappraisals are very kind. I am not so forgiving. Better was to come from director Sam Peckinpah. Several themes he introduces here, particularly the life-weariness of the protagonists, reappear in his masterpiece The Wild Bunch, so I was interested, but only from a cinematic and historical point of view.
Major Dundee isn’t a great film by any stretch.
Neither is The Nudist Story (1960) - but I await your review with eager anticipation.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
THE UNDEFEATED (1969)
Andrew V. McLaglen directs this sturdy western.
John Wayne is a Yankee colonel who turns horse drover and, with his ex-cavalry volunteers, herds 3000-head into Mexico for $35 an animal. Rock Hudson is the Confederate renegade whose troops, families and friends have embarked on the same trail to start a new life as soldiers in Emperor Maximillian’s army. The local bandits want the booty. The revolutionaries want the horses. Wayne wants to be paid. Wayne’s adopted Indian son wants Hudson’s daughter. Hmm. Nice scenery.
For three-quarters of its length, The Undefeated is genial and interesting. It’s framed well, with many early scenes almost reviving that fifties ‘3-D’ look – lots of foregrounds, views through windows and doors or up wagon trails – and the story, while flat, is well-played by the cast. McLaglen’s usual broad humour is mostly eschewed, which is a change, excepting a comedic brawl at the midpoint, and latterly the theme turns to blackmail and execution, which is rather dark considering the pleasantries in the run up. One wonders if there wasn’t a simpler, more homespun movie crying to escape from the confines of the cowboy genre because the socially edgy situation, the romance and the themes of trust and truth seem to deserve something more [or less, if you like] than shootings and stampedes.
Still, entertaining, I suppose.
BACKROOMS (2026)
If you’ve seen illustrations like this
then you’ll know what to expect. A lot of liminal images with a whisper of a plot to hold them together, this film actually holds up quite well until a major reveal or two perhaps halfway through when it descends into the sort of monster-chases-girl movie we all know, then ends with a bit of technobabble to give it a weak scientific rationalisation.
ENTRAPMENT (1999)
They used to make these kind of slick capers with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, or Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway, you know the kind of pairing. Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones seem an ill-matched pair. Their criminal romance is dealt with gently. You still don’t believe it; although I vaguely remember my girlfriend saying she quite fancied Sean Connery – not sure which Sean she meant, this one or the Bond one, or the fat one in Cuba.
Anyhow, Entrapment is alright. It is an inoffensive reasonably thrilling heist movie with good photography, a nailed on plot and a lot of hi-tech hi-jinks. It works and the [yes] good-looking stars help. Jon Amiel directs efficiently.
I enjoyed Guillermo Del Toro's FRANKENSTEIN (2025), which I saw for the first time yesterday at BFI Southbank. The film is reasonably close to Mary Shelley's novel (1818/ 1831), including its structural use of changing narrative viewpoint, while also incorporating nods to James Whale's Universal movies (1931/ 1935) and Hammer's take (1957 ff). There are even visual echoes of Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein illustrations of the 1970s-80s. Del Toro's overall approach, with this multi-layered allusiveness and his highly stylised cinematic flourishes, is comparable to Coppola's in 'Bram Stoker's Dracula' (1992).
The film is full of interesting images. An example of the little nods I have in mind is when Mia Goth's Elizabeth contemplates a fluttering butterfly in a cylindrical jar, a moment which connects with the scene in 'Bride of Frankenstein' with Dr Pretorius's restless, tiny people kept in jars. It's a shame that del Toro doesn't pursue the Bride storyline and let Goth do the full Elsa Lanchester, but given the film's already long running time I can understand why that opportunity wasn't taken.
Oscar Isaac plays Victor as something of a showman, occasionally verging on comic extravagance, while Jacob Elordi's Creature becomes the articulate, philosophical character of Shelley's novel. If anything, the Creature is rather too empathic at times, somewhat Netflix-y. To my mind, Christopher Lee's version in 'The Curse of Frankenstein' is more disturbing, because Lee plays the character as horrifically empty and soulless. Of course, Boris Karloff remains the most iconic Monster, and 'Bride of Frankenstein' is, in my view, the best of all Frankenstein movies.
Bond fans will have enjoyed the casting of Charles Dance (a heavy in FYEO) as Victor's father; Christoph Walz (Blofeld) as Victor's arms-dealing enabler; and, of course, Elordi himself, touted as a prospective OO7. Elordi does an undeniably impressive job performing the Creature's physicality. For me, his craggy features are better suited to this context of gothic excess than they would be to Bond's classic version of handsome. (That said, Daniel Craig has, I suppose, normalised cragginess as a Bondian look.) Oh, and it's nice to see David Bradley cast as the blind old woodcutter, even though his halting delivery of his lines reminds me overmuch of his ersatz First Doctor in 'Doctor Who' (2017/ 2022).
ERIN BROCKOVICH (2000)
If you want to see a modern cinematic performance that’s as natural, becoming and inspiring as a genuine human being, I urge you to watch Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich in Steven Soderbergh’s award winning biographical film. Here we see Julia Roberts, leggy, smiley, one-dimensional, whatever the critics wanted to frame her, interpreting a real life character with all the gusto and pizzazz, the empathy and intelligence, the mind behind the eyes, that you would expect to see from one of those RADA trained Dames.
In the early days of sound movies, ‘talkies’, actors still seemed demonstrative; ‘stagey’ you’d call it. They shuffled past that, only to be confronted with ‘the method’ and a host of brooding, inward-looking performances. Naturalism came next, all that mumbling and ‘acting the part for real’. As Laurence Olivier put it to Dustin Hoffman: “Why don’t you just act, dear boy?” What Julia Roberts delivers here is interpretive physical empathy, a skilful combination of all the good works she did before. Humour from My Best Friend’s Wedding, sass from Pretty Woman, sympathy for Steel Magnolias, trepidation from Sleeping with the Enemy, motherhood in Stepmom, anger from The Pelican Brief, romance from Notting Hill – it is all on display here piecemeal, intermingled and loaded on a cut-price cinematic plate. She’s astonishingly good as the untrained paralegal who brought a negligence case against the chemical company PGE, a firm who had knowingly poisoned a California town’s water supply for over three decades. Whether dealing with shady corporate lawyers, reluctant plaintiffs, her neglected kids, her grumpy boss, her awkward boyfriend, her disdainful work colleagues, Roberts makes us believe her interpretation of Erin Brockovich is definitive, all-encompassing and non-negotiable. There’s steeliness and righteous anger, yet also tenderness, frustration and understanding. Her character features in every scene, so the film succeeds through the force and sustained calibre of her performance, one which is as cheeky and likeable as it is impulsive and objectionable. I have no idea if this is how the real Erin Brockovich behaved, and that doesn’t really matter, the brilliant script [by Susannah Grant] and Roberts’s interpretation makes you believe it is.
Casting aside the wider corporate litigation process, the film sensibly stays within the human dimensions of the sufferers and thus allows Roberts in particular to shine. Biting her lip, for instance, when informed that a terminally sick child wants to return to school, in full knowledge it simply won’t happen. Or watching a mother’s children play in a paddling pool full of contaminated water, no words, simply a watchful glance. Or an accusing speech of specific horrific detail to three hot-shot lawyers which ends with an untactful invitation to drink the local water supply. Or resigning herself to losing her supportive partner, a small sigh, a clutch at a box of earrings, no tears, no histrionics. Practical. Sensible. Emotionally understated, then impactful, occasionally graceful. Roberts packs every trick she learnt in the previous fifteen years to inhabit Erin Brockovich and make her a three-dimensional individual. People may say the performance lacks depth, by which they mean it doesn’t have ‘quiet moments’ or ‘hidden emotions’ but the point about Brockovich [as she is written here] is that she reveals so much of herself upfront and unafraid, accepting the kicking disappointments, moving on, regardless, relentless, until the good comes to the top, driven by her own personal moral idealism. The court case barely gets a look in.
This is true biopic territory. Excellently presented, willingly and brilliantly acted – Albery Finney is starchily good too as her boss, lawyer Ed Masry – and condensed into a series of one-to-one discussions and confrontations, Erin Brockovich has heart and mind in its favour and a lead actress quite simply at the very, very top of her class.
Blindingly good all-round.
THE NICE GUYS (2016)
As co-written and directed by Shane Black, the man behind the Lethal Weapon series, The Nice Guys shouldn’t hold any surprises. However the fact it is just about enjoyable is surprising. Russell Crowe plays an enforcer who teams up with Ryan Gosling’s useless private detective in an attempt to locate the missing porn star Misty Mountains, who it appears is being impersonated by her co-star, Amelia Kutter, daughter of the head of the Los Angeles Justice Department. Car manufacturers, hit men, lies, double-crosses, prat falls, adult movie makers and a winning turn from Angourie Rice as Gosling’s smart and competent daughter make this watchable and for the most part the script is satisfyingly twisty and quite humorous. Where is falls down is an over-reliance on brutality to resolve all conflicts. There are so many senseless, stupidly enacted gun fights, beatings and chases – some of them resembling children’s cartoons when the proceedings are deadly serious – that the film, instead of being an intense 70s set neo-noir becomes a dull pastiche of any old action flick, just with glam threads and tits. They should have cut all the violence out and utilised the interestingly played characters and intriguing situations to drive the story forward. Andie McDowell’s daughter Margaret Qualley plays Amelia. They share the same smile. Good, but sadly not as good as it should be.
The problem with Entrapment was always The Thomas Crown Affair with Brosnan which came out in the same year: that film was just so much more stylish and elegant and dealt with a very similar situation between a thief and insurance investigator and made Entrapment look rather tacky and basic. And then Entrapment desperately tries to make itself seem more interesting with a rather hard-to-swallow twist in the final reel.
Plus there's that bit where Connery mysteriously vanishes in CZJ's hotel room, but he can only be hiding behind the chair. Which leaves the audience with a rather sad mental image of an old man crouched behind a hotel chair for an entire night...
The Nice Guys is absolutely brilliant; wonderfully funny in so many places. The car show gag with Gosling on the revolving dais is superb, and the moral lesson at the end about alcoholism leaves me howling. I think it's the film where Ryan Gosling cemented his winning movie star ability with excellent self-effacing qualities, leading to his status today as perhaps the best male lead around.