Movie Monday: Dark City

This week's Movie Monday selection is the 1950 film noir Dark City!

Dark City is not the (IMO) vastly overrated 1998 sci-fi film, but rather a mystery thriller that features the first starring role of some kid named Charlton Heston--plus a supporting cast that is about as cool as it gets:

Heston plays Danny Haley, a n'er-do-well on his way to visit the illegal gambling hideout he runs with his cronies. But on his way there he sees the cops headed in the same direction, and hides out in a nearby coffee shop as the place gets busted.

Inside the hideout are the three guys who are in cahoots with Heston, played by Jack Webb (Dragnet), Ed Begley (12 Angry Men), and Harry Morgan (M*A*S*H and, funnily enough, Dragnet):

Webb and Begley are busted, but Morgan--playing the sweet and appropriately named Soldier--escapes the long arm of the law. For now.

Later, Haley arrives, and is at a loss as to what to do now that their livelihood has been decimated by the cops. While visiting a nightclub singer named Fran Garland (Lizabeth Scott), he meets a good-natured business man named Arthur Winant (Don DeFore), who makes the mistake of revealing he's carrying a cashiers check for $5000, to be delivered to a business associate.

Haley invites DeFore to a poker game with his pals, and at first he manages to clean up against them:

But something's wrong--while visiting, Fran notices the other guys are purposely throwing the game, so Winant will win. Its all a plan, so when he's invited back the next night, they turn the tables on him. Winant loses his shirt, and is pressured into signing over the check, even though the money isn't his.

Shortly thereafter, Winant, in a fit of panic, hangs himself. The local police captain (Dean Jagger) tries to get Haley to confess to being involved, but Haley professes his ignorance to the whole thing.

But it doesn't end there--Winant has a brother, a psychopath named Sidney, who takes it upon himself to extract revenge against the guys who swindled his brother. His first victim is Barney (Begley), who Haley finds dead, hanging by a noose. Soldier, who is disgusted at even being involved, heads off for Vegas, leaving Haley to try and flush Sidney out into the open.

After making friends with Arthur Winant's widow (Viveca Lindfors) and her young son, Haley takes off for Vegas as well, where Soldier gets him a job as a dealer. Haley thinks he's escaped, but as we see the darkness follows him to his new home, in the form of the murderous Sidney Winant, whose identity is kept from us until the very end of the film:

I won't say any more about Dark City, because anyone who is a fan of film noir should head over to Netflix right now and watch it. At around 90 minutes, the film is a crackerjack piece of "B" filmmaking, featuring an excellent supporting cast, sharp noir visuals, and some scenes that verge on almost a horror film (Sidney Winant, with his whole "hanging" MO, could have been a Batman or Dick Tracy villain).

It's not perfect--we're treated to four(!) musical numbers by Elizabeth Scott's character, which is three and a half too many. And when the identity of Sidney Winant is revealed, it's all over too quickly and it doesn't really get a chance to register as effectively as it might have.

But overall I thoroughly enjoyed Dark City; it's a tough little movie, and one that's well worth seeking out for film noir fans. I wonder if this Chuck Heston ever did anything else after this?

 

Movie Monday: Apache Drums

This week's Movie Monday selection is the 1951 western Apache Drums!

Apache Drums is no ordinary western. It was the last film to be produced by the legendary Val Lewton, who of course is most famous for his horror films, like Cat People, I Walked With A Zombie, and (my personal favorite) The Seventh Victim. After completing his soon-to-be-legendary run at RKO, Lewton moved on to other studios, with Apache Drums inadvertently being the last movie that bears his stamp.

We'll get into the hows and whys of this movie in a moment, but right now let's see just how well the words "Val Lewton" and "western" go together:

The town of Spanish Boot is undergoing a makeover, away from the typical lawless western town to something more respectable, the kind of place you can bring your family up in. The only problem--well, the main problem--is inveterate gambler and scoundrel Sam Leeds (Stephen McNally), who we are introduced to while he's doling out some hot lead to someone who has done him wrong:

Sam claims the shooting was in self-defense, but the town's Mayor (Willard Parker) is having none of it. He wants Sam out of town, and organizes with the town preacher (Arthur Shields) to force Sam to leave, in an effort to clean up Spanish Boot. Their efforts don't end with Sam--they also buy-off the local madam (Ruthelma Stevens) and send her and her girls out of town:

Complicating the issue between the Mayor and Sam is they're both sweet on the same woman, Sally (Colleen Gray), so the Mayor has even more motivation to get Sam out of the way. After pleading his case, and failing, Sam leaves, only to find the wagon train of prostitutes (now there's an idea for a movie!) who left ahead of him slaughtered by Apaches. The only survivor is their stagecoach driver, who is surprisingly still wearing his bowler hat. "Leave it on...they took my hair" is what he's able to say as he dies.

All this is a set-up for a long set-piece which takes up the final third of the film: after Sam returns to warn them of what's coming, the Apaches attack the town, forcing everyone--men, women, and children--into a small church where they are cornered. Night falls, and the air is filled the sounds of the ominous apache drums:

The Apaches kill a young man who tries to escape (James Best, Rosco P. Coltrane from The Dukes of Hazzard) and dump his body in the local well, poisoning the water supply, tightening the noose on everyone in Spanish Boot.

Everyone tries to keep the spirits of the young children up, by doing magic and singing songs (one song heard in the movie is "The Bells of St. Clements", a song sung by Kim Hunter in Lewton's The Seventh Victim). But the Apaches get ever closer, closer, closer, until:

After fighting off one attack, the Apaches begin to burn the town down all around them--all the lights go out, with the only illumination coming from the flames outside. The Mayor volunteers to go outside and try and bargain with the Apaches, and then everyone inside hear a knock at the door. Then the voice of the Mayor is heard, telling them not to open the door. But they can't help themselves:

This is an amazing sequence, tense and scary. It doesn't quite come off--it's awkwardly staged, which I can only think is the fault of director Hugo Fregonese. I can only imagine what Lewton's horror directors, Jacques Tourneur, Robert Wise, or Mark Robson would have done with this.

Still, this whole final sequence in the church is superb--all the time, the we hear the Apache drums, signifying death to those in Spanish Boot:

There's one final battle between the townsfolk and the Apaches, and the film ends on a lighthearted note, a callback scene involving a donkey and its mother. The End!


Apache Drums is no classic--in many ways its a conventional western, with somewhat bland characters. But the final third, with the Apaches attacking, is so well staged and tense that it makes the film a true pleasure, especially for Val Lewton fans. There are so many Lewton hallmarks here, recalling his previous films, that it was clear he hadn't lost his touch, even after the years of creative setbacks following his leaving RKO in 1946. He apparently had a hand in the screenplay as well (based off a book, Stand at Spanish Boot), adding little bits of wry humor that give the film an extra edge, hinting at things that could not be explicitly stated in movies at the time (the dialog between the Reverend and the Madam being a particularly fine example).

Apache Drums shows that Val Lewton was capable of bringing his particular brand of movie genius to a non-horror movie, turning what could have been a routine oater into something unusual and memorable. Sadly, Lewton died shortly after the movie premiered, making it the last time he would have his name on. Apache Drums is a melancholy symbol of What Could Have Been.

Probably due to its lack of stars, Apache Drums has never been released on DVD or for streaming; but you can find it if you really want to. If you're a Lewton fan, it's worth the effort!

Movie Monday: The King and Four Queens

This week's Movie Monday selection is the 1956 comedy/drama/western The King and Four Queens!

I spent way too much time toiling at a video store, back when those things existed. It was hardly my chosen career path, but I will say this: our store had everything, a real movie lover's paradise. So I took advantage of our vast selection (and free rental policy) to send myself to film school, in that I watched everything I could get my hands on.

One of the sections we had was called Hollywood's Best, which grouped films by star, and sometimes director. I would pick a particular star--say, Woody Allen or Clint Eastwood--and simply go through every one of their films. For some stars, I was surprised how many films there were I had never heard of. Sure, everyone knew Dirty Harry, but what the heck was The Beguiled (more on that later)? I enjoyed rummaging through the lesser known films of certain stars; it seemed like you'd find an occasional overlooked gem, some odd little movie that probably only got made because the Big Time Movie Star was in it.

That's what I thought of when I came across The King and Four Queens, starring none other than Clark Gable, on Netflix WI. I had no familiarity with this movie at all, so the combo of Gable and director Raoul Walsh (White Heat) was enough to get me to try it out:

Gable plays con man Dan Kehoe, who wanders into the proverbial small western town (called Wagon Mound), that was probably used in several thousand previous westerns. He stops by the local saloon, grabbing a drink and a shave:

...you gotta love those Character Actor faces. People don't look like this in movies anymore.

Anyway, Kehoe learns about the McDade family at the edge of town, consisting of all women: a mother (Jo Van Fleet), and four daughters-in-law (Barbara Nichols, Jean Wiles, Sara Shane, and Eleanor Parker), who are supposedly sitting on a cache of stolen loot. Of course, it only takes Kehoe a few minutes to head over there, where he introduces himself by firing his pistol in the air. All five women hear the shot, and each gets a marvelous introduction:

Ma McDade wounds Kehoe for getting too close, and then they take him in and bring him back to health (seems counterproductive to me, but then I never lived in the Old West). After he wakes up, Kehoe tries to charm each of the daughters (not bothering with the Old Lady, even though the actress playing her--Jo Van Fleet--was a full thirteen years younger than Gable) to see if he can find the location of the loot.

It's at this point the movie settles into what you could call a rut: Gable seems a bit long in the tooth to be playing the charming young buck, and because of the Production Code, there's only so much passion that could be shown: at one point Kehoe is bathing in a pond, and the daughter known as Birdie decides to join him, only to get interrupted by some visitors before she can even get one article of clothing off.

Ma McDade has four sons (of course), who are stagecoach robbers. She hears three of them have been killed, but doesn't know which one. Each daughter-in-law hopes its her husband who has survived, since he will presumably come home, take his wife and the loot, and head out for a better life than the one in Wagon Mound. The one mild surprise in the movie is that one of the daughters isn't exactly who she claims to be--and eventually pairs up with Kehoe to double-cross her family and run away with him.

"Frankly, Ma McDade, I don't give a damn."

Kehoe finally decides to leave, having found the loot (in a reveal so anti-climactic I almost thought I had missed something). He runs into some trouble (again, mild) with a sheriff's posse, who have captured the remaining brother. Kehoe talks his way out of trouble, only to be rewarded for his honesty, in a roundabout way. He meets up with the fake McDade daughter, and together they ride off into the sunset.


Most reviews of The King and Four Queens say the same thing, and I guess I'm going to as well: there's nothing inherently wrong with this movie, it's just so bland that it seems like a waste to have such talents like Gable and Walsh involved in it. The comedy is mild, the action very mild, and the drama mild--no one in the movie ever gets too worked up about anything, so why should we?

I mentioned Clint Eastwood's The Beguiled at the beginning of this review, and I couldn't help but think of that movie while watching The King and Four Queens. Both films feature an decidedly rugged, adult man (Eastwood as a Confederate soldier, Gable as an outlaw) who ends up being cared for a group of young women, led by an older one. The Beguiled, made in 1971, was able to take advantage of loosened content restrictions by playing up the sexual tension unleashed when a capital-M Man is dropped into such a controlled setting. In this film, things get barely more heated than your average episode of Gunsmoke.

And that's too bad; it's a handsome film, with some gorgeous, widescreen vistas, it's a shame that the filmmakers couldn't find a more interesting story taking place in front of them.


One final note: The title, The King and Four Queens, really makes no sense, other than being related to the fact that Gable for many years was called "The King of Hollywood" (as he is referred to on the poster, which should have won an award for Biggest Hyperbole). By 1955 Gable's star was still bright but significantly dimmed; calling him King reminded me of how some partisans insisted on referring to Michael Jackson as The King of Pop long, long after he began his sad descent.

This was the first film Gable ever produced; apparently just getting it made was so tortured and stressful(?) to the star that he never bothered trying to create his own material again, going back to being an actor for hire.

Movie Monday: Catching Hell

This week's Movie Monday selection is the 2011 documentary Catching Hell!

I normally don't cover documentaries on Movie Mondays, but sometimes one of them is so unusual and so captivating I can't help but talk about it. And that's definitely the case with Catching Hell.

Directed by master documentarian Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Taxi to the Dark Side), Catching Hell is part of ESPN's "30 for 30" series of docs covering all different sports-centric stories. I had heard that this series was unusually good, that ESPN clearly really wanted to come up with real documentary films, not glorified "Behind the Music"-style TV specials. Catching Hell was one that I had heard about, so when it popped up on Netflix WI I watched it immediately:

Catching Hell is, on the surface, the story of Steve Bartman, the infamous Cubs fan who reached out during a Cubs/Marlins playoff game, seemingly interfering with the ball being caught by Cubs outfielder Moises Alou. This happens all the time every Baseball season, so what made this moment so special?

The story of Steve Bartman is almost the definitive case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. To this point, the Cubs were (it was assumed) on their way to defeating the Marlins and then the World Series. But after Bartman got his hands on the ball, knocking it into the hands of another fan, it all seemed to fall apart for the Cubs: the Marlins scored a series of hits, with Cubs shortstop Alex Gonzalez making an error and ruining a near-certain double play. The Marlins ended up scoring eight runs that inning, winning the game, and then going on to win Game 7, ending the Cubs' only chance at a World Series appearance in almost seventy years. Despite all the catastrophic errors on the field, Chicago fans aimed their fury at Bartman, making him the scapegoat for the Cubs' collapse.

Gibney starts the movie with the story of another scapegoat, Red Sox First Baseman Bill Buckner, who infamously let a simple ground ball go through his legs during the 1986 World Series, leading to the New York Mets eventual win:

Catching Hell shows that the same curious events took place in 1986 that repeated themselves in Chicago in 2003: the fans' unwillingness to see what really happened in front of their eyes, instead choosing to pin all the blame on one person, whose life was almost ruined in the process. Buckner received death threats and endless teasing, so much so he and his family had to leave Boston.

In the case of Steve Bartman, the anger directed at him played out in real time, on live television. Director Gibney manages to track down nearly everyone who was there that night, including players, TV producers, even some fellow fans who were sitting around Bartman and also tried to catch the soon-to-be-famous ball:

Using modern filmmaking techniques (including digitally removing everyone else from the scene, leaving only Bartman and the ball), Gibney examines the moment as if was the Zapruder film: frame by frame, moment by moment, trying to prove conclusively one way or the other whether Bartman is even guilty of the "crime" he was instantly convicted for.

Two amateur filmmakers happened to be at that game, sitting in the same part of the park as Bartman, and videotaped it all go down, and we can see the creeping sense of violence hanging in the air. One fan walks by and throws a beer at Bartman, splashing him right in the face:

We then get to meet that guy, in 2011, and he is (barely) apologetic for his douchebag behavior, still seemingly holding his grudge towards Bartman. We also meet one of the Cubs' security team, who explains that she was in charge of getting the young man out of the park, under cover, lest real violence break out. She recalls, nearly in tears, talking with Bartman at her apartment, realizing how out of control it all got, so fast, and how his life would never be the same.

And it wasn't. The next day, a newspaper revealed Bartman's address(!), and cops had to show up to keep people away. Bartman, ironically a Little League coach in his spare time, had to hide inside his home while the media gathered. His Little League team shows up, too, carrying signs supporting him and asking everyone to leave their coach alone. Bartman releases a statement to the press, expressing his horror at what he did, but even that doesn't quiet things down: people are mad. Why?

To be fair, Gibney doesn't have a lot of answers to this question, why are people so determined to pin all the blame on one person. Is it easier to deal with disappointment and hurt if there's just one thing to focus all that emotion on? Is there something about the human psyche that needs us to be able to point to one person, or cause, and say "It's their fault"?

Steve Bartman does not appear in Catching Hell, and the movie points out that he has almost completely disappeared, even in this age of omnipresent social media. He stills lives in Chicago, as we learn through an ESPN reporter who tracked him down, only to essentially be rebuffed.

The film winds back to where it started, with Bill Buckner, who returned to Boston for a special event and was greeted as a returning hero. A generation or two has passed since the 1986 World Series, and it seems that Boston was ready--eager--to patch up old wounds give the man the due he deserves. Maybe someday, Steve Bartman will similarly be able to go back to a normal life.


I don't think you need to be a sports fan to enjoy Catching Hell, though if you're a baseball fan (as I am) you'll probably get a little more out of it. In any case, Alex Gibney is such a natural storyteller that he after making documentaries about such titanic issues--Enron, the Iraq War--that he can turn his attention toward a seemingly trivial topic such as this and craft a compelling, almost gripping, tale. Highly recommended.


Fun Fact: In 2003, I was doing illustration work for a company based in Chicago. Around late October, they came to me and asked me to produce a piece for their company's annual Christmas card. I had been following the Bartman story and had seen the name of the company he worked for, which was the same as the company I was working with. At the end of an email about the job, I asked my contact if, indeed, this was the same company and did Steve Bartman work there? My contact informed me that, yes, he did, and at the time, it was really, really awkward around the office!

Movie Monday: The Spirit

This week's Movie Monday selection is the live action adaptation of Will Eisner's classic comic book The Spirit!

No, not the Frank Miller-directed bomb from a few years ago; even I have my limits. Rather, I'm talking about the little-seen 1987 version done for ABC, starring none other than Flash Gordon himself, Sam Jones!

I watched The Spirit when it first aired, and then was confused as it seemingly completely disappeared from existence. My memory of it was hazy, but I didn't remember it being that bad. I occasionally thought about tracking it down one way or another, but for whatever reason I never did. Then, when I attended the Great Allentown Comic Con with my Ace Kilroy partner Dan O'Connor, I saw a bootleg copy of it for sale. I didn't buy it (the quality of those things is always pretty dodgy at best), but I did search it out online, watching it for only the second time in twenty-five years:

The Spirit opens strongly, with panels of Will Eisner's artwork as they fade to live action versions of the scenes. The music--which will be a consistently weak element throughout the movie--is screechy 80s guitar rock, a mystifying choice, but the visuals are great.

The first scene proper is of Denny Colt (Sam Jones) getting a call from his mentor, a man named Sevrin (the great Phillip Baker Hall, who ironically enough would have been a perfect Commissioner Dolan) who investigating a case of art forgery. When Colt arrives, he finds Sevrin's house ablaze, leading to the man dying in Colt's arms, with a single clue to the case--the name of a museum curator:

Colt pursues the investigation, which involves rich, respected members of the city. Commissioner Dolan (Garry Walberg) warns Colt to be careful who he offends, but Denny Colt only cares about truth and justice!

During these scenes we are also introduced to Dolan's daughter Ellen (a pre-Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Nana Visitor), a young grifter orphan named Eubie (Bumper Robinson, playing essentially the "Ebony" role), and the slinky P'Gell (Laura Robinson), a friend of Ellen's. Colt gets a tip about the case and meets his informant at the harbor, but it's all a set-up leading to Colt being shot to death and dumped in the water.

Somehow, Colt survives, and crawls his way to Wildwood Cemetery, where Eubie is conducting a "business deal" involving some bootleg Whitney Houston cassettes. The other kid is scared off, but Eubie sticks around, helping Colt recover. In time, it dawns on Colt that since he is believed dead, he now has the perfect chance to go after criminals without all that pesky law stuff getting in the way. He sets up his HQ inside a crypt and fights crime as The Spirit:

The crime/investigation scenes are fairly dull (with a cookie-cutter TV movie bad guy), but the interplay between Jones and Visitor is pretty good, if at times in the movie's attempt to capture Eisner's whimsical approach, they go a little broad. Case in point: this scene of The Spirit and Ellen trying to climb out an upper window, involving all manner of physical comedy:

Most of the movie is shot during the day (an odd choice), on sets that look like standard issue backlot. Occasionally the filmmakers (including director Michael Schultz, who just helmed an episode of another comic book series, Arrow) go for something moody and striking, like this scene of P'Gell watching as The Spirit is tortured by some thugs:

Ellen and P'Gell think The Spirit is a hunk (of course), and there's a number of scenes with Jones with his shirt off. At one point Ellen gets an unconscious Spirit into a cab, where she is tempted to remove his mask and see who he really is--but a reminder from her father (who is now secretly working with The Spirit) pops into her head admonishing her:

Finally, The Spirit stops a bomb (planted by P'Gell in the museum while it's full of innocent people, like Eubie)and finds Sevrin's killer. P'Gell manages to get away, which leads to The Spirit to promise they'll meet again.

The movie ends with The Spirit and Ellen walking arm and arm out of his crypt, launching the beginning of a beautiful friendship:

...The End!


Like Dr. Strange, The Spirit has completely disappeared from the unofficial corpus of comic book movies--many people don't even know it exists. It never aired again, and has never been released on VHS or DVD. Which is too bad, because it's really not that bad, merely inconsequential--it's hardly worth seeking out, but at the same time it's not a blight on the legendary work of Mr. Eisner. Jones is fine if generic as The Spirit, and Visitor channels Lucille Ball as Ellen, with a dash of Lois Lane thrown in. The rest of the cast is fairly unmemorable, the sets uninspiring, and as I said above the music is god-awful.

That said, the tone of The Spirit is so earnest and straightforward that it's hard to really dislike it--everyone here is in there swinging, and there's no reason to think if this movie/pilot had gone to series it wouldn't have gotten more interesting all around.

I guess any chance of this movie being officially released got buried along with the memory of Denny Colt when Frank Miller's 2008 adaptation bombed so massively; it's a shame that so many younger comics fans probably think of that when they hear the name "The Spirit" before they do the work of Mr. Eisner. Seeing this movie might be a nice bridge between the two.

The 2012 Philadelphia Geek Awards

Many of you who read this column already know all about this, but it would be remiss of me not to mention Friday night's events here on my writing blog.

Thanks to my work as writer/co-creator of the daily webcomic Ace Kilroy (which you totally should be reading!), I was nominated for a 2012 Philadelphia Geek Award as "Comic Book Writer of the Year." The Geek Awards are an annual award created by the site Geekadelphia, which celebrates all sorts of geek and arts culture in the Philadelphia area--science, social media, the arts, film, and, yes, comics. Both my co-creator and partner Dan O'Connor and I were nominated, in the comics art and writing categories, respectively. The ceremony was held at the beautiful Academy of Natural Sciences in Center City, preceded by food and cocktails. I attended with my Darlin' Tracy, and Dan was there with his wife Kayla.

Our awards came near the end of the program, which was deftly paced and a lot of fun. Finally, when they got to my category, photographer/filmmaker Kyle Cassidy read off the names, which included Phil Kahn and Bryan J. Glass. Apparently there was a mistake with the envelopes, which had mixed up the artist and writer categories. As Kyle explained what had happened, I wondered if it was anatomically possible for my heart to burst out of my throat.

Finally, Kyle got the right envelope, and I stared straight ahead, waiting to see the letters in Phil or Brian's names form on the screen. Then...

I heard my name, and was confused. What? That can't be right! I turned to my right, to see Kayla and Dan clapping madly, and Tracy smiling as wide as I've ever seen her. Holy cow, I think I won!

I made my way to the stage, hands shaking madly. I managed to cobble together a speech made from random thoughts, ending with a dedication to three people, without whom Ace Kilroy wouldn't exist: Dan, Darlin' Tracy, and the late, great Joe Kubert. After all, it was at his school that Dan and I met, and without that...

I got back to my seat, completely floored. Two or three more awards were given out, and then the show ended with a brief video message from Stan Lee, who I believe read his lines phonetically. As we wandered back into the hall, a few people congratulated me and said nice things about my speech. I then got Tracy to take a pic of me and the statue, which I would eventually name Blinky:

After a very brief appearance at the after party, the four of us split off, and Tracy and I headed home. An amazing night, punctuated my phone dinging madly--Tracy had posted the news on Facebook, then I posted this picture, and every fifteen seconds I received another nice comment from one friend or another.

All through art school, I never considered myself a writer: all my fellow Kubies had their own characters, which meant they were de facto writers; I never thought that was my path. It took over twenty years, but I soon realized I love writing, in some way even more than illustrating, and I am so fortunate that Ace Kilroy fell together the way it did, and that I have such a perfect partner in crime in Dan. The whole project from the beginning was meant to be DIY, and while there are many upsides to that, there are also a lot of downsides--one of them being, it's really hard to get noticed.

Organizations like Geekdelphia, which shine a light on projects that might otherwise not get much attention from the media, are vital to keep the independent creative spirit alive. I couldn't be prouder of the award, and am looking forward to being back next year to give Blinky some company!


For a complete list of nominees and winners, click here!

Movie Monday: The Wild Geese

This week's Movie Monday selection is the 1978 all-star action/adventure The Wild Geese!

I was in the mood for an old-timey big adventure-type film, and how could I pass up a film with this cast? (Though I will admit, I don't think Hardy Kruger is quite on the same level as his co-stars)

Anyway, The Wild Geese opens with Col. Allen Faulkner (Richard Burton) who has arrived in London to meet Sir Edward Matheson (Stewart Granger), whom the latter wants to hire for a special, very dangerous, mission: to rescue the recently-imprisoned leader of a small African country, named Limbani, who has fallen victim to a military coup.

Faulkner goes to assemble the core of his team, which consists of Shawn Flynn, a pilot-cum-smuggler (Roger Moore) and logistics expert Rafer Janders (Richard Harris):

When we first meet Flynn, he is forcing a former employer--a drug runner--to literally eat his own stash of cocaine after Flynn realizes he's been used to run drugs, something he is morally against. Janders, for his part, has managed to return to a quiet civilian life, spending time with his young son. But after playing on Janders' political leanings, Faulkner gets him to come aboard, where together they help rescue Flynn after he is kidnapped by the mob that he double-crossed.

Seeing these three huge stars all in one scene, acting like they all know each other, makes The Wild Geese feel a little like a sequel to a movie we've never seen, and Burton, Moore, and Harris have an easy rapport. The sequence where they turn the tables on the mob is tense and a lot of fun.

They also hire Peter Coetzee (Hardy Kruger), a down-on-his-luck former South African solider who just wants to earn enough money to buy a farm back in his homeland. The four of them hold what kinda looks like Open Auditions for the other team members, making all of this look so casual:

A team of about fifty soldiers are hired, and The Wild Geese make a parachute drop into South Africa on the mission. They land near the prison where Limbani is being held, and make their way in via crossbows, cyanide gas, and guns.

Limbani is found and rescued, but he gets wounded in the melee. They make their way to an airfield, ready to be picked up.

Unfortunately, back in England their benefactor has decided to cancel the whole mission, having made arrangements with Limbani's captors. See, this wasn't a mission of politics so much as it was business: this small country is sitting on a fortune ofminerals, and Limbani was an easy partner with Matheson and his business interests. But now that a new deal has been made, and the money is flowing again, he and The Wild Geese are left stranded.

The Wild Geese then have to fight their way past and through heavily armed African troops, on their way to Limbani's village in an effort to reinstall him as leader. Some of the team are killed (in some fairly decent action sequences), and what's left of the team have to make a daring escape before they and Limbani are killed.


I found The Wild Geese highly enjoyable. As I said above, it's really fun to watch three old pros like Burton, Moore, and Harris--all English, but very different in their screen personas--mix it up and kick ass. Compared to today's action stars, these guys look positively geriatric, but it's plausible because this is supposed team with years of experience, having been through countless scrapes all over the world. You're gonna get a couple of wrinkles!

The film spends a little too much time with quasi-racist Coetzee and Limbani learning to appreciate one another, in a whole Ebony and Ivory thing, but the action scenes come fairly frequently and are well staged. That's something else I feel like modern action films are missing nowadays: with their heavy reliance on CGI, the blood, sweat, and dirt looks too clean, too perfect, to have as much of an impact. Watching real guys out in the real desert being set on fire or sprayed with bullets (squibs, but you know what I mean) gives action films from this era a leg up--you feel like you're really there, because of course you are (Moore in particular seems to be sweating a lot, I wonder if he had a good time making this).

The ending--which I'm not revealing on purpose--is tense and dark and has some nice twists and turns, ending on a moment of kindness and grace. Nobody's a real hero in The Wild Geese, so the best any of these guys can do is finish the mission and get their butt out in one piece. And not all of them do!