Golden Rendezvous (1977)

 

          Adaptations of Alistair MacLean’s pulpy adventure novels emerged regularly throughout the ’70s, though none achieved the stature of The Guns of Navarone (1961), the most successful movie yet derived from a MacLean story. Watching Golden Rendezvous offers a quick reminder of why so many of these pictures failed to generate excitement. An action saga set on the waters of the Caribbean, Golden Rendezvous has a little bit of everything—bombs, double-crosses, fist fights, gambling, gun fights, hijacking, knife fights, murder, sex, and so on. The overarching story makes sense once all the pieces fall into place, but the character work runs the questionable gamut from iffy to one-dimensional, and the gender politics belong to an earlier era. In other words, Golden Rendezvous is regressive macho silliness so determined to avoid depth and substance that whenever it seems like a moment of true human feeling is about to appear onscreen, the filmmakers introduce some element of danger and/or violence. And if there’s any meaning or theme being served here, then it’s only because the filmmakers failed in their efforts to keep such things at bay. Golden Rendezvous is pleasant enough to watch for the action scenes, and the cast is plenty colorful, but you’ll forget having watched the thing before the end credits finish rolling.

          Richard Harris stars as John Carter, first officer on a boat that hauls cargo but also includes a high-end casino. When criminals led by Luis Carreras (John Vernon) hijack the ship, Carter springs into action, forming covert alliances with trustworthy crewmen and passengers while also using sneaky tactics to eliminate thugs one by one. The plot becomes more ridiculous with each passing scene, so by the end of the picture, Golden Rendezvous involves not just the hijacking but also a blackmail scheme and even a nuclear bomb. MacLean was a whiz at generating suspenseful situations, but credibility was never his strong suit. Still, Harris is enjoyable here, all lanky athleticism and roguish charm, and several solid actors support him. Besides Vernon’s reliable villainy, the picture offers, in much smaller roles, John Carradine, David Janssen, and Burgess Meredith. As for leading lady Ann Turkel, one can’t blame Harris for trying to help his then-wife build an acting career—this was the third of four Harris movies in which she costars. As went their marriage, alas, so too did her run in big-budget movies.

Golden Rendezvous: FUNKY

A Special Day (1977)

          “I don’t think I’m anti-fascist,” the well-dressed man remarks. “If anything, fascism is anti-me.” Those simple words, revealing a world of sociopolitical significance, epitomize what makes the Italian drama A Special Day so resonant. By viewing cataclysmic historical events through the prism of one very specific relationship, the picture brings the past to vivid life while also conveying timeless truths about subjects ranging from compassion to tyranny. A Special Day is also noteworthy as one of the best collaborations between classic Italian stars Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. Whereas many of their celebrated onscreen pairings are romantic comedies, A Special Day uses their easygoing chemistry in a more imaginative way, which nets powerful results.
          Set in 1938, the movie takes place in Rome on the day Adolf Hitler made a state visit to confer with Italy’s fascistic strongman, Benito Mussolini. The action revolves around a huge apartment building with a massive inner courtyard. In the morning, bedraggled housewife Antonietta (Loren) rouses her large family. Her husband, Emanule (John Vernon), is a staunch Mussolini supporter, so he plans to take all their kids to a rally celebrating Hitler’s visit. Given her backbreaking obligations of cleaning and cooking for the big family, Antonietta stays home. Once the apartment building is nearly empty, she happens into a conversation with a neighbor from across the courtyard, Gabriele (Mastroianni). We discover things about Gabriele gradually, learning that he’s a radio announcer recently fired from his position for mysterious reasons, and that just before he encountered Antonietta, he was close to attempting suicide.

          Giving away the other revelations about his character would diminish the experience of watching A Special Day, so broad strokes must suffice—over the course of a long day comprising conversations, flirtations, and intimacies, Antonietta discovers through her new friend a world of emotion and ideas and nonconformity that rocks her existence. By the end of the day, she’s almost a completely different person than the woman who first met Gabriele. And because the things we learn about Gabriele speak directly to the dangers of living under a totalitarian regime, he changes, too, if only in the sense of emerging from shadows by sharing provocative secrets with a friend.

          Directed by the acclaimed Ettore Scola, A Special Day achieves that rare trick in movies, presenting characters who are so fully realized they seem like real people; accordingly, even the most fanciful turns in the movie’s central relationship have credibility and depth. At different times, we experience Antonietta’s fear, loneliness, pride, and warmth, just as we experience Gabriele’s dignity, humor, joy, and sadness. Loren downplays her signature glamour, hewing closer to the earth-mother aspect of her screen persona, while Mastroianni effectively tweaks his urbane image. (Modern viewers may flinch at some aspects of the characterizations, but the portrayals fit the period during which the story takes place.) Also worth noting is the picture’s unique visual style. Scola and cinematographer Pasqualina de Santis employed a desaturated color scheme, putting the look of A Special Day somewhere between black-and-white and color, and while the look is jarring at first, it makes sense after a while; this is a story that exists between the margins of history, so it warrants an offbeat presentation.

          Given the way the horrors of World War II loom just outside the narrative, there’s something fundamentally grim about A Special Day. Surely, not every character we meet is destined to survive the next few years. Yet within the darkness, A Special Day provides much that is bright and uplifting, conveying how real human connection is the only way to bridge divides. Many well-deserved accolades came the film’s way, including two Oscar nominations (for Best Foreign Film and for Mastroianni as Best Actor), as well as a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film.

A Special Day: RIGHT ON

Virginia Hill (1974)

          Here’s an odd cinematic footnote: Seventeen years before he played a supporting role in Bugsy (1991), the whip-smart drama about real-life gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, Harvey Keitel starred as Siegel himself in a 1974 TV movie called Virginia Hill. In real life, Hill was Siegel’s girlfriend for several years. As the title suggests, Virginia Hill tells the Siegel story from his companion’s perspective, exploring how a small-town girl ended up with the violent criminal who invented Las Vegas but then doomed himself by spending too much of the Mob’s money. Cowritten and directed by costume designer-turned-filmmaker Joel Schumacher, Virginia Hill crams too much material into its scant 74-minute running time, and Dyan Cannon disappoints in the title role. Among other problems, Cannon seems so self-assured from her earliest scenes that it’s hard to accept the way Siegel dazzles Virginia. Keitel isn’t much help, since he’s robotic except during one scene in which an enraged Siegel physically assaults his lover. (Violent rage, always a Keitel specialty.)

          After the introduction of a Congressional hearing that provides the movie’s wraparound structure, Virginia Hill gets underway with flashbacks depicting Virginia’s adolescence, when her acceptance of favors from male suitors made her a social pariah. Fleeing to the big city alongside childhood friend Leroy (Robby Benson), for whom Virginia assumes responsibility, Virginia becomes involved with gangsters Leo Ritchie (Allen Garfield) and Nick Rubanos (John Vernon). After earning the criminals’ trust, Virginia is tasked with spying on Siegel. Eventually, Siegel and Virginia develop real feelings for each other, so she’s with him when he envisions Vegas—and when he seals his fate. In terms of plot and themes, this stuff should be dynamite (as it was in Bugsy), but Virginia Hill is unrelentingly pedestrian. Cannon plays the role too abrasively for viewers to develop empathy, and there’s zero chemistry between her and Keitel. As for Schumacher, he was still a ways from the stylish pulp of The Lost Boys (1987) and the crowd-pleasing histrionics of his blockbuster John Grisham adaptations. 

Virginia Hill: FUNKY

Charley Varrick (1973)

          B-movie director Don Siegel was on a serious hot streak in the ’70s, capping his previously erratic career with a run of wonderfully entertaining dramas and thrillers, notably the four ’70s movies he made with actor Clint Eastwood. Charley Varrick was Siegel’s first movie after he and Eastwood scored with Dirty Harry (1971), and the picture proved the director’s appeal wasn’t predicated solely on his access to the former Man With No Name. A tight little crime thriller with a sense of playful humor (even though it contains plenty of vicious violence), Charley Varrick stars the inimitable Walter Matthau as a pilot-turned-crook who inadvertently steals over $750,000 from the Mob, then tries to wriggle free of the ensuing hit that’s ordered on him. Based on a novel by John Reese, the picture stacks one clever twist upon another, so even though the plot’s a bit overstuffed—the picture runs 111 minutes, and it could have lost a supporting character or two without any diminishment in quality—Charley Varrick moves along at a zippy pace.
          Set in the Southwest, the movie begins when Charley (Matthau) and his accomplices rob a small-town bank. The crime goes badly, resulting in several deaths, so a police manhunt begins. But that’s not the real trouble. It turns out the bank was a dead drop for laundered Mafia money, which means Charley pilfered from the wrong people, and, alas, giving the money back and apologizing won’t satisfy the aggrieved parties. Crooked banker Boyle (John Vernon) enlists brutal but silver-tongued enforcer Molly (Joe Don Baker) to track down and kill the thieves. Since Charley did a stretch in prison and knows his way around the underworld, much of the picture comprises fascinating scenes of Charley planting seeds for his ultimate escape plan while constantly remaining a step ahead of his relentless pursuers. Along the way, Charley expertly handles a hot-tempered accomplice (Andrew Robinson), a duplicitous counterfeiter (Sheree North), an opportunistic secretary (Felicia Farr), and other shifty characters.
         Because Matthau was always so good at making devious characters seem likable, it’s great fun to watch him incarnate a calculating son of a bitch who’s perfectly willing to throw accomplices in the line of fire if that’s what it takes to survive. Plus, because the story establishes that the people chasing Charley are completely reprehensible, our sympathies always lie with the “hero,” even though he’s a liar and thief. Siegel gets a lot of visual mileage out of such dilapidated locations as junkyards and trailer parks, sketching a netherworld of career criminals who hide their illegal enterprises behind borderline legitimate businesses—a crappy photo studio on a second-floor walkup in an apartment building, a crop-dusting concern in the middle of nowhere, and so on. Better still, Siegel hits the perfect everyone’s-expendable tone for this sort of thing, using low angles and quick cuts and the nerve-rattling rhythms of Lalo Schifrin’s score to amplify the danger in every corner of this seedy little universe. The acting is uniformly colorful, with Farr and North, among others, contributing seen-it-all stoicism while Baker and Vernon incarnate gleefully sociopathic attitudes. Flying above it all—sometimes literally, since he pilots a biplane during the thrilling finale—is Matthau, caustic and unimpressed even during the most frightening of circumstances.

Charley Varrick: GROOVY

Face Off (1971)

Contrived, dull, and trite, the Canadian-made hockey drama Face Off would be negligible if not for the inclusion of many real-life NHL players and footage of the athletes plying their trade. Given the shabby storyline, however, even hardcore hockey fans will have a tough time sitting through the whole thing. Brace yourself for clichés: Protagonist Billy Duke (Art Hindle) is a rookie player whose talent is undermined by anger-management issues; his girlfriend, folksinger Sherry Nelson (Trudy Young), is a gentle spirit who hates the violence associated with hockey; Billy’s coach, Fred Wares (John Vernon), tries to separate Billy and Sherry so Billy can focus on training and winning; and Sherry’s manager, Joe MacMillan (Steve Pirnie), has romantic designs on Sherry, resulting in a love triangle. Oh, and Sherry gets addicted to drugs, too. Written by George Robertson and directed by George McCowan, Face Off feels like a made-for-TV tearjerker—think stiff dialogue, noxious music, and tedious montage sequences. Face Off is best when it hits the ice, because the scenes of hockey players swooshing past each other in between brawls have a certain innate energy that the mediocre filmmaking cannot suppress. The trouble kicks in whenever the hockey stops. For instance, Hindle must try to keep a straight face while delivering the following dialogue to Sherry: “I’m younger and stronger and tougher. That’s why you dig me.” Hindle, who has enjoyed a long but not particularly distinguished career in both American and Canadian films, has a comfortable vibe onscreen, but his performance is not a cause for excitement. Young’s work invites even less praise, so it falls to reliable veteran Vernon—chewing scenery as always—to give the picture bite. He does what he can with a one-dimensional role. Like a lot of low-rent sports flicks, Face Off eventually moves into a zone where it’s less about sports and more about the angst of uninteresting characters, but until that happens, the NHL gets loads of screen time; many of the people portraying commentators, executives, and players are actual NHL personalities of the early ’70s, including iconic skaters Jean Béliveau, Gordie Howe, and Derek Sanderson.

Face Off: FUNKY

The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

          With the possible exception of Dirty Harry (1971), the offbeat Western The Outlaw Josey Wales is Clint Eastwood’s best movie of the ’70s, and also one of the most textured films in his long career. Blending a sensitive approach to character with Eastwood’s signature meditations on violence—a unique combination that resulted from Eastwood’s fractious collaboration with co-screenwriter Philip Kaufman—the picture delivers the intense action fans expect from Eastwood Westerns, but also so much more. Based on a novel by Forrest Carter, the picture was written by Kaufman and Sonia Chernus, with Kaufman originally slated to direct. Alas, Eastwood, who was the film’s de facto executive producer (though not credited as such), got into a disagreement with Kaufman partway through filming and fired Kaufman, stepping into the director’s chair himself.

          Eastwood had already helmed four features, so he was well on his way to developing a recognizable style—deep shadows, long takes, quick-cut bursts of bloody violence. Yet while it’s possible to watch the film and make educated guesses about which bits remain from Kaufman’s tenure behind the camera, the blending of two sensibilities goes much deeper than that, since Kaufman wrote a script he intended to direct and Eastwood followed that script. In any event, fused authorship gives The Outlaw Josey Wales more tonal variety than one finds in Eastwood’s other ’70s Westerns, especially because so much screen time is devoted to presenting idiosyncratic supporting characters.

         The story begins when pro-union bandits led by the craven Terrill (Bill McKinney) murder the family of Missouri farmer Josey Wales (Eastwood) during the Civil War. Joining the Confederate cause to seek revenge, Wales annihilates several enemies but witnesses the treachery of Terrill’s commander, Captain Fletcher (John Vernon). Soon Wales becomes a fugitive, with Fletcher and Terrill his relentless pursuers. Wales embarks on a long journey through the South, inadvertently gathering a surrogate family of frontier stragglers while preparing for his inevitable confrontation with Terrill, and possibly a second showdown with Fletcher.

          As in many Eastwood pictures—notably Unforgiven (1991), which can be seen as a successor to Josey Wales—this picture investigates the question of whether a man can preserve his soul after succumbing to bloodlust. Wales is a decent, hard-working man when we meet him, but tragedy turns him into a ruthless killer. Then, once he’s out on the frontier, protecting and being protected by his oddball friends, he becomes something more than a vigilante; he’s a strange sort of gun-toting patriarch, struggling to claim high ground while mired in moral quicksand.

          Simply by dint of the nuanced script, Eastwood’s acting has a broader range of colors here than usual, and the way his performance is decorated with weird details—like spitting tobacco onto nearly every living thing that crosses his path—makes Wales as indelible an Eastwood characterization as Dirty Harry or the Man With No Name. McKinney and Vernon provide different colors of villainy, with the former essaying a violent zealot and the latter portraying a world-weary pragmatist capable of shocking ruthlessness. Reliable character actors including Matt Clark, Woodrow Parfrey, and John Quade populate the movie’s sweaty periphery. Yet it’s the actors playing members of Wales’ surrogate family who often command the most attention. Sondra Locke, appearing in the first of many films she did with Eastwood, lends fragile beauty that contrasts the ugliness of Wales’ world, while Chief Dan George is dry, funny, and wise as Lone Watie, an aging Cherokee Indian who joins Wales’ entourage.

          Holding the movie’s potentially disparate elements together is slick technical presentation, courtesy of cinematographer Bruce Surtees and composer Jerry Fielding (both frequent Eastwood collaborators) and others. From its unique spin on gunslinger mythology to its colorful use of vivid Western archetypes, The Outlaw Josey Wales feels consistently interesting, literary, and personal.

The Outlaw Josey Wales: RIGHT ON

The Black Windmill (1974)

          The Black Windmill is a straightforward thriller distinguished by the onscreen participation of Michael Caine and the behind-the-camera participation of director Don Siegel. Caine grounds the picture in his understated performance brimming with just-below-the-surface intensity, and Siegel makes sure the movie stays laser-focused on the task of generating tension. So, even though the plot is quite ordinary and the ending is a bit on the abrupt side, it’s hard to argue with results, and The Black Windmill is consistently compelling, exciting, and nerve-jangling. It may not be what the poster promises (“The ultimate experience in controlled terror”), but it’s a solid potboiler.

          Caine plays Major John Tarrant, a British covert operative under the supervision of unctuous spymaster Cedric Harper (Donald Pleasence). Violent crooks led by a mysterious Irishman (John Vernon) kidnap Tarrant’s son, then use their hostage for leverage to pressure Harper into handing over a cache of diamonds his agency is holding. (Rest assured this seems a lot less convoluted when it unfolds onscreen.) The story twists in interesting ways as Tarrant realizes his superiors value their financial assets more highly than the life of his son, so Tarrant steals the diamonds and attempts to outsmart the crooks. While still leaving room for a touch of nuance here and there, the picture builds steadily from one nasty situation to the next while Tarrant drifts further into illegality.

          As always, Caine excels at illustrating on-the-fly calculations; watching him assess situations and change strategy is pure pleasure, because subtle fluctuations dart across his expressive features like lightning sparking in the night sky. Pleasence is terrific as well, playing a heartless survivor whose mousy demeanor hides lethal ambition, and Vernon delivers another of his enjoyably florid turns as a cold-blooded monster. Joss Acklaland, Clive Revill, and chilly European starlet Delphine Seyrig also appear, and Nicholas and Alexandra Oscar nominee Janet Suzman gives an emotional performance as Tarrant’s estranged wife, who finds herself drawn back to Tarrant because of their family’s harrowing circumstances. Thanks to all of these virtues, it doesn’t matter that The Black Windmill isn’t really about anything, because the movie does exactly what it’s supposed to do and nothing more.

The Black Windmill: GROOVY

One More Train to Rob (1971)

Bland and slow-moving but harmless, the action/comedy Western One More Train to Rob benefits from the casting of leading man George Peppard in his natural idiom, because Peppard shines while alternating between smooth displays of virility and casually dispatched wisecracks. He plays Harker Fleet, a gentleman thief who gets double-crossed by his partner, Timothy Nolan (John Vernon), after a train robbery—Timothy steals not only Fleet’s loot but also his high-maintenance lady friend, Katy (Diana Muldaur), so Harker ends up in jail while Timothy enjoys the life that should have been Harker’s. Later, when Harker gets out of incarceration, he reconnects with his former friend and discovers that Timothy is scheming to rob gold from a group of Chinese miners. (The immigrants need the gold to support sick relatives living in San Francisco.) As should be obvious by now, the storyline of One More Train to Rob spins in a new direction with almost every scene as Harker’s characterization conveniently evolves from that of a charming rogue to that of an unlikely hero. To say that these narrative twists lack credibility misses the point, since the purpose of an escapist piffle like One More Train to Rob is stringing together fistfights and gunfights. However, there aren’t enough fistfights and gunfights; the film gets so mired in laying narrative pipe that much of the screen time is consumed by expository conversation. Furthermore, the themes are so generic that the picture feels like a highlight reel of Western tropes, and flat lighting gives the movie the look of bad episodic TV from the same era. (Even some of the supporting players, including Robert Donner, France Nuyen, and Soon-Tek Oh, are mostly familiar from small-screen fare of the early ’70s.) Peppard’s charisma and Andrew V. McLaglan’s efficient direction ensure that watching One More Train to Rob isn’t unpleasant, but everything about the movie is so artificial and irrelevant that the picture fades from memory the instant it’s over.

One More Train to Rob: FUNKY

Animal House (1978)

          The outrageous comedy Animal House belongs on any list of ’70s movies that changed the cinematic landscape (for better or worse), because ever since Animal House set the template, raunchy comedies about kids getting into mischief have been a staple at multiplexes. As is often the case, however, few imitators can match the energy of the original—Animal House is the Wagnerian opera of frat-house flicks, featuring debauchery and destruction on epic levels. Whether the picture is actually amusing depends on the viewer’s taste, of course, since the barrage of nocturnal panty raids and toga-party bacchanalias is inherently vulgar. Nonetheless, Animal House has a certain kind of lowbrow integrity because it never apologizes for its excesses; quite to the contrary, the picture proudly celebrates cretins and lowlifes.

          To make this anarchistic material palatable, the filmmakers smartly position the boys of Delta House as relatable underdogs, then stack the deck by making the straights who oppose the Deltas such insufferable pricks and prigs that there’s no choice but to root for the Deltas. Describing the plot of is futile, since the story isn’t the point, but the basics are that Delta House is the worst frat on campus, so the Deltas have to clean up their collective act or face expulsion by their mortal enemy, Dean Wormer (John Vernon). Far more important than the story are the raucous exploits of Boon (Peter Riegert), Bluto (John Belushi), D-Day (Bruce McGill), Flounder (Stephen Furst), Otter (Tim Matheson), Pinto (Tom Hulce), and the rest of the Deltas. Whether they’re jamming to “Shout,” destroying the school cafeteria in a gigantic food fight, or sneaking into sororities to stare at naked coeds, these misfits live for babes, booze, and brawls. Accordingly, the picture’s humor exists on a plane of adolescent wish fulfillment, so watching Animal House is like entering the testosterone-fueled dreams of a teenaged boy who thinks he’s invincible and that life should be a nonstop party.

          Sure, the picture has a few nods to social consciousness reflecting its setting in the early ’60s—mostly via Donald Sutherland’s smallish role as a with-it professor who espouses counterculture ideals in between nailing coeds—but the heart of Animal House lies in characters like Bluto, the slob who horrifies a “nice” girl by stuffing his face with mashed potatoes and then smashing his cheeks to spit out his food before announcing, “I’m a zit!” There’s no denying the crude power of this movie, which was made with great enthusiasm—and, thanks to director John Landis, considerable craftsmanship. Furthermore, the cast is uniformly good. Belushi’s take-no-prisoners performance transformed him from a TV star into a box-office attraction, Hulce is sweetly hapless, Matheson is cool and slick, McGill is a force of nature, Vernon nails his campy villain role, and a young Kevin Bacon is terrific as one of the clueless straights fighting the Deltas. Still, despite all the talent on display, it’s difficult to make a case that Animal House is about anything except glorifying bad behavior. Enjoyable though Animal House may be, it’s not particularly admirable.

Animal House: GROOVY

Dirty Harry (1971) & Magnum Force (1973) & The Enforcer (1976)

          In the years following the Supreme Court’s landmark Miranda v. Arizona decision, which laid out the rights of persons arrested by police, an outcry rose from crime victims and others incensed by what they perceived as kid-gloves treatment given to accused criminals post-Miranda. Hollywood responded with films including Dirty Harry, a powerful action movie about a vigilante cop who personifies the “shoot first, ask questions later” ethos. Pacifists hate the very idea of this franchise, maligning Dirty Harry’s violent exploits as fascist pornography, but despite the diminishing sophistication of later entries in the series, the first movie (and to a lesser degree the second) are as thought-provoking as they are exciting. Segueing gracefully from his triumphs in a string of European-made Westerns, ascendant star Clint Eastwood is unforgettable as San Francisco Police Inspector Harry Callahan, because his mixture of seething anger and swaggering confidence perfectly illustrates the film’s concept of an archaic gunslinger adrift in morally ambiguous modern times.
          Eastwood’s mentor, B-movie specialist Don Siegel, directs the first film, Dirty Harry, with his signature efficiency, briskly and brutally dramatizing Callahan’s pursuit of the “Scorpio Killer” (Andrew Robinson) as well as the policeman’s clashes with bosses including a politically opportunistic mayor (John Vernon). The legendary “Do I feel lucky?” scene is a perfect introduction to Callahan’s perverse attitude, and Eastwood and Siegel really soar in the climax of the film, when they reveal how little separates Callahan and the killer, ethically speaking; though the fine line between cops and crooks later became a cinematic cliché, it was edgy stuff in 1971. So whether it’s regarded as a social statement or just a crackerjack thriller, Dirty Harry hits its target.
          The first sequel, Magnum Force, features a clever script by John Milius, with Callahan facing off against a cadre of trigger-happy beat cops who make him seem tame by comparison. Milius’ right-wing militarism sets a provocative tone for the movie, forcing viewers to identify the lesser of two evils in a charged battle between anarchistic forces. Hal Holbrook makes a great foil for Eastwood, his chatty exasperation countering the star’s tight-lipped stoicism, and fun supporting players including Tim Matheson, Mitchell Ryan, and David Soul add macho nuances to the guns-a-blazin’ thrills. (Watch for Three’s Company starlet Suzanne Somers in a salacious bit part.)
          The last of the ’70s Dirty Harry flicks, The Enforcer, gets into gimmicky terrain by pairing Callahan with his worst nightmare, a female partner, but the producers wisely cast brash everywoman Tyne Daly (later of Cagney & Lacey fame) as the partner; since she’s not Callahan’s “type,” it’s believable that even with his Neanderthal worldview, he develops grudging respect for her once she holds her own in a series of chases and shootouts. The movie makes terrific use of Alcatraz as a location for the finale, but a bland villain and an undercooked plot make the film a comedown. After The Enforcer, Eastwood wisely took a break from the Dirty Harry character, returning several years later for a pair of uninspired ’80s sequels.

Dirty Harry: RIGHT ON

Magnum Force: GROOVY

The Enforcer: GROOVY

Brannigan (1975)

Killing time between the elegiac Westerns that comprised the final statements of his epic career, John Wayne ambled through this routine thriller about a swaggering American cop set loose on the streets of London, playing the sort of trigger-happy rogue that Clint Eastwood incarnated so much more effectively during the same period in his Dirty Harry flicks. Cast properly, the movie could have boasted a terrific culture-clash tension, but with Wayne in the role, the main character doesn’t make much sense: The actor is far too old to play a dangerous man of action, and his flirtatious interplay with an attractive British copper (Judy Geeson) has a dirty-old-uncle quality, even though the film addresses their age difference. A bigger problem is that despite lots of talk about how reckless Lieutenant Jim Brannigan is, everything he does in the picture is fairly reasonable—he wrecks a good deal of public property, but it’s all in the service of getting killers off the streets. As a result, the idea that Scotland Yard is incensed by his activities never rings true, and the film makes “bobbies” look like boobs, which fits Brannigan into Wayne’s jingoistic filmography but doesn’t do much for the film’s credibility. While the movie drags throughout its laborious 111-minute running time, the underlying premise of Brannigan chasing a U.S. crook who’s hiding out in Europe is solid. Less sturdy is the subplot about an assassin hired to take out Brannigan, because the allegedly frightening killer makes a number of absurdly amateurish attempts on the hero’s life. Instead of rigging elaborate booby traps, why not just shoot the son of a bitch? Costar Richard Attenborough is drab as Wayne’s U.K. counterpart, who does little except get flustered by Brannigan’s bravado, and John Vernon isn’t given nearly enough screen time as the slimy American gangster Brannigan is trying to capture. By the time the film lurches into a ridiculously protracted showdown between Brannigan and the hapless assassin, logic and momentum have been completely trumped by sloppy direction and by Wayne’s enervated grandstanding.

Brannigan: LAME