Film Review: They Came To Rob Las Vegas (1968)

In the 1960s, as the Hollywood studio system was falling apart at the creative and financial seams, European cinema was kicking ass with auteurs like Fellini, Truffaut, Godard, and Antonioni. Europe was also doing a roaring business in what would later become cult pictures: titles such as Barbarella, Danger: Diabolik, The 10th Victim, and Black Sunday all became classics of their kind. It's into this last category that They Came To Rob Las Vegas falls. Like most cult films, it's essentially a B-movie that earns the cult label through an extra degree of artistry, inventiveness, energy, and, for lack of better term, craziness.

The plot, which is far more complex than your average B-movie, has a group of thieves taking down an armoured car that ferries cash from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. But this is no ordinary armoured car; it's a Skorsky armoured car, which means it's built to be invulnerable to attack. It even has remote controlled machine guns to dissuade attackers. Tony, the leader of the gang, has the edge on Skorsky because his girlfriend, Ann, is Mr Skorsky's personal (very) assistant, and can tell him the route the car is taking. The attack on the armoured car goes down without a hitch, but things quickly go pear-shaped from there, and Tony, the anti-hero of the film, has to scramble to keep the money and his life.

That's the plot in a very tiny nutshell. But what makes the film a cult classic? Let's start with the soundtrack. It was almost a regulation that all European genre films of the '60s had to have a really cool/weird musical score, and They scores high in this department. Georges Garvarentz was the composer, and when he wasn't scoring schlock like Killer Force and Sappho, he wrote the music for Charles Aznavour's songs. Georges gives the film some wonderfully brassy, bombastic music for the action scenes, and a classic piece of trippy mood music that features a female vocalist doing a lot of humming and la la la-ing.

The quality of the acting is all over the place. Pros like Lee J. Cobb and Jack Palance earn their paycheques, but no more, and Elke Sommer as Ann is, well, she looks good in a low-cut dress. It's Gary Lockwood as Tony who's the revelation here. Stanley Kubrick had already cast him as the doomed astronaut in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and you can see here why Kubrick gave him the role. Lockwood lacks leading man looks, but he certainly has leading man charisma. His character is supposed to be tough, smart and oh-so-very-cool, and Lockwood conveys all this effortlessly. It's a bewilderment that Lockwood never got anything but TV work after this and 2001. The no-name actors who make up the rest of Tony's gang all seem to have got their training in the commedia dell'arte. Nothing is too over the top for this group of thespians. The script infers that they're all hippies, but they come across as deranged hipsters with a fondness for trilby hats.

What really makes this film work is the look of it. European directors of this period loved the chance to work with big, wide-open spaces. Sergio Leone being the most obvious example. In this case the director, Antonio Isasi, is shooting in Las Vegas, California and the Spanish desert (doubling for Nevada), and he clearly relishes the chance to move men and machines around in vast landscapes. The shot composition is always first rate, as is some of the location work in Los Angeles and San Francisco. The highlight of the film is the seizure of the armoured car in the desert. It's a complicated sequence involving many moving parts and it is, without a doubt, a brilliant combination of cinematography and editing. It's during this sequence that something becomes very apparent about the film's visuals. Except for a few shots involving moving vehicles, the camera never moves in this film--no zooms, pans, tilts, and no tracking or dolly shots. Normally that would produce a film that looks inert, but in this case almost every shot ends with a cut on some kind of action, which is picked up, perfectly synced, in the next shot. Some razor-sharp editing ties it all together to produce a visually dynamic film in which the camera is almost always locked down. If I was teaching in film school this film would be on the syllabus.

Another thing that distinguishes this film is its absolute cold-bloodedness. Tony is clearly the hero of the film and yet he thinks nothing of killing security guards and, in one case, an innocent bystander. This kind of nihilist attitude is common in films now, but in 1968 it was pretty shocking.

Is They Came To Rob Las Vegas a great film? No, of course not. The acting is sometimes laughable, the dialogue is clunky, and some sequences (the Las Vegas strip by night) appear to have been filmed from the back seat of a cab. What this film does have is insolence, energy, a surprisingly intricate plot, good action sequences, and a fun vulgarity that makes it not just a B-movie, but a cult B-movie. If you want it, you'll have to order it online from the Warner Archive Collection.

Film Review: Thor

Well, I can't say I was expecting much, so I can't say I was disappointed. In fact, Thor was passably entertaining. Unlike the Batman movies it's not stuffed with emotional sturm und drang, and Kenneth Branagh, the director, seems well aware that he's making a popcorn movie for teens and kids, unlike Christopher Nolan, who seems to think his target audience is moody hipsters.

Two things work in Thor's favour: first, it has a sense of humour. I'm not saying it's a laughfest, but the preposterousness of a Norse god arriving in a small town in New Mexico is milked for a few laughs, and Thor's relationship with his human allies (Natalie Portman and Stellan Skaarsgard) is kept light and silly. Even the romance between Thor and Portman's character is kept at a flirtatious level. The second point in the film's favour is that it's brief. Too many of the superhero/summer blockbusters go on and on and on, like some kind of tights and testosterone Berlin Alexanderplatz.

The weakest part of Thor are the action elements, which are just a CGI rehash of your average episode of Wrestlemania. I also have to quibble with Asgard, home of the Norse Gods: it looks more like an insanely expensive hotel in Dubai than an abode of the gods. But then that style has become common in sci-fi/fantasy films over the last 20 or so years--alternate realities apparently look startlingly like first-class airport departure lounges.

Game Misconduct For Hockey Night In Canada

If you have an underperforming and/or overpaid player in the NHL you can trade him, bury his contract in the AHL, or even buy him out. I only wish CBC would do the same with some of HNIC's on-air talent.

Let's see; how about sending Glenn "Hyperbole" Healy down to a house league somewhere in the Yukon where he can constantly tell kids they're about to play the most important game/period/shift of their lives; Don Cherry could be traded, straight up, for Donald Trump; and Ron MacLean could be bought out and sent to open a referee school in Khandahar.

The problem with all three of these personalities is that thanks to being given jobs on Canada's premier hockey program, they have all developed a level of self-importance that beggars belief. This was most recently seen with Healy's tirade against the Green Men of Vancouver, who, he claims, detract from the game. Outside of Osama Bin Laden hunting, hockey is the nastiest, ugliest, most violent team sport in the world. Does Healy really think two men cavorting in green unitards can tarnish the game? But then, Healy is speaking from the HNIC pulpit where hockey is viewed as a quasi-religion.

Don Cherry has simply gone past his sell-by date. It used to be that he couldn't pronounce European names, now he can't handle good ol' Canadian names like Kevin Bieksa. Aside from that problem, his bigotry remains undiminished (he only makes loving mention of the hometowns of Anglo-Canadians), and his praise of players who don't wear visors is akin to urging parents to forgo baby seats for their infants.

The worst of the lot is Ron MacLean, the perpetually smirking adolescent of Canadian sports broadcasting. Ron's tortured, witless puns now seem to have become the manifestation of his outsize ego: "I said it, so it must be funny!" His self-importance becomes glaringly obvious whenever someone other than Don Cherry disagrees with him. Recently, Mike Milbury took a more pacifist stance than MacLean thought desirable and a whining Ron practically choked on his own bile. And on the rare occasions MacLean interviews Gary Bettman, his disdain for the commissioner could only be more obvious if he bit him.

So here's a plan to revamp the HNIC team, much as hockey teams do in the off-season: bring Elliot Friedman up from the minors and give him MacLean's job; poach Pierre Maguire from TSN and cut loose Healy; and send Cherry to the old goons retirement home and just do away with Coach's Corner. Finally, here's a really revolutionary idea for HNIC: hire a European colour commentator. A Russian one, preferably. Europeans have been a major force in the NHL for nearly 40 years so it would seem that they're overdue for one of the commentating jobs currently monopolized by ex-enforcers, ex-backup goalies, and ex-coaches.

I know, get Alexei Kovalev to replace Don Cherry and call the segment Commissar's Corner. At least Kovalev's actually won a Stanley Cup.

Book Review: A Walk In the Dark by Gianrico Carofiglio

Gianrico Carofiglio's books are described on the jackets as mysteries, but in reality they're legal thrillers, with a side dish of psychological insight into the character of Avvocato Guido Guerrieri, the hero of Carofiglio's novels. Fortunately, Guerrieri is an engaging character; well-read, a film buff, a fan of American rock 'n roll, and reluctantly committed to doing the right thing in his legal career.

In A Walk In the Dark, Guerrieri is representing a young woman who is charging her ex-boyfriend with assault, and therein lies the appeal of Carofiglio's books; he doesn't give Guerrieri sensational or improbable cases. Carofiglio shows us how much drama can come out of pedestrian criminal cases. His previous novel, Involuntary Witness, was about a child murder, but it didn't offer any sensationalism, just the patient defence of a man accused of a crime he didn't commit. This most recent novel has a thrillerish conclusion, but still earns most of its appeal from Guerrieri's clever undoing of his client's attacker. The main weaknesses of the novel are Guerrieri's improbable, but fleeting, relationship with nun named Claudia, and the ending, which is largely predictable.

Film Review: The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec

This is a Luc Besson-produced film so you know it's going to look good; this is a Luc Besson-produced film so you know the script will be a bit of a shambles. Besson is something of a European Roger Corman, albeit one with more financial clout and artistry. He comes up with B-movie concepts and gives them an A-movie gloss: The Transporter, From Paris With Love, Taken, and so on.

Adele Blanc-Sec is more of the same. Set in 1911, the titular character is a French journalist/female Indiana Jones who we first meet as she's retrieving a mummy's sarcophagus from a burial chamber in Egypt. A mediocre action sequence ensues, and the scene switches to Paris where an aged scientist is, through some unexplained form of mental power, causing a pterodactyl egg to hatch in the Louvre. It turns out that Adele wants to bring the mummy back to Paris so that the scientist can reanimate the mummy, who, it turns out, was an eminent Egyptian doctor circa 3,000 BC. Said doctor will then cure Adele's sister who is in a coma thanks to a...hatpin lodged in her skull.

After the action-y opening the film settles into French silliness, by which I mean a lot high-speed banter, slight visual gags, and way too much comic mugging. None of it is funny enough, and the pterodactyl, who looks good, is not given, as it were, a lot to do. The one interesting thing in the movie is the appearance of some reanimated mummies at the end, who, unlike all previous movie mummies, aren't the least bit threatening, but turn out to be regal and just a bit fey. The film is based on a series of French comic books that appeared in the 1970s, and it's in that decade that this lightweight fare would have seemed more original and exciting.

Film Review: The Lincoln Lawyer

Hurrah! Matthew McConaughey's finally made a movie a male audience can enjoy. I don't know why, but McConaughey is always getting roped into starring in lame ass romantic comedies such as Fool's Gold and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Isn't that what Paul Rudd's for? McConaughey's been excellent as an action hero in otherwise B-grade films like Reign of Fire and U-571, but he seems to prefer romcoms.

In The Lincoln Lawyer he plays a semi-slimy lawyer named Mick Haller who operates out of the back seat of his Lincoln Continental. The car is driven by his (political incorrectness alert!) black chauffeur. Anyway, he ends up representing a spoiled rich kid accused of assaulting a prostitute and things get sticky from that point on.

The fun of this film is that it has a retro 1970s feel. The stylish opening credits seems to announce this fact, and the gritty L.A. locations aren't the usual postcard scenes of piers, beaches and boardwalks. Although there are thriller elements here, the film is mostly a courtroom drama, and it's one of the better ones to come along in recent years. The glue that holds the whole film together, though, is McConaughey's performance. He's got the rogue with a heart of gold (divorced with a daughter he loves dearly) thing down pat, and he's believable as a sharp-witted lawyer.

The film does suffer a bit from a couple of scenes that require McConaughey to show some teary emotion; it's not that he can't do this, it's just the scenes feel shoehorned in to make the character more human. Ryan Phillipe's rich kid is completely one-dimensional, which is fine since the fun in this kind of film is a clever plot, not revealing layers of character motivation. And in that regard the ending is pleasantly unexpected. Instead of being changed by his experience, the Haller character goes right back to being a sharp, slimy lawyer who's fun to watch. Not a perfect movie, but it's always fun.

Book Review: The Star of Algiers by Aziz Chouaki

You often see novels promoted as having a rock 'n roll feel or sensibility, but it's not often you read one that has an actual rock 'n roll beat to it. More specifically, a nasty, angry punk rock beat. The Star of Algiers is set in Algeria in 1990-91, just on cusp of the Algerian civil war. The Algiers we see, feel and smell in this novel is, in keeping with the rock 'n roll theme, a mosh pit of a city: dirty, noisy, smelly, overcrowded, and often drunk and/or stoned.

The main character is Moussa, a man in his 30s who shares a three-room apartment with his extended family of fourteen people in a slum district of Algiers. Moussa's ticket out of anonymity and poverty is music; he's a Kabyle singer, which is, it seems, a popular Algerian folk music. But Moussa has aspirations beyond being a successful wedding singer; he constantly reminds himself and others that he's very influenced by Prince and Michael Jackson and wants, in some ill-defined way, to be their Algerian equal.

Moussa's talent is genuine, and he begins to rise in the local music scene against a backdrop of his city and country collapsing into chaos and civil war. Inevitably, as in many rock 'n roll fables,
Moussa descent is fast and furious, and ends with him turning into a militant and bloodthirsty Islamist.

While Moussa is more a symbol than a character, he's an effective guide through the hell of Algiers. On one side is the urban elite: educated, French-speaking, affluent, defining themselves by their Westerness. On the other side are the Islamists, or "beards" as Moussa dismissively calls them. These are men who've embraced religious fanaticism as an unconscious protest against the crushing poverty and corruption of Algeria, and will soon go to war against the one-party government.

What gives this novel is its energy and power, what makes it feel like a throbbing speaker sitting on the side of a stage, is the prose, which is rapid-fire, terse, choppy, acidic. As good as the novel is in depicting a country in free fall, it's even better at showing the wonderful highs and soul-crushing lows of a young man reaching for the stars and falling.