Preview: The Limits of Control

Jim Jarmusch’s distinctive new take on a familiar film premise.

Writer-director Jim Jarmusch’s distinctly off-center style is something of an acquired taste. The creative force behind more than two decades of eclectic work, including especially the critical darlings Down By Law and Mystery Train, Jarmusch’s virtuoso ability at juxtaposing cultures between and among unlikely genres has seldom resulted in anything less than fascinating work with a singular voice. It’s a voice that often needs approaching on its own terms, though. Like Tom Waites’ music or T0m Robbins’ fiction, most people either “get” his work or they don’t.

Still, his latest project looks interesting, if only for that celebrated ability to breathe strange new life into familiar tropes. And with The Limits of Control he’s taken on one of the hoariest sub-genres: the supremely-focused criminal becoming distracted by the colorful, treacherous characters around him. A concept that stretches back in film at least as far as the 1942 Alan Ladd-Veronica Lake vehicle This Gun For Hire, the idea of the complications that arise when an unstoppable force (the hitman/criminal/fixer) meets the irresolute obstacles that change or dissuade him (love, compassion, fate, the actions of others) has long proven a potent conceit.

It’s also a particularly resonant premise in this recent decade of isolation and acrimony, and its basic elements have achored films highbrow (No Country For Old Men), middlebrow (The Bourne series), and low (The Transporter franchise). Several distinguished directors have already taken a run at the concept, including David Mamet with Spartan, Steven Soderbergh with The Limey, and Michael Mann with Collateral. As displayed by No Country For Old Men‘s Anton Chigurh, the central unyielding force around which the plot and other characters revolve or flee doesn’t have to be completely well-rounded. In fact, audiences often respond to the type if he remains mysterious for as long as possible. Consequently the success of the film often largely rests on the charisma of the actor playing the central figure. 

Well, leave it to Jarmusch to take those ideas and move them away from an American setting and towards a more languid and mysterious pace while stripping the genre formula down to its essentials. Set in a sun-drenched and languid Spain and starring an actor (24‘s Isaach DeBankole) more or less unfamiliar to American audiences, the story concerns a criminal carrying out a procession of illegal tasks while encountering a series of people that either help, hinder, or stand opposed to his progress. That’s admittedly not a lot of detail: plot specifics have been kept mum, and the official trailer doesn’t say more than a few genre-standard catchphrases. IMDB and Focus Features’ official site even fail to list character names for the cast, so it’s possible they’re meant to represent archetypes or even just ideas.

Advance press materials say the film is “both intently focused and dreamlike,” meaning its narrative likely has a slippery feel to it that in almost anyone else’s hands but Jarmusch’s would serve as cause for audience hesitation. While it’s a little obvious to say his very European approach to story and image construction seems best in a European setting, it’s maybe a little less obvious that the neo-noir premise plays to his texture-producing strengths. He’s also assembled a terrific cast, full of his favored performers, that’s potentially full of surprise chemistry as well: the film co-stars Bill Murray and Tilda Swinton, who headed his previous Broken Flowers, while The Motorcycle Diaries’ Gael Garcia Bernal and the great John Hurt also appear. The gorgeous woman clad only in reading glasses, by the way, is rising actress Paz de La Huerta.

 

The film opens in limited release May 22.

- Michael Kabel
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Let Us Now Praise Former Leading Men

Seven actors we want to see return to the Hollywood A-List.

Fame, it’s often said, is a fickle bitch. Increasingly so in the movie industry, where for many stars their time at the top amounts to a couple years or even just several months. The bitter truth is that plenty of so-called “stars” these days deserve the brevity of their acclaim. But plenty of others don’t.

Hollywood is hardly a meritocracy – it never was, it will never become one – but every now and then an actor makes it based on hard work, attention to their craft, and of course a great big dose of talent. The right part is important, too, but most actors have a body of work that shows a rise through the rank and file. Sometimes, unfortunately, they spend more time climbing than they do reaping the benefits of their work; conversely, very few overnight successes have long runs of quality stuff.

Presented below are seven actors that at one time (predominantly the previous decade) or another sat atop Hollywood’s A-List but have slipped a bit in recent years. They’re all still working, and in fact at least one is furiously productive. But we think they deserve bigger roles in better projects than what they’re doing now. We’ve included video clips to show them playing against type , or at least public image, and included some “unsung” performances where their work deserved more recognition than it actually received.

1. Ray Liotta: The tough guy with the icy blue eyes got his break leading DeNiro and Pesci in Goodfellas (1990) but he’d actually been making films for more a decade already, including 1998′s underrated gem Dominick & Eugene (a kind of moody, less precious Rain Man). Best unsung performance: as a world-weary father to Johnny Depp’s drug kingpin in Ted Demme’s Blow (2001). Possible career tipping point: The knee-jerk answer here is 1995′s Operation Dumbo Drop, though it’s more likely he just played the psycho asshole bit (Turbulence, Something Wild, Unlawful Entry) once too many times. Career advice: Stop making so many films with Guy Ritchie and broaden your screen persona. Alternately, find the right premium cable project.

2. Andy Garcia: Elegant and reserved but with a smoldering charisma, Garcia outshone both Kevin Costner and Sean “I’m using my Scottish burr to play an Irishman” Connery in Brian DePalma’s The Untouchables (1987). Best unsung performance: as a cop-turned-prosecutor getting his idealism crushed by political reality in Sidney Lumet’s Night Falls On Manhattan (1996). Possible career tipping point: Garcia made solid work through the 90s, including perfect turns in the period classics When A Man Loves A Woman (1994) and Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead (1995). The same year he headlined the epic turkey Steal Big, Steal Little, however, and despite subsequent quality performances in Hoodlum (1997) and Desperate Measures (1998) the career damage was done. Career advice: Find a project that appeals to his romantic charm. Also, he and Liotta somehow keep winding up in the same B-movie action flicks. As with Liotta, take a break from the gun-crazy stuff.

3. Michael Keaton: The deceptively intelligent Keaton was the king of working class comedies in the 1980s, with winning turns in Mr. Mom (1983) and Gung-Ho (1986). He also headlined the cult favorites Johnny Dangerously (1984) and Beetle Juice (1988) before finishing the decade in Tim Burton’s two Batman films, both of which are aging now like medical waste. Best unsung performance: as a sleazeball coke addict stumbling towards clarity in 1988′s little-seen Clean And Sober. Possible career tipping point: Somewhere in the 90s Keaton’s screen persona shifted from blue-collar everyguy to white-collar media smartass in lukewarm fare such as The Paper and Speechless. Playing a rock singer-turned-living-snowman in 1998′s Jack Frost amounted to career hemlock. Career advice: Channel the darker side of his acting repertoire already used to great effect in Desperate Measures and Pacific Heights (1990). By all means find a way to reprise the role of Ray Nicolette, the scene-stealing cop he played in both Jackie Brown (1997) and Out of Sight (1998).

4. Gabriel Byrne: The brooding and mysterious Byrne lit up screens in the Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing (1990) as well as making similarly well-crafted performances in Smilla’s Sense of Snow (1997) and The Usual Suspects (1995).  For a while in the 90s, Byrne had the career that these days the industry insists on giving to Clive Owen – the European tough guy desired by women but admired by men. Nothing against his starring role in HBO’s In Treatment, but we miss his film work. Best unsung performance: playing a lonely electronics expert working to blanket Los Angeles in surveillance coverage in Wim Wender’s The End of Violence (1997). Possible career tipping point: Back-to-back appearances playing a priest in Stigmata and the Devil in End of Days (1999), both terrible biblical-themed horror films cashing in on Millennial anxiety, seemed like an attempt at self-typecasting. Career advice: We’re curious to see what Byrne could do with some intelligent science fiction. Failing that, remind audiences how good he is at neo-noir.

5. Bill Pullman: Affable, easygoing Pullman broke through by upstaging both Danny DeVito and Bette Midler in the hilarious Ruthless People (1986). 90s-era turns leading giant ensemble casts in Singles (1992) and Independence Day (1996) established him as a solid if not exactly riveting leading man. But his under-the-radar turns in The Last Seduction (1994) and Lost Highway (1997) showed a depth that his higher-profile studio work didn’t. Best unsung performance: Daryl Zero, the world’s smartest man and most neurotic private detective, in Jake Kasdan’s weirdly endearing Zero Effect (1998). Possible career tipping point: Hard to say. Never a stranger to flops (Mr. Wrong, Brokedown Palace), Pullman’s career didn’t burn out so much as fade away. Lately he’s taken to strong character work in uneven indie fare like Bottle Shock (2008) and Nobel Son (2007). Like Dennis Quaid before Far From Heaven, he seems one good film away from a total career rebirth. Career advice: Getting slightly more selective in his indie work won’t hurt; find a project to direct as well as lead, as with 2000′s telepic remake of The Virginian.

6. Kevin Kline: Articulate, elegant, witty – Kline is an old-school movie star equally comfortable in dramatic and comedy roles alike. Never a bad performer even when appearing in bad movies, his good films are virtually legion, including semi-classics like The Big Chill (1983), Chaplin (1992), and of course A Fish Called Wanda (1988). Best unsung performance: Joey Boca, the philandering pizza parlor owner targeted for death by his wife (Tracey Ullman) and two drugged out hitmen (William Hurt and Keanu Reeves) in Lawrence Kasdan’s black-as-pitch I Love You To Death (1990). Possible career tipping point: A decline really began with his paycheck-grabbing turn in 1999′s Wild Wild West. Lately too many of his films look like ripoffs of more successful movies, including the American Beauty knockoff Life As A House (2001) and the poor man’s Dead Poet’s Society melodrama The Emperor’s Club (2002). Career advice: We’d watch Kline read the phone book if Kasdan directed it. Failing such a reunion, get back together on a project with John Cleese or William Hurt.

7. Billy Bob Thornton: Thornton has made a career out of defying or straight-up subverting public and industry expectations. He also often seems smarter than he lets on, hinting at a ferocious intellect even when playing the mentally challenged or emotionally crippled. His well-modulated, nuanced turns in underrated fare like Bandits (2001) and The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001) go against the public’s expectations of his hard-partying redneck demeanor; audiences seem more comfortable seeing him play boozy curmudgeons in Bad Santa (2003) and The Bad News Bears (2005). Best unsung performance: Jacob Mitchell, the mentally challenged sidekick who makes a sacrifice to Bill Paxton’s life-changing scheme in Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan (1998). Possible career tipping point: There’s a case to be made for simple public and industry backlash. A string of odd film choices, including 2002′s Waking Up In Reno and 2006′s The Astronaut Farmer, make him hard to get a lock on. Career advice: Return to writing his own scripts, as he did in his Oscar-winning Sling Blade (1997). Also, take another stab at directing, both his own projects (Sling Blade) and for others (the 2000 Matt Damon vehicle All The Pretty Horses).

Next Wednesday we’ll unveil our list of seven former A-List leading women who should get the comeback treatment.

- Michael Kabel

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Review: I Love You, Man

The effortless charisma of a powerhouse cast can’t redeem an underdeveloped script.

The big question surrounding I Love You, Man as a  film is a dilemma no one ever wants to ask themselves in a romantic relationship: if you lower your expectations, or if you don’t ask for too much, is it okay when all is said and done to not feel too terribly disappointed? Long on setup but middling on ambition and payoff alike, it’s a mildly underachieving film with a few laughs and no sense of having wasted time when leaving the movie theatre. That will likely be enough to satisfy most casual viewers, and indeed it’s a film that’s almost impossible to take seriously. It does skirt around and run from some interesting questions, however, questions that deserve more attention than given.

Paul Rudd (Role Models), an affable comic presence if any exists in film right now, plays newly engaged real estate agent Peter Klaven, a man so comfortable around other women that he’s never felt the need, outside of a few acquaintances at his fencing club, to forge camaraderie with other men. When he overhears his fiance Zooey (The Office‘s Rashida Jones) complaining at a girl’s night party that his lack of male friendship might cause problems in their upcoming marriage, Peter resolves to find a new male friend. His gay brother (Andy Samberg) sets him up on man-dates – social, non-romantic events that aren’t meant to lead to anything sexual. This being a comedy made in early 21st Century America, of course the man-dates are disastrous.

Modern day warriors: Rudd, Segel

His luck changes when he happens up on Sidney Fife (Jason Segel), a laid-back investments counselor with plenty of masculine energy. “You seemed like a good dude,” Fife tells Klaven at the end of their first man-date, providing the bulk of explanation in what the eccentric Fife would see in the nebbishy, vaguely effeminate Klaven. The two hang out in Fife’s man-cave jamming to Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” or drinking beer, or walking up and down the Venice Beach boardwalk. Klaven’s growing self-confidence – and lack of time to spend helping Zooey plan their wedding – leads to tension between between his love and his new best bud. A third act of awkward misunderstandings and sorrowful longing ensues.

Odd couple: Jones, Rudd

Despite it’s fashionable “bromantic” twist, there’s little about co-writer/director John Hamburg’s (Along Came Polly) script (written with Dr. Doolittlescribe Larry Levin) that doesn’t feel painstakingly formulaic. All the elements of modern middlebrow-hip comedy are on ready display: there’s a gag about bodily functions, in this case vomit. There’s the post-ironic fetishizing of a classic rock band, in this case Rush. A faded celebrity from twenty to thirty years ago appears as himself (Lou Ferigno). Every character, no matter their age or education, swears like a sailor jailed on shore leave. As for the plot, it’s possible that Hamburg et al. are co-opting every plot contrivance and shopworn gimmick of traditional romantic comedies as  a means of subversively poking fun at the romcom genre. If only anything else about the film were so clever such a idea might become at least a little credible.

Mean Girls: Pressly, Jones, Burns

Perhaps the most annoying aspect, one that would be troubling in a drama, is the superficiality of the script’s attitudes towards both sexes. Men are childlike, buffoonish, and desperate for company from either sex. Women are shrill, judgmental, and as often as not mean-spirited. That’s probably true at times, but not to the simplistic extremes presented here. I Love You, Man, like dozens of other romantic comedies, moves on a straight line despite its characters or their relations to one another. If women have to be sanctimonious and men cretinous to get each scene’s point across, well then that’s what’s necessary. It doesn’t help that Zooey’s best friends are sitcommish cliches: Denise (Jamie Pressly) is a shrill smartass in a nasty marriage; Hailey (Sarah Burns) is so pathetically lonely she tells guys about her wedding plans five minutes after meeting them.

The cast raises the script as far as they can, though, and their innate likeability raises the film several notches. Rudd doesn’t push the envelope of his acting repertoire, which means he’s charming and funny and earnest. Segel, a little more ambitious in playing the zen slacker Sidney, seems to struggle with finding his character’s basis; you can see him reaching for something in several scenes. As for the supporting cast, it’s a shame Jones isn’t given more to do except smile or frown according to the situation. J.K. Simmons and Jane Curtain show up to play Peter’s parents, and Samberg is miscast as his brother. Pressly could teach a graduate seminar in playing snarling sexpots, but her scenes with Jon Favreau (the only one here playing against type as her dickish husband), in which the two negotiate sex in exchange for favors (“You’re wearing a cheerleader outfit tonight if I do this.”) provide some of the film’s most quotable dialogue.

If I Love  You, Manwere a better film it might raise questions about masculine idea in the  post-Sexual Revolution, post-metrosexual landscape. In a culture filled with the idea of men as pets (the docile milquetoasts of Generation Y) and romantic masculinity as a fantasy notion (Twilight) there’s a lot of ground to cover on what being a man actually entails. God knows there’s more to it than gets presented here. A light comedy isn’t the place for a referendum on gender identity, but in bringing the subject up it seems that the film ought to provide at least a theory. Failing that, more laughs than it does.

- Michael Kabel
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Seven More Crime Classics from the 70s

The rest of the best from the golden age of gritty crime thrillers.

The 70s were not an optimistic time, and most American cinema carried and echoed that cynicism. Cop films were no exception, eschewing the traditional white hat/black hat simplicity in place since the 1950s in favor of darker shades of gray among its cops and crooks alike. Looking past the “D’Antoni Trilogy” of Bullitt, The French Connection, and The Seven-Ups, movie theatres of the era were held down by dozens of gritty police and crime thrillers, many of which rivaled or in some ways surpassed the blueprint those three films delineated. Known for their realistic settings, amoral protagonists, and meticulous attention to violent detail, the era’s crime films were often as bleak and unremitting as the real-life stories that sometimes inspired them.

The following list includes films that exemplified the crime genre. The edges of film genre are seldom clear and almost never straight, but the list includes films of a certain recognizable kind but deliberately omits others. There’s no question that Chinatown, for example, was one of the 70s best films. Including it as a crime film, however, both sells its considerable achievements short while ignoring the criteria of texture and mood that defines most “crime” films of the period. Likewise for other films such as Taxi Driver, Murder On The Orient Express, The Godfather and its sequel, The Parallax View, Dog Day Afternoon, and no doubt many others.

In chronological order:

Shaft (1971): The decade saw the rise (and fall) of the blaxploitation sub-genre, typically low-budget efforts that brought the new cop movie morality to the inner city, a locale where in the real world crime and corruption were reaching catastrophic levels. Films  including Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Dolemite, Black Caesar,  and Super Fly pitted strong black men against, alternately, evil white people, crooks, mobsters, revolutionaries and politicians.

The mack daddy of them all, however, was 1973′s Shaft, an eye-popping swirl of color, attitude, and especially violence. Richard Roundtree played the titular private detective on the trial of a local kingpin’s kidnapped daughter, bucking criminals and cops with help from a Black Panthers-like revolutionary cell. Touted as “The Black James Bond,” Roundtree reprised the role of John Shaft in three sequels, though none match the original. (Note that the following is a fan-made trailer.)

 

Dirty Harry (1971): A film that’s become somewhat archetypal over time, Don Siegel (The Killers) directed this ultra-violent crime thriller about rogue San Francisco Police Inspector “Dirty”  Harry Callahan, a role that after thirty-eight years and four diminishing sequels has become synonymous with star Clint Eastwood’s public and screen image. The plot puts the remorseless Callahan against a serial sniper loosely based on the real-life Zodiac killer, then at the height of his reign of terror over the Bay Area.

The story is straightforward and the characterizations rote, but Siegel keeps the mounting tension taut as piano wire. Callahan and “Scorpio” are both unstoppable objects, making their inevitable collision loom mercilessly over the audience. At leat the trailer gives fair warning:

The Getaway (1972): Mastermind criminal Doc McCoy (Steve McQueen) is paroled from a Texas prison on the condition that he plan a bank robbery for corrupt businessman Jack Benyon (Ben Johnson). One of the businessman’s goons kills a security guard during the heist, and Doc and his wife Carol (Ali McGraw) flee to the border at El Paso while eluding pursuit by Benyon and the killer. McQueen and MacGraw became real-life lovers during filming despite her marriage to producer Robert Evans, making them a kind of 70s Brangelina. Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch) directs the sleek, swift-moving thriller purely for the sake of entertaining the audience, who loved the palpable chemistry between its stars. A 1994 remake starring then-married couple Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger flopped.

Serpico (1973): Director Sidney Lumet (Twelve Angry Men) returned to the theme of police corruption time and again through his career, though probably none of his works equal the haunting intensity of this true-life story of whistle-blowing narcotics detective Frank Serpico. Shunned and eventually set up for a near-fatal shooting by his NYPD colleagues, Serpico (Al Pacino) personified the righteous outcast persona typical of 70s film protagonists, as the film’s grim ending perfectly demonstrates. Pacino was only just coming into his commanding screen presence, and the on-location shots of a crime-devastated New York showcase Lumet’s attention to precise realism. The two reteamed for the bank heist classic Dog Day Afternoon two years later.

 

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973): The poster on the left isn’t meant to be cheap -  it’s just that this film about the working class ranks of the Boston underworld is actually that stark and bleak. Faced with an impending jail sentence, low-level hood Eddie Coyle (the great Robert Mitchum, kicking off a late-career resurgence) agrees to snitch a gang of home invaders to the feds, only to learn that the gang was already caught that same morning. Meanwhile the Irish Mob, believing Coyle was actually the informant, sends his friend Dillon (Peter Boyle) to kill him in retribution. Mitchum and Boyle, two consummate pros, build their characters comfortably and with unforced but nonetheless mounting tension, while great turns by unjustly forgotten character actors such as Richard Jordan, Steven Keats and others fill in the grimy, desperate world they inhabit. Peter Yates (Bullitt) directs, and the film will see a long-anticipated DVD release this May.

The Conversation (1974): Francis Ford Coppola made this smart conspiracy yarn between the first two Godfather sagas, distilling the decade’s paranoia and fear of technology into an intense character study chock full of irony. Gene Hackman plays Harry Caul, a surveillance expert who leads a life of deliberate isolation from others while keeping morally removed from the consequences of his discoveries. Haunted by a previous mistake that left three people dead, he becomes obsessed with the meaning of his latest taped investigation, ultimately finding himself the target of eavesdropping and pursuit for reasons not immediately apparent. The script was written in the mid-60s, yet the film saw release during the height of the Watergate scandal. A pre-Star Wars Harrison Ford makes a rare screen appearance as the heavy.

The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three (1974): A British mercenary (Robert Shaw) and his three henchmen hijack a crowded New York subway train and demand a million dollar ransom. A Transit Authority detective (Walter Matthau) scrambles to stall the gang, which includes former subway system employees who know how to exploit the weaknesses in its safety features. Directed by veteran TV director Joseph Sargent, Matthau and the versatile cast imbue the film with a cynical New York humor, while Quentin Tarantino lifted the hijackers’ color-coordinated code names for his Reservoir Dogs. A remake, starring Denzel Washington in the Matthau role and John Travolta as the hijacker’s ringleader, is scheduled for release this June.

- Michael Kabel
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70s Crime Cinema: The Seven-Ups

The French Connection‘s spiritual successor completed the new direction in cop films begun by Bullitt.

For as much as Bullitt presaged and The French Connection ushered in a new era of violent, realistic police procedural movies, 1973′s The Seven-Ups took that gritty baton and ran with it, bringing a depth of character and dramatic pathos to its narrative that, by and large, those earlier films had little interest in developing. A tough and morally complicated story with a deep melancholy at its heart, the film isn’t just a copy or derivative of its predecessors’ more successful tropes (though it shares many of them), it’s also a more mature and well-rounded work of filmmaking. And for those reasons, many will find it a more rewarding viewing experience.

Smll wonder, considering the shared talent involved. Produced and directed by Philip D’Antoni, who had previously produced both The French Connection as well as Bullitt, The Seven-Ups featured a story by NYPD detective Sonny Grosso, whom star Roy Scheider had played in The French Connection. The film’s crew included Bill Hickman, who had orchestrated the car chases of both earlier films as stunt coordinator, as well as music by Don Ellis, whose French Connection soundtrack won a Grammy. Finally, both Scheider and co-star Tony Lo Bianco returned in similar roles to their French Connection originals, playing respectively a rogue cop and scheming low-level mobster. Hickman also had a small part as a hired goon, a shift from playing that film’s doomed federal agent Mulderig.

For all that shared talent, it’s tempting to under-value The Seven-Ups as a cash-in to its predecessors’ immense popularity. The 1970s were an age of quick, cheap sequels that did little justice to their inspiration, all too often made hurriedly while the first film remained fresh in the pubic awareness. Yet The Seven-Ups’ elaborate plot, rooted as it was in character and police culture, belie such an easy dismissal. Scheider plays Bobby Manucci, leader of an elite  ”dirty tricks” squad of detectives who orchestrate sting operations that facilitate arrests by the conventional police. The rank and file cops see Manucci’s group – named because their sting arrests are guaranteed to bring at least seven years in prison – as dangerous compromises of police tradition and morality. The squad keeps to itself, not especially close to their colleagues or even with one another. A leader by example, Manucci builds the group’s intelligence with a wallet full of mug shots of known gangsters combined with hearsay from childhood friend Vito Lucia (Lo Bianco), now a working-class wiseguy with a wife and children.

What Manucci doesn’t suspect of his old friend forms the crux of the film’s tension. Though supplying him with information, Lucia is using Manucci’s wallet file to target upper-level mobsters and loan sharks for kidnapping by two thugs (Hickman and Richard Lynch) that pose as police to bypass their victims’ guard. The mobsters are ransomed off but seethe with hostility towards the police, and when one of the Seven-Ups is caught while conducting undercover surveillance a twist of fate ends in his murder at the hands of Lucia’s men. What follows is the film’s intense chase sequence, an effort that must surely have been D’Antoni and Hickman’s conscious effort to top The French Connection‘s landmark car-vs.-train set piece.

The sequence was shot in Uptown New York, down crowded city streets and busy thoroughfares. Its higher ambition obviously lacks the novelty of Bullitt or The French Connection, but its sheer technical bravado makes for intense viewing. And like those other film’s sequences it improves with repeated viewing, when new camera angles and details come into better focus.

Scheider plays Manucci much as he played The French Connection‘s Buddy Russo, but minus Gene Hackman’s scene-swallowing screen presence his intense reserve and brooding intelligence hold the story’s center by virtue of its moral ambivalence. Always an actor who understood the importance of not revealing everything, Scheider often seems more dangerous than other action stars of the period simply by remaining aloof. The realization that his lifelong friend has betrayed him plays out entirely in his eyes, as a scene in which their back and forth movement slows to a stop, indicating Manucci’s cold determination.

Yet Manucci never suffers for want of ruthlessness. Following the death of their compatriot he leads the remaining Seven-Ups on a midnight raid to a mobster’s home, threatening the gangster’s wife while holding a gun to the man’s face. Later, he coaxing information from a hospitalized mafioso by repeatedly removing his oxygen hose. The final shootout, set in what must have been the ugliest vacant lot in New York, is nasty, brutal, and merciless, while the denouement meeting between Manucci and Lucia makes a grim a comment on justice as opposed to legal procedure.

The film is not without its flaws. The hard-to-follow plot at times gets lost in the gritty atmosphere. Important plot points that bear further explanation (character movements, exposition that establishes characters’ relations to one another) are skimmed over, so that first-time viewing can provoke some searching-back and reviewing of key scenes to clarify story movement. In particular, the opening set piece in which Manucci and his men set up a sting against counterfeiters never quite comes together as much as it should; Lucia’s exact stature and position within the Mob also remains frustratingly nebulous.

But the film completes a growth set in motion by Bullitt and continued through The French Connection: whereas the former was about innovation and the latter about realism, both at the expense of conventional audience expectations, The Seven Ups infuses its main character with depth and angst. Unlike Frank Bullitt’s glacial self-confidence or Popeye Doyle’s fiery self-justifying rage, Manucci is troubled by self-doubt and self-recrimination. He tortures criminals but approaches his superiors with a trepidation born of doubt. He exacts revenge for his subordinate’s death, yet betrayal even to avenge betrayal leaves him resolved but miserable. The film’s frozen last image suggests as much:  ”You can’t do this to me, Buddy!” Lucia protests, as Manucci prepares to rat him out to the gangsters he kidnapped. “You watch me!” Manucci retorts, before storming away in guilt and shame as the camera fades to black.

Friday we’ll have seven more classic crime films of the gritty 70s. Please join us then.

- Michael Kabel

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70s Crime Cinema: The French Connection

William Friedkin’s gritty masterpiece defined cop movies for a new era.

Obsessive street detectives on a collision course with charming, elegant villains. The friction between the heroic local police and their arrogant, meddling federal colleagues. The pervasive sense of urban decay whittling personal motivations down to ruthless killer instinct. 1971′s The French Connection might not have invented all the tropes that have since become the vocabulary of police procedural movies and television, but it brought them all together and made telling a cop story any other way seem like bullshit. The film was a game changer, much like  Citizen Kane was for the biography and Blade Runner was for science fiction. And like those other classics it’s sometimes tricky to watch the film now without letting its legions of derivatives distract from its gripping audacity.

Based on celebrated real-life events and constructed with meticulous attention to realistic detail by director William Friedkin (The Exorcist), The French Connection was adapted in part from Robin Moore’s nonfiction book of the same name but drew technical advice from the main characters’ real-life counterparts, who also played supporting parts in the film. The story’s premise is brutally simple: two street-level New York City narcotics detectives, Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle and Buddy “Cloudy” Russo, stumble upon word of a major drug influx while staking out a low-level wiseguy (Tony Lo Bianco) and instantly resolve to stop the importation, no matter how much extra work that might entail.

The detectives are nobody’s idea of white knights: Doyle especially drinks too much, bullies women and minorities, and smacks around suspects and informants with an almost palpable glee. Russo, quieter and more methodical, abets Doyle’s rampages through intelligence gathering and measured consideration. They both want wire taps to investigate the possible influx of drugs, but the mistakes of Doyle’s past make the necessary clearance harder to obtain from their captain (Eddie Egan, the real-life Doyle). Russo gets the court orders they need but picks up the hostile assistance of two federal agents in the process (stuntman supreme Bill Hickman and Sonny Grosso, the real-life Russo.)  

Meanwhile the drugs, about $35 million worth of grade-A heroin, are coming to the States inside the car of a French television personality, placed there by Marseilles shipping magnate Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey) and his enforcer Nicoli (Marcel Bozzuffi). Upon their arrival in New York Charnier and Nicoli find themselves under surveillance by Doyle, Russo, and the federal agents. But Doyle especially finds himself outmatched in short order by the suave Charnier, who smugly dismisses Doyle’s tail by outwitting him on a subway platform.

The film is distinguished throughout by its lack of explanation. There are no moments of clarification in the Captain’s office, no recanting of the details so that the audience can vicariously refresh themselves of plot points. Friedkin and screenwriter Ernest Tidyman build a palpable undertow into the film’s momentum, so that the viewer is pulled into and then along for the events as they happen in furious succession. Frankly, that speed does the movie a service, because careful or dogged examination will reveal any number of plot holes and gaps in logic that will likely annoy the very left-brained among its audience. But Friedkin et al. meant to engage the senses, not the mind, and in that sense the fluid plot works like a Swiss watch.

The centerpiece of said plot being the car-vs.-subway chase sequence, in which Doyle madly attempts to overtake Nicoli’s hijacked train car on its overhead track. It’s here that the detective’s relentless drive becomes laid bare of job or duty and the obsessiveness beneath its surface grows exposed. What’s amazing, and what future derivatives would cheat, is the realism of the chase. The traffic lights don’t turn themselves off, and the streets don’t empty of pedestrians – far from it. The sequence took weeks to shoot over several locations, and included all manner of clever lens techniques and editing slight of hand.

Friedkin, Hickman and their crew accomplished all that without a single pixel of CGI.

The film’s third act relates the taking apart and reconstruction of the drug-laden car and the eventual bust of the New York criminals as the sale is concluded. Doyle, Russo, and the federal agents corral the criminals inside a trash-collecting facility on a tiny island outside the city (New York in miniature, really), precipitating a bloody shootout that moves Doyle’s character completely over the edge of morality. The tortuously ambivalent ending denies the viewer any real satisfaction, followed by postscripts that play out almost tuantingly rote. The film doesn’t end so much as it ceases to share information with the viewer.

But like the tonally similar Bullitt three years previous (the films share a producer in Philip D’Antoni) that sense of lacking resolution captured the mood of the times, working instead as a thematic counterpoint to its display of New York’s dilapidated myopia. There are no easy answers and no one heads home satisfied or even vindicated, if they get to go home at all. Though Doyle and Charnier would have their reckoning in a largely forgotten sequel released four years later, the ambiguity of this film keeps its point separate and inviolate. In displaying Doyle and Russo’s brutality, The French Connection along with Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry (released the same year) began to craft what would soon be known as the anti-hero, and their success opened a floodgate of performances good and bad that have continued ever since. Though modern actors like Bruce Willis, Clive Owen and many others have made a career out of such parts, in 1971 they were a new film species as different from their more heroic predecessors as those characters were of the Keystone Kops a generation before them. They were heroes of their time, for better but especially for worse.

And while future marketing wizards would label their approach to the world as “in your face” attitude, nevetheless there’s something more slippery at play in Hackman and Sheider’s performances. It would seem somewhat stupid, in retrospect, if cinema came out of the 1960s with the same perspective it had before that decade’s upheaval. By building protagonists out of flawed men, Friedkin, Hackman and Sheider were moving closer to true realism by accepting the world everyone was handed and then willfully grounding their performances and their entire films inside it. “Realistic” has since become an empty prhase in describing fiction, but forty years ago it was a goal to chase, even if we as viewers didn’t much care for where we found ourselves once that race was run. The French Connection made that chase and hijacked us along for the ride. 

Wednesday we’ll look at The French Connection‘s creative and spiritual true successor, a great movie that’s a little lost in this film’s long, dark shadow.

-Michael Kabel

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70s Crime Cinema Preview: Bullitt

Celebrating some of the great crime films of the decade known for moral ambivalence.

American cinema experienced a golden age in the 1970s, and no genre had more of a rebirth than the crime thriller. Films such as The French Connection, Dog Day Afternoon, the Dirty Harry series, and The Conversation (among many others) constructed a new voice to the structure and narrative of the typical cops-and-robbers saga, which since the late 1930s had maintained and languished in an instructional, moralistic tone. Reflecting the uncertainty of the era, the new crime films boasted morally ambiguous protagonists who often brandished the same ruthlessness as their opponents. The films were an idea whose time had come, and their brooding relativism would inform not only other crime movies but also the science fiction and Western genres throughout the 1980s and 90s.

But as proof that time hates a calendar, the new breed began two years ahead of their decade with the 1968 release of Peter Yates’ Bullitt. The gritty story revolves around loose cannon Frank Bullitt (Steve McQueen), a San Francisco police detective charged with protecting a mob witness until a district attorney (Robert Vaughn) can bring him to trial. But Bullitt’s assistants fail to guard the witness from mob hitmen, and it falls to Bullitt to uncover the wide-ranging conspiracy behind the attack.

Bullitt the character is archetypal of the 70s crime cinema anti-hero: noncomformist even among other cops but especially with respect to his superiors, he’s what in today’s parlance would be considered a “rogue.” Ignoring the district attorney and a writ served against him, he enlists his girlfriend Cathy (Jacqueline Bisset) into the investigation, which soon reveals that the witness Bullitt’s men guarded was not actually a mob witness at all but someone else entirely. Horrified by the scene of a dead body, Cathy attacks Bullitt with recognition of his world. “You live in a sewer, Frank!” she screams, presaging the appalled love interest archetype that would also become a mainstay of cops-on-the edge actioners. Bulitt then has to stop the true mob witness from escaping the country that same day.

The centerpiece of the film is the gripping 11-minute car chase sequence through the San Francisco streets, a set piece that proved so popular with audiences that dozens of imitator films would make its use cliche by the end of the 70s. Yates (Breaking Away) shot the sequence on location, keeping the action not on deserted streets but rather on crowded avenues and through intersections, narrowing the viewer’s perspective while raising the tension.

Small wonder that the film proved a boon to the Ford Motor Company, whose 390 CID V8 Mustang essentially enjoyed a co-starring role as Bullitt’s vehicle of choice.

Other smaller details almost seemed aggressive in promoting a new image of masculine cool: Bullitt’s all-black wardrobe, his sleek underarm shoulder holsters (inspired by legendary SFPD Inspector David Toschi, who served as a technical adviser on the film), and the aforementioned anti-authoritarian attitude all resonated with audiences grown bored with the straight-arrow lawmen that had populated crime movies and television since the heyday of Dragnet in the 1950s. Bullitt and Cathy enjoy a very modern relationship: highly sexualized but with little sense of real commitment. They each have their own careers (she’s an architect) but their lives intersect easily and without strain. Watching the film now, it’s easy and even tempting to misunderstand their dynamic as bullying or one-sided. But Bullitt only pulls Cathy into his world when he has no alternative, implying a protectiveness and trust towards her that stays powerful by remaining unspoken. The film ends with him staring at himself in a mirror while she sleeps in the next room, possibly reasserting his dedication to self-reliance in the future.

Next week we’ll be reviewing three crime films of the 70s, including the Oscar-winner that’s one of the best cop films of all time. Please join us then.

- Michael Kabel
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Review: Watchmen

Zack Snyder’s adaptation of the legendary comics series is violent, obscure, self-sabotaging.

Watchmen is a film that wants to be more than it is – at least most of the time. Based on the highly-praised (perhaps overpraised) 1980s-era DC Comics mini-series and at least twenty years in its journey from page to screen, Zack Snyder’s epic vision of a parallel America where super-heroes have worked, thrived and perished for years, the film comes to theatres atop the crest of a marketing juggernaut matched only by fan expectations. Does it succeed? Well, like the ink blot tests at the center of one character’s obsessions, that largely depends on how you see the film as a work of adaptation and as a film in its own right.

On the one hand, it’s slavishly devoted to the comic’s atmosphere, characters, and even dialogue. On the other, Snyder’s insistence on highly stylized violence – the same gimmick that made his previous 300 such a blood-soaked thrill – works against the intelligent-approach-to-superheroes leitmotif that has always served as the comic’s standard. Snyder, unwisely, attempts to have his cake and eat it too, presenting haunted characters doomed by their humanity who  nevertheless relish beating the shit out of other people. The two work at cross-purposes to one another, and while the 163-minute film never lags or suffers for pace, there’s often a sense of it getting winded, too. Superheroes don’t get tired – at least these don’t – but the emotional pitch often warbles and peters out.

Tell me what you see: Rorschach

The plot is faithfully byzantine, and fans of the comic series (who are going to enjoy the film the most anyway) will recognize dozens of visual and aural references to the world minutely created by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. For the layman viewer such density of information will probably prove disorienting, but in broad strokes the world works as a nightmarish amplification of the worst excesses of the Reagan/Thatcher Era, including all the paranoia and shame that accompanied them. A real problem sometimes emerges when the talented cast attempts to bring Moore’s pulp-inspired dialogue to life. Jackie Earle Haley, playing the haunted vigilante Rorschach, has the biggest task in this regard but also succeeds the most, bringing palpable feeling to his minimalist voice-overs. The rest of the performers don’t fare as well, often bringing to mind Harrison Ford’s famous admonition to George Lucas on the set of Star Wars: “You can type this shit, but you sure can’t say it.”

Crying on the inside: The Comedian

But amid the dogged loyalty shown by Snyder and screenwriters David Hayter (X-Men) and Alex Tse, the changing of the book’s ending comes both as a surprise and a relief, yet it still doesn’t entirely make sense. Watchmen the comic’s ending has long been a subject of debate and even derision (the book’s own editor, Wolverine creator Len Wein, fought with Moore but relented). To be fair, the original ending is both derivative (though openly so) and quite a bit dated by now. Hayter and Tse’s script turns the central mystery inward but fail to really examine the ramifications of its execution, and Snyder tries to ram the idea past the audience with bluster and speed. Neither tactic works.

She bangs: Silk Spectre II

The film would work much less than it does if not for the performances that manage, often against overwhelming odds, to emerge from the special effects and tediously long and gruesome fight sequences. Billy Crudup finds the character of godlike Dr. Manhattan in the estranged superbeing’s lonesome voice, while Patrick Wilson (Lakeview Terrace) disappears inside the flabby self-loathing of the myopic Nite Owl. Less commendable are the turns by Malin Ackerman (The Heartbreak Kid) as Laurie Jupiter, the second Silk Spectre, and Matthew Goode (Match Point) as Adrian Veidt, the hero turned media mogul. Moore wroter Veidt as a dispassionate, virtually asexual intellectual; while Goode’s glacial good looks fit the part he never brings any depths to the character’s dark intellect. Meanwhile Ackerman struggles with a role that’s underwritten to the point of insignificance. Perhaps the delicate balance of family versus self and the struggle for a father figure at the heart of Jupiter’s character was beyond the screenwriters’ capability or outside their interest. Whatever the reason, her character was neglected most in adaptation, and the big reveal regarding her paternity doesn’t quite come off as a result.

When Nite Owl steps on your foot, you feel it.

The action sequences aside, there are finally other problems with Snyder’s sense of staging and scene construction, and even the most casual viewing reveals missed chances. One particular wasted opportunity involves a third-act reconciliation between Nite Owl and Rorschach, as the latter begs his former partner’s forgiveness for being obstinate. Though the scene screams for close-ups, to show the emotions bursting forth from beneath the masks, Snyder frames the moment as a static medium two-shot. Other visual counterpoints to character growth used so masterfully in the comics – a crystal castle splinters and falls as memories come to light, dirigibles hover over death, a perfume advertisement heralds a new future - are all curiously missing.

The cynical response, obviously, is that Snyder or the screenwriters just missed them when reading the comics. And it’s possible a repeated viewing might show that their understanding of the comics’ themes and still-timely message is in fact only skin deep. I hope not. After 23 years, the Watchmen movie shouldn’t feel like a waste of time.

- Michael Kabel
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Miscellaneous Debris: March Edition

Our version of the old Movietone newsreels, but in blog form.

The green tint is the pollen.

Spring is just around the corner, and for those of living in the South that means soupy thick fogs of oak pollen and warmer temperatures occasionally punctuated by slick, sweaty rain. Lucky for us more movies start debuting, and that the theatres showing them are climate controlled. Seriously, if we lived somewhere with better weather we’d probably be doing something else (probably something outdoors.)

March means the downhill homestretch towards the summer movie season, with some distant beeps already popping on the radar for April and especially May. There’s a new Star Trek trailer airing before Watchmen, for example, and a fresh trailer for X-Men Origins: Wolverine is beginning to circle around online. Besides the geek culture stuff, April sees the release of Adventureland for the undergrad crowd and Gigantic for their hipster dorm mates. Grown-ups get State of Play with Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck as well as the long-delayed The Soloist with Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx.

The following items are just a roundup of some topics of interest, movies and news that either don’t merit a full blog post or will bear further previewing and reviewing as more information becomes available. But they’re all things worth talking about right now.

Who watches The Horsemen?

1. Our senses of pity and fair play alike compel us to mention that the movies The Horsemen, 12, Phoebe In Wonderland, and Tokyo! also open this weekend. Probably the coming-of-age Sundance favorite Phoebe In Wonderland and 12, a Russian version of 12 Angry Men, offer the most divergent counter-programming for those not looking for super-heroics. All four movies open “in limited release,” here meaning the arthouses of the larger cities even more so than that phrase usually does.

2. If and when you get tired of hearing about the genius of the original Watchmen graphic novel, Comic Book Resources.com offers an excellent critique and evaluation of the 1986 comics series by veteran comics writer Steven Grant. It’s a note of clarity and scholarship that’s both fair and balanced, to use the cliche. Definitely worth reading.

Man out of time: O'Mara

3. America’s long war of attrition against quality network television scored another victory this week with ABC’s cancellation of Life On Mars. An upstart show that realized its considerable potential by leaps and bounds with each passing episode, the atmospheric time travel mystery-drama never developed an audience despite repeated chances from the network. The show’s creators will be able to wrap up is outstanding plotlines, however, presumably revealing just exactly why main character Sam Tyler (Jason O’Mara) finds himself trapped in an often-hellish vision of New York City circa 1973.

4. While we’re on the subject of good television, AMC’s weird, addictive original Breaking Bad debuts its second season this Sunday night. Overshadowed by the elegant glare of AMC’s  Mad Men juggernaut, this grimly sharp drama about a dying high school chemistry teacher (Emmy winner Bryan Cranston) manufacturing and dealing drugs to support his family consistently went in unexpected directions its entire first season. Small wonder, considering it was created by Vince Gilligan, the mad intellect who helped create some of The X-Files’ most memorable episodes.

He's the main character, folks.

5. Is it better to burn out than fade away? Besides Life On Mars, several other shows including Life, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and Pushing Daisies are all either cancelled or hearing bells toll for their renewal chances. Watching the slow deaths of other longer-running episodics, such as the ones we’ve come to call Name That Cylon and The Adventures of Ben Linus, Super Genius almost make us feel relieved these good shows will wrap before their creative half-lifes expire.

6. Pixar’s summer-debuting Up has a premise that’s ingenious in its simple whimsy and a trailer promising the same wonder-inspiring visuals as so many of the animation maestros’ other productions. Still, it seems at least initially doomed to become a footnote after last year’s masterpiece Wall*E, an approximate Barry Lyndon to that film’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Though such a dismissal is probably unfair, after Wall*E anyone would deserve a victory lap. And given Up‘s septuagenarian protagonist – a dead ringer for Andy Rooney, to boot – it’s now fairly obvious that the animators aren’t even keeping up the pretense of making children’s films anymore.

Up opens nationwide May 29th.

Flavor Flav does not appear in this movie.

7. Looking farther into the summer, July 1st sees the release of Public Enemies, probably the biggest event of the year for crime movie junkies as well as anyone enamored of white-hot leading men Johnny Depp and Christian Bale. Based on the true-life pursuit of gangster John Dillinger (Depp) by FBI agent Melvin Purvis (Bale), the film’s also directed by crime auteur Michael Mann, meaning lots of structure and veracity in detailing Dillinger’s mythic crime career. Depp looks dashing as all Hell in the production photos that have leaked so far, but Bale has a talent for stealing films from his more celebrated co-stars (Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Colin Farrell), and a supporting cast that includes Marion Cotillard, Billy Crudup and Giovanni Ribisi only sweetens the potential. Consider us stoked.

8. We’ve fired some stiff shots at The Office in blog posts past, but the show’s creative staff really needs to stop making such gripes so plentiful. In particular this season’s saturation with Dwight – a character that in the most versatile of performer’s hands would still only merit small doses - is slowly draining the show of the ensemble charm that was beginning to draw comparisons to classic TV like WKRP In Cincinnati and Cheers. Someone suggested that the creators are building Dwight up for a catastrophic fall. We hope that’s the case, because we miss the warmth and slice-of-life sweetness of earlier seasons. And we miss Amy Ryan a lot, too.

9. Sometimes the library of Blu-Ray titles reminds us of a HBO programming schedule circa 1984. Recent releases on the still-not-quite-America’s-format-of-choice medium include Escape From New York, The French Connection, Amadeus, and Gandhi. But overall Blu-Ray seems at times spasmodically self-sabotaging. Amid the marketing of tons of modern cinema drivel, there’s still no word on such all time classics like Citizen Kane or Lawrence of Arabia, or even modern favorites like Schindler’s List and The Return of the King getting the big blue upgrade. The release timeline will likely (and we hope) follow the same paradoxical model as traditional DVD over the last decade: as the format becomes more mainstream, films of less general appeal will see their release. In the meantime, it wouldn’t hurt studios to release some high-profile classics in Blu-Ray now, at a loss, as a sign of good faith to more serious movie collectors.

We’ll return Monday with our review of – what else – Watchmen. Have a good time this weekend at the movies or anywhere else you find yourself.

- Michael Kabel
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Two More Days Until Watchmen!

An expanded look at the Minutemen, the Watchmen universe’s original super-team.

You’ve been living in a cave on Mars if you haven’t heard about the Watchmen movie. After years of speculation and arguably the best marketing campaign of any film in recent years, Zack Snyder’s epic adaptation of the legendary DC Comics mini-series opens in just two days.

Some of the film’s preview images and especially some of its viral video campaigns (like this one) offer glimpses into the Watchmen’s meticulously realized alternate reality, a universe in which America won the Vietnam war, Richard Nixon serves four terms in office, and masked heroes originally emerged to fight crime during the Great Depression (the one in the 1930s, not the one right now.) These original heroes, known collectively as the Minutemen, feature significantly in the film’s central narrative and backstory.

Their story is short and often grim. Though successful in protecting the American homefront from Nazi spies and other assorted threats throughout the 1940s, their ranks were often torn apart by mutual fear and self-loathing. The members separately led dark private lives marred by tragedy and violence, even after their costumed careers ended.

The members are, from left to right:

Silhouette: A Jewish refugee from Austria, Ursula Zandt was expelled from the group in 1946 when her homosexuality became public knowledge. She was killed by a revenge-seeking former enemy weeks later.

Mothman: Persecuted by McCarthyism, Byron Lewis (Niall Matter) succumbed to alcoholism and psychological problems that left him permanently hospitalized. Fondly remembered by the other heroes, he’s sometimes visited by the second Nite Owl, Dan Dreiberg (Patrick Wilson).

Dollar Bill: The public spokesman and “in house superhero” for a national bank, Dollar Bill (Dan Payne) was shot dead by robbers when his flowing cape became caught in a branch location’s revolving door.

Nite Owl I: Hollis Mason (Stephen McHattie) was a police officer by day and the crimefighting Nite Owl by night. A salt-of-the-earth type who retired to a life as an auto mechanic, his tell-all memoir Under The Hood is excerpted in the Watchmen graphic novel’s early chapters. He’s both friend and mentor to his successor, Dan Dreiberg.

Captain Metropolis: A former Marine Corps lieutenant, Captain Metropolis was the group’s organizer and strategist. He attempted to start a similar group, the Crimebusters, in the 1960s, citing both “promiscuity” and “black unrest” as social ills that needed the heroes’ attention. His homosexual relationship with Hooded Justice was concealed in part with help from the original Silk Spectre.

The Comedian: Edward Blake’s (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) murder sets off the events of the story’s main plotline. A hero turned government enforcer, Blake participated in America’s victory in Vietnam and later helped cover up the break-in at the Watergate Hotel. Blake attacked teammate Sally Juspeczyk (Cala Gugino), the first Silk Spectre, after a Minutemen meeting in their headquarters but was stopped and viciously beaten by Hooded Justice.

Silk Spectre I: Sally Juspeczyk was a burlesque dancer who fought crime as a means of attracting publicity for her entertainment career. Though sexually assaulted by The Comedian, nevertheless a brief tryst between the two decades later produced a daughter, Laurel (Malin Akerman), who would later become the second Silk Spectre.  

Hooded Justice: The first of the costumed crimefighters to appear on the public scene, Hooded Justice’s identity remains a mystery, though some suspect he was a circus strongman with Nazi sympathies. He vanished after questioning by the House Un-American Affairs Committee, leading many to speculate he was murdered by The Comedian in revenge for the beating Blake received after attacking Sally Juspeczyk.  

- Michael Kabel

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