The movie Struck (2007) was “inspired” by a terrible news story about an inhumane woman’s car accident. In life the woman was African American, in Stuart Gordon‘s film she is white (Mena Suvari as Brandi)—a white woman with black friends. No angels, these.

Unintentionally Brandi hits with her car a newly homeless, jobless man (Stephen Rea), much of whose body becomes stuck—and bloody—in the car’s busted windshield. He is still alive, though, while anxious Brandi is unhelpful.

Human beings are so self-protecting and self-aggrandizing, as Brandi is, they will disregard another’s suffering and death when these things threaten their welfare. This is what Gordon and his co-writers are telling us. The majority of the characters here are the film’s dartboards, with a lot of sympathy naturally going to Rea’s down-and-outer. Struck is fierce, candid and practically nihilistic. Candid, I say: it’s for mature audiences only. The problem is Brandi’s not being examined, and a little exploration of Brandi’s boyfriend (Russell Hornsby) would have been nice as well. Even so, the movie was worth my time.

The 1973 Charley Varrick is gritty fun but not one of Don Siegel‘s best. This is because it is nigh mindless, a sometimes obtuse crime flick.

“A man, his wife and their friend stage a bloody bank robbery without realizing they are stealing from the Mob” (imdb). Thereafter the plot is not always well served. Siegel said Walter Matthau, as Charley Varrick, did not understand what was going on in CV, but it is not a hard movie to follow. You may not always like, however, where it takes you. It has some pretty colorful crooks, though, in Joe Don Baker‘s Mr. Molly and Andy Robinson‘s Harman. And it’s vigorous.

Adolf Hitler, magnificently acted by Bruno Ganz in the German film Downfall (2004), is half-educated and hot-tempered, a sane psychopath clearly unhappy over abysmal failure. His is not the only suicide in this scorching chronicle. The Third Reich falling to pieces, as Russian soldiers pour in, becomes a charnel house of self-killing. The non-suicidal are often wounded. Many long to survive.

Two things about Oliver Hirschberger‘s movie must be said, and at least one of them already has been, viz. it lets the German people off the hook for tolerance of antisemitism, etc. The other thing is that it humanizes people who were human beings—blind ones, alas. These folks include Traudl Junge, Gerda Christian, Alfred Jodl, Albert Speer, and the unhinged devil at the top of the heap. All the same, they were not victims. Their suffering does not match that of Jewish men, women and children in the death camps.

(In German with English subtitles)

The doctors’ wives in the 1971 Doctors’ Wives, directed by George Schaefer, are neglected, disgraceful, betrayed, noble. Seemingly a Valley of the Dolls wannabe (!), the film is a vulgar nonentity. It is a soap opera, by which I mean it is shallow and phony while appearing to be serious. The acting ranges from smoothly successful (John Colicos) to unsubtle (Rachel Roberts) to dull (Marian McCargo).