I refuse to read the atheistic Ayn Rand. Whether Paul Johansson‘s film, Atlas Shrugged, Part 1 (2011), is faithful to Rand’s novel I don’t know, but in fact the movie more or less stands on its own. I reviewed it on this site years ago and I find it faulty but worthwhile.

Now what engages my mind is how relevant AS is to America in 2020. That a railroad company makes copious money because trains are the only affordable means of transportation in a blighted U.S. economy is an odd conceit, but not odd at all is the tendency of government to throw its weight around. In the face of a blighted economy it does this (of course), as it does today in America. But it is not done only through legislation. The decision of the movie’s State Science Institute to declare Hank Reardon’s metal unsafe may be the equivalent of the Veterans Health Administration concluding that hydroxychloroquine is a worthless drug against COVID-19. This, I believe, is a lie with respect to people who show COVID-19 symptoms for the first seven days, but the VA fecklessly wants to discredit Donald Trump for promoting hydroxychloroquine (plus azithromycin). The dystopia we have in today’s U.S. is, lamentably, not much different from that which exists in Atlas Shrugged, Part 1.

I watched an hour and 20 minutes of the Sam Peckinpah film, The Killer Elite (1975), until, weary of how stupid it was, I stopped. James Caan and Robert Duvall enact two employees of a violence-using private company affiliated with the CIA. Expecting more money from another source, Duvall commits murder and betrays Caan by shooting him in the kneecap. I knew I was in trouble with the film when, a relatively short time later, Caan, sporting a cane, starts taking judo or karate lessons (whichever they are).

An hour into the movie, Caan and a team of his confront the guns of Duvall and his crew of scumbags. Waiting to fire on Caan’s team, one of the scumbags sits not in a simple car but in a stolen or borrowed garbage truck! (He’s trying to be sneaky, you see.) Let me comment also that this sequence did not exactly inspire memorable dialogue.

Peckinpah was a talented director who worked with some knowing film editors, but he was mostly inept at writing and judging writing. The men behind the script here tut-tut the CIA because of its . . . contracting, but as the late John Simon explained, if these gents had known unpleasant truths about the CIA, they would not have been allowed to impart them. I don’t know what The Killer Elite is imparting.

I watched an hour and 20 minutes of the Sam Peckinpah film, The Killer Elite (1975), until, weary of how stupid it was, I stopped. James Caan and Robert Duvall enact two employees of a violence-using private company affiliated with the CIA. Expecting more money from another source, Duvall commits murder and betrays Caan by shooting him in the kneecap. I knew I was in trouble with the film when, a relatively short time later, Caan, sporting a cane, starts taking judo or karate lessons (whichever they are).

An hour into the movie, Caan and a team of his confront the guns of Duvall and his crew of scumbags. Waiting to fire on Caan’s team, one of the scumbags sits not in a simple car but in a stolen or borrowed garbage truck! (He’s trying to be sneaky, you see.) Let me comment also that this sequence did not exactly inspire memorable dialogue.

Peckinpah was a talented director who worked with some knowing film editors, but he was mostly inept at writing and judging writing. The men behind the script here tut-tut the CIA because of its . . . contracting, but as the late John Simon explained, if these gents had known unpleasant truths about the CIA, they would not have been allowed to impart them. I don’t know what The Killer Elite is imparting.

His first feature film, the 1969 Downhill Racer is one of Michael Ritchie‘s efforts concerning competition, and like his Smile, an admirable effort it is.

The best thing about it is Robert Redford‘s acting as David Chappellet, a skiier who aspires to be an Olympic champion. Chappellet had humble beginnings—with an unloving father, in fact—and grew up with no real education. This, says his coach (Gene Hackman), is “not enough” for an Olympic competitor. Though he wins races, Chappellet is cocky and irresponsible, an athletic know-nothing. He is a poor representative of the United States. Will he learn?

In Redford we see an enticing intelligence. He has thorough understanding of his character, with James Salter‘s fine screenplay enabling him to shine in every nuance. The account of Chappellet’s life is always absorbing. Indeed, the interlude with him and high-class lover Carole (Camilla Sparv—not the actor that Redford and Hackman are) could have gotten boring, but it doesn’t. I don’t much like the music by Kenyon Hopkins, but Ritchie directs with an artist’s eye. I don’t know whether there is any true resolution at the end of Downhill Racer, but at any rate, to my mind, as a movie it never goes downhill.

His first feature film, the 1969 Downhill Racer is one of Michael Ritchie‘s efforts concerning competition, and like his Smile, an admirable effort it is.

The best thing about it is Robert Redford‘s acting as David Chappellet, a skiier who aspires to be an Olympic champion. Chappellet had humble beginnings—with an unloving father, in fact—and grew up with no real education. This, says his coach (Gene Hackman), is “not enough” for an Olympic competitor. Though he wins races, Chappellet is cocky and irresponsible, an athletic know-nothing. He is a poor representative of the United States. Will he learn?

In Redford we see an enticing intelligence. He has thorough understanding of his character, with James Salter‘s fine screenplay enabling him to shine in every nuance. The account of Chappellet’s life is always absorbing. Indeed, the interlude with him and high-class lover Carole (Camilla Sparv—not the actor that Redford and Hackman are) could have gotten boring, but it doesn’t. I don’t much like the music by Kenyon Hopkins, but Ritchie directs with an artist’s eye. I don’t know whether there is any true resolution at the end of Downhill Racer, but at any rate, to my mind, as a movie it never goes downhill.