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.

With White Material (2009), French director Claire Denis has done an intelligent and provocative job of presenting the human inability to see things as they really are.  Isabelle Huppert’s Maria, a white woman in Africa, is deluded about the danger posed by ferocious civil-war fighters.  Her indolent son (Nicolas Duvauchelle) responds to the conflict by becoming a gun-toting troublemaker—much to his peril.  In the realm they live in, human life could not be cheaper; no one can afford to be blind.

Denis’s film has a nervous energy and a real punch to it.  It’s candid.  If it had an MPAA rating it would probably be NC-17 because it briefly shows an actor’s impressive penis.

(In French with English subtitles)

Français : Isabelle Huppert au festival de Cannes. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In Darkness (2018) is not a Hitchcock-like thriller, even though it wants to be. It features too many banal camera shots. Too, it suffers from a certain banal complexity—banal now—which sometimes confused me. The protag it concerns is a blind young woman (Natalie Dormer) who desires revenge on a Serbian businessman and vicious criminal.

Directed by Anthony Byrne with a screenplay by Byrne and Dormer, at least the film is properly disturbing about straightforward violence. As well, a few impeccable performances emerge, as from Miss Dormer—credible as a blind person and a nifty fit for an espionage thriller. Along with a very attractive elfin face, Dormer has a thin body whose breasts she knows she can be proud of. Her nudity is meant to contribute to the movie’s arthouse look and cred except, unfortunately, In Darkness is not a success.