The Homesman.

Tommy Lee Jones is a clever individual, ostensibly an actor he can direct, write and produce and in the case of his latest project – all four at the same time. Although he did have the support of the great French filmmaker Luc Besson in the production of what has been called a feminist western by some commentators. The Homesman (2014) takes place in the 1850’s and is set in the Midwestern United States in Nebraska and Iowa. It’s based on the 1988 novel of the same name by Glendon Swarthout who was also responsible for the source novel for John Wayne’s very last film The Shootist (1976) which had a screenplay co written by the novelist son Miles Hood Swarthout, which is coincidently about the last days of a dying gunfighter, played by the then dying Wayne.

 

Mary Bee Cuddy is a 'good woman'.

As well as Tommy Lee Jones the movie features a great performance from Hilary Swank as Mary Bee Cuddy a proud strong middle aged spinster women who is an integral part of the Nebraska farming community, a women with land and “money in the bank” but who is unable to find her self a husband, accused of being “too bossy” and “too plain”. But when three poor women are deemed to have lost their minds it is decided to take them back East to their families to see if they can be ‘cured’. It’s Mary Bee who gets the job to transport the women on what is only expected to be a five-week journey! She rescues a man from being hung and enlists his help to drive the prison type coach and horses across a barren and treacherous country side, battling not only the weather and Indians but her ‘press ganged driver’ George Briggs (Jones) and three dangerously deranged women. 

 

It's a hard journey for Mary Bee and George.

Admittedly not the normal subject for what is an unusual type of western but one that is certainly different.  As well as depicting the harsh life of the early settlers the movie illustrates the effect this life it has on women and how it can not only result in physical bodily damage but also influence their mental well-being. The pressures of a forced marriage and the need to give birth to healthy children on a regular basis do nothing to help this problem.

 

George Briggs come to the rescue of the three women.

The movie features an ensemble cast that includes Meryl Streep, Hailee Steinfeld, John Lithgow, and James Spader. Cinematography is by the celebrated Mexican cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto who won an Academy Award for his camera work in 2005’s Brokeback Mountain. Marco Beltrami is responsible for the films exceptional score. At times the film can be a disturbing watch but its real strength’s are the growing relationship portrayed on the screen between Mary Bee and George Briggs and Jones’s exploration of the ‘female condition in the mid 19^th century American West’[1].

Would you rescue this man from the rope?

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[1] Press Kit Interview with the director.

The Family.

When I recently ‘blogged’ Kenneth Branagh’s Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2013) I stated that complete nonsense can be fun and that Branagh’s film committed the greatest sin in the action genre in that it was tediousness! Now I can give you another example of an action drama that the critics hated, but in this case it was, at least for me, a great deal of fun which in turn made it a very diverting watch. 

Luc Besson is a prolific movie director capable of making some very watchable movies from the seriousness of The Lady (2011) to the quirkiness of his comic book adaptation of The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec (2010) and the Cinema du look of Subway (2010), The Big Blue (1988) and Nikita (1990) and The Family (2013) or to give it its French title Malavita, is certainly no exception. Described as a dark action drama it involves an ex-Mafia boss, Robert De Niro, and his wife, the still very attractive Michelle Pfeiffer, and their two teenage children Dianna Agron and John D’Leo who are relocated to a small Normandy village in France under a Witness Protection Program after ‘grassing up’ their Mafia connections. Assigned to keep the Manzoni family in line is FBI agent Tommy Lee Jones. Most of the ‘humour’ comes from the fact all four members of our ‘family under cover’ have problems forgetting their old Brooklyn way’s. We witness mum blowing up the local Supermarché when a shop assistant insults her; dad has his own unique way of dealing with the problem of brown water and the two kids are not long making them selves known at the local school. But as you would expect it’s not long before their former Mafia cronies’ track them down and all hell breaks loose.   

 

Making a 'bang' at the local supermarche!

Made as a tongue in cheek tribute to the gangster movies of Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola this English language French film is based on the novel Malavita by the award winning French crime fiction writer Tonino Benacquista, and has been adapted as a screenplay by Besson and Michael Caleo. The real strength of this film is in its splendid cast who along with Besson’s direction really highlight’s the clash of comedic cultures between the Americans and the parochial villagers. The chemistry between De Niro and Pfeiffer is well worth the cost of a DVD on its own. Prime entertainment for politically incorrect people.

Lincoln

The American Civil War (1861 – 1865) has been the subject of many feature films over the years from Birth of a Nation (1915) to Cold Mountain (2003) via epic movies like Gone with the Wind (1939), Gettysburg (1993), Ride with the Devil (1999) and many more. This week’s Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre Film Club, again hosted by Mr Stephan Pickering standing in for his wife Pat who unfortunately was suffering from a bout of the flu, was screening Lincoln (2012) an absorbing, performance driven film that invites you to witness the last four months of Abraham Lincoln’s life right up to his assassination on the 14^th April 1865 by the American stage actor and Confederate sympathiser John Wilkes Booth at the Ford Theatre Washington DC while watching a play accompanied by his wife Mary Todd Lincoln. We see very little of the actual war, the movie focuses on the presidents efforts to have the Thirteenth Amendment to the United Constitution passed by the United States House of Representatives, and the underhanded skulduggery that went on from the President down in a attempts to get this unpopular amendment passed. The text of the 13th amendment read:

Section 1: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2: Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The President and his First Lady Spielberg style.

The movie is directed by Steven Spielberg, his best film since Munich in 2005 and includes a cast of over 100 speaking parts. These actors are really on top of their craft, including Daniel Day Lewis, who won a clutch of Best Actor Awards for his uniquely masterful portrayal of Lincoln, Sally Field outstanding as the First Lady, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Robert Todd Lincoln, David Strathairn, as Secretary of State Seward, Tommy Lee Jones superb as Thaddeus Stevens and John Hawkes as Colonel Robert Latham.  The key source of the screenplay is the biography called Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

The real thing!

My only criticism is in its typical American ending, which yet again tends to add a coating of sickly syrup where its not needed. It should have finished with the President leaving the White House; we all know what happens next so there was no need to extend it to include flickering candles! That apart the movie is a fascinating political drama that I could not recommend more and I’m sure that supplementary viewing’s would only increase the enjoyment.

Rolling Thunder.

Art work for the poster.

Its 1973, a military plane fly’s into a small Texas airfield where a large excited crowd await its passengers. Disembarking from the plane is two ex prisoners of war that have been locked up and tortured for eight years in a Hanoi prison camp. The first man out is Major Charles Rane; the second is his friend and compatriot Sergeant First Class Johnny Vohden. Following the welcome home speeches both men are hoping to return to the life they left behind. Rane quickly discovers that this is not to be the case, his young son barely remembers him and his wife wants a divorce to marry the local Sheriff.

Major Rane looses his hand!

The inhabitants of the town treat the Major like a celebrity’ presenting him with a handsome red Cadillac convertible and 2555 silver dollars, one for every day he was a captive and one for luck. A gang of criminals lead by the ‘Texan’ breaks into his home demanding that he hands over the silver dollars. Rane refuses and the villains torture him by sticking his hand in the waste disposal unit. Witnessing this barbarous act his wife and son hand over the valuable silver dollars to stop Rane from completely loosing his arm. But this inhuman bunch of degenerates having no compassion what so ever, shoot the wife and boy dead leaving our ex war hero to have hismangled hand replaced by a prosthetic hook. Connecting up with his old Army buddy Vohden they set out to inflict good old-fashioned grindhouse revenge.

Linda Hayes as Rane's groupie.

This ‘back from Vietnam’ revenge thriller is now available on DVD and Blu-ray for the first time and very welcome it is. With a screen play written by Paul Schrader, best known for the screenplay for Taxi Driver (1976) for which this film serves as a great companion piece, and directed by American film director John Flynn it stars the great but underrated William Devane as Charles Rane, the brilliantly smouldering Tommy Lee Jones as Johnny Vohden and one of my own favourite actors James Best as the evil Texan. Reputed to be one of Quentin Tarantino’s favourite films and you can see why. A really good American low budget grindhouse thriller, Rolling Thunder (1977) is well worth 99 minutes of your time.