The Split
Jim Brown leads a heist team composed of Ernest Borgnine, Warren Oates, Jack Klugman, and Donald Sutherland to steal a little over half a million dollars during a Los Angeles Rams playoff game. Unfortunately things go south when he hides the money at his ex-wife's house, who is then murdered by her white rapist landlord. Now Brown is being investigated by a crooked cop, Gene Hackman, while the guys he hired to pull the job with him all want their money and are willing to use whatever means necessary to get it.
I like most of this movie. It was unusual at the time this came out for a black man to lead a group of white men and beat the tar out of them, and the opening featuring Brown seemingly for no reason attacking and testing each member of the crew was apparently shocking in 1968. But the problem I have is that the film falls apart for about 20 minutes in the middle. The landlord thing basically comes out of nowhere, and what follows feels disjointed with no connecting thread, up until a torture scene where Brown realizes that Hackman has the money. From there it is smooth sailing into a great shootout and ending, but the movie would have benefited from about 15 more minutes to connect the dots and establish the landlord.
Quote of the movie: "The last man I killed for $5,000. For $85,000, I'd kill you seventeen times."
"McQ"
John Wayne tried to get the lead role in Dirty Harry but couldn't due to his age and concerns over his previous bout of lung cancer and surgery in the 1960s. Not one to be kept down, Wayne still pushed and succeeded in making two cop films back to back about a year before his retirement from acting in 1976. The first of these is McQ, a neo noir in which John Wayne plays McQ, an aging detective whose partner is gunned down early one morning. McQ investigates despite being told not to, quits his job and becomes a private investigator, eventually discovers his partner was dirty, and finds out that somewhere in the higher echelons of the Seattle police, someone with nefarious desires is pulling the strings.
A lot of attention is place on the Ingram MAC-10, but this isn't an action film. It's slow, most of it involves McQ trying to understand and coping with what has happened. But when action sequences do occur, they're actually pretty awesome. The final car chase and gun battle on the beach really shows off just what that MAC-10 can do, and while Wayne looks old and tired, it fits perfectly with his character.
Quote of the movie: "I'm up to my butt in gas."
Brannigan!
Brannigan is the other cop movie John Wayne made. Here Wayne plays an Irish-American cop from Chicago who gets sent to London to fetch a mobster with the help of Scotland Yard. Unfortunately once he arrives, he finds out that the mobster has been kidnapped, but not before calling in a ruthless hitman to take Brannigan out. Between this and McQ, Brannigan is the weaker movie. It tries at times to play up the "Ugly American" narrative but does so half-heartedly and never manages to use the London location to its advantage. This film might as well have been made in New York City or Los Angeles.
Part of the issue I find is that Wayne has a British counterpart in Richard Attenborough, who is a bit more gentlemanly but every bit as tough and ruthless when it comes to getting his man. The "Chicago Style" of Brannigan is just as often matched with the London Style by Attenborough's character, Sir Charles Swann. The one thing that Brannigan has that Sir Swann doesn't is gunplay, but there isn't enough of that to really matter, and when the big bar fight breaks out midway through the film, it's Swann who is doing all the punching. It's not a bad film, just not very good.
Quote of the movie: "My father flew with the RAF. He said there were only three things wrong with the Yanks: 'oversexed, overpaid and over here'."
Freebie and the Bean
James Caan and Alan Arkin are partners in San Francisco who love to berate each other and must protect a mob boss over the weekend so they can serve him with a warrant on Monday. Unfortunately they're both insane, screaming wrecking balls of idiocy who just as often take out each other as they do the bad guys. And that is what makes the movie work, because both of these goofballs have a ball-busting friendship that gets them through the day even when the world is coming down around them.
And it is. Some of the chase scenes in this film seem to be Arkin and Caan just doing as much damage to San Francisco as they can. For instance, in one scene Arkin chases a suspect on foot through a restaurant and into a kitchen. Along the way they smash through windows, tables, chairs, full meals, destroy food being cooked, knock over shelves, fight with ladles, and eventually end up dumping tomato sauce and shooting at each other in close quarters next to a stove top. It's messy, it's dirty, and it is exhausting to watch the ongoing banter, but it still works out in the end. I like it. I just felt like I needed a nap afterward.
Quote of the movie: "Hi, Fred. We got a little accident. Could you send a tow truck, please, to 618 Elm Street? Hold it. It's the, uh, third floor, apartment 304."
Chandler
Warren Oates is Chandler, an aging retired PI who is convinced to get back into the game by a corrupt government agent to supposedly protect a state's witness who must testify about the mob. At least that is what he is told. What he is really doing is being used as bait to bring her gangleader boyfriend off of home turf so corrupt government agents can assassinate him and put their own man on top of the Mafia...or so I think. Unfortunately this movie is slow, tired, never wants to talk straight, and comes off more confusing and bland than anything else. Out of all the films in this list, Chandler was the worst because it feels lifeless and limp, every bit as tired as Oates looks.
That's not to say it's completely awful. This movie has a strong beginning in silence where Chandler gets fed up with his job as a security guard and walks off in mid-shift. The intro is great. Unfortunately everything just goes downhill from there. Ultimately Chandler is to be a patsy and killed so the corrupt feds can blame him and not get any heat when they put their own man in, or at least that is what I think is going on with the ending. The plot is sort of half-mumbled, and even the big car chase sequence just comes across as dull, with characters popping up for seemingly no reason to talk to each other in a stereotypical noir misdirectional semi-slang where nobody ever says what they are really thinking or doing.
Quote of the movie: "You'll do."
