Baxter! (1973)

          Something of a Catcher in the Rye for the grade-school set, this peculiar Anglo-American production begins as the lighthearted story of a precocious Californian exploring a new life in the UK, then steadily darkens until becoming the harrowing character study of a young man losing his grip on reality. Among the film’s many admirable elements are a host of sensitive performances, a witty script by Reginald Rose, and a willingness to follow the subject matter into grim terrain. For those who are okay with offbeat tonal shifts, Baxter! will seem insightful, serious, and touching. For others, the movie will seem confused and depressing. Yet nearly any viewer could find at least one thing to like here, whether it’s Geoffrey Unsworth’s stately photography, Patricia Neal’s sharp work as a speech therapist, or young Scott Jacoby’s impressive performance in the leading role.

          When the picture begins, bitter and self-absorbed divorcée Mrs. Baxter (Lynn Carlin) relocates to England with her son, Roger (Jacoby). He’s charming and imaginative and smart, but he has a glaring speech impediment because he replaces every “R” with “W.” As a result, he can’t even say his own name without embarrassment. Nonetheless, Roger strikes up friendships with kids at his new school, and also with Chris Bentley (Britt Ekland), a beautiful young woman who lives upstairs in the same apartment building. Eventually, Chris invites Roger on getaways with her French boyfriend (Jean-Pierre Cassel), and they become surrogate parents for the boy while Mrs. Baxter preoccupies herself with dating, hobbies, self-pity, and excessive drinking. Also central to Roger’s life is Dr. Roberta Clemm (Neal), who recognizes that Roger’s difficulty with speaking is symptomatic of deeper problems. As the movie progresses, Mrs. Baxter’s parenting becomes abusive, pushing her son deeper into the hiding place of his troubled mind.

          It’s always painful to watch stories about parents damaging their children, and Baxter! employs the familiar balm of a heroic adult endeavoring to rescue an endangered youth. From a structural perspective, there’s nothing new about this picture. Furthermore, the movie’s flow has a herky-jerky quality, with some scenes skewing way too gloomy while others are so frivolous as to be silly. (Try to avoid cringing when Cassel, Ekland, and Jacoby sing a musical number together.) However, the best stuff in Baxter! is quite respectable, and the way the film spins from giddy to sober to terrifying almost works. If nothing else, the filmmakers deserve ample credit for presenting a fully dimensional juvenile character. Even when the narrative bumps, the sense that we’re seeing the world through the protagonist’s unique prism never wavers.

Baxter!: FUNKY

The Great Train Robbery (1979)

          Easily the best movie that novelist/filmmaker Michael Crichton ever directed—thanks to a larky story, rich cinematography, and two vivid performances—The Great Train Robbery is an old-fashioned escapist adventure. Set in late-19th-century England, the movie concerns gentleman crook Edward (Sean Connery), who travels in high-society circles while cruising for possible schemes. One day, Edward learns the particulars about a regular gold shipment transported by the British government to cover military expenses. Excited at the prospect of being the first person to ever rob a moving train, Edward enlists cronies including femme fatale Miriam (Lesley-Anne Down) and pickpocket John (Donald Sutherland). Over the course of several months, Edward’s team tracks down and copies the four keys needed to open the locked train safe in which the gold is stored during transit. Concurrently, Edward contrives an outlandish method for getting onto the train undetected. When unexpected complications arise, Edward’s gang responds with imagination and verve.

          Crichton, who adapted the screenplay from his own novel of the same name, based the story on a real event. As a result, the narrative has the flavor of authenticity even though the tone is strictly lighthearted. Better still, Crichton stays laser-focused on the fun of depicting a seemingly impossible heist, rather than getting bogged down in contrived plotting and/or iffy characterization (two conundrums that permeate Crichton’s wholly original stories). That’s not to say The Great Train Robbery is flawless; quite to the contrary, the movie drags in the middle and contains several passages of stilted dialogue, such as Crichton’s weak attempts at double entendre-laden romantic patter. Nonetheless, the virtues of The Great Train Robbery outweigh the shortcomings. First and foremost, the movie looks gorgeous. Employing his signature deep-focus compositions and haze filters, cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth creates a look that seems as if it’s illuminated by the gas lamps of the story’s historical period. Fantastic costuming and production design complete the intoxicating illusion of Unsworth’s imagery.

          Leading man Connery, ever comfortable in the role of the handsome rascal, sells the effervescent aspects of his characterization with a grace reminiscent of Cary Grant, and he underlines the physicality of the character with impressive stunt work on moving trains. Sutherland provides a terrific foil, opting for eccentric whining as a contrast to Connery’s unflappable poise; with his mutton-chop sideburns and scowling expressions, Sutherland approaches but safely avoids camp. Leading lady Down is more beguiling than interesting—while her work in The Great Train Robbery is competent, all she’s really asked to do is look seductive. It’s true that The Great Train Robbery is a bit windy at 110 minutes, although the painstaking approach pays off with such long scenes as the nighttime break-in at a train-depot office. However, with expert composer Jerry Goldsmith’s rousing music pushing things along, The Great Train Robbery snaps back into shape for a bravura finish.

The Great Train Robbery: GROOVY

The Reckoning (1971)

          An interesting character study about an ambitious businessman who releases his inner animal after being dragged back to his working-class roots, The Reckoning boasts an intense leading performance by Shakespearean actor Nicol Williamson, the fiery Scotsman perhaps best known to American audiences for his spellbinding turn as Merlin the Magician in Excalibur (1981). In The Reckoning, he plays Michael Marler, a fast-rising executive at a London business-machine company.

          Arrogant and merciless, Michael cuts a swath through local ladies, even though he’s married to the long-suffering Rosemary (Ann Bell), and he’s brutally competitive with coworkers. However, he acknowledges the limits of propriety, if not necessarily those of morality. Michael’s world is rocked when he’s called back to his hometown of Liverpool for a deathbed visit with his hardscrabble Irishman father. It turns out Michael’s “da” was fatally injured in a bar fight with local motorcycle thugs, so Michael reasonably expects the police to investigate. The British Bobbies show little interest in examining the death of an Irishman, so Liverpool locals pressure Michael to exact street-level justice. “For Christ’s sake,” Michael wails, “it’s way past the middle of the twentieth century, and here I am, expected to kill some yob I don’t even know!”

          Whether he goes through with the deed is best discovered in the context of the movie, but suffice to say that contemplating the most violent aspects of his nature releases Michael from any self-imposed obligations to honor legality. This epiphany emboldens him to act out even more boorishly than before, which manifests as brazen boozing and debauchery, and it liberates him to sabotage his immediate workplace superior. Watching Williamson chart Michael’s slide down into an amoral abyss is fascinating, since the actor’s craft is beyond reproach, so it ultimately doesn’t matter too much that the script by John McGrath (from a novel by Patrick Hall) meanders. Williamson is in virtually every scene, and he’s compelling even when the story loses focus.

          Adding considerable interest is crisp photography by the great British cameraman Geoffrey Unsworth, who eschews his signature ’70s style; instead of the dense haze filters he used for other projects, Unsworth opts for long lenses and smoked sets in order to create depth. Jack Gold, the journeyman British director behind a long string of respectable projects for film and television, opts for a few cheap tricks, like smash cuts and sudden zooms, but, for the most part, he wisely lets Williamson’s acting occupy center stage. Veteran composer Malcolm Arnold contributes a subtly Hitchcockian score that ups the tension level, and the movie benefits from solid location photography and a sturdy if unremarkable supporting cast. The ending is a bit dodgy, with a way-too-obvious final scene that would have been more effective if placed elsewhere in the film, but, even with its flaws, The Reckoning is a potent little dose of nastiness. (Available through Columbia Screen Classics via WarnerArchive.com)

The Reckoning: GROOVY

Lucky Lady (1975)

          Screenwriters Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz were hot after American Graffiti, scoring a huge purchase price for their screenplay Lucky Lady, which gene-spliced the music-driven ribaldry of Cabaret (1972) with the twisty plotting of The Sting (1973). An impressive roster of A-list talents converged on the project, including director Stanley Donen and the three stars billed above the title: Gene Hackman, Burt Reynolds, and Cabaret Oscar-winner Liza Minnelli. Cabaret vets working behind the camera include cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth and songwriters Fred Ebb and John Kander. But even with all of this cinematic firepower, and a hefty budget of $13 million, Lucky Lady is little more than a well-made train wreck.

          The main problem is that expensive script, which puts three despicable characters into an icky housekeeping arrangement. After an unnecessarily convoluted set-up, Prohibition-era schemers Kibby (Hackman), Claire (Minnelli), and Walker (Reynolds) become rum-runners sailing their ship, the Lucky Lady, back and forth between Mexico and the U.S., chased by a homicidal Coast Guard captain (Geoffrey Lewis) and a ruthless fellow bootlegger (John Hillerman). Half of the picture is devoted to criminal intrigue, including several high-seas shootouts, so the movie’s frothy tone disappears whenever the story turns dark and violent, which is often. The other half of the picture is devoted to the farce of Kibby and Walker competing for Claire; she moves back and forth between their beds until all three finally sleep together. Why these two men are so excited by the abrasive Claire is as mystifying as why viewers are expected to care about any of them, since all three are deceitful, shallow, and tiresome. (Supporting player Robby Benson, as a Lucky Lady shipmate, adds the film’s only glimmer of sweetness.)

          With its painfully episodic structure, the movie feels much longer than its 118-minute running time, and Unsworth goes berserk with his signature haze filters, making some images almost indecipherable. The stars try valiantly to make the material work, with Reynolds thriving in his light-comedy métier and Minnelli belting out a few numbers, but aside from the production values and star power, there’s little to recommend in Lucky Lady.

Lucky Lady: LAME

Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

 

          The praise lavished on this bloated Agatha Christie adaptation (including six Oscar nominations and one win) has always mystified me, because while Murder on the Orient Express is a handsomely made film with an intelligent script and an amazing cast, it’s still just a contrived and methodical whodunit. It appears that much of the picture’s novelty derived from the fact that it was a throwback not only to a beloved Hollywood genre, but also to a more sophisticated time in terms of diction, fashion, and manners; somewhat like the aesthetically pleasing accoutrements of the same year’s Chinatown, this film’s glamorous production values and swellegant ’30s costumes were a change of pace from the gritty realism that dominated early ’70s cinema. Furthermore, Murder on the Orient Express is that rare all-star jamboree in which each actor has something interesting to do, with several performers receiving impressive showcase scenes, and even elaborate subplots, during the course of the movie’s lumbering 128 minutes. One could never accuse Murder on the Orient Express of shortchanging the audience.

          As for the story, which screenwriter Paul Dehn adapted from Agatha Christie’s 1934 novel, it’s ingenious but not necessarily persuasive, and the lack of any real emotional heft means the experience of watching Murder on the Orient Express is all about luxuriating in production-design eye candy, piecing together clues, and savoring star power. Set in 1935, the movie finds Christie’s urbane detective Hercule Poirot (Albert Finney) riding the famous train mentioned in the title. Poirot becomes enmeshed with a group of people including wealthy American Samuel Ratchett (Richard Widmark), so when Ratchett gets stabbed to death early in the journey, Poirot and Signor Bianchi (Martin Balsam), an executive with the company that owns the train, join forces to determine which passenger was responsible for the crime. The gimmick, as per the Christie formula, is that everyone in a confined space is a suspect, so the closer the investigation gets to the truth, the greater the danger becomes for everyone involved. Despite the film’s posh trappings, this is not highbrow stuff.

          Worse, Murder on the Orient Express is tedious, at least from my perspective, and director Sidney Lumet’s overly respectful treatment is part of the problem. Treating Christie like Shakespeare is as absurd as, say, treating John Grisham the same way. There’s simply no reason for this empty spectacle to sprawl over such a long running time. Giving credit where it’s due, however, Murder on the Orient Express is a visual feast. The clothes, linens, and table settings make the titular train seem like a rolling four-star hotel, and cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth uses his signature haze filters to make everything look painterly—to a fault, because sometimes it’s hard to distinguish details. But the biggest selling point, of course, is the high-wattage cast. Beyond those mentioned, players include Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman (who won an unexpected late-career Oscar for her work), Jacqueline Bisset, Sean Connery, John Gielgud, Wendy Hiller, Anthony Perkins, Vanessa Redgrave, and Michael York.

Murder on the Orient Express: FUNKY