Murphy’s War (1971)

          Blending elements of classic films including The African Queen (1951) and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), with a dash of Robinson Crusoe thrown in for good measure, the offbeat World War II drama Murphy’s War illustrates the madness that takes root once individuals personalize international conflicts. Specifically, the incomparable Peter O’Toole stars as Murphy, an Irish sailor who survives a U-boat attack on a civilian ship near the coast of Venezuela and finds refuge in a mission overseen by a British physician, Dr. Hayden (played by O’Toole’s real-life wife at the time, Sián Phillips). Desperate for revenge, even though radio reports indicate that the surrender of the German army is imminent, Murphy repairs a battered plane and then teaches himself to fly. Next, Murphy scouts the location of the U-boat and plans an attack involving makeshift weapons. What happens after this point in the story is surprising and tragic, because the U-boat’s commander, Lauchs (Horst Janson), turns out to be a formidable opponent.

          Adapted by slick Hollywood talent Stirling Silliphant from a novel by Max Catto, Murphy’s War tells such a simple story that it could have been presented in far fewer than 107 minutes (the film’s running time). Accordingly, some stretches of the movie feel dull and repetitive, particularly when Murphy argues the merits of violence with peacenik Dr. Hayden, or when he manipulates the emotions of his simpleton friend, Louis (Philippe Noiret), the operator of a cargo ship docked by the mission. Yet the virtues of Murphy’s War easily outweigh the shortcomings. Director Peter Yates, a versatile craftsman with a special proficiency for shooting action, makes the most of the picture’s jungle locations, creating a sweaty sense of atmosphere and maintaining tension throughout the most important scenes. (Regular cutaways to the interior of the U-boat, where German sailors wait out the end of the war with boredom and fatigue, add to the story’s credibility.) Yates also benefits from stellar work by cinematographer Douglas Slocombe, whose long-lens shots of Murphy’s plane zooming over South American rivers are deeply evocative.

          Yet the film ultimately rises and falls on the strength of O’Toole’s performance. The actor had been down this road before, since Murphy is something of a cousin to T.E. Lawrence, but O’Toole gets to shift into a different gear because Murphy is a working-class slob instead of an urbane officer. Spewing his lines through a crass Irish accent, O’Toole incarnates Murphy as a creature of pure id, given license and opportunity by circumstance to inflict his dangerous passions on others. Phillips counters O’Toole well, channeling rationality and warmth, while Noiret represents a sweetly nonjudgmental type of friendship. It’s a testament to all of the actors, and to Yates, that the physical apparatus of the picture—notably the plane and the submarine—never overwhelm the human elements. One could argue that Murphy’s War is too clinical, and that the unhinged emotions of Murphy’s mission never generate much of a rooting interest, but the film is so expertly made that it sustains interest intellectually, if not always viscerally.

Murphy’s War: GROOVY

Breaking Away (1979)

          An Oscar winner for Best Screenplay and a nominee for Best Picture, Breaking Away is one of the true gems of the late ’70s. While the film is inarguably a feel-good sports tale with a big race for a climax—which is to say that the story traffics in formulaic elements—Breaking Away explodes with so much in the way of memorable acting, characterization, and dialogue that the handicap of a preordained ending isn’t crippling. From start to finish, screenwriter Steve Tesich and director Peter Yates ground the story in specificity, separating Breaking Away from the pack of routine inspirational athletic pictures. Tesich, a Yugoslavian native whose family relocated to Indiana when he was a teenager, brings a unique outsider/insider viewpoint to this perspective on American culture; he captures the colorful textures of American idiom while evincing a sharp consciousness of class divisions. Further, the credible qualities of Tesich’s script enable the film’s four principal actors to sculpt distinct (and distinctly likable) personalities.

          Breaking Away’s protagonist is Dave (Dennis Christopher), a recent graduate from an Indiana high school who’s obsessed with a celebrated group of Italian bicyclists. Accordingly, even though Dave’s a corn-fed townie who spends his afternoons at a swimming hole with fellow high-school grads Cyril (Daniel Stern), Mike (Dennis Quaid), and Moocher (Jackie Earle Haley)—none of whom have clear plans for the future—Dave emulates Italian culture by singing along to opera and speaking Italian at every opportunity. This causes great consternation for Dave’s working-class dad, Ray (Paul Dooley); Ray’s befuddled rants about his kid’s abandonment of U.S. culture are endlessly entertaining. As the story progresses, Dave gets romantically involved—under false pretenses—with a pretty Indiana University coed, Katherine (Robyn Douglass), and he also decides to enter an annual bike race called the “Little 500.” Dave’s nervy encroachment into the rarified collegiate world exacerbates tensions between upper-crust students and blue-collar locals. (The college kids pejoratively refer to locals as “cutters” because limestone mining is a venerable local industry.)

          You can pretty much guess where things go from here, and, indeed, the story features lots of oppressor-vs.-underdog standoffs. Yet the joy of Breaking Away is the journey, not the destination. For instance, the ensemble scenes involving Dave’s friends feature crisp dialogue, naturalistic acting, and a warm sense of camaraderie. On a deeper level, the sense of anxiety these young men express speaks volumes about the fraught lives of people restricted by limited choices. Christopher, Haley, Quaid, and Stern function as a cohesive unit, even though Christopher has more scenes than anyone else, and their enchanting work is complemented by great supporting turns from Dooley and Barbara Barrie (who plays Ray’s wife). The actors playing IU snobs don’t fare quite as well, since their roles lack equal measures of complexity, but everyone is effective in his or her way. Director Yates, who often made thrillers such as Bullitt (1968) and The Deep (1977), captures Tesich’s humanistic storyline in an unvarnished style that suits the material, and his filmmaking soars during the climactic bike race.

Breaking Away: OUTTA SIGHT

The Hot Rock (1972)

          Lightweight and never quite as laugh-out-loud funny as it should be, The Hot Rock is nonetheless a fun caper flick featuring one of Robert Redford’s most effortlessly charming performances. The movie also boasts a thoroughly entertaining screenplay by William Goldman, the wiseass wordsmith who penned Redford’s breakout movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). In fact, Goldman and Redford clicked so well whenever they collaborated, it’s a shame their friendship dissipated after behind-the-scenes strife during the development of All the President’s Men (1976). Anyway, The Hot Rock was adapted from a novel by Donald E. Westlake, whose special gift is creating likeable crooks and outlandish plots. The Hot Rock begins with career thief John Dortmunder (Redford) getting released from his latest stint in prison—although he’s a talented robber, he has a bad habit of getting caught. Dortmunder is picked up, after a fashion, by his brother-in-law, Kelp (George Segal)—Kelp stole a car he doesn’t know how to drive, so he nearly runs Dortmunder over.

          And so it goes from there: Dortmunder’s life becomes a comedy routine of incompetent criminality once he agrees to pull a job with the amiable but unreliable Kelp. The duo are hired by Dr. Amusa (Moses Gunn), the U.N. ambassador of a small African nation, to steal a gigantic diamond, but each attempt at nabbing the prize ends up a pathetic failure. Over the course of several weeks, Dortmunder and Kelp try stealing the diamond from a bank, a museum, a police station, and a prison, abetted by neurotic explosives expert Greenberg (Paul Sand) and reckless getaway driver Murch (Ron Leibman).

          Goldman and versatile British director Peter Yates keep things moving along smoothly, balancing jokes and tension during elaborate heist scenes, so while The Hot Rock never explodes into raucous chaos, it sustains a solid energy level from start to finish. Yates shoots locations beautifully, capturing a vivid sense of Manhattan as an urban playground for the film’s gang of chummy nincompoops, and the acting is lively across the board. Redford plays everything so straight that he grounds the film’s comedy in emotional reality (while still cutting a dashing figure), and Leibman and Segal complement his work with motor-mouthed hyperactivity. Sand contributes a quieter vibe of sedate weirdness, and Gunn incarnates exasperation with great poise. Overbearing funnyman Zero Mostel pops up for a featured role about halfway through the picture, but luckily he’s only onscreen for short bursts, so he doesn’t wear out his welcome.

The Hot Rock: GROOVY

Mother, Jugs & Speed (1976)

          With a more coherent script work and a better actress playing the female lead, this insouciant comedy about misfits working for low-rent ambulance companies might have been a solid entry in the M*A*S*H-inspired subgenre of outrageous medical comedies. As is, the picture’s redeeming qualities get drowned out by muddy storytelling and tonal inconsistencies.
          Bill Cosby stars as Mother, a driver at the wildly unethical F+B Ambulance Company. Boozing it up behind the wheel and packing a .357 Magnum for sticky situations, Mother regularly intercepts calls for other ambulance companies so F+B can collect the fares. Raquel Welch costars as Jennifer, better known as “Jugs” (for obvious reasons); she’s the F+B receptionist who longs for gender equality in the workplace. Eventually, Harvey Keitel shows up as Speed, a police detective who needs to make extra cash while on suspension for alleged corruption. These three characters, along with other oddballs like Murdoch (Larry Hagman), a scumbag prone to stunts like trying to rape unconscious female patients, form a tapestry of human weirdness that’s occasionally very funny.

          Screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz, known for his lighthearted contributions to Roger Moore’s early 007 movies and the first two Superman pictures, contrives lively banter, although the fact that Cosby delivers most of the best lines suggests the actor did some on-set embellishing. When the movie is really cooking, which doesn’t happen very often, Mother, Jugs & Speed cleverly riffs on the idea of trying to remain sane in a world gone mad. Unfortunately, the movie gets derailed as frequently as it stays on track.

          One big problem is the characterization of Jennifer. After she transitions from her secretary role to working in the field, the movie’s focus shifts to the angst she suffers upon encountering the Big Bad World. Jennifer also falls into a sudden (and not particularly credible) relationship with Speed, despite rebuffing the advances of every other dude she meets. Exacerbating matters is the fact that when Mother, Jugs & Speed goes dark, it goes very dark, to the tune of major characters getting shot and killed. Even with reliable director Peter Yates calling the shots, this picture simply isn’t solid enough to sustain whiplash changes in tone.

          Still, there’s plenty for casual viewers to enjoy in the brisk 95-minute film, from Cosby’s impeccable timing to Allen Garfield’s sweaty performance as F+B’s cheapskate proprietor. Fellow supporting players Hagman, Bruce Davison, and L.Q. Jones deliver vivid work, and Keitel is appealing in one of his few real romantic leads. As for Welch, she thrives during light-comedy bits but is startlingly awful during dramatic scenes.

Mother, Jugs & Speed: FUNKY

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1972)

          Despite having been in movies since the heyday of the studio era, Robert Mitchum delivered several of his most interesting performances in the ’70s, probably because his don’t-give-a-damn acting style meshed comfortably with the naturalistic filmmaking methods that were in vogue at the time. One of the best examples of this synthesis between the right actor and the right moment is The Friends of Eddie Coyle, a soft-spoken crime picture about a sad-sack Boston hoodlum faced with the awful choice of going to prison for an interminable sentence or snitching on his lowlife friends.

          Utilizing the actor’s hangdog face and world-weary carriage to great effect, director Peter Yates employs Mitchum as the visual foundation for a rich portrait of going-nowhere criminality. Character actors Peter Boyle, Richard Jordan, Steven Keats, and Alex Rocco surround Mitchum with vivid performances laced with ambition, avarice, paranoia, and sociopathic violence; Boyle is particularly good as an operator working several self-serving angles at once. So even though the storyline meanders through beats that are familiar to fans of the crime genre, deeply textured acting gives the piece dimension and humanity.

          In one of the best scenes, Mitchum meets with a cocky gun dealer (Keats) in a coffee shop to discuss an illicit arms deal. Bruised by a lifetime of bad experiences, Mitchum brandishes his deformed mitt and explains that making a deal with the wrong guy in the past led to getting his hand broken, thus explaining his reluctance to accept Keats’ overconfidence at face value. Yates shoots the scene simply, with long lenses angled over the actors’ shoulders, creating a level of docudrama realism that’s emulated throughout the picture. As a testament to Yates’ focus on meticulous dramaturgy, the film’s quiet conversation scenes often have as much punch as its highly charged bank-robbery sequences. The action stuff works just fine, however, like the bits in which hoodlums use their favorite trick—holding a bank manager’s family hostage so he doesn’t get heroic ideas during a robbery.

          The Friends of Eddie Coyle has a subtle power that isn’t immediately evident on first viewing, since the plot isn’t clever and the payoff is more logically inevitable than inexorably tragic, but it’s hard to think of another crime film from the same period with as much artfully rendered nuance.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle: GROOVY