Reviews

I expected to love this movie, but I'm quite thoroughly bored and put off by it. The story is predictable, the directing is heavy-handed and mostly not very effective; the fiery ocean battle in the first part looks scripted and fake, and so do the scenes of the slaves rowing in the galley.) Charlton Heston projects one emotion only: sullen, angry self-pity and his character seems to have one virtue: he's good at athletics and he's very sure, in his simple-minded way, that he's right, especially about religious questions. I don't feel sorry for him even when he finds that his family have been banished to a leper colony. (Sure, leprosy on top of everything else, why not? Why didn't they also have him suffer from boils?)

The bad-guys also act very badly and their characters take everything much too seriously. Ten minutes after the end of the movie I had forgotten what the principal antagonist ("Messala"?) looked like.

Even the music is tinny and pretentious.

What this movie needs is some comedic anti-heroes (one, at least!) like the two in SPARTACUS: someone like Peter Ustinov's character Lentulus Batiatus and Charles' Laughton's character Senator Gracchus. And how about, maybe, a strong or surprising female character, with a personality? Please?

A huge amount of money spent, one glorious athletic contest, and the rest of it you can keep, thank you.

I love Patrick McGoohan, and I love Lee van Cleef, so I thought this'll be fantastic! But it bored me. It's a simple, straightforward story about a talented hit-man who wants to retire, but his boss tries to wring one more hit out of him by threatening his wife. So he kills the boss' henchmen and has a drawn-out final shootout with the boss himself. I'm not sure what they had in mind with the minimal dialogue, but whatever it was, it didn't work. I kept waiting for something unexpected to happen and it never did. Also, there was never any reason to like the protagonist.

One of the things I usually like most about Patrick McGoohan is that he is brave enough to appear in bad movies, and to play one-dimensional roles like the Warden in ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ and self-mocking roles like Roger Deverill in SILVER STREAK, and straightforward love-to-hate-them bad-guys like King Richard the Long Shanks in BRAVEHEART - he is great in these because he makes so much impact out of a very small amount of screen-presence - but this was too much screen time and too little development of character. Sure, he's visually intense, but static. He's the same guy with the same desires at the end of the flick as he was at the beginning.

Eventually I just started distracting myself by counting the number of obviously-bald actors wearing really bad hairpieces. There are many of them in one of the scenes in a pub, and their hairpieces are really bad.

Tuesday Weld always plays beautiful women whose beauty has made them needy and manipulative. Even as late as the 1990s, in FALLING DOWN she plays the manipulative, formerly beautiful wife of the principal cop (Robert Duvall). "It's not easy to see your beauty go when that's all you had," Duvall explains to his fellow cop. In real life, she (Weld) was equally needy because her father died when she was young and she had to support her family boy modeling and acting. She began drinking when she was ten years old attempted suicide when she was 12.

Here she plays an early variant, a beautiful blind girl who constantly tests her family's love for her by deliberately complicating their lives.

It's a very nice episode, very absorbing, with a likeable protagonist and some fine character-acting in minor roles by actors who are always fun to see. But it triggers one of my pet peeves in this kind of show. Which is: (SPOILER ALERT!!!! The next sentence I write will contain a BIG SPOILER!! Do not read if you want to watch it and guess how it ends!) A scalpel is not a good weapon for murdering someone. No hired killer would use a scalpel as a murder-weapon unless the target were already unconscious or already in restraints. Anyone who has ever handled a scalpel will laugh at the idea. The blade of a scalpel is very sharp, but also very easy to break, and very small. While you're trying to cut your victim with a scalpel, he'll be punching you in the face. This silliness is not unique to this particular show, it happens frequently in many shows, but it annoys me every time.

Like most TV shows, "The Fugitive" spent the first nine installments figuring itself out, trying one basic story-line after another. (The previous installment, for instance, was more like what you'd expect from an Agatha-Christie whodunit than like "The Fugitive".) Now the basic pattern is established: Dr. Kimble helps troubled strangers face their demons and, in a climactic moment, take ownership of their lives, usually by unexpectedly helping him escape instead of turning him in. This installment is a particularly gratifying variation on the theme. It's so satisfying, and now it's the norm.

For the first time in the series, the amazing, versatile, infinitely productive Ida Lupino directs, and puts many hours worth of tension and subtlety into one hour of viewing-time. She loves these brief shots of someone's face in which the actor shifts his gaze from one direction to another, as the character considers his options and assesses the situation. For instance, watch the scene where Kimble confronts the nasty thin younger brother "Frank", who is horsewhipping the mentally impaired character "fatso". She gives a tight, masterful sequence of three of these rapid-eye-motion facial close-ups, about one second each, as each character shifts his gaze from one of the other two to the other. The whole hour is filled with directing-gems like this.

Finally, Barry Morse has fully understood his character (Lieutenant Gerard) now: passionate but disciplined, irritable, ultra-energetic, determined, observant, subtle, and keen, as if Sherlock Holmes had grown to middle age, moved to USA, and taken a job in the late 1950s' police force. When he's onscreen, you can feel how great the odds against Kimble are. He may escape this time, and maybe again next week, but sooner or later, the reckoning will come.

This second installment of THE FUGITIVE establishes the core theme of the show, the standard story which will be re-told so many times. The central story is: Kimble's altruistic compulsion to help everyone he meets gets him into a dangerous situation, and then the dangerous situation escalates to a climactic moment where Kimble's life depends on whether a weak or morally-ambiguous stranger, (usually a woman, but sometimes a man or a child) trapped in a stable but degrading life, will take the safe, easy option and stay weak and trapped, or whether she (or he) will decide to break out of her (or his) situation, and free herself (or himself) by helping Kimble escape, in some risky or heroic way.

Everything about this particular installment is great, right up until the ending, which is, unfortunately, god-awful and unbelievable. Up until the climactic moment, the pivotal character has been so such an evil, unrepentant, irredeemably bad seed, that her final decision to give up her satanic, idolatrous fantasies and do the right thing makes no sense at all.

Other than that, it's a fine Fugitive hour, with a terrific child-actress (Gina Gillespie), scary bad-guys, and the hard-hitting bright-but-dreary rural-American atmosphere which makes the show so compelling. And if you watch carefully and don't blink, you'll even see Elisha Cook, Jr., as one of the gang.

I'm not gonna say anything about the overall final installment of the show. Well, OK, I'll say one thing about the whole: it's very good, a lovely, festive finale which recaps the series and does not disappoint. But enough reviewers have talked about that. I just have a two items which I haven't seen mentioned.

First, my complaint: the climactic four-way chase scene starts really well - what better venue for a chase than an empty amusement park, with lots of jolly ride-equipment to sneak around and hide behind and climb on, and lots of familiar (in the 1960s) family-outing feeling for the home viewers to enjoy? But (alas, I have to admit this) it does go on a bit too long. It really would be more effective if they had cut, say, 40% of the footage from the final chase, especially Dr. Kimble's grappling bout against the one-armed man. Do we really need to see Kimble pull up through the top-platform opening to the roof of the tower, and get his head kicked down by the bad-guy, and pull himself up again, FOUR times in a row, before he manages to get through and grip the guy by the leg? When the bad guy succeeds in disarming Kimble, does the gun really have to skitter across the platform and stop at the edge, where the two will struggle for another god-knows-how-many seconds trying to get hold if it without falling? They could have used the extra time to deepen the plot, or any of the characters. So, a point or two off for overplaying the final chase.

Now, here's what I especially liked, above and beyond the general stuff everyone is shouting about, is how the MUSIC is used during the flashback, where Lloyd Chandler (JD Cannon), frozen with fear, watches helplessly as the one-armed man beats Mrs. Kimble to death. I don't know whether this was stock-music used throughout the show, or whether it was specially composed for this finale, but either way, it's fantastic and makes the scene impossible to turn away from. A blind person could enjoy this scene, and given the popularity, at least one probably did.

I always remind myself: two-part finales are often not as good as viewers expect. This first of the two parts would have been pretty hum-drum (IMHO) except for one show-stopping actor: the immortal Michael Constantine, who apparently had already been around doing TV character-roles forever. (I recognize him because I used to be a devotee of the cheesy late-1980s show "Friday the 13th: the Series", in which he very memorably played the corrupted father of one of the protagonists.) With his pudgy body, round face, expressive brown eyes, flutey voice (which would be a sweet tenor if it weren't so husky and whispery), and deceptive smile, by 1967 he had already been typecast for characters who are guilty but sympathetic, characters who had tried to get rich by taking one big risk rather than by working hard over time like normal people, and who had gotten into something illegal and dangerous, too big for them to handle. Characters who make you think "there, but for the grace of God, go I."

So it's nice to see him playing a pure-evil character this time: a sneaky, greedy, ruthless, low-class bail-bondsman, who manipulates his prisoner (the one-armed man), and plans to "squeeze" his own mysterious client in most unscrupulous fashion. Constantine obviously enjoys playing an unambiguous bad-guy, a character we love to hate, rubbing his hands together and chuckling with glee at his own cleverness, like a cartoon villain or like King Richard the Third. (Spoiler: he gets what's coming to him.)

Definitely don't overlook his work in this first part of the finale!

This installment of "The Fugitive" is one of the purest, simplest presentations of the core idea of the show, the pure theme we have now seen so many variations of: Kimble encounters a sympathetic character in a predicament, and tries to help the person regain personal power; then someone else learns his (Kimble's) true identity and calls the authorities, and then the sympathetic character must follow Kimble's lead, take ownership of his (or her) own life, and assert his (or her) new personal power by helping Kimble escape.

But this installment is very simple, and all about one person: the Hermit, and his predicament is purely existential, without any complexity. He battles only himself, and his own mortality and physical limits (illness), and his own marginal sanity. Laurence Naismith does such an amazing job with such an amazing script that the other actors (including David Janssen) don't have to do anything here except wear the right costumes and recite their one-dimensional lines. Really, they might just as well be props.

Naismith's part alternates between quasi-rational self-presentation and lunatic feverish raving. Naismith demonstrates total mastery of the sense and the mood: frenzied and almost-intelligible, but not quite. The whole thing reminds me of Samuel Beckett's monologues like KRAPP'S LAST TAPE, and his strange first-person non-novels like MOLLOY and MALONE DIES. Looking around the web, I'm not seeing any recordings of Naismith reading anything by Beckett, but he might have done them in performance, and if he did, there's no doubt he did them fantastically well. If only we could watch!

I think what makes this film so exceptionally good is there are no unambiguously nice inmates, not even any sympathetic ones. There's no counterpart to "Red" (THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION) or "English" (ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ) or the old guy "Seldom Seen" in PENITENTIARY. No nice senior guy to take the naive protagonist under his wing and teach him how to get along. In this prison, you really cannot trust anyone, and (SPOILER HERE) if you the viewer were hoping that someone will do something unexpectedly noble and help the protagonist at a climactic moment, forget it. Not in this movie. Even the naive new inmate, convicted of manslaughter for drunk driving, (SPOILER) turns bad very quickly.

All the principal actors deliver convincing, realistic performances, even (IMHO) Wallace Beery, whose character is the most cartoonish. (I could be biased, because I love Wallace Beery's deep voice - he sounds like Johnny Cash, but nasty.)

The atmosphere, characters, uncompromisingly cruel story, and acting make this the second-scariest prison movie I've seen. (The scariest is MIDNIGHT EXPRESS.)

Another reviewer mentioned the wonderfully claustrophobic overcrowded cells, but there's another haunting repeated image: the courtyard assemblies where the prisoners must march together with quasi-military discipline.

The script is like a cheesy soap-opera, with a tired, cliché plot, canned, silly dialogue and narration, no sex, no violence, no mystery, no surprises, no amusing banter, none of the diverting things that make movies fun. It should have bored me to death. But the acting, the city street-scenes, the music, and the camerawork make it a masterpiece. I couldn't take my eyes off the screen.

Trevor Howard plays against his future-type, as the leading man. We are used to seeing him as cynical, bitter, ruthless, domineering men like Captain Bligh and. Major Calloway in THE THIRD MAN. Here he's a figure of romance, with a handsome, comforting demeanor. The opposite of his later type. He really was a master of the craft of acting - becoming someone other than himself.

This installment of "The Fugitive" is a cheesy tear-jerker with a plot which depends heavily on (spoiler-alert!) a deus-ex-machina moment. But it's a surprisingly effective tear-jerker. I cried like a baby, more than the one in the story. What makes it convincing is really good acting by magisterial Harry Townes, and by understated Tom Skeeritt, and by overstated Kim Darby, (who provides some ham to go with the cheesiness of it all. This episode aired just ten days before her "Star Trek" episode in which she played a less grown-up variant of the same character she plays here.)

I must take issue, strongly, with other reviewers who didn't like this particular installment of "THE FUGITIVE". Yes, it's in color, which is never as great as the black-and-white ones, and yes, it's the obviously-wacky '60s not the surface-normal '50s, but even so, this one gets the "Fugitive-formula" just right.

The beginning quickly establishes a creepy, drama-fertile setting. Then the plot begins with a shocking initial event. The tension steadily increases as the police enter the story and begin investigating, and Kimble faces his usual central dilemma: he knows the facts but dare not come forward lest he reveal his identity. There's a semi-climactic hand-to-hand fight in which Kimble, restrained (as always) by his ethical commitment not to harm anyone, desperately tries to overcome the bad-guy without seriously hurting him, while the bad-guy (of course) has no such scruples about seriously harming, or killing, Kimble. And this is only a tension-spike, not the final climax.

The final climax occurs very close to the end, where Dr. Kimble's fate depends on whether an attractive but morose young woman (Madeline Rhue) can persuade her father, a bitter, self-deluded elderly weirdo, to face reality for once and do the right thing. This scene is exceedingly effective, mostly because Madeline Rhue milks it for every drop of drama, every moment more tense than the preceding, but does it so well that you don't notice how well she's acting until afterwards. The father-daughter argument is peppered with very short shots of Kimble watching it, aware that he has said his bit and cannot further influence the outcome which will decide his fate. So the viewer and Kimble are staring transfixed at the scene: Kimble is the viewer and the viewer becomes Kimble. This is unusual television! When was the last time you watched a TV show and thought you were one of the characters?

This is a kind of a prequel to DEATH WISH, about a respectable man who is victimized by a gang of thrill-seeking youths, finds the police unsatisfactory, and takes the law into his own hands. (Unlike Paul Kersey, Walt Sherill doesn't become a generalized vigilante, but one gets the impression that he might have, if he had not been able to locate his attackers.)

But I enjoyed this movie much more than DEATH WISH (the original AND the recent remake). Alan Ladd does a much better job than Charles Bronson or Bruce Willis of making his character sympathetic, and Sherill's wife plays a larger role in the story than Kersey's. Also, this movie's ending, although ambiguous, is much more satisfying than Bronson's self-mocking wink at the end of DEATH WISH.