The Last King of Scotland (2006)

Directed by Kevin MacDonald
Starring Forest Whittaker (Idi Amin) and James McAvoy (as Nicholas Garrigan)

After watching this film I left the cinema with a sense of disappointment, and as I walked to the pub I wondered why.

It wasn't just because it was too long, although I thought that the opening scenes could have been telescoped and wondered what exactly was the point of Gillian Anderson’s role.

It wasn’t the final violence, disgusting as it was. In fact I thought it was long overdue, considering the subject matter.

The editing style was a bit flashy for my taste at times and I would like to have seen some of the minor roles fleshed out more. The British diplomat perhaps, the other Ugandan doctor certainly.

I realised my problem was with the lead characters.

Forest Whitaker has been praised and honoured for his performance, justly so, for he is magnificent. But it upsets the balance of the film, which is not ‘The Life of Idi Amin’, (along the lines of All the King’s Men) but ‘The early life of Dr Nicholas Garrigan’ (along the lines of Moby Dick).

And I simply didn’t care for or about Nicholas Garrigan. As written, the character is feckless, superficial, mouthy and naïve (read ‘stupid’) and there is nothing James McAvoy can do to make him sympathetic.

I found it difficult to believe that Nicholas would have informed on the Minister of Health, having watched the violent mood swings and incipient paranoia of Amin. He is a doctor after all, and apparently quite a good one. And his affair with the dictator’s wife beggar’s belief, unless I’ve grown too old to remember the power of youthful hormones.

Whatever his motives, his behaviour overall leads to the torture and death of at least three innocent, even good, people. And yet there is no sense of Nicholas’ story being a tragic one, merely that a silly boy is lucky to get away free from the consequences of his actions.

But the film is worth seeing for Forest Whitaker, amiable buffoon and paranoid monster, moving from charm to bonhomie to suspicion to rage and back again with bewildering and terrifying ease.

I think the producers made the wrong film.

The Long Goodbye (1973)

Directed by Robert Altman. Starring Elliott Gould, Nina van Pallandt and Sterling Hayden.

Chandler purists don't like this film. And you can't blame them because Gould's Marlowe is a chain-smoking slob, forever muttering to himself, and who finally blows what little of the original's integrity he manages to display throughout the movie.

Let's ask a few questions:

Is this movie a typical example of Altman's cinematic flair?

Sure is. It's as flashy as hell. There's the usual overlapping, aimless dialogue; a scene involving reflections in a window; also great ensemble acting. Credit where it's due.

What about the acting?

Pretty good. Hayden's good, though his character is an irritating bore. Mark Rydell is not bad as a gangster boss, although probably he was just playing himself. He is a director after all. Nina is pretty pretty, for a skinny bird. Elliott is just brilliant. Never better. In every scene. He carries the film, such as it is.

Comedy?

It has moments: the thing with the cat; the thing with the trainee hood; the thing with the guard who likes to do impersonations (I liked his Walter Brennan, but Cary Grant was poor). Elliott was hilarious throughout.

Drama, intrigue, suspense?

Not a lot.

Does it reflect the era when it was made?

Definitely. The half-naked tarts in the neighbouring apartment, doing yoga and making candles, the 'aren't we so cool' condescension to the bourgeoisie, the occasional existential violence.

Character development?

Don't be silly.

Judgement?

I enjoyed it but mostly for Gould's performance and because it was a diverting new take on an old character. But it didn't work for me, and I just want to go back and watch Bogie in The Big Sleep or Dick Powell in Farewell, My Lovely (Mitchum , come to that).

But suit yourself. Makes no difference to me.

Shane (1953)

Directed by George Stevens. Starring Alan Ladd, Van Heflin, Jean Arthur, Brandon de Wilde.


SPOILER ALERT


Story

Shane rides into the Starret homestead, heading north. The purpose of this journey, if such there be, is not revealed. Joe Starrett is suspicious of what is obviously a gunman, especially when Ryker, the local big rancher simultaneously arrives with yet another demand that Starrett and the other homesteaders get out. It becomes clear that Ryker is conducting a campaign of harassment against the squatters in order to maintain the open range for his cattle.

When it becomes clear that Shane is not involved, he and Starrett become friends and this is symbolised by their joint effort to uproot a tree-stump, the scene portentously shot, edited and scored for maximum emotional impact. It's clear also that Starrett's wife, Marion, is drawn to the handsome, soft-spoken but dangerous stranger; and that their son, Joey, from whose point of view much of the drama is seen, already hero-worships him.

Shane interrupts his journey, takes off his gun and sets to work for Starrett. When Ryker loses patience and hires the black-clad, snake -like killer, Wilson, to root out the settlers at whatever cost, the crisis comes to a head. One of the farmers is murdered, 'legally', and Ryker hatches a plot to kill Starrett, a natural community leader, at a 'peace conference'. Shane intervenes and in a fight shot to parallel the earlier stump-pulling prevents the other man from attending the meeting.

He challenges Wilson in professional style and kills him, as well as Ryker. Joey, as ever observing, watches Shane re-holster with a memorable flourish, a flashy hint of pride in a job well done, then shouts out a warning that Ryker's brother has the drop on him. Shane is wounded but still kills the other man.

Then, following a little moral lecture to Joey, he rides away, heedless of the boy's pleas: 'Shane, come back . . .I love you . . .Mother loves you!'

Style

With Shane George Stevens wanted, it seems, to take a routine story and present it with fresh depth, with a combination of realism and cinematic beauty. In telling it through the eyes of a child he can merge reality into legend.

The film is set in a valley, not just beautiful but obviously fertile, the kind of place for which men would kill and die, but the small town in it and the the settlers' homes are makeshift at best, squalid at worst.

Stevens emphasises the terrifying loudness of Shane's initial display of gunfire and the brutality of Stonewall's death in a muddy street, but he also achieves the effect of Wilson's effortless and graceful mounting of his horse by running backwards film of him dismounting. The deer's antlers' framing of Shane when he first rides in is well-known, but Stevens uses the same trick when Stonewall storms out through the saloon door, smashing a hole through which we see Ryker, his brother and Wilson, silent and malevolent.

Such things draw attention to themselves and are, to my mind, a flaw to which Stevens was prone.

Themes

For all that the film ends withe defeat and the death of 'bad guys', we nonetheless leave it with a feeling of melancholy. The victory of the settlers is tempered by the departure of their glamorous champion, the fracture of a family and the passing of an heroic way of life.

The friendship of Starrett and Shane is close. Forget homosexuality, but watch their shared pleasure in uprooting the stump together and taking on a bunch of cowboys in the saloon. Starrett is a man shackled to the treadmill of his farm, with just a woman and boy for company. His other acquaintances are a group of timorous neighbours, who have no strength but what he gives them. Only Shane shares his resolution, but complements his stolidity with style and deadly skill.

But it is a doomed friendship. One is a settler, one a wanderer. And there is Marion. Their last meeting is a vicious fight for the right to face Ryker and Wilson. Shane's motive is to save Starrett's life, for the sake of Marion; Joe's to prove himself a man in her eyes. Shane, fighting unfairly for once, uses his gun to knock out his opponent before taking his gun, with obvious phallic symbolism.

Marion's contentment with life is shattered. From now on, she will know that there is a man she prefers to her husband, and whom she has now lost forever. Moreover she has blurted out her frustration with the grinding toil of her daily life. If that has improved, now that Ryker is dead, that improved has been achieved by the use of guns, something she has opposed. She knows too that Joey's fascination with guns has been reinforced by the role model of Shane.

Joey has lost his surrogate father and senses the estrangement between his parents.

Ryker is no typical villain. He is even given the opportunity to put his case, the case of all conservatives who see a world they love passing. His methods are violent, but not murderous at first. In turning to Wilson, he is betraying what moral code he has. Compare him with Ben Johnson's Calloway, a bullying cowboy eventually repelled by the murder of Stonewall.

Ryker is proud of opening up the territory, defeating Indians and rustlers and imposing his own law for want of any other. Now he sees all he has done is clear the way for others with alien values. Not only is official law approaching, with a marshal a hundred miles away, but it is brought to his doorstep by 'squatters' bearing bits of legal paper.

Shane is like Ryker, a man whose days are past, although 'not quite yet' as he says, contemplating one last job to be performed in the old-fashioned way.

We know nothing of Shane's past, but we note his lightning reaction to the cocking of a gun. He remarks with disapproval on the number of fences near Starrett's land. He says he is heading North. Where? Perhaps he is another Wilson, on his way to work for another Ryker. If he helps Starrett, it is for personal reasons, but not because of self-interest.

If John Wayne had played the part - and it has affinities with Ethan Edwards and Hondo - instead of Alan Ladd, I doubt that we would have perceived the inner sadness of the man, as he contemplates the the woman he can never have, the son who will never be born to him, the friend he must hurt, the open land he must watch carved up and the life he must lose.

Some say he is dead at the end of the film. I cannot say, but he is a dead man riding.

Conclusion

So are there any winners? As the old guy says at the end of The Magnificent Seven, 'Only the farmers have won.' Who are these farmers who have replaced the pioneering Ryker and the heroic Shane?

They are a pusillanimous crowd, only able to survive if they find a strong leader and someone not afraid to fight their fights for them. These are the men who despise Shane for initially refusing to fight, then worrying about the consequences for them when he does, who call his profession 'murder'. One is a comic Swede, one a boastful old soldier, another lazy drunk, their women plain and dowdy. Only the Starretts have class. And even they will help turn the wide open spaces into little parcels of suburbia, happily growing their 'taters' and rearing their hogs.

The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

Directed by and starring Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood carries his stardom easily and confidently. Throughout this film he wears a scruffy beard, bisected by a long scar from a sabre slash, and spits streams of tobacco juice at anything that moves. But none of this can prevent his genuine charisma shining through.

He's not afraid of competition either, happy in the past to cede the screen to a scenery-chewing Eli Wallach, an orang-utan or, here, a loquacious old Indian offering periodic morsels of off-the-wall wisdom.

An exchange, one of the best jokes, shared between Josey and Lone Watie, played by Chief Dan George, encapsulates the film's theme. Josey bemoans the fact that, ' When I get to likin' someone, they ain't around long.'

'I notice,' replies Lone, 'when you get to dislikin' someone they ain't around long neither.'

Josey Wales is a variation on The Man with No Name Character and we get more than our fair share of superhuman gunplay. In fact, for students of Western gunfights, this film provides some of the best. Look out for 'The Missouri Roll', 'the Missouri Boatride' and the strangely thoughtful scene where a young bounty-hunter is forced to back down by Josey. Rather than breathe a sigh of relief, Josey waits, knowing that pride will bring the man back. He does indeed return, to certain death.

Unlike Clint's heroes for Leone, we are given some motivation for Josey's character. Forced to watch the murder by pro-Union guerrillas of his wife and son, he arms himself with a burning hatred and a deadly skill with firearms, and sets off on a quest for vengeance.

And we see his gradual and reluctant re-integration into society. A motley band of outsiders coalesce around Josey, drawn to his strength and diverting him from his vengeance. The little community, populated by familiar Western types is both a re-creation of his own lost innocence and a restoration of a society fractured by war.

Perhaps the film is too optimistic - Josey's love for the sister of a 'Redleg', conceivably one of those who murdered his family, the pact with the Comanche chief - but interestingly this all happens outside of established society, where government is seen as a malevolent force. And amongst the spirit of reconciliation, Josey's revenge must proceed.

An episodic film, a succession of quirky characters, miniature dramas, and punctuated by well-staged gunfights. Clint's best Western, in my opinion, a fine film in the twilight of the genre's life.

Waterloo (1970)

Directed by Sergei Bondarchuk and starring Rod Steiger as Napoleon and Christopher Plummer as Wellington.

So often a war film does not give any idea of the scale of a battle. I remember watching Cromwell's recreation of the Battle of Naseby, and seeing what appeared to be a minor skirmish between a few cavalrymen, with the outcome hingeing on one simple ruse.

The logistics of creating a major battle between armies are so great, even with the assistance of CGI, that very often the film chooses to focus on the contribution of one unit. This technique also has the benefit of emphasising character and concentrates the drama. On reflection, Saving Private Ryan, for all its power and pyrotechnics, adopts this approach.

The Longest Day's huge scale is in fact a patchwork of individual human stories from all ranks of the military and civilian participants.

Movies which have made a serious effort to stage a realistic battle include Paths of Glory, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Alamo, Patton and Midway. But the best of the lot is Waterloo.

Forget character. Steiger is hammy, Plummer so understated as to be a caricature of the stiff-upper-lipped, haughty English aristocrat. There's a nod to the other ranks involved and one simple soldier is allowed to voice the one anti-war remark. Otherwise the dialogue is made up of carefully selected 'famous quotations' or vague, simplistic indications of what the hell is going on. 'He who wins the farmhouse,wins the battle.' Don't ask why.

But as a spectacle it is unsurpassed. Amid great columns of smoke, we see from a helicopter huge British squares attacked by hundreds of French cavalry, massive batteries of cannon, the sieges of Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte. Bondarchuk re-stages the famous charge of the Royal Scots Greys -'the finest cavalry in Europe, and the worst-led' - in the style of the paintings produced later, and likes it so much he lets us see it it slow motion. Napoleon staggers blindly though black smoke as the battle slips away from him.

Although the scale is huge, you won't come away from this film with much insight into how the Waterloo was won and lost. The absence of Grouchy, the arrival of Blucher, the impetuosity of Ney, the illness of Bonaparte all seem to be significant, but do not expect to know the strategies of the commanders, to understand the on-field tactics, or see individual initiative, heroics and blunders.

Nonetheless, Waterloo is magnificent. But, as they say, 'C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre' - nor a great film.