Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 21, 1990 TAG: 9003212028
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Mike Mayo
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The restorers did some of their best work on \ "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly." The images on this new edition are startlingly vivid and sharp. The picture looks so good that it almost makes up for the difference in size between video and theater screens.
This 1966 film was, of course, the third and most ambitious of Sergio Leone's "Man with No Name" trilogy.
The first one, "A Fistful of Dollars," was a remake of Kurasawa's "Yojimbo." The second, "For a Few Dollars More," was a dream-like story of revenge and greed. Both were marked by archetypal characters, exaggerated violence and memorable music by Ennio Morricone. The two films were wildly successful and established Clint Eastwood as a star.
Leone pulled out all the stops on "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly." It's a long film filled with memorable scenes and moments: Tuco (Eli Wallach) buying the pistol, the long walk across the desert, the evacuation of the town as artillery fire lands closer and closer, blowing up the bridge that the Union and Confederate armies have been fighting over, Tuco's bath, Tuco's dizzying run through the graveyard and the extended three-way showdown.
While Lee Van Cleef and Clint Eastwood try to be more laconic, stoic and flinty-eyed than each other, Wallach steals the film.
By the third or fourth viewing, the fragmented plot actually begins to make sense, but then, telling a clear logical story wasn't Leone's objective. He's telling a romantic tale about larger-than-life, deliberately unrealistic characters. Reflecting the unsettled times in which it was made, this is a story about the failure of established government and religion. All of the military and religious leaders are either physically disabled or powerless.
In Leone's fantasy West, individuals can depend only on themselves. Or as Eastwood puts it in his famous line to Tuco, "You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig."
"The Good, The Bad and The Ugly" was released as the genre was fading, but it remains an operatic, overblown, glorious nutcase of a western that's still a lot of fun to watch.
William Wyler's "The Big Country" was released at the height of the western's popularity in 1958. Its reproduction on videotape isn't quite as sharp as Leone's film, but that probably reflects the different times when they were made. This version looks much better than many of the faded, washed-out prints that have been shown on television recently.
On this tape, the colors are bright, and the restorers have done a good job of scanning the wide screen to keep the important action in focus. Films made in Cinemascope and other wide-screen processes don't translate well to the proportions of a TV screen. A quarter to a third of the action on either side is lost. That's why you can see only one of the participants in the climactic shoot-out of "Silverado" and why you can't see Alfred Hitchcock at all when Cary Grant turns to look at him on the bus in "To Catch a Thief."
That problem doesn't arise much in "The Big Country" because this story is so carefully focused on individual characters. When Wyler does pull the camera back to reveal the size of the landscape, almost invariably the characters are dwarfed by it. In the key scenes, they are close to the camera.
The characters make this one worth a second or third look. Wyler and his writers (five are given credit, including novelist Jessamyn West) stay away from traditional good guys and bad guys. Instead, this story of feuding families is filled with unusual conflicts. All the characters rub each other the wrong way. No one is completely right or completely wrong. Even the two leads, played by Gregory Peck and Jean Simmons, are relatively powerless.
The supporting cast could not be better. Burl Ives won an Oscar for his commanding performance as the rough-hewn Rufus Hannassey. His opening speech - a brilliant scene where he crashes a party - is a true show-stopper. Charlton Heston is excellent in an important supporting role and Chuck Connors manages to give some depth and humanity to what could have been a stereotyped cowardly villain. Carol Baker does a fine pouty impersonation of a spoiled rich girl still overly attached to daddy, who's well played by Charles Bickford.
Jerome Moross' terrific score deserves mention, too.
The other "big" westerns of that era - "Shane," "High Noon," "Giant" - may have better reputations, but "The Big Country" has aged gracefully. If it's been a while since you've seen it, or if you've been frustrated by the worn-out and chopped-up versions you've seen on commercial TV, take a look at this tape. It won't disappoint.
\ New releases this week\ Casualties of War:***\ Starring Michael J. Fox, Sean Penn. RCA/Columbia. Directed by Brian De Palma Studio, 115 min. Rated R for extreme violence and language.
Brian DePalma, always an impressive stylist, has apparently graduated from slick, somewhat lurid escapism to more substantial movies.
"Casualties of War" could be construed as an atonement for the mixtures of sex and violence ("Dressed to Kill," "Body Double") that stirred up DePalma's detractors.
It sets out to be a powerful movie about conscience and moral disintegration during wartime and succeeds more through the subject matter and DePalma's talent as a stylist than through a penetrating exploration of the characters involved. DePalma's moral outrage is in full throttle here as he delivers moments of heart-wrenching horror in this movie based on an actual occurrence.
Fox plays Eriksson, a relative newcomer to Vietnam. During the opening moments of the movie, Eriksson's life is saved by Meserve, his sergeant. As played by Sean Penn, Meserve is a battle-wise veteran who loses any semblance of moral restraint during the last month of his tour of duty. Fox is the movie's moral voice and he's a strong one, playing a feisty soldier who can adapt to the war in general, but not to something that his conscience won't tolerate. More problematic as far as the movie's credibility is concerned are the men who commit the crime, who are mostly reduced to movie stereotypes. - Chris Gladden
\ An Innocent Man: ** 1/2\ Starring Tom Selleck, F. Murray Abraham, Laila Robins. Directed by Peter Yates. Touchstone. Rated R for violence and language. Director Peter Yates may be guilty of formula movie-making with "An Innocent Man." But he gives the movie a hard edge that's persuasive even when the plot isn't.
Selleck plays Jimmy Rainwood, a decent, hard-working guy whose wife Kate (Laila Robins) is a decent, hard-working woman. They make a happy couple with a bright future until their life is disrupted by two cops who are as stupid as they are crooked.
David Rasche and Richard Young play Parnell and Scalise, two hot-shot narcotics detectives, who like nothing more than violently busting a big drug deal and then stealing part of the dope. They mistakenly crash into the Rainwood home and shoot Jimmy. But they plant a gun and some cocaine and Rainwood goes to the joint.
"An Innocent Man" is part revenge thriller, part prison movie.
It's at its most convincing and suspenseful during Rainwater's prison stay, and it's here that Selleck does some of his best acting to date. Tough dialogue, brutal action and good supporting performances make the prison segment taut, terrifying and claustrophobic.
It is an entertaining hard-boiled yarn that does what it sets out to do with a minimum of flashiness. Yates keeps the action lean and mean, just what this kind of genre movie requires. - Chris Gladden
by CNB