Reeling Backward: "Torn Curtain" (1966)

I've been making an effort the last couple of years to catch up on Alfred Hitchcock's earlier films before he came to Hollywood and experienced his heyday in the 1940s through early 1960s. But the truth is I haven't seen any of his later movies.

I'm not a big fan of "The Birds" and consider "Marnie" to be an utter embarrassment. So I have sort of unconsciously lumped all his post-"Psycho" filmography into a mental bin I dismissed as unworthy.

"Torn Curtain" isn't going to be confused with Hitch's best stuff, but I was surprised at how effective and tense it was. His 50th feature, it was fairly savaged by critics of the time, who said Hitch's style was worn out, though it did decent box office.

The mercurial, mischievous director was eager to do another spy film because of the popularity of the James Bond flicks, and he even received the biggest movie star in the world at the time, Julie Andrews, to play in it.

Truth was Hitchcock didn't want Julie Andrews or her co-star Paul Newman, preferring Eva Marie Saint and Cary Grant, who paired nicely in "North by Northwest." But Grant was retired and Saint deemed not a big enough star anymore. Despite the director's reserve, Newman and Andrews make an excellent onscreen couple, playing an American nuclear scientist defecting to East Berlin and his asssistant-slash-fiance.

The movie opens with the two rollicking in bed together, missing breakfast and then lunch in favor of some extended lovemaking. The very fact that a mainstream movie showed an unmarried woman and man in bed together tells you something about how much cinematic mores had changed by 1966.

The movie has two distinct halves. In the first, Michael Armstrong (Newman) defects to the Soviet bloc with his lady love, Sarah Sherman (Andrews), tagging along uninvited. He attempted to give her the slip at a Copenhagen science conference, but she followed him on the plane and is horrified to discover that he is going behind the Iron Curtain. Their relationship is strained and in danger of shattering.

In the second, he reveals to her what we suspected all along: he's not actually a traitor betraying America's nuclear secrets to the enemy, but doing quite the opposite: trying to pick the brain of a legendary German scientist, Gustav Lindt (Ludwig Donath), for the last piece of the puzzle to building a missile defense system that would give the U.S. the advantage in the nuclear Cold War.

Their relationship blooms again, just in time to spend the last hour of the movie being chased around by the Stasi security forces. From their kiss-kiss in a park, it's all chase-chase to the end, with a little bang-bang thrown in.

Hitchcock's camera work (photography by John F. Warren) is notable for its extreme close-ups of its stars, especially when their faces are close for kissing or conversation. It's distracting at first, seeing a star from eyebrows to chin, but the smothering effect also draws us into their passion.

He also uses the same technique for what is probably the film's most famous scene: in which Armstrong and a German farmer's wife (who's secretly part of the resistance) beat, stab and wrestle his "security guide," aka shadow, to death, finally doing him in by forcing his head into an unlit gas oven.

It's an astonishing sequence of grunts, sweat and blood, the flip side -- and more overt depiction -- of Michael and Sarah's canoodling.

The thug is Gromek (Wolfgang Kieling), a leering presence in a black leather jacket who prattles annoyingly about his days living in New York City, no doubt as a Soviet-sponsored spy. In a classic bit of Hitchcockian misdirection, Gromek perpetually struggles with a lighter that won't produce a flame. I figured this would prelude some fireball-related demise, though in the end it's the lack of a spark that ends him.

The movie (screenplay by Brian Moore from a story by Willis Hall and Keith Waterhouse) contains a rogues' gallery of interesting, colorful characters. Günter Strack plays Manfred, the well-coiffed East German scientist who recruited Michael and clearly has romantic designs on Sarah. Mort Mills is the spy chief helping them out, posing first as a farmer and then a travel agent.

David Opatoshu is Jacobi, who oversees an operation in which the underground runs a fake bus route from Leipzig to Berlin, complete with fake passengers. It runs 10 minutes ahead of the real bus, and during the trip through the countryside they're repeatedly delayed, to the point the real bus is in danger of catching up and revealing their ruse.

Leave it to Hitch to make a bus ride a nail-biter.

Tamara Toumanova has a fun role as a famous aging ballerina who is repeatedly (and inadvertently) dissed by the spy contretemps. She is first miffed when she gets off her plane and sees a horde of photographers waiting, puffs herself up for a picture, only to learn they are there for Michael's defection, which the East Germans are playing up for propaganda.

Later when Michael and Sarah are on the run, they hide in the theater where she is performing. She spots him from the stage, recognizing him from his photo being splashed in every newspaper, and calls the authorities, leading to another terrifically tense scene as the couple try to think of an escape with police closing in from every side during the performance. The haughty artiste gets her own comeuppance in the end.

By far the weirdest and most indelible supporting charactger is Countess Kuchinska, a displaced Polish noblewoman played by Lila Kedrova. Ostentatiously dressed, she is desperate to emigrate to the U.S. Spotting Michael on the street, she politely blackmails them in return for her help, which they didn't actually need.

She bemoans the terrible coffee and cigarettes of the Eastern bloc, and pleads with them to be her official sponsors to emigrate in exchange for showing them to the post office where they will meet their next contact (a location they had already discovered on their own). It never seems to occur to her that two American spies would not be looked upon favorably on her visa application.

A pathetic, cloying figure, Kuchinska makes a scene wherever she goes, hurts their cause more than she helps, though in the end she proves a figure of stouter resolve than anyone imagined.

"Torn Curtain" is also notable for another, sad reason: it marked the end of the long and fruitful partnership between Hitchcock and composer Bernard Hermann. Hitch rejected Hermann's creepy, languid score and, after the latter refused to change his, ordered up a jumpier one by John Addison, dooming the relationship. I have a copy of Hermann's rejected score, and I can't imagine why Hitchcock disliked its eerie beauty.

Reportedly the studio wanted something jazzier and more modern. During their fallout, Hermann reportedly told off the director: "Look, Hitch, you can't outjump your own shadow. And you don't make pop pictures. What do you want with me? I don't write pop music."

Hitchcock, whose career was (imho) damaged by being put upon a pedestal by the French critics, who hailed him as an auteur, spent much of his last two decades worrying about being seen as old and out-of-touch. Instead of following his inner voice, he fretted about his films being derided, leading inevitably to what he feared most coming to pass.

At least, that's my working theory. I quite enjoyed "Turn Curtain" as a well-crafted bit of old school suspense. Maybe I'll need to go deeper into Hitch's last days to see if I'm right.

Video review: "Cars 3"

“Cars 3” didn’t do too well at the box office compared to other Pixar animated flicks, so in all likelihood it will stand as the last in the series. I’m fine with that.

The movie is a conscious closing of the loop, as brash race car Lightning McQueen (voice of Owen Wilson) finds himself in the same tires… er, shoes as his mentor, Doc Hudson. He’s now the old racer struggling against upstarts in a sport that no longer seems to want him around.

Armie Hammer provides the voice of Jackson Storm, a “next gen” racer who’s fast, relentless and uncaring. Soon Storm clones have booted all of Lightning’s old opponents to the curb, and he survives a major crash not unlike the one that ended Doc’s career. He goes into a rehab program at a fancy modern facility where his chirpy trainer, Cruz Ramirez (Cristela Alonzo), embraces him as her “senior project.”

It’s more wistful and contemplative than its two predecessors, particularly the fun-but-zany “Cars 2,” which was essentially one long Benny Hill skit with hillbilly tow truck Mater front and center. This film is about the aging process, how we deal with rough patches in life, and passing the torch to a worthy successor. In the most moving sequence, Lightning looks up some of Doc’s old friends to find inspiration.

There is still plenty of time for racing action and goofy fun, such as when Lightning finds himself caught in a backwoods demolition derby against a killer school bus, Miss Fritter.

“Cars 3” doesn’t have the pure entertainment horsepower of the first two movies, but it’s sadder and wiser.

Bonus features are excellent, though most of them come with the Blu-ray edition. The DVD has a feature-length commentary track featuring director Brian Fee and his creative team, plus a short animated film, “Lou.”

Upgrade to the Blu-ray and you add a new mini-movie featuring that smashmouth bus, “Miss Fritter’s Racing Skoool.” There are also five deleted scenes and eight featurettes touching on various aspects of production, including “My First Car,” an illustrated gallery of cast and crew talking about their first vehicle.

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Review: "Cars 3"

“Cars 3” is a movie of full circles coming round.

It’s amusing, glitzy entertainment for kids that also ponders what happens when we get old and start to worry about life passing us by. We’re going so fast, and suddenly you find yourself sitting in a pasture, unsure if you drove yourself in or were put out.

I can’t think of a film series that better incorporates the death of one of its stars into the core themes of the story. Paul Newman was the beating heart of the original “Cars” as the cantankerous Doc Hudson, who sets aside his ancient grievances against the sport of racing to coach a cocky young upstart, Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson).

In a lot of ways, it was as much Doc’s story as McQueen’s.

Doc is very much on Lightning’s mind as the film opens, using his lessons and inspiration to become a living legend himself. He’s essentially traded places with Strip “The King” Weathers, the aging champion from the first movie, having to deal with an upstart rookie trying to take his crown. Except in this case, it’s not just one opponent but the entire field of competitors.

Jackson Storm (Armie Hammer) is a “next gen” racer, and looks the part -- few curves, efficiently unpretty, a sleek personification of function over form. He drives like an automaton, straight down the groove, no risks and lots of speed. He also has little patience for old-timers like McQueen, brusquely shoving the old generation to the side.

Soon, all the older racers have been replaced by Storm clones, and Lightning suffers a major crash just like Doc did. Can he come back and race again, or has his time gone by?

Brian Fee, a Pixar animation veteran, ably takes the director’s chair for the first time, with a screenplay by Mike Rich, Pixar do-everything-guy Bob Peterson and Kiel Murray, one of the writers on the original “Cars.” Their entry into the franchise stands out from the other two movies by taking some left turns we don’t expect.

It doesn’t quite have the emotional horsepower of the first one or the dizzy Mater-centric antics of “Cars 2.” But I think most people, young and old, will find it a satisfying iteration – possibly conclusion? – of the saga.

It is a little disappointing to mostly leave the Radiator Springs crew behind this time, including Mater (Larry the Cable Guy), Sally (Bonnie Hunt), Luigi (Tony Shalhoub), Ramone (Cheech Marin) and the rest. But they make a few appearances, and there are new faces.

Most notable is Cruz Ramirez (Cristela Alonzo), a hyperactive young “race trainer” who wants to whip Lightning back into shape with computer simulations and kooky psychological motivations. She sees him as her “senior project,” and prescribes lots of naps and an oil drip pan as needed. Watching over is Sterling (Nathan Fillion), the seemingly benevolent new owner of the Rust-Eze race sponsors.

(The Magliozzi brothers of NPR “Car Talk” fame, who did the voices of their animated counterparts, get their own nice little sendoff.)

And there’s a sentimental journey to Doc’s old dirt-track stomping grounds, where Lighting encounters the mentor of his mentor, Smokey (a pitch-perfect Chris Cooper), and a few other old-school racers. Plus a madcap dash through a demolition derby where Miss Fritter (Lea DeLaria), a smashmouth school bus, always steals the show.

You can quibble with some of the particulars of the plot, including a rather… novel take on racing rules that I don’t think NASCAR is going to incorporate anytime soon. But its heart is never far from the right place.

I should mention that Newman’s character and voice appear in this movie, flashbacks from the original but also a few lines of dialogue that were recorded and never used. It’s great to hear that beautiful gravel baritone again, and we learn some things about Doc we didn’t know. It’s like hearing new stories about your departed father, told by people who adored him.

Happily, this means that “Cars 3” will stand as Newman’s final official film credit. A lifelong car nut, I don’t think he would mind.

The movie itself is a lot like classic cars. They don’t have the power they used to. But oh, to watch them go by…

Reeling Backward: "From the Terrace" (1960)

"From the Terrace" is not particularly well remembered, but it's an interesting example of midcentury melodrama. It addresses the topics of marital infidelity and divorce in a bold way you generally didn't see in that era. It casts a gimlet eye on the accepted practice of putting business ahead of love and family.

And it stars husband-and-wife team Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in the third of their 10 onscreen appearances together.

Newman plays Alfred Eaton, a young go-getter from a fractured family determined to make his own high place in the world. Woodward plays Mary St. John, the unobtainable daughter of an old-money clan whom he pursues relentlessly and then abandons for his work once they're married.

Though Mary is ostensibly the villain of the piece, it's a much more nuanced portrait of an unraveling marriage, with Alfred bearing an equal share of the responsibility for its descent from joy to neglect to poison. He consciously puts her in a distant second place behind his job, first as co-founder of his own aeronautics company and then as worker drone for a prominent financier.

At first Mary defends Alfred from her friends' taunts about abandoning her. But as time marches on she grows more resentful, insisting that she has a right to socialize while he's away for months at a time -- and emotionally absent even when home. Eventually she reignites an affair with Jim Roper (Patrick O'Neal), the dashing doctor to whom she was engaged before Alfred stole her away.

By the end she's a shrewish harpy gleefully throwing her cheating in her husband's face. Her idea of rapprochement is offering an open marriage where they can each sleep with whomever they want. Woodward is icy and effective in the role, a platinum blonde hairdo offsetting her less-than-angelic demeanor.

It's an atypical performance for Newman, who at this stage of his career usually played earnest young men or charming rascals. Here he's a repressed sort, a guy who secretly craves the affection he never got from his parents. It's essentially a portrait of a hero who falls onto the wrong path. He quickly realizes his mistake, but rather than correct it he's determined to carry through no matter what.

He ends up as rather a grim figure, hectored on the job by Old Man MacHardie (Felix Aylmer) and harried at home by Mary. Indeed, the film's middle section can be rather hard to get through, and at just shy of 2½ hours the movie is much longer than it needs to be. It was written and directed by Mark Robson ("Champion," "The Inn of the Sixth Happiness"), based on the novel by John O'Hara.

Some of the best stuff is at the beginning, when Alfred returns home from World War II. His father is a nouveau riche owner of a Pennsylvania steel mill. Terrifically played by Leon Ames, Samuel Eaton is an old-school tyrant who emotionally checked out of the family a dozen years earlier when his older son died of cystic fibrosis. The great Myrna Loy plays the mother, who's turned to drink and the arms of another man for comfort. One of her favorite habits is to board a train to anywhere and drink herself into a stupor.

Expecting a hero's welcome, Alfred returns to a lost mother and a father who's openly hostile to his presence. He rejects dad's assumption that he'll follow into the family business, instead opting to establish a private plane manufacturing company with Lex Porter, an old-money pal (a superbly WASP-y George Grizzard).

Samuel tries to warn his son that unless he puts up half the seed money himself, Alfred will always be treated as the lesser partner -- a prediction that turns out exactly so. It's his way of offering the dough himself, but there's too much pride and resentment between them for the message to get through. The elder Eaton is too used to keeping the younger in his place.

"You're not big enough to even walk in my shadow. And you never will be!" he thunders.

Perhaps the film's most pivotal scene takes place when father Eaton tries to explain to Alfred why he's been so uncaring toward him. It's a soul in pain reaching out, trying to make amends. But he loses himself in a quagmire of regret over his lost boy, which Alfred interprets as another brick in the wall of shunning him. Dad suffers a heart attack and dies soon after.

Of course, the lesson is that Alfred's father only cared about wealth and status, and it brought him to a low end. But the son can't see it, and like so many sons with chips on their shoulders, unwittingly starts down the same path himself.

The film picks up again in the third act with the introduction of the character of Natalie Benzinger, the daughter of a mine owner who comes to represent for Alfred all the opportunities he eschewed for a life of warmth and family. They begin a tentative affair while he's assessing the mine for purchase by MacHardie.

At first Natalie rejects his overtures because he's married, but comes to recognize the streak of nobility and empathy under Alfred's hard, crusty exterior. She's played by Ina Balin, who received a Golden Globe nomination for her resonant performance.

There are too many twists and turns of the plot in "From the Terrace" -- including the machinations of MacHardie's son-in-law, Creighton Duffy (Howard Caine), whose business affairs are tied up with Alfred's old buddy Lex. He tries to blackmail Alfred with evidence of his affair with Natalie.

It's a classic example of filmmakers adapting a novel and failing to pare down the characters and narrative to the beating heart of the tale. But there's still a vibrant pulse in this film, an odd mix of dourness and elation that subtly encourages us to seek our own bliss.

Reeling Backward: "The Verdict"

If there's a greater actor in a better role than Paul Newman in "The Verdict," I haven't met it.

This 1982 legal drama directed by Sidney Lumet is one of my cinematic touchstones, a film that grabbed me at an early age and profoundly affected the way I approached movies. It still retains a strong hold on me and I think about it often, even though I doubt I've seen it more than a total of three times.

Watching it as a precocious preteen bedazzled by Jedis and replicants, "The Verdict" opened me up to a universe of serious films where the characters didn't do much more than talk. It's an incredibly spare film, lacking big showy moments, and with barely any music to push or pull the audience into easy emotional catharsis.

Even Frank Galvin's courtroom speeches are rambling and unfocused -- he comes across less as an attorney presenting a compelling legal argument than a stumblebum hanging out on the corner lamenting the woes of the world to no one in particular. It's hardly the fiery "you're out of order!" brimstone you usually see.

To call Frank down on his luck would be to presume that he ever had any.

When we first meet him, Lumet and screenwriter David Mamet (on just his second screenplay) go out of their way to depict him as a lowlife ambulance-chaser. He plays pinball with grim concentration, taking a breakfast of a beer with a raw egg cracked into it before heading out on his daily rounds. This mostly consists of following the funeral notices in the paper for potential cases. He bribes the morticians to introduce him to the bereaved family as an old friend, so he can slip them his card and drum up a wrongful death lawsuit.

We learn he's only handled four cases over the last three years, all of them out-of-court settlements. And that Frank had a brush with the law, nearly losing his law license for jury tampering a decade ago. Since then he's been riding the downward spiral, with retired lawyer friend Mickey Morrissey (Jack Warden) throwing him a case from time to time, and peeling him off his office floor when Frank's been on one of his benders.

The latest is a good one, a real "money-maker," Mickey promises. But Frank can't even remember the case when Mickey brings it up, 10 days before trial. He pulls himself together enough to meet with the clients, the sister and brother-in-law (Roxanne Hart and James Handy) of a woman who fell into a coma after going to the hospital to give birth and being given the wrong anesthetic. (Interestingly, the film never mentions what happened to the baby.)

The hospital is owned by the Archdiocese of Boston, and the calculating-but-not-uncaring Bishop (Edward Binns) offers Frank a $210,000 settlement. For his standard one-third fee, that would garner him a neat $70,000 (about $170k in today's dollars) -- enough to keep Frank flush in cheap cigarettes and breath spray for years. But he refuses, and insists on taking the case to trial.

Why? Part of the film's greatness is never definitively answering this question. Clearly Frank is deeply impacted when he visits the woman in the hospital, curled up in a permanent fetal position, and takes Polaroid photos of her. Lumet cleverly doesn't allow his camera to show her from the same angles as Frank's pictures, which bring her sad plight into focus -- for us and for him.

His clients don't want to go to trial. They make clear they're looking to recover $50,000, which is the amount a local facility wants as an endowment to take over perpetual care of the woman. The sister and brother-and-law want to move out west and wash their hands of the burden. So why does Frank turn down the settlement -- nearly coming to blows with the sister's husband when he finds out?

From a legal standpoint, his case is a mess. He only has the testimony of one over-the-hill country doctor (Joe Seneca), who turns out to be black to top things off. It's funny and sad to think about how just three decades ago, having an African-American doctor as your star witness was seen as undermining the case.

Of course, Frank stumbles into luck with a last-minute witness, an admitting nurse who was bullied into changing the medical form to cover up the doctor's mistake (played by Lindsay Crouse employing a full-on Boston blarney accent). He does so in part by breaking into a post office box to get an uncooperative woman's phone records.

Frank sees this as his last shot for ... well, not greatness, but at least legitimacy. After he wins this case, the final scene of him reposing in his office, refusing to answer a phone call he knows he oughtn't to, suggests that Frank will resume practicing the law with something like resolve. He'll probably keep boozing, and probably handle lowlife cases, but he'll be an attorney again.

About that phone call. Charlotte Rampling plays Laura, a divorced woman who takes Frank up like a lost child off the street and becomes his lover/confessor, bucking him up when things look bad. Certainly it's not because a burned-out 55-year-old drunk has any business nabbing her interest. Even his initial come-on lacks embellishment: "My God, you are some beautiful woman."

Secretly she's being paid off by Frank's opposing counsel, Ed Concannon (James Mason, in pure aristocratic arrogance mode), to feed him information. When Frank finds out, he belts her ... hard.

I'd like to talk about that punch. It was the thing I most remembered from seeing the movie, when Mr. Movie Star Paul Newman punches out a willowy-looking woman. There's a long, silent pause before he does so, as they look at each other. Wordlessly, the look of betrayal on his face is reflected in her own, as she realizes the gravity of what she's done.

The look on Newman's face is just classic. It's the expression of a beat-down dog who's just had his last bone taken away from him, and he's finally riled up and mad. He's ready to fight. Frank has lost everything -- his status, his wife, his friends -- and here is this woman gnawing away the last tatters of his dignity.

Violence against women is repugnant, but in the film's context it feels totally justified.

Aside from Newman, the performances are roundly solid. Rampling has a certain reserved, damaged quality -- we later learn she used to be a lawyer herself and is looking to get back in the game. Concannon is the real twisted soul, taking a case he could easily win and putting a couple of fingers on the scales of justice. I wonder if it ever occurred to Concannon that he is engaging in the sort of activity that nearly cost Frank his law license?

Warden is his usual blowsy, hard-talking presence. Seneca has a quiet dignity as a man who earns most of his livelihood testifying against other doctors in court. He acknowledges his vocation but fervently affirms the validity of it. Wesley Addy also has a small, subtle role as the accused doctor.

Milo O'Shea, who recently passed, is just terrific as Judge Hoyle, who handles Frank like a wayward student hawking spitballs in the back of his classroom. In his heart of hearts, he'd rather just see Frank thrown out in the the wilderness, but he does his duty anyway. Not without prejudice, however -- it's quite clear that the judge favors the defendant, and works to undermine Frank's case.

Yet, when the surprise witness has just undermined Concannon's case, he and the judge have this great exchange of stares where O'Shea peers out from beneath those marvelous caterpillar eyebrows with a look that says, "You're on your own, me bucko."

That's one of the things that dazzled me when I recently watched "The Verdict" again -- how it makes every big moment bigger by going smaller. In its lean, small, often wordless and soundless way, "The Verdict" is a piece of true greatness.

Reeling Backward: "Slap Shot" (1977)

Paul Newman has commented that he did not swear much before making "Slap Shot," a 1977 sports comedy that was considered very raunchy for its time. Newman's character and most others drop the F-bomb liberally, and also spew epithets about gay men and women that would be considered very un-P.C. today. Supposedly Newman found much of that language creeping into his everyday speech.

A modest hit at the time, "Slap Shot" has gone on to cult film status, particularly among sports writers who regard it as one of the best sports comedies ever, and fans who call it one of the finest hockey movies of all time (which isn't saying that much since there aren't that many of them.)

For me what makes it stand out is that it's one of the few sports movies that is openly contemptuous of its sport, or at least the modern state of it. Professional hockey in the view of screenwriter Nancy Dowd has devolved into a shallow show of grandstanding and violence, in which the blood-dripped spectacle is more important than the skating or the scoring. It remains the one mainstream team sport in which fighting between players is tacitly encouraged.

Director George Roy Hill seems to have gone out of his way to show as little hockey action as possible, focusing instead on the mayhem and the fisticuffs. In defiance of every sports movie cliche, the big championship game at the end is decided by forfeit.

The result is both very funny and very depressing, at least if you're a hockey purist.

The film is one of those seemingly light comedies that has a strong vein of social commentary running just underneath the surface. The fans of the inept Charlestown Chiefs only get excited about their home team when they resort to goon tactics. In this sense, "Slap Shot" is thematically closer to "Network" than "Semi-Tough" or "The Longest Yard."

It's more akin to "North Dallas Forty" than anything else, and I'd speculate there was cross-pollination between the two creations. Peter Gent's book came out in 1973, before Dowd wrote her screenplay based on her brother's experiences in minor league hockey, but the film version of "Forty" came out two years after "Slap Shot." Indeed, Dowd is reported to have served as an uncredited writer on the football film.

(The Oscar-winner for "Coming Home" enjoyed a low-profile career where she often wrote uncredited or under a pseudonym.)

"Slap Shot" was the third and final pairing of Hill and Newman, after the phenomenal success of "Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid" and "The Sting." He also made another film, the underrated "The Great Waldo Pepper," with Newman's co-star in those other two films, Robert Redford. The easy, loose feel of Newman's performance is probably due to their well-established rapport.

Newman plays Reg Dunlop, a once-great player eking out an existence as player-coach of the Chiefs. When the local mill is scheduled to close, it becomes clear that the team's mysterious owner plans to disband it. Reg, who is cagey if not necessarily intelligent, comes up with the idea of making the team viable to be sold to a new owner by amping up the violence.

The impetus for this new tactic is the arrival of the Hanson brothers, a trio of young hockey enforcers who have become the most enduring iconography of the film. The brothers' thick black glasses and long hair became their trademark, both in the movie and real life. They were based on an actual trio of brothers who were hockey players, and in fact two of the three were played by the actual siblings. The third couldn't appear because he had been called up to the NHL. Many former and current pro hockey players also acted in the movie.

The Hansons are angelic bruisers, who play with toy cars when not in the rink and dole out punches and brutal take-downs when in it. There seems to be no malice in them, being perfectly polite and respectful of their elders. To them, that's simply the way hockey is played. It's an opportunity to hit people without the fear of arrest ... or at least less chance of it.

In a couple of famous scenes, the Hansons start a fight when the teams are doing their warm-up skate, and are the victims of a reprisal as soon as the puck is dropped. Perhaps the funniest moment in the film is during the national anthem, when a referee clued into the Hansons' tactics screams at him not to try any of that stuff on his rink. "I'm trying to listen to the fucking song!" the lead Hanson retorts, and this sideways appeal to patriotism shuts the other man up.

After some initial hesitation, the other members of the Chiefs happily join the punch-drunk party, especially when they start racking up wins as a result. The one player who won't go along is Ned Braden (Michael Ontkean), the team's clean-cut leading scorer. The noble knight-errant of the story, Ned refuses to sully the purity of the game ... at least until it serves his purposes.

Things get so bad that Reg starts openly hitting on Ned's deeply depressed wife Lily (Lindsay Crouse), who dresses like a man, drinks like a fish and drives like a hellion. He's only doing it in hopes of riling Ned up, but is nonplussed when his wooing works and Lily actually shows up on his doorstep with dog and suitcase in tow.

Reg foists her off on his estranged wife (Jennifer Warren), who he thinks will serve as a model of how happy a woman can be when she gives her hockey-playing husband the boot. Part of the comedic gold of Reg's machinations is that he genuinely feels like he's doing everyone a favor. He's really a manipulative mook, but he's so gosh darn charming at it.

The roll call of supporting players is rich and deep, including Strother Martin as the Chiefs' bow-tied, conniving PR man; M. Emmet Walsh as the local newspaper hockey beat reporter, who's always "trying to capture the spirit of the thing" but usually getting conned  into carrying Reg's water; Swoosie Kurtz as an uptight hockey wife; Melinda Dillon as an enemy player's lovesick wife who has a fling with Reg; and Jerry Houser as a player who thinks Reg's goon philosophy is not incompatible with the New Age harmonies of yoga and meditation to which he's attuned.

Personally, I'm not much of a hockey fan. It's too violent, but if you took the violence out everyone would realize how profoundly boring it is. I think the greatest trick of "Slap Shot" is undermining the state of hockey while mining it for comedy gold.

3.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "Hombre" (1967)

Paul Newman, of course, looks about as much like an American Indian as I do an Aboriginal chieftain. Even as half-breed Apache John Russell, it's an entirely unconvincing portrait -- the bad wig and bandana he wears briefly during the opening scene doing nothing to help.

But Russell is a compelling anti-hero in "Hombre," notable for two reasons. First, he's a powerful advocate for a revisionist look at how Indians are portrayed in Western films, delivering a stern uppercut to white characters who look disdainfully down on his people. To the snooty upper-crust woman who talk in horrified tone about seeing some Apaches eat dog meat, he tells her she's never known real hunger. "You'd eat dog, and fight for the bones."

And that line gives a clue to the other aspect of the character: He is one of the unkindest, most unlikable men  you're apt to meet in a mainstream film. He kills without enjoyment, but he does so with a total lack of hesitation or compassion. Russell is not above shooting a man in the back after he's come to parley if he thinks the other a threat.

Lots and lots of men of this ilk are portrayed in movies, particularly Westerns, but their grimness is always a front for a fairly typical heroic outlook ... or, at the very least, their severity is eventually triumphed by altruistic feelings. Think of the Man with No Name, whose trilogy was recently profiled in this space. Clint Eastwood wears the visage of a selfish killer, but almost from the get-go he's looking to help out the downtrodden.

Not John Russell. Newman's steely performance makes quite clear that he gives not a fig for the Caucasians (and one Mexican) with whom he shares a stagecoach. when they find out he's half-Indian, Russell is forced to ride up top with the driver. When the coach is stopped and robbed by bandits -- one of them hidden among the passengers -- Russell is ready to let them all die so long as he's not harmed.

In the end, of course, Russell does sacrifice himself for the greater good. But it's damn clear he's not happy about doing it. It's an act of heroism, but executed with a sneer and resignation rather than a kind heart.

Elmore Leonard must hold some kind of record for most novels turned into films, due in part to the fact that he leapt through genres gleefully. Harriet Frank Jr. and Irving Ravetch adapted the book for the screenplay, turning in a spare, economical script with surprisingly little dialogue. Russell himself rarely speaks more than a sentence or two at a time.

Director Martin Ritt was a well-regarded journeyman who had previously worked with Newman on "Hud," "The Long, Hot Summer" and and several other pictures. Visually "Hombre" isn't terribly novel, though Ritt has a flair for extreme close-ups of faces that is in some ways reminiscent of Sergio Leone.

His real strength as a filmmaker, I think, was in eliciting sharp, strong performances from his cast. All the characters in "Hombre," from the lead to the smallest supporting role, have a resonance and authenticity that's gripping. Even a Mexican bandit (Frank Silvera) -- who's only credited as "Mexican bandit" -- gets a few choice lines and a dramatic death scene.

It's no surprise that Ritt, who scored only one Oscar nomination during his long career, saw his films garner an astonishing 11 Academy Award acting nominations, with two wins.

The plot is pretty bare, though it bears some similarities to an updated version of John Ford's classic "Stagecoach."

A party of disparate souls are packed together for a journey through dangerous lands, with one of them an outcast. Russell, who had been corralling horses in the mountains with other Apaches, learns the white father who adopted him has died and left him a boarding house. He takes one look at it and the harried, soulful woman running the place and decides to sell it for a herd of horses.

Jessie (a terrific Diane Cilento), acts as the moral conscience of the group, repeatedly trying to shame Russell into helping the others instead of just looking out for himself. Jessie has her own problems. In addition to just losing her livelihood, she proposes marriage to her boyfriend, the local sheriff Braden (Cameron Mitchell), and is told, "Not a chance." By her own reckoning she's been married, widowed, used and abused, but she has a strong sense of self and is in some ways hardier than Russell himself.

Fredric March plays Favor, an elderly professor and Indian agent who's been robbing Russell's tribe blind, carrying $12,000 in cash along with his much younger refined bride, Audra (Barbara Rush). Also along for the ride are Billy Lee (Peter Lazer) and Doris (Margaret Blye), a very young and recently married couple whose lives seem headed toward misery. Mendez (Martin Balsam) runs the coach line and is the closest thing in the world Russell has to a friend.

Last and least is Cicero Grimes, the head of the robber gang who poses as a passenger (by intimidating a soldier into giving up his ticket). Richard Boone has a splendid turn as the amoral Grimes, who's relentless and folksy at the same time. He's a loathsome man -- at one point he makes a semi-serious rape attempt on Doris -- but the movie only hits its highest gear when he's around.

3.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "Exodus"

"Exodus" is a big, sprawling (209 minutes) epic about the birth of Israel. It uses fictional characters, but infuses the production with enough historical fact to lend it a certain sense of verisimilitude.

Paul Newman plays Ari Ben Canaan, a Jewish commando responsible for transporting 611 Jewish refugees from a British internment camp on Cyprus to the land of Palestine, as it was then known. Eva Marie Saint plays Kitty Fremont, an American nurse who gets caught up in the exodus and eventually falls for Ari, in one of the most unconvincing cinematic romances I've ever seen.

The film was directed to Otto Preminger, one of the most active directors of the 1950s and '60s. It was notable that Dalton Trumbo was credited as screenwriter, since he had been blacklisted. He continued working steadily through the '50s, using other writers as fronts. "Exodus" marked the first major film in which he was given an official credit, and doing so effectively ended the blacklist. In 1960, besides "Exodus" Trumbo also wrote "Spartacus," another huge-scale epic. Not a bad year.

"Exodus" is a decent film, but its first half is stronger than its second. That deals with the actual exodus, which includes a neat bit where Ben Canaan impersonates a British officer and fools them into supplying their own trucks and crew to carry the refugees to a ship. The ship is promptly blockaded, but a hunger strike by the Jews draws world-wide attention, and eventually they are allowed to go on to Palestine.

From there, the middle section is taken up by a prison break to spring Ben Canaan's uncle, who's the leader of the Jewish terrorist organization. The last third or so deals with the United Nations vote to partition the land for a Jewish state, followed by the violent aftermath.

I should mention the strong performance by Sal Mineo as Dov Landau, a hotheaded young Jewish revolutionary. Mineo is one of those wonderful supporting actors who sometimes get forgotten with the passage of time. He was nominated for an Oscar for this film, as he was five years earlier for "Rebel Without a Cause," when he was just 16 years old. He was stabbed to death in 1976.

I have to admit that it's only in recent years that I've learned much about the founding of Israel. So "Exodus" acts as interesting document (somewhat fictionalized) of recent history that many people know little about. As a work of cinematic fiction, it's somewhat weak, but certainly an enjoyable spectacle.

2.5 stars