Reeling Backward: "The Hot Rock" (1972)

"Not me. I’ve got no choice. I’m not superstitious, and I don’t believe in jinxes, but that stone’s jinxed me and it won’t let go. I’ve been damn near bitten, shot at, peed on, and robbed. And worse is gonna happen before it’s done so I’m taking my stand. I’m going all the way. Either I get it, or it gets me!"

That's a line of dialogue from "The Hot Rock" that I'm not sure if it came out of the typewriter of screenwriter William Goldman or author Donald E. Westlake, who wrote the book. I highly suspect the former, because Goldman -- one of the most celebrated script men of all time -- has a penchant for giving main characters long-ish speeches where they more or less tell you everything you need to know about them.

That line is from Dortmunder, a career thief played by Robert Redford, talking about a massive diamond he and his team are after at the behest of an African diplomat named Dr. Amusa (Moses Gunn). Dortmunder has had a run of bad luck during his life in crime; indeed, as the story opens he's just getting out of a long prison stint.

He takes the job, even though he has every intention of taking up the plumbing trade he learned behind bars, because his brother-in-law Kelp (George Segal) convinces him to. It's fun to see Redford play a character who is inherently pessimistic and downbeat -- he even chews a special medicinal gum to soothe his pre-ulcerous stomach.

They case the museum where the diamond is held, leading to another great exchange of dialogue as he explains their likelihood of success:

Dortmunder: "It's good, and it's bad. There's a guaranteed return, and that's good. But the guarantor is Amusa, and Amusa's a rookie, and that's bad. But it's an easily transportable object, and that's good. Only it's in a rotten position in the museum, 30 steps to the quickest exit, and that's bad. And the glass over the stone, that's bad too, because that's glass with metal mixed in it, bulletproof, shatterproof. But the locks don't look impossible, three, maybe five tumblers. But there's no alarm system, and that's the worst, because that means no one's going to get lazy watching, knowing the alarm will pick up their mistakes. Which means the whole thing has got to be a diversion job, and that's good and that's bad, because if the diversion's too big, it'll draw pedestrians, and if the diversion's not big enough, it won't draw that watchman."
Kelp: "Dortmunder, I don't know where the hell you are, or what the hell you're saying. Just tell me, will you plan the job?!?"
Dortmunder: "It's what I do."

The basic joke of this comedy-caper is that the crack team of criminals are very good at what they do, but something always seems to go wrong and they keep having to steal the same diamond over and over again.

They successfully distract the guards by having their wheel man, Murch (Ron Leibman), crash a car in front of the museum and pretend to be injured, while their explosives guy, Greenberg (Paul Sand), portrays a doctor helping out. But things go awry and Greenberg is arrested after swallowing the diamond.

Then it becomes a prison break movie, with Dortmunder and the team forced to get Greenberg out. Then they learn he stashed the diamond in the holding cell at the 9th Street police station, so they have to break in there with the help of a helicopter and more diversions.

Finally, after learning Greenberg's father, a slimy attorney played by Zero Mostel, has double-crossed them all and hidden the diamond in his bank safe deposit box, they have to break into there, strong-arming the bank clerk with the help of a hypnotist.

The movie's not terribly funny, but the caper bits are really inspired and nerve-wracking. Director Peter Yates, know for "Breaking Away" and "Bullitt," has a tight feel for action scenes, while simultaneously knowing how to make each character vivid and distinct.

The film contains several notable aspects. While they're flying the helicopter to the police station, Murch -- a novice at piloting a chopper, but insisting "I can drive anything!" -- nearly crashes into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, which was then still under construction. Christopher Guest makes his film debut with a bit part as a cop at the police station.

I also thoroughly enjoyed Robert Redford in a non-golden boy role, playing a man who's a ball of nervous energy and low expectations for himself. The part at the end where Dortmunder, having successfully retrieved the diamond from inside the bank, walks away is just a treat.

He finally has a bounce in his step, and Redford practically floats above the sidewalks of New York City, almost seeming to dance his way into the arms of long-elusive success.

Reeling Backward: "Murphy's War" (1971)

"Murphy's War" has the bones of a great movie, but forgot to add the flesh.

In general, I appreciate films that are understated and minimalist, especially when tackling big subjects like war and revenge. It makes the message more powerful when the filmmakers aren't underlining and highlighting it for the audience. But director Peter Yates and screenwriter Stirling Silliphant, working from the novel by Max Catto, construct a story so lacking in relatable characters that the movie seems to exist as pure allegory.

The film is most remembered now for being the most significant of only two onscreen pairings between Peter O'Toole and his then-wife, Siân Phillips (the other being "Goodbye, Mr. Chips"). Phillips is best known to my generation as the evil Reverend Mother in "Dune" and the TV miniseries "I, Claudius." She has a wonderful, sharp-featured face with large, expressive eyes and a slightly otherworldly quality -- think Angelina Jolie without the menace.

She plays Dr. Hayden, a Quaker doctor living in a remote Venezuelan coastal village in the waning days of World War II. O'Toole plays Murphy, an Irish merchant seaman whose ship was destroyed by a German submarine. After being rescued and patched up by Hayden, he vows revenge despite the fact he is only a mechanic, and armistice could be declared any minute.

It's a treatise about one man's obsession, and yet we never really feel like we get into Murphy's head. Why exactly does Murphy feel compelled to throw away his life trying to kill the Germans? The submariners machine-gunned his crew mates to death in the water in order that no signal about their location could be given, but this is hardly the worst war crime committed by the Nazi regime.

There's a suggestion that Murphy was something of an outcast on his ship, the Mount Kyle, evidenced by the fact that when a lieutenant washes ashore badly injured, he's distressed that the only other survivor is Murphy. Later, having heard the doctor broadcast about a survivor claiming to have seen a submarine, the Germans arrive at the village and shoot the lieutenant in his hospital bed, not realizing Hayden was talking about Murphy.

This is the point at which Murphy, who had seemed content to ride out the war in exile, determines to take out the submarine. He fixes up the lieutenant's crashed seaplane with the help of Louis (Philippe Noiret), the French custodian for a distant oil company. The last half of the film is taken up with Murphy's fixing the airplane, learning to fly it through trial and error, and a bombing run on the sub using some improvised Molotov cocktails. When this fails, he commanders Louis' barge and attempts to ram the U-boat.

Eventually, both Murphy and the submariners die when the hot-headed Irishman uses the barge's hoist to pick up a live torpedo the sub shot at him from where it beached itself, and drops it on top of the submerged vessel, which had run aground. The crane crashes onto Murphy, pinning him as both barge and sub sink into the waves.

Illogic reigns throughout this scenario. Let's start with the Germans. Why in the world would the Nazis order a submarine to Venezuelan waters as their regime crumbled, under orders of strict secrecy? And then have them hide out in a river? There's no possible strategic assets in that area requiring such measures, and the U-boat skipper (Horst Janson) carries out his orders reluctantly, as if he knows they are inhumane.

And even if it were somehow necessary, having the submarine appear off the coast of the village and the men coming ashore with machine guns is surely not the way to ensure such secrecy. Hayden had already broadcast Murphy's warning, so the cat was already out of the bag, so to speak. The doctor had scoffed at Murphy's claims of a submarine, so their appearance simply turned rumor into hard fact, with hundreds of witnesses.

The flying scenes are the highlight of the film, wonderfully shot and daringly maneuvered by the stunt pilots, though they too don't really stand up to scrutiny. The idea that a shot-up airplane could be restored to flight in  a couple of days strains credulity, but not nearly as much as the notion of a man who's never been a cockpit before being to able to a get plane into the air, let alone learn to maneuver it without instruction.

Beyond these logistical matters, though, is the pervasive sense that I never felt connected to any of the characters. They seem to exist with no backstory, no motivation or inner presence. Why would the murder of an officer he hated compel Murphy to take up his fanatical revenge? Why has the beautiful Hayden chosen a life of solitary celibacy? Why is Louis so malleable and passive?

"Murphy's War" not only never answers these questions, it never even asks them.

2 stars out of four