Film Review: Malone (1987)

Release Date: May 1st, 1987
Directed by: Harley Cokeliss (as Harley Cokliss)
Written by: Christopher Frank, Rudy Wurlitzer (uncredited)
Based on: Shotgun by William P. Wingate
Music by: David Newman
Cast: Burt Reynolds, Kenneth McMillan, Cynthia Gibb, Lauren Hutton, Cliff Robertson, Scott Wilson, Alex Diakun, Philip Anglim, Tracey Walter, Dennis Burkley

Orion Pictures, 92 Minutes

Review:

“I’ve got socks older than you.” – Richard Malone

While I had hoped that this would be incredibly high octane, it paled in comparison to Charles Bronson’s awesome Death Wish movies. However, it’s still a much harder movie than what Burt Reynolds typically did, so it was cool seeing him go badass vigilante in order to help a small town combat a scumbag that was trying to buy everyone out for very nefarious reasons.

This movie also had a pretty solid cast with Cliff Robertson being the villain, Scott Wilson playing a good guy mechanic and Tracey Walter a.k.a. Bob the Goon playing a total shithead that got his back blown out with one of the largest squib explosions I’ve ever seen that represented just a single bullet.

Additionally, the women in this, Cynthia Gibb and Lauren Hutton, were damn enjoyable.

This is kind of a paint-by-numbers small town protector movie, though. These things were super common back in the ’80s but also, it’s a formula that most dudes love and why shouldn’t Burt Reynolds have had his go with one?

It didn’t really offer up anything new or bold but seeing a bunch of shitheads take a bullet from an all-time masculine great like Reynolds is a treat. His rivalry with Robertson in this was pretty well managed and both men performed well with one another.

Malone is just a mindless, entertaining action movie that features an aging cool guy showing that he’s still pretty fucking cool. It’s also got a good villain, a decent supporting cast and leaves you nodding your head with the type of satisfaction only these sort of movies can bring.

Rating: 6.25/10

Vids I Dig 612: Razörfist: Rageaholic Cinema: ‘Malone’

Film Review: White Lightning (1973)

Also known as: McKlusky (working title)
Release Date: August 8th, 1973
Directed by: Joseph Sargent
Written by: William W. Norton
Music by: Charles Bernstein
Cast: Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, Bo Hopkins, Jennifer Billingsley, Diane Ladd, R.G. Armstrong, Laura Dern (uncredited)

United Artists, 101 Minutes

Review:

“I was tryin’ to save these two buddies of mine from getting knocked up by a homosexual.” – Gator McKlusky

White Lightning is a decent movie but not anything exceptional. Yet it still holds a special place in history because it’s popularity would help it to kick off a new type of film genre in the 1970s. Without this, we might not have had all those other car and trucker movies. Hell, who knows what Burt Reynolds would have done had he not carved out his place in history with this sort of role.

This took that ’70s whitesploitation shtick and made it mainstream. This was a film put out by a major studio and had some semblance of a budget compared to the similar grindhouse pictures of the time.

Burt Reynolds, himself, referred to the film as “…the beginning of a whole series of films made in the South, about the South and for the South. No one cares if the picture was ever distributed north of the Mason-Dixon Line because you could make back the cost of the negative just in Memphis alone. Anything outside of that was just gravy. It was a well done film. Joe Sargent is an excellent director. He’s very, very good with actors. And it had some marvelous people in it whom nobody had seen before. Ned Beatty for example. I had to fight like hell to get Ned in the film.”

The film had a pretty good score done by Charles Bernstein, who would make that famous A Nightmare On Elm Street theme a decade later. The score here may sound familiar to fans of Quentin Tarantino, as he reused some of it for his Kill Bill films.

Reynolds was pretty good as Gator McKlusky and he would get to return as a character in the sequel Gator, three years later.

The plot sees Gator initially try to breakout of an Arkansas prison but his attempt is foiled. He then works out a deal to bring down a crooked Sheriff, who is responsible for murdering his brother. Gator wants revenge, the system wants justice and everyone loves moonshine and fast cars.

White Lightning isn’t my favorite film in the genre it helped popularize but it is still worth revisiting from time to time due to its cultural significance and because well, Burt Reynolds is cool. Although, I prefer him alongside Jerry Reed.

Rating: 6.5/10

Film Review: Navajo Joe (1966)

Also known as: A Dollar a Head (US working title), Navajo’s Land, Red Fighter, Savage Run (alternate titles)
Release Date: November 26th, 1966 (Italy)
Directed by: Sergio Corbucci
Written by: Dean Craig, Fernando Di Leo, Ugo Pirro
Music by: Ennio Morricone (credited as Leo Nichols)
Cast: Burt Reynolds, Aldo Sanbrell, Nicoletta Machiavelli, Tanya Lopert, Fernando Rey, Franca Polesello, Lucia Modugno

Dino de Laurentiis Cinematografica, C.B. Films, Dear Film, United Artists, 93 Minutes

Review:

“My father was born here, in the mountains. His father before him and his father before him and his father before him. Where was your father born?” – Joe

I have never seen Navajo Joe, which is probably a crime, as I love spaghetti westerns and consider myself an aficionado of them. I especially love the western films of Sergio Corbucci and I have always been a big fan of Burt Reynolds, a man too cool for just about anyone they put him in a movie with. Also, this has one of the greatest scores that Ennio Morricone ever did. In fact, some of this songs here have been reused in other films.

Burt Reynolds plays Joe, a Navajo badass that wants to avenge the slaughter of some of his people and his woman. He tracks the killers and finds that they are taking advantage of a desert town and that someone in the town is working with them. He offers his services to the citizens at one dollar a head, to be paid by each person in town. The town is reluctant to pay Joe and realistically, if Joe is just planning on getting revenge, he should just go for it. But I guess making some money isn’t a bad thing. He gets mixed up with a local woman of Navajo decent but ultimately, only cares about his dead love. Navajo Joe is a true drifter with revenge in his heart. He’s got no time for love, only time for justice served with a hearty helping of lead.

Corbucci, one of the three Sergios of Spaghetti Westerns, made this film just after Ringo and His Golden Pistol and his most famous classic Django. This is a film that carries on the quality that Corbucci westerns were known for. While it isn’t quite the masterpiece that Django was, it is still a balls-to-the-wall violent action epic that will leave you satisfied. Revenge stories are great and adding in Burt Reynolds was a pretty cool touch, even if Corbucci didn’t know how great the man would become, as this is very early in his acting career.

The action sequences were well shot and very fluid. I liked the fighting style of Reynolds’ Joe as he slithered around the dirt and in and out of the train, killing off scumbags in the process. The film’s action was well choreographed, unique and interesting.

Navajo Joe is a good western and after seeing it, it would have been cool if Reynolds and Corbucci did a few more. I liked Reynolds in this role a lot and this played really well, mainly because the script was good and Corbucci is just a great director that probably deserves more credit outside of his preferred genre.

Rating: 7.25/10

Film Review: The Dukes of Hazzard (2005)

Release Date: August 5th, 2005
Directed by: Jay Chandrasekhar
Written by: John O’Brien, Jonathan L. Davis
Based on: characters created by Gy Waldron
Music by: Nathan Barr
Cast: Johnny Knoxville, Seann William Scott, Jessica Simpson, Burt Reynolds, Willie Nelson, David Koechner, M. C. Gainey, Lynda Carter, James Roday, Joe Don Baker

Village Roadshow Pictures, Warner Bros., 104 Minutes

Review:

“Derp, derp, derp, (expletive) derp!” – Everyone in the film

Man, what a pile of absolute shit this was.

Okay, let me say that I wasn’t expecting much, which is probably why I waited twelve years to watch a film based off of a television show I used to love. This also features some actors I like, so I was expecting, at the very least, something a bit better than total shit. But no, this is total shit.

The story is just a jumbled mess of scenes that are fairly nonsensical and for the most part, don’t advance the plot. This is just a film about gags and every now and then, we are reminded of some sort of narrative framework that is supposed to pull all this together. However, Knoxville’s Jackass movies have more of a unified narrative than this movie.

The film brings together Johnny Knoxville and Seann William Scott, two guys who have amused me in the past and who should have been pretty good together. However, with such a bad script and nearly non-existent direction, The Dukes of Hazzard makes Joe Dirt 2 look like 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I mean, this film’s script is so bad, that I wouldn’t even give it to Kim Jung Un to use as toilet paper. It’s the worst script I’ve seen that has actually gone before the camera in a really long time. Burt Reynolds and Willie Nelson should have been smarter than to have been in this fully loaded shit sandwich with a side of shitato salad and a 20 oz. cup Diet Dr. Shitter. Strangely, Nelson came back for a direct-to-video sequel.

This movie was one of the most painful experiences of my life. I tried to just focus on the beauty of Jessica Simpson but then she kept talking and I was reminded that this is a girl that doesn’t know the difference between tuna and chicken.

Of course this has to go through the Cinespiria Shitometer. The results read, “Type 3 Stool: Like a sausage but with cracks on its surface.”

Rating: 1.5/10

Film Review: Smokey and the Bandit (1977)

Release Date: May 27th, 1977
Directed by: Hal Needham
Written by: James Lee Barrett, Charles Shyer, Alan Mandel
Music by: Bill Justis, Jerry Reed
Cast: Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Jackie Gleason, Jerry Reed, Mike Henry, Pat McCormick, Paul Williams, Macon McCalman

Rastar, Universal Pictures, 96 Minutes

Review:

“What we’re dealing with here is a complete lack of respect for the law.” – Sheriff Buford T. Justice

Smokey and the Bandit is one of those pop culture things that was huge and often times talked about when I was a kid. Granted, I wasn’t born until the end of 1978 but this was a film that I couldn’t escape, as it spawned a few sequels and was so beloved that it was on television and VHS everywhere I looked. But justifiably so, because there is just something bad ass and cool about Burt Reynolds, especially with Jerry Reed as his partner and Jackie Gleason in hot pursuit. Not to mention the charming charisma of Sally Field.

While this is a massively cherished movie, I personally don’t see it as a classic worthy of the highest levels of esteem. Is it fun? You bet your ass. It is also hilarious, at times, and the characters are all pretty lovable. All that aside though, it’s not a great movie. Well, not great in the sense that it should be a true cinematic classic.

The action is better than decent but it isn’t anything exceptional. It really plays like an episode of The Dukes of Hazzard except it is a feature length picture. As a kid, I certainly enjoyed The Dukes of Hazzard a lot more but maybe that is because I had the car, the poster and it was on television just about every single day. Sure, that television series was obviously inspired by Smokey and the Bandit and a whole slew of cowboy car and trucker movies but it had a bigger impact on me and I certainly feel more nostalgic for it than Smokey.

Burt Reynolds is still pretty damn enjoyable in anything but therein lies the problem. Had this not been a vehicle for Reynolds, it probably would have just come and went and not reached the pop culture heights that it did. Take out Jackie Gleason and you’re not left with much other than a run of the mill car stunt movie.

This is a film that is truly carried by its stars. While I would probably still find enjoyment with it had someone else played the Bandit, I doubt that the general public would have gotten behind it like they did.

The direction isn’t great and the editing is choppy in some parts and actually has a lot of mistakes, especially in regards to where vehicles are in relation to each other from cut to cut. Also, Coors is a pretty shitty beer but the microbrewery revolution hadn’t really kicked off in 1977 and rednecks today still drink mass produced swill.

While it may sound like I am being hard on this film, I’m just putting the facts out there, as I see them. I really like Smokey and the Bandit but not in the same vein as its hardcore fans. But that’s okay. Everyone has their cup of tea and while this is a very good cup, it isn’t a great cup.

Rating: 7.5/10