The Assassination of Trotsky (1972)

Muddled and pretentious, this British drama takes the strange tack of inventing a fictional character in order to tell a story pulled from real-life. In 1940 Mexico, a Russian agent named Ramón Mercarder killed Leon Trotsky, the exiled founder of the Red Army. After helping to lead the Russian Revolution, Trotsky became a political enemy of Soviet strongman Joseph Stalin and fled the USSR for Mexico. Stalin then ordered Mercader to assassinate Trotsky, thus silencing a powerful opposition voice. Since all of this historical material is fascinating, the narrative path followed by the makers of The Assassination of Trotsksy is befuddling. Nicholas Mosley’s script presents the fictional Frank Jackson (Alain Delon) as Trotsky’s killer-in-waiting, and then wastes inordinate amounts of screen time on confusing scenes depicting the codependent relationship between Frank and Gita Samuels (Romy Schneider), who works as a housekeeper in Trotsky’s villa. They scream at each other a lot. Director Joseph Losey, who seems utterly lost in terms of what sort of movie he’s trying to make, generates marginal Day of the Jackal-style interest by showing Frank’s meticulous preparations for killing Trotsky, though this material ultimately feels superfluous. Similarly, the film includes many scenes of the aging Trotsky (Richard Burton) wandering around his villa and giving speeches about how the true meaning of Marxism has been overwhelmed by Stalin’s brutal totalitarianism. Eventually, the picture brings its disparate elements together when Frank uses his relationship with Gita to insinuate his way into the villa and befriend Trotsky, whom he then kills with a hammer to the back of the head. This occasions more yelling, because Burton transitions from the prior somnambulistic mode of his performance and commences a Grand Guignol freakout replete with geysers of blood pouring down his face. Just as Delon’s eyes are hidden behind sunglasses throughout most of the movie, whatever virtues The Assassination of Trotsky has are impossible to see through the fog of a lifeless and meandering storyline.

The Assassination of Trotsky: LAME

Un Flic (1972)

          The final film of French director Jean-Pierre Melville, a specialist in postmodern hard-boiled cinema, Un Flic has enough style for a dozen movies, even though the plot leaves something to be desired. Starring suave Alain Delon as a Parisian police superintendent, the picture is a methodical, sleek examination of the title character’s investigation of an armed robbery that turns out to have larger implications. The picture soars when presenting a twilight world filled with amoral people and wicked schemes; Melville treats actors and objects as colors in his deliberately minimal palette. Yet the picture falls short in characterization, since Melville is obviously more interested in mood than in psychology. Still, with Paris as the primary backdrop and the beautiful faces of Delon and leading lady Catherine Denueve at his disposal, it’s hard to blame the director for getting preoccupied with surfaces.

          The movie begins with a brief introduction to Edouard (Delon), an unflappable detective who spends his evening prowling the Parisian underworld to resolve cases that flummox other policemen. Then the movie shifts to a bank robbery overseen by Simon (Richard Crenna). The robbery ends with one bystander murdered and one accomplice wounded. While the injured crook is hospitalized, Edouard cleverly connects the man to the crime; then the policeman works informants and discovers that the robbery was merely the prelude to an elaborate train heist. Concurrently, Edouard spends time with his glamorous mistress, Cathy (Deneuve), who is also Simon’s lover—although Edouard initially has no idea that Simon is involved with criminal enterprises.

          While the procedural aspects of the story come together well, culminating in an deliciously ambiguous finale, the romantic-triangle thread fizzles after too many excessively cryptic scenes. Plus, the nature of the principal Gallic performances creates an inherent storytelling obstacle—Delon and Deneuve transfix with their looks, but neither actor communicates much emotional heat. Meanwhile, the valiant Crenna’s work is hampered by dubbed dialogue, for although the Hollywood star spoke his French lines on set, a performer with better diction was hired to loop the role during post-production.

          These shortcomings aside, Un Flic has an utterly unique look that communicates Melville’s themes beautifully. In addition to employing such playfully artificial tools as miniatures for train scenes and process shots for driving scenes, Melville presents the whole film in a cool shade of blue—it seems likely he shot daylight film without adjusting for artificial light, and vice versa, so even the whites in Melville’s images (with a few exceptions) feel slightly azure. This offbeat visual device makes Un Flic seem as if it exists within a universe all its own. Better still, the most effective sequences do more than merely cast a spell with visuals. The centerpiece of the picture, for instance, is a real-time staging of the audacious train heist, an impressive 20-minute sequence almost entirely bereft of dialogue. Similarly, the opening robbery sequence and Edouard’s final scramble to capture fleeing criminals are studies in economy.

Un Flic: GROOVY

Scorpio (1973)

          The overcooked but diverting Cold War-era espionage thriller Scorpio stars Burt Lancaster as Cross, a CIA agent marked for extermination because his superior believes he’s turned double agent for the Soviets. The “Scorpio” of the title is Cross’ onetime apprentice, Frenchman Jean Laurier (Alain Delon), a suave killer the CIA uses to ice foreign enemies the company can’t “officially” eliminate. Cross’ nefarious boss, McLeod (John Colicos), hires Laurier to kill his former mentor, but Cross realizes he’s been targeted and escapes from his home base in Washington, D.C., to Europe. This sets the stage for cat-and-mouse intrigue set in Paris and Vienna, some of which is quite zippy, like a lengthy shootout at a construction site.

          However, more interesting that the action stuff is the camaraderie Cross shares with his longtime KGB counterpart, Zharkov (Paul Scofield). Both men have outgrown ideological differences, and they recognize that their ambitious young superiors are more interested in political advancement than actual counterintelligence. Zharkov finds his old friend a hiding place in Vienna, clues him in to the movements of CIA operatives assisting Laurier, and talks shop over long drunken evenings. Watching these old lions debate the broad strokes of the Cold War is fascinating, even though their exchanges are muddied by occasionally pretentious dialogue.

          Scorpio is generally smart and tense, but it’s a difficult movie to follow—not because the story is overly sophisticated, but because the filmmakers often forget to give viewers key information. The biggest flaw in this regard is that we’re never told why McLeod believes Cross went rogue, which is pretty much the whole show. However, as directed by thriller veteran Michael Winner (who never let script problems get in the way of a violent action scene), the film zooms past narrative hiccups like a getaway car blasting over speed bumps. Lancaster works a world-weary groove that keeps his tendency toward macho preening in check (though he demonstrates still-impressive athleticism in action scenes), and Delon is perfectly cast as a cool professional with a soft spot for stray cats. Scorpio is far too long at 114 minutes, and there are so many plot twists that the movie eventually exhausts itself, but there’s a lot of interesting stuff along the way.

Scorpio: FUNKY

Airport (1970) & Airport 1975 (1974) & Airport ’77 (1977) & The Concorde: Airport ’79 (1979)

          It’s appropriate that the last movie bearing the Airport brand name begins with a balloon getting inflated, because this series is filled with nothing so much as hot air. Melodramatic, overlong, and trite, each of the four Airport flicks is a midair soap opera, with characterization and dialogue that would barely pass muster in the worst episodic television. If not for the innate allure of disaster stories and the presence of motley casts comprising former A-listers and permanent C-listers, these pictures would have vanished into obscurity immediately after they were made. However, one should never underestimate the public’s appetite for vapid escapism: The first picture was the biggest moneymaker of 1970 (out-earning M*A*S*H and Patton), and it somehow snared 10 Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture. As the people filling that balloon at the beginning of The Concorde: Airport ’79 know, hot air always rises.

          The first flick, simply titled Airport and adapted from Arthur Hailey’s bestselling novel of the same name, is lumbering and dull. An airport manager (Burt Lancaster) and a pilot (Dean Martin) face a crisis when a disturbed passenger (Van Heflin) sneaks a bomb onto a passenger jet. Contrived romantic subplots abound, as do goofy elements like a storyline about an elderly woman (Helen Hayes) who keeps sneaking onto flights as a stowaway. Shot in a flat, ugly style that reveals every location as part of a garishly lit soundstage, the talky movie grinds through so much nonsense that Martin’s plane doesn’t even take off until after the one-hour mark.

          Only about 30 minutes of the movie contain actual disaster-oriented action, so it’s notable that even though Airport was the first hit for the genre, the familiar victim-every-10-minutes formula wasn’t perfected until producer Irwin Allen (who had nothing to do with the Airport movies) made The Poseidon Adventure in 1972. About the only lively element of Airport is George Kennedy’s lusty supporting performance as airport engineer Joe Patroni, who spouts macho lines like, “I’ll have this mother outta here by midnight!” There’s also some mild interest in spotting moments that were later spoofed in Airplane! (1980), like the vignette of a stewardess slapping a hysterical passenger.

          For the imaginatively titled sequel Airport 1975, producer Jenning Lang took the franchise reins and shamelessly copied Irwin Allen’s style; Lang also hired square-jawed leading man Charlton Heston, who previously led the cast of Lang’s Allen-esque disaster flick Earthquake (1974). Although it’s just as insipid as the original film, Airport 1975 is more enjoyable, simply because it doesn’t take itself seriously; the movie is all about cheap thrills and over-the-top storytelling. In this one, a 747 is struck in mid-air by a tiny private plane, blowing out the cockpit and killing the flight crew. After the accident, a stewardess (Karen Black) has to keep the plane steady until her boyfriend (Heston) can reach the plane via helicopter, climb into the cockpit by rope ladder, and steer the jet to a safe landing. About the only thing more absurd than the plot is the cast, which also includes Linda Blair, Sid Caesar, Erik Estrada, Helen Reddy, and Gloria Swanson (as herself!). Kennedy reprises his Patroni role to mostly inconsequential effect.

          After this crescendo of craptastic cinema, the series fell to earth with Airport ’77, a boring thriller about a plane that gets hijacked over the Bermuda Triangle, and then plummets into the ocean. Instead of mid-air suspense, most of the picture delivers dull tight-quarters bickering set in the underwater jet, and everyone in the mixed-bag cast looks bored: Joseph Cotten, Lee Grant, Christopher Lee, Jack Lemmon, James Stewart, and so on. (Kennedy’s back as Patroni, not that it makes much difference.) Airport ’77 is the nadir of a series whose quality level was never high.

          The final entry in the franchise is arguably the most enjoyable, at least from a bad-cinema perspective, because The Concorde: Airport ’79 is preposterous right from the first frames. Cinematic cheese is spread evenly across a ludicrous story, cringe-inducing dialogue, and a parade of laughable performances. In other words, Airport ’79 marks the moment the franchise officially became The Love Boat with explosions. Kennedy finally gets promoted to a leading role, co-piloting the famously sleek French jet of the title with a smooth Gallic flyer (Alain Delon). Meanwhile, an evil industrialist (Robert Wagner) wants to blow up the plane because one of the passengers is carrying evidence that incriminates him for dastardly deeds. Wagner tries to take out the Concorde with a robot drone, a manned fighter jet, and, finally, a bomb smuggled on board when the Concorde conveniently hits the tarmac long enough for sabotage. Several actors who should have known better got roped into acting in this drivel (Eddie Albert, Cicely Tyson, David Warner), but most of the screen time goes to ’70s also-rans like John Davidson, Andrea Marcovicci, and Jimmie J.J. Walker. Cementing the Love Boat parallel, Charo even shows up for a cameo.

Airport: LAME

Airport 1975: FUNKY

Airport ’77: SQUARE

The Concorde: Airport ’79: FUNKY

Red Sun (1971)

Revealing the pedigree of Red Sun should separate those who couldn’t care less from those who can’t get their eyeballs onto this movie quickly enough. Terence Young, the director of Dr. No (1962) and From Russia With Love (1963), helms this zippy “East-meets-Western” that pits unlikely buddies Charles Bronson and Toshiro Mifune against cold-blooded bad guy Alain Delon, and Dr. No bikini girl Ursula Undress (ahem, Andress) is along for the ride as high-spirited eye candy. If that recitation doesn’t quicken your pulse, then move along to the next movie, but if it does, then praise the movie gods because, lo, ye have just been delivered a prime example of early-’70s manly-man action/adventure cinema. The convoluted plot begins when a train delivering the Japanese ambassador through the Old West is robbed by a group of bandits led by Delon. Overpowering sword-wielding bodyguards including Mifune, the thugs rip off an ancient samurai sword the ambassador was supposed to deliver to the U.S. president as a gift. During the robbery, however, Delon comes to a violent parting of the ways with his accomplice Bronson, so Bronson and Mifune join forces to kick their Gallic adversary’s derriere. The movie is loaded with action right out of the gate, and it delivers exactly what is promised, blending fistfights, gunfights, and swordplay in sequences like the stylish finale, wherein most of the major characters face off against the backdrop of a burning wheat field. At 112 minutes, Red Sun is longer than it needs to be, but the filmmakers devote a fair amount of that excessive screen time to giving Mifune’s character dimension (if a string of earnestly presented samurai-movie clichés, like the inevitable near miss with hara-kari, counts as dimension). Bronson and Mifune do their best to sell the story’s many contrivances, although their real focus is providing swaggering badass coolness, Delon is a solidly hissable villain, and Andress brings the requisite amount of sexy. Red Sun isn’t any kind of classic, but if you’re a fan of vintage action, this is the movie you never knew you wanted to see.

Red Sun: FUNKY