Reviews by bharath

Critics and film historians have often noted how the film is divided into three equal thirds or acts. Likewise the plot synopsis is also divided into three acts, spanning the years of 1968-1975.[a 2]

Act I - In Clairton, a small working class town in Western Pennsylvania, in late 1968, Russian American steel workers Michael (De Niro), Steven (Savage), and Nick (Walken), with the support of their friends Stanley (Cazale), John (Dzundza) and Axel (Chuck Aspegren, his only movie role; he was a steel worker from Gary, Indiana), are preparing for two rites of passage: marriage and military service.

The opening scenes set the character traits of the three main characters. Michael is the no-nonsense, serious but unassuming leader of the three, Steven the loving, near-groom, pecked at by his mother for not wearing a scarf with his tuxedo and Nick is the quiet, introspective man who loves hunting because, "I like the trees...you know...the way the trees are..." The recurring theme of "one shot", which is how Michael prefers to take down a deer, is introduced.

Before the trio ships out, Steven and his girlfriend, Angela (who is pregnant by another man but loved by Steven nonetheless) get married in an Orthodox wedding. In the meantime, Michael must contain his own feelings for Nick's lovely but pensive girlfriend Linda (Streep), who has just moved out of her abusive father's house.

At the wedding reception held at the local VFW, the guys all get drunk, dance, sing and have a good time, but then notice a soldier wearing his dress uniform and the green beret of the US Army's Special Forces sitting at the end of the bar. Michael buys the soldier a drink and tries to start a conversation with him to find out what Vietnam is like, but he ignores Michael. After Michael confronts him to explain that he, Steven and Nick are going to Vietnam, the Green Beret raises his glass and says "fuck it" to everyone's shock and amazement. Obviously disturbed and under mental anguish, the Green Beret again toasts them with "fuck it". After being restrained by the others from starting a fight, Michael goes back to the bar with the others and in a mocking jest to the Green Beret, raises his glass and toasts him with "fuck it". The Green Beret then glances over at Michael and grins smugly.

Later, during the Russian Orthodox traditional wedding toast to Steven and Angela, which is believed to be good luck for a couple who drink from conjoined goblets without spilling a drop, a drop of blood-red wine unknowingly spills on her wedding gown, foreshadowing the coming events. Near the end of the reception, Nick asks Linda to marry him, and she agrees. Later that night, after a drunk and naked Michael runs through the streets of town, Nick chases him down and begs Michael not to leave him "over there" if anything happens. The next day, Michael and the remaining friends go deer hunting one last time, and Michael again scores a deer with "one shot".

Act II - The film then jumps abruptly to a war-torn village, where U.S. helicopters attack a communist occupied Vietnamese village with napalm. A North Vietnamese soldier throws a stick grenade into a hiding place full of civilians. An unconscious Mike (now a staff sergeant in the Army Special Forces) wakes up to see the NVA soldier shoot a woman carrying a baby. In revenge Mike burns the NVA with a flame thrower and then shoots him numerous times with an M16. Meanwhile a unit of UH-1 helicopters drops off several US infantrymen, Nick and Steven among them. Michael, Steven, and Nick unexpectedly find each other just before they are captured and held together in a riverside prisoner of war camp with other US Army and ARVN prisoners. For entertainment, the sadistic guards force their prisoners to play Russian roulette and gamble on the outcome.

All three friends are forced to play. Steven aims the gun above his head, grazing himself with the bullet, and is punished by incarceration to an underwater cage, full of rats and the bodies of others who earlier faced the same fate. Michael and Nick end up playing against each other, and Michael convinces the guards to let them play with three bullets in the gun. After a tense match, they kill their captors and escape. Mike had earlier argued with Nick about whether Steven could be saved, but after killing their captors he rescues Steven.

The three float downriver on a tree branch. An American helicopter accidentally finds them, but only Nick is able to climb aboard. The weakened Steven falls back into water and Mike plunges in the water to rescue him. Unluckily, Steven breaks both legs in the fall. Mike helps him to reach the river bank, and then carries him through the jungle to friendly lines. Approaching a caravan of locals escaping the war zone, he stops a South Vietnamese military truck and places the wounded Steven on it, asking the soldiers to take care of him. Nick, who is psychologically damaged apparently suffering amnesia, recuperates in a military hospital in Saigon with no knowledge on the status of his friends. At night, he aimlessly stumbles through the red-light district. At one point, he encounters Julien Grinda (Pierre Segui), a champagne-drinking friendly Frenchman outside a gambling den where men play Russian roulette for money. Grinda entices the reluctant Nick to participate, and leads him into the den. Mike is present in the den, watching the game, but the two friends do not notice each other at first. When Mike does see Nick, he is unable to get his attention. When Nick is introduced into the game he instead grabs the gun, fires it at the current contestant and then again at his own temple, causing the audience to riot in protest. Grinda hustles Nick outside to his car to escape the angry mob. Mike cannot catch up with Nick and Grinda as they speed away.

Act III - Back in the U.S., Mike returns home but maintains a low profile. He tells the cab driver to pass by the house where all his friends are assembled, as he is embarrassed by the fuss made over him by Linda and the others. Mike goes to a hotel and struggles with his feelings, as he thinks both Nick and Steven are dead or missing. He eventually visits Linda and grows close to her, but only because of the friend they both think they have lost. Mike is eventually told about Angela, whom he goes to visit at the home of Steven's mother. She is lethargic and barely responsive. She writes a phone number on a scrap of paper, which leads Mike to the local veterans' hospital where Steven has been for several months.

Mike goes hunting with Axel, John and Stanley one more time, and after tracking a beautiful deer across the woods, takes his "one shot" but pulls the rifle up and fires into the air, unable to take another life. He then sits on a rock escarpment and yells out, "OK?", which echoes back at him from the opposing rock faces leading down to the river, signifying his fight with his mental demons over losing Steven and Nick. He also berates Stanley for carrying around a small revolver and waving it around, not realizing it is still loaded. He knows the horror of war and wants no part of it anymore.

Steven has lost both his legs and is partially paralyzed. Mike visits Steven, who reveals that someone in Saigon has been mailing large amounts of cash to him, and Mike is convinced that it is Nick. Mike brings Steven home to Angela and then travels to Saigon just before its fall in 1975. He tracks down the Frenchman Grinda, who has made a lot of money from the Russian-roulette-playing American.

He finds Nick in a crowded roulette club, but Nick appears to have no recollection of his friends or his home in Pennsylvania. Mike sees the needle tracks on his arm, a sign of drug abuse. He realizes that Nick thinks he (Michael) and Steven are dead, since he is the only one who made it back on the helicopter. Mike enters himself in a game of Russian roulette against Nick, hoping to jar Nick's memory and persuade him to come home, but Nick's mind is gone. In the last moment, after Mike's attempts to remind him of their trips hunting together, he finally breaks through, and Nick recognizes Mike and smiles. Nick then tells Mike, "one shot", raises the gun to his temple, and pulls the trigger. The bullet is in the gun's top chamber, and Nick kills himself. Horrified, Michael tries to revive him, but to no avail.

Epilogue - Back home in 1974, there is a funeral for Nick, whom Michael brings home, good to his promise. The film ends with the whole cast at their friend's bar, singing "God Bless America" and toasting in Nick's honor

It's interesting the full circle journey the martial arts genre has gone through in the last three decades. From fierce foreign novelty and geek obsession to influential Tinseltown standard, the carefully choreographed action of the Hong Kong staple has become the cinematic benchmark for almost every onscreen scuffle. In return, Hollywood has influenced the form with its own unique attributes. Nowhere is this more clear than the latest from beloved director and wire fu specialist Woo-ping Yuen.

Perhaps most famous to Westerns as the man who gave The Matrix its gravity defying fisticuffs, his own unique oeuvre contains classics like Drunken Master and Iron Monkey. Now, he offers up the intriguing if trite True Legend, a typical hand-to-hand period melodrama enlivened by the filmmaker's deft touch, while some sloppy CG work distracts from the overall entertainment level.

Su Can (Vincent Zhao) is a general in the Chinese Imperial Army. When given the chance to retire and govern his home province, he graciously declines. Instead, he wants to open up a Wushu academy. So he suggests his sly brother Yuan (Andy On) take his place. Years later, the two clash when the latter kills their father. Turns out, Yuen and his sister Ying (Zhou Xun) were adopted by Su's dad, himself a master of the dark Five Venom Fists discipline.

Left for dead, our hero tries to regain his skills while his now crazed evil sibling kidnaps Su's child, Little Feng. As part of his retraining, the disgraced warrior falls in with the God of Wushu (Jay Chou), who helps him hone his skills. Unfortunately, the final battle doesn't turn out as planned, sending Su into an alcohol fueled fall. Years later, he becomes the legendary Drunken Master, using his inebriated technique to defeat his enemies.

In the moviemaking maxim of leaving well enough alone, True Legend gets lost in the translation. This is an intriguing set of ideas meshed into an experience that's both exciting and exasperating. On the one hand, our iconic director never met a fight sequence he couldn't amplify with his flashy film techniques. Bodies fly, punches land with death defying bombast, and battles blaze with a kicky kind of kinetic force that flummoxes your Westernized mindset.

As long as he's doesn't linger too long on the family inanity going on in the narrative, everything is cool. We breeze along on wave after wave of inventive maneuvering, certain we are in the presence of some manner of genius (and, of course, we are). But when forced into a standard storytelling hole, when mandated to make something out of all this half-brother bravado, Woo-ping comes up short. Indeed, True Legend limps along like a defeated combatant when it has to play plot.

Then there is the CG. The SyFy Channel is more realistic in its rendering of giant killer squid-sharks than this movie is with its many set-pieces. Backdrops look flat and featureless while other fake elements stick out like badly composed afterthoughts. Though the skill and technique of the action can overcome almost anything, the lame F/X seem to indicate a lack of a basic budgetary support. As long as the violence doesn't look cheap, everything is fine.

Unlike classics in the category that have come to define the faithful devotion to these type of films, True Legend is merely good. Greatness could have been achieved had Woo-ping spent as much time on the little things - acting, script, overall narrative arc - as he did with the fighting. Instead, we have yet another example of a highly successful and skilled genre watered down by weak American attributes.

Dragon Tiger Gate is a martial arts academy established by two powerful martial artists. The academy aims to train and equip students with martial arts in order to uphold justice and combat the threat of the triads in a seemingly lawless world. The academy is also a haven for children who had been orphaned as a result of triad activities.

The story begins with the two sons, who were born to different mothers, of Wong, one of the founders of the academy. The older son is named Dragon and the younger one is named Tiger. When the boys were still young, Dragon's mother left the academy and gave Dragon half of a jade amulet pendant and told him that his half-brother Tiger has the other half of the pendant. When Dragon's mother was killed in a fire, Dragon was taken into the care of triad boss named Ma Kun and he grew up to become Ma's bodyguard. Ma Kun's gang is a subject of the evil Luocha Cult.

Several years later, Tiger and his friends are dining in a restaurant and encounter Ma Kun and his men, who are receiving the Luocha Plaque. The plaque is a symbol of authority within the Luocha Cult and indicates that the holder is second only to the cult's leader Shibumi. Ma Kun and the leader of the White Lions Gang were arguing over the plaque when Tiger interrupts and starts a fight with the gangsters. They manage to seize the plaque. Just then, Dragon appears and fights with Tiger, whom he does not recognise to be his half-brother. Ma Kun calls for Dragon to pull back.

Later that night, Dragon confronts Tiger and his friends at a Japanese restaurant to take back the plaque. Tiger and his friends have been drugged by Scaly, another of Ma Kun's lackeys, who also wanted to seize back the plaque to prove to his boss that he is the better man. Scaly and his followers fight Dragon over possession of the plaque. Turbo Shek, another diner at the restaurant, is aroused by the commotion and he joins in the fight on Dragon's side. Dragon and Turbo defeat Scaly and his men and Dragon takes back the plaque from Tiger. Just then, Tiger discovers that Dragon has the other half of the jade amulet pendant and realises that Dragon is actually his half-brother.

Turbo follows Tiger back to Dragon Tiger Gate and wants to be enrolled into the academy to improve his martial arts. He is refused by the current leader of the academy, Master Wong, for his arrogance. Dismayed, Turbo waits outside the academy and promises not to leave unless he is accepted in as student. Master Wong agrees to spar with Turbo and defeats Turbo easily. Turbo is humbled and accepted by Master Wong as a student.

Meanwhile, Ma Kun returns the Luocha Plaque to signify his retirement. He is supported by Dragon, who wants to return to Dragon Tiger Gate, and his daughter Ma Xiaoling, who wants a simple life. Shibumi sees this as an insult and sends his henchmen, the Double Devils, to kill Ma Kun. He uses his subordinate Luocha to lure Dragon away while his minions kill Ma Kun. Dragon realises that he had been tricked and return to rescue Ma Kun but it is too late. Dragon slays the Double Devils after a vicious fight and leaves Ma Xiaoling in his brother's care before leaving.

Shibumi was impressed with Dragon for defeating his henchmen and goes to Dragon Tiger Gate to issue a challenge. With Dragon not present, Master Wong, Tiger and Turbo takes on Shibumi's challenge but were utterly defeated. Master Wong is killed by Shibumi while Tiger and Turbo are severely wounded. Ma Xiaoling brings Tiger and Turbo to Mount Baiyun to seek help from Master Qi. Master Qi heals the wounded Tiger and Turbo, and teaches them new martial arts techniques to fight Shibumi.

Tiger and Turbo storm into Shibumi's Black Pagoda to stop him from committing evil acts once and for all. Although their martial arts abilities have greatly improved since the last time they fought, they are still not Shibumi's match. At the critical moment, Dragon appears and fights Shibumi, eventually defeating him. Before the film ends, Dragon returns to Dragon Tiger Gate together with Tiger and Turbo.

Set in pre-1997, before the return of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China, the film opens with brothers Archer, Tony and Tiger discussing a drug deal with Sam, a rival gang leader. Ma Jun, a serious criminal investigations detective, along with a team of police officers, raids the nightclub for investigation, and winds up fighting against his partner, Wilson, who has been planted as a mole.

The three brothers are later attacked by Sam and his gang who are impatient over receiving the drugs from the brothers' native Vietnam. Archer and his brothers later threaten the elder leaders of their gang, when they attempt to intervene. Tiger is later assigned to kill Sam out in public, but the plan backfires when Wilson intervenes. While in hospital, Sam agrees to testify in court against the three brothers. On the night of their mother's birthday, the brothers plan to recover their drug money, but as the heist is being performed, Archer is arrested by Hong Kong police, while Tony and Tiger discover that Wilson is a mole.

While in court, Archer is forced to turn in all of his travel documents, in hope that he will not flee from Hong Kong before his hearing. Tony and Tiger brutally murder Sam along with several other witnesses and crime figures crucial to the police investigation. After their first plan to kill Wilson fails, Tony and Tiger decide to sneak into a hospital guarded by police. Ma discovers that Tiger, disguised as a janitor, is in the building and goes after him, they both end up being in the same elevator where Tiger attempts to kill Ma with a silenced pistol. Here they engage in a grueling fight, a female police officer runs into the elevator and tries to help Ma but ends up getting shot in the heart by a stray bullet after hesitating to shoot Tiger. Tony, having kidnapped Wilson's girlfriend, Julie, threatens to kill her, if Wilson, now a sole witness, testifies in court. Ma chases Tiger when he tries to escape until he squares off against Tiger inside a restaurant, and brutally beats him to death in front of a crowd after Tiger severely injures a little girl by throwing her on the concrete. During the court hearing, Wilson refuses to testify, and the case is dismissed for lack of evidence. Wilson later attempts to rescue Julie, but is captured by Tony and his gang.

Once Archer walks free, Ma holds him captive, and calls his brother, Tony, for an exchange of hostages, leading to a confrontation in a Chinese village. Ma singlehandedly takes on the remaining gangsters, and engages in a grueling fight with Tony, whom he later arrests.

During the late Ming Dynasty, the imperial court is plagued by corruption as eunuchs usurp state power and the reigning emperor is incompetent. The Jinyi Wei (literally: brocade-clad guards) are the government's secret police, trained in clandestine combat since childhood, they are in charge of conducting missions to ensure peace and stability within the empire. They have the authority to prosecute anyone deemed as an enemy of the state and they devote their lives and lethal prowess to serving the emperor only. When the organization was first founded, the Jinyi Wei took orders directly from the emperor, but now they are under the control of the eunuchs. The eunuch chief Jia Jingzhong is plotting with an exiled noble, Prince Qing, to rebel against the emperor and seize power. Jia Jingzhong orders Qinglong, the Jinyi Wei leader, to kill the Imperial Councilor Zhao Shenyan and take Zhao's safebox, which supposedly contains a list of names of traitors.

However, Qinglong discovers later that he had been used, as the safebox contains the Imperial Seal, a symbol of the emperor's authority, and Jia Jingzhong wants to use it to legitimize Prince Qing's actions when the rebellion begins. Qinglong is betrayed by his fellow Jinyi Wei and becomes a fugitive when Jia Jingzhong denounces him as a traitor and issues an order for his arrest. Qinglong escapes and joins the Justice Escort Agency, where he strikes up a romantic relationship with Qiao Hua, the daughter of the agency's leader. Qinglong is determined to fulfill his loyalty to the emperor and continues to search for evidence of Prince Qing's plot while undermining Prince Qing's plans concurrently. He is joined by the Heaven Eagles Gang, a group of bandits led by the Judge of the Sands. Standing in Qinglong's way are Jia Jingzhong's lackeys and his former Jinyi Wei fellows, as well as Prince Qing's goddaughter Tuotuo, a highly-skilled female warrior.

Jackie Chan wrote, directed and stars in this English-language action-comedy tale of about a commando group that travels to South Africa to kidnap scientists working on new energy sources. However, a Washington-based cover-up requires a downed plane after completion of the mission, and Jackie is the only survivor of the plane crash. When the crash trauma leaves him with amnesia, his question, "Who am I?" becomes his name -- Whoami. Recognized by CIA agent Morgan (Ron Smerczak), Whoami learns covert operatives have sent assassins to eliminate him, and the martial arts footwork gets fancy with Whoami heading to Rotterdam in hopes of recovering his memory

John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) is a former member of an elite United States Army Special Forces unit and was awarded the Medal of Honor for his service in the Vietnam War. The film begins after the war, in America, and takes place in December 1981. Rambo is searching for one of his friends from his unit, Delmare Berry and soon learns that he has died from cancer due to Agent Orange exposure. Although not yet revealed to the audience, Rambo knows he is now the last surviving member of his unit. The scene cuts to Rambo entering the fictional small town of Hope, Washington (actually filmed in Hope, British Columbia) on foot. With his long hair and military-style coat, he is quickly spotted by the town's overzealous and paranoid sheriff, Will Teasle (Brian Dennehy) who quickly drives Rambo out of town, noting his strong distaste for "drifters." Rambo heads back toward town immediately, causing Teasle to get suspicious and arrest him.

Rambo stands his ground against the deputies at the station and is brutalized and harassed by Art Galt (Jack Starrett), the sheriff's cruel head deputy and closest friend. While being processed, Rambo has flashbacks to his time as a prisoner of war. When Galt and two other officers (Chris Mulkey and David Caruso) attempt to dry-shave him with a straight razor, Rambo has a flashback to being tortured in a North Vietnamese P.O.W. Camp back in 1969 and loses control, escaping on instinct using his military training. He fights his way out of the station, assaulting most of the deputies, throws a civilian off a motorcycle, steals it, and is pursued into the nearby mountains. The deputies are eventually forced to search for Rambo on foot and he climbs down onto a steep cliff to elude capture. After spotting Rambo from a helicopter, Galt blatantly disregards protocol and attempts to shoot him in cold blood. Rambo drops into a mass of trees and, while cornered, throws a rock at the helicopter in self-defense. The helicopter, struck by the projectile, pitches, causing Galt to fall to his death. Teasle, who had not seen Galt's attempt to kill Rambo, vows to avenge his friend's death.

Rambo tries to convince them that he did not mean to kill anyone, but they do not listen, and Teasle leads his deputies into the woods in an attempt to capture Rambo. The deputies are inexperienced and bicker, particularly after learning over the radio about Rambo's combat experience and status as a war hero. Rambo quickly disables the small, disorganized team using guerrilla tactics and booby traps, severely wounding but not killing the deputies. In the chaos, Rambo isolates and confronts Teasle with a knife to the throat. "Don't push it...or I'll give you a war you won't believe. Let it go!" he warns before disappearing into the woods. A base camp is assembled near the site, the State Patrol and the National Guard are called in. United States Special Forces Colonel Sam Trautman (Richard Crenna) arrives, taking credit for training Rambo. He is surprised to find any of the deputies still alive and warns that it would be safer to let Rambo go and find him after the situation has calmed down. Fueled by a mixture of scorn and pride, Teasle refuses to heed his advice.

Rambo is eventually cornered by the National Guard in a mine entrance. The novice guardsmen fire a M72 LAW rocket at him, collapsing the entrance and trapping him inside. They assume Rambo is dead. Unbeknownst to his pursuers, Rambo has escaped into the tunnels of the mine. Rambo finds some old fuel and makes an improvised torch. After wading through waist‑deep water and fighting off rats, Rambo cleverly uses the flame of the torch (as an indicator of air flow) to find an escape. Rambo hijacks a passing M135 2½ ton cargo truck and is chased by a police car. He rams the car into an abandoned car, which explodes and overturns it, killing the two people inside. Rambo returns to town, crashing it into a gas station. He blocks the highway to anyone in pursuit by igniting the spilled fuel, also destroying the stolen truck. Armed with an M60 machine gun, Rambo destroys a sporting goods shop and a few other businesses in an attempt to confuse Teasle and identify his position before spotting him on the roof of the police station.

Rambo carefully enters the police station. Aware of Teasle's presence on the roof, Rambo darts under the skylight to draw fire as bait to reveal his exact location. Teasle immediately fires at Rambo who notes his position and returns fire through the ceiling with the M60, injuring him. Teasle falls through the skylight onto the floor. Rambo steps over him, prepared to kill him. Before Rambo can shoot Teasle, Colonel Trautman appears and tells him that there is no hope of escaping alive. Rambo, now surrounded by the police, rages about the horrors of war. He weeps as he recounts a particularly gruesome story about witnessing his friend dying by having his legs blown off by a booby-trapped shoeshine box planted by a Viet Cong child operative. Realizing he has nothing left to live for, Rambo then turns himself in to Trautman and is arrested. Teasle is taken to the hospital. The credits roll as Rambo and Trautman exit the police station.

In a dystopian future Australia, law & order has begun to break down. Berserk motorcycle gang member, Crawford "Nightrider" Montizano, has escaped police custody and is attempting to outrun the Main Force Patrol (MFP) in a stolen Pursuit Special (Holden Monaro). Though he manages to elude his initial pursuers, the MFP's top pursuit man, Max Rockatansky, then engages the less-skilled Nightrider in a high-speed chase, resulting in the death of Nightrider in a fiery crash.

Nightrider's motorcycle gang, led by Toecutter and Bubba Zanetti, is running roughshod over a town, vandalizing property, stealing fuel and terrorizing the populace. Max and officer Jim "Goose" Rains arrest Toecutter's young protege, Johnny "the Boy" Boyle, when Johnny, too high to ride, stays behind after the gang rapes a young couple. When no witnesses appear for his trial, the courts throw the case out and Johnny is released. An angry Goose attacks Johnny and must be held back; both men shout threats of revenge. After his lawyer drags Johnny away, MFP Captain Fred "Fifi" McPhee tells his officers to do whatever it takes to apprehend the gangs, "so long as the paperwork's clean."

A short time later, Johnny sabotages Goose's motorcycle; it locks up at high speed, throwing Goose from the bike. Goose is unharmed, though his bike is badly damaged; he borrows a ute to haul his bike back. However, Johnny and Toecutter's gang are waiting in ambush. Johnny throws a brake drum at Goose's windshield, which shatters and causes Goose to crash the ute; Toecutter then instructs Johnny to throw a match into the gasoline leaking from Goose's wrecked ute, while Goose is trapped inside. Johnny refuses; Toecutter first cajoles, then verbally and physically abuses him. Johnny eventually throws the lit match into the wreckage, which erupts in flames.

Goose is severely burned. After seeing his charred body in the hospital, Max becomes disillusioned with the Police Force. Worried of what may happen if he continues working for the MFP - and that he is beginning to enjoy the insanity - Max announces to Fifi that he is resigning from the MFP. Fifi convinces him to take a holiday first before making his final decision.

While at the coast, Max's wife, Jessie and their infant son run into Toecutter's gang, who attempt to rape her. She flees, but the gang later finds them again at the remote farm where she and Max are staying. The gang runs over Jessie and their son as they try to escape, leaving their crushed bodies in the middle of the road. Max arrives too late to save them.

Filled with rage, Max dons his police leathers and takes a supercharged black Pursuit Special (Ford Falcon XB GT 351) to pursue the gang. After torturing a mechanic for information, Max methodically hunts down the gang members: he forces several of them off a bridge at high speed, shoots Bubba at point blank range with his shotgun, and forces Toecutter into the path of a semi-trailer truck. During the struggle, Bubba runs over Max's arm and shoots him in the knee, which Max braces with a makeshift splint. Max finally finds Johnny, who is looting a car crash victim he presumably murdered for a pair of boots. In a cold, suppressed rage, Max handcuffs Johnny's ankle to the wrecked vehicle whilst Johnny begs for his life, confessing that he is a sick man who suffers from a psychopathic disorder who shouldn't be blamed for his past behavior since he's admittedly crazy. Max ignores his begging and sets a crude time-delay fuse with a slow fuel leak and a lighter. Throwing Johnny a hacksaw, Max leaves him the choice of sawing through either the handcuffs (which will take ten minutes) or his ankle (which will take five minutes). Johnny screams in horror at Max for the unspeakably horrific fate he has been left with, accusing Max of being worse than him. Max wordlessly drives away; as he clears the bridge, the vehicle explodes. Max continues driving into the darkness, the movie ending with his ultimate fate unknown.

Cast & Crew

Director : John Sturges

Producer : John Sturges

Screenwriter : James Clavell, W.R. Burnett

Starring : Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasence, James Coburn

Coming on the heels of John Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven three years earlier, 1963’s The Great Escape shows how quickly the ambitious epic can turn into a rote, readymade piece of filmmaking – a Hollywood masterpiece by design. There’ s a formal, somewhat stilted feel to its three-hour story about a group of imprisoned World War II officers and their struggle to break out of a Nazi P.O.W. camp, and anybody who thinks that Michael Bay is a bullying thug of a filmmaker who likes pushing people’s emotions around can come here to see where he got it from. But for all its flaws, Escape has some of the most memorable moments in any war film, and some excellent performances from its ensemble cast.

Based on a true story, The Great Escape is set during the tail end of World War II, when a variety of officers from different countries were sent to Stalag Luft III, a prison camp designed to handle the most diligent escape attempts. Both fearless and duty-bound, the men spend no time with long prologues or chit-chat about what to do; they, along with the movie, immediately set to work, using the skills they know best. There’s Anthony Hendley, the “scrounger” skilled at digging up needed provisions; James Garner, at his best when he’s being charmingly unctuous to his Nazi captors; Charles Bronson, as the “tunnel king” Danny Velinski, offering a nice combination of two-fisted bravado and sensitive-guy neurosis; and Donald Pleasance, the British document forger, who brings a steely, proud stoicism to his role that sets the movie’s emotional feel. His is the most convincing performance, which makes sense given that really did time in a German P.O.W. camp.

But this is Steve McQueen’s movie. From the quiet bravado he shows when he helps his fellow inmates escape, to the smirking I’ll-be-back way he tosses a baseball in his jail cell, to the simply kick-ass way he roars across the German countryside on a motorcycle, this is the moment where McQueen defined himself not just as a great American actor, but as a living representative of what America’s all about. The movie’s official tragedy is that 50 of the men who escaped were caught and killed by Nazis. But the real one is the moment when McQueen himself is finally caught on the lush German countryside. Bleeding and swaddled in barbed wire, he looks sadly emasculated.

There are other parts of Escape worth cheering – James Coburn’s humor, Elmer Bernstein’s wonderful score – but John Sturges isn’t a very clever director, and his approach to the war story itself often feels pat and insubstantial. The script suffers from its share of improbabilities and clichés – none worse than the way Bronson gets a sudden case of claustrophobia at just the wrong time after spending his life making tunnels. So Escape sits somewhere between Stalag 17 and the average episode of Hogan’s Heroes – a professionally made World War II tale, but not an emotionally resonant on.

On the new DVD, director Sturges (with various others) offers a commentary track, plus a nifty pop-up trivia track. A second disc offers numerous featurettes and archival documentaries. Highly recommended disc set.

He's going back! He's going back!

Death Wish succeeds more as anti-liberal backlash than as a movie, with an engaging premise of a conscientious objector who takes up arms in the streets of New York City when he finds that the criminals have run rampant without anyone to stop them. Based on the novel by Brian Garfield, the premise of the film pushes forward the notion that if there aren't enough police to help protect the citizens, then the citizens need to start defending themselves. It's an influential movie, spawning four sequels and dozens of imitators, and striking a chord with an audience that had been increasingly fed up with not seeing justice served to those who inflict harm on others. It's a simplistic story, with equally simplistic delivery, but it gets its point across, although the hammy acting and spotty direction do little to bolster the ideology into a good film in the end.

Charles Bronson (Love and Bullets) stars as Paul Kersey, a low-key "bleeding heart liberal" working as an architect in New York, where handguns are not allowed. A devout pacifist, Kersey refused to fight in the Korean War, and generally speaking, he has a good job, with a good family, and little to complain about. That is, until a trio of hooligans invades his home, attempts to rape his wife and daughter, leaving one dead and the other in a mental institution. The police are befuddled, so at the urging of one of his friends, he takes up a gun and patrols the streets himself, trying to rid them of as many murderous thugs as possible. Meanwhile, the police concentrate a good deal of their energy on catching this vigilante, while the press and public praise him as a hero.

I've never been a huge fan of Michael Winner's (The Mechanic, The Sentinel) directorial style, as it feels choppy and stagnant much of the time, and he doesn't always get the best performances from his actors. I do enjoy composer Herbie Hancock's work, but his improvisational jazz style is ill-suited for a hard-boiled action drama like this. Death Wish, for all of its interesting points, is just too uneven an experience to fully recommend to anyone who isn't either a die-hard Bronson fan or a lover of average-joe vigilante films in general. As a testament of pro-gun and anti-criminal rights, it does hit its marks, but as a movie, the flaws are too substantial to ignore.