Daily Archives: Thursday, May 10, 2018

  • Rollerball

    Old YorkerFilm review

    Norman Jewison (1975)

    ‘In the not so distant future’, says the poster, ‘there will be no more wars but there will be Rollerball’[1].  Norman Jewison doesn’t make clear, however, whether the violent sport of the title will also have replaced all other sports and culture.  Even the rules of the game are hazy.  Jewison is uncomfortably ambivalent about the material.  He dishes up gory violence then seems to scold the viewer for lapping it up.  James Caan stars as a top Rollerball player who, suspicious of a forced retirement, belatedly starts investigating the corporate giants that now rule the world and own the Rollerball teams.  John Houseman is the unacceptable face of corporatism.

    9 February 1976

    [1] Afternote:  The film’s ‘not so distant future’ is 2018 …

  • French Connection II

    Old YorkerFilm review

    John Frankenheimer (1975)

    John Frankenheimer is well up to handling the action sequences that dominated the original but this sequel is principally a showcase for Gene Hackman, reprising the role that won him an Oscar last time around.  Foul-mouthed, amoral Popeye Doyle is now playing away, in Marseilles.  The centrepiece is a cold turkey episode after Popeye has been pumped full of heroin.  This, like plenty more in the film, is too much, in spite of Hackman’s excellence and Claude Renoir’s almost literally stunning photography.  Yet like its predecessor, French Connection II delivers in terms of visceral excitement and Frankenheimer makes the ending cleverly economical.  Dislikeable but recommended.

    [1970s]

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