Monthly Archives: May 2018

  • Gordon’s War

    Old YorkerFilm review

    Ossie Davis (1973)

    Green Beret Gordon Hudson returns to New York from Vietnam to discover that his wife has died – she’s one of the many victims of the drug dealers who’ve taken over Harlem.  Gordon determines to clean up the neighbourhood with the help of some vigilante mates.  They set about accomplishing the task with violent aplomb.  As in the following year’s Death Wish, there’s no insight into the characters but plenty of sentimentality.  Paul Winfield, who plays Gordon, has been quoted as saying that he wants to be the best film actor in the world – ‘Not as good as Olivier or Brando – the best’.  Winfield is going the wrong way about it.

    [1970s]

  • The French Connection

    Old YorkerFilm review

    William Friedkin (1971)

    This was the first and best of the early 1970s films that featured a new dramatic partnership:  the hero and the heroin.  William Friedkin’s direction really is dazzlingly effective – it blinds you to how crude this violent crime thriller’s suspense devices actually are.  The picture’s principal, all-purpose means of getting hold of the audience is noise, especially the crash-bang-wallop of fist fights and the din of New York traffic jams.  As the soundtrack gets louder, Jerry Greenberg’s cutting is faster and ever defter.  Gene Hackman is formidably insensitive as the cop protagonist Popeye Doyle, Roy Scheider is his sidekick, Fernando Rey the suavely elusive Mr Big of the drugs world whom they doggedly and unavailingly pursue.  This tale of narks and narcotics is, on its own terms, almost flawless.  The terms aren’t likeable, though.

    [1970s]

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