Review #1,405: 'Escape from Alcatraz' (1979)

Before their falling out, director Don Siegel and actor Clint Eastwood made some great films together, beginning with Coogan's Bluff in 1968 and ending with arguably their finest work, Escape from Alcatraz in 1979. Like Eastwood's character Frank Morris, Escape from Alcatraz is lean and no-nonsense, set completely within the walls of the infamous island prison. It's also a masterpiece of visual storytelling, with Siegel displaying a skill for capturing the routine of life in Alcatraz, from the small individual cells to the mundane work cycles, all combining to create an overall sense of hopelessness for those destined to rot away on the Rock. Morris has been placed there because he has escaped from every other prison he's been sent to, and nobody escapes from Alcatraz. He is quickly informed by a fellow inmate that should you even manage to get out of your cell, it's a mile away from land and the cold will kill you before the next prisoner count.

This revelation would crush the souls of most men, but Morris simply sees it as another challenge to overcome and quickly starts to plan a break-out. It will take time however, so he must endure the harshness of prison life in the meantime. Alcatraz is a place of punishment, not rehabilitation, and the quietly sadistic warden, played by Patrick McGoohan, appears to be proud of the prison's reputation of making good prisoners, not citizens. We are gradually introduced to the other inmates: There's the eccentric Litmus (Frank Ronzio), who convinces a new arrival that he is actually Al Capone, artist and amateur botanist 'Doc' Dalton (Roberts Blossom), black librarian English (Paul Benjamin), and eventually Morris' old acquaintances and brothers Clarence (Jack Thibeau) and John Anglin (Fred Ward). Morris quickly makes an enemy in Wolf (Bruce M. Fischer), when he clobbers the would-be rapist for making advances in the shower room. With Wolf waiting impatiently in solitary for revenge and the threat of a cell move looming, Morris steps up his efforts, finding hope in the crumbling concrete around the grille in his cell.

The escape itself is a magnificent, meticulously researched sequence that arrives at the climax, but before that we are ushered into the harsh realities of prison life, and what it takes to survive and maintain your sanity in such brutal surroundings. Siegel skilfully builds dramatic tension in a suffocating, cramped confinement. Alcatraz was no ordinary prison. It was an intricate machine designed to crush the spirits of those serving time, where a luxury could be taken away in an instant for the pettiest of reasons, leaving you with nothing but walls and your thoughts. Siegel doesn't necessarily side with the prisoners - with one exception, they all certainly deserve to be locked up - but he is keen to point out that such mental abuse doesn't do anybody, especially society, any good. This sense of injustice is certainly what seems to be driving Morris, and you'll be willing him on when the date is finally set. The escape is actually relatively straight-forward, but Siegel makes it nail-biting nonetheless. This also fits in with the whole docudrama feel, sticking closely to how it actually went down back in 1962. The ending eerily lets you ponder their fate for yourselves. They were never seen again, nor were their bodies discovered.


Directed by: Don Siegel
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Patrick McGoohan, Roberts Blossom, Jack Thibeau, Fred Ward, Paul Benjamin, Larry Hankin
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,264: 'The Beguiled' (1971)

As the opening titles of The Beguiled flicker by with a collection of grainy photographs from the brutal American Civil War, it would seem we're in familiar tough, manly action territory, especially when the names of Don Siegel and Clint Eastwood flash on screen. These feelings appear to be confirmed as Eastwood grizzled Union officer John McBurney comes into shot, clearly wounded and hanging on for dear life following a bloody battle with Confederate soldiers. He is discovered by Amy (Pamelyn Ferdin), a 12 year old student at the nearby Seminary for Young Ladies, who quickly takes a keen interest in the handsome but battered young man. As some bloodthirsty Confederate soldiers trot by and they are forced to hide, John plants a lingering kiss on the child's mouth, which immediately cause feelings of discomfort for the viewer. No, The Beguiled is not your typical Siegel tough-guy actioner, but something all the more fascinating and complex.

John is eventually smuggled back into the school run by Miss Martha Farnsworth (Geraldine Page), a woman with a secretive past of her own. She wants the Union soldier gone immediately, but the soldier is charming and badly wounded, so she and the fellow ladies of the school tend to his injured leg and give him a bed. He is kept under lock and key, but he is often visited by the curious ladies, including virginal teacher Edwina (Elizabeth Hartman) and precocious 17 year old student Carol (Jo Ann Harris). With Martha still insistent on turning him over to Confederate troops once he has regained his strength, John seizes the chance to seduce as many of them as he can, taking full advantage of their time away from men and natural curiosity towards the opposite sex. He becomes unnervingly comfortable with his methods of manipulation, and is soon playing the women off one another. But these ladies have seen it all before, whether it be a father, a sibling or a drunken soldier stumbling onto the school grounds with cruel intentions.

The Beguiled is a film about jealousy, sexuality and bitterness, so it's no surprise that it flopped and didn't go down well with fans of Siegel's tougher, more straight-laced output. The film also threatens to venture into horror territory, as emotions begin to spill over and John's scheming becomes apparent. There were cries of misogyny upon the film's release, but although the claim is certainly open for debate, this is not a film by a director who hates women. To label the film misogynist would be to cruelly over-simplify it, as the likes of Martha and Edwina aren't just coy women to be easily taken advantage of, but incredibly complex characters both scarred and enlightened by past experiences with men. John is clearly the most loathsome character, an evil man who uses his physicality and charm to worm his way into their lives and gain their trust, and Siegel makes little attempt to make him sympathetic. It's an incredibly claustrophobic and intense experience, with career-best performances from Page and Hartman. It is Siegel's favourite of his extensive filmography, and it isn't difficult to see why.


Directed by: Don Siegel
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Geraldine Page, Elizabeth Hartman, Jo Ann Harris, Pamelyn Ferdin
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,128: 'Sully: Miracle on the Hudson' (2016)

The miraculous events of January 15th, 2009, when veteran pilot Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger was forced to make an emergency landing in New York's Hudson River after a flock of birds flew by and took out both of the plane's engines, were reported widely here in the UK, with the media quite rightly branding the feel-good story as an act of heroism by a humble man who had dedicated 42 years of his life to his job. Almost as if the decision-makers felt like the people in the UK were too ignorant to recall a famous and extremely recent incident from the U.S., Sully has received the distracting subtitle of Miracle on the Hudson, making it sound like a TV movie aired by Channel 5 in the process. But this is directed by Clint Eastwood, and with the screen legend behind the camera and one of its most celebrated talents in front of it, Tom Hanks, Sully can only mean one thing - the arrival of awards season.

While the title may suggest a hastily-made cash-in for bored housewives and the unemployed to consume during a weekday afternoon in front of the TV, Sully has Eastwood at his most accomplished, delivering a solidly-made, well-acted tale of heroism in his usual clinical fashion of shooting quickly and without fuss. If you know the story, which you likely do, the opening scene may seem predictable as Sully and his co-pilot Jeff Skiles (Aaron Eckhart) buckle in and take off, until disaster strikes. Rather than heading to the Hudson, the plane takes a left turn and is soon flying dangerously close to skyscrapers, eventually clipping one and going down in a ball of flames. This turns out to be Sully's nightmare, as he struggles with the overwhelming media attention and the questions posed by the National Transportation Security Board (NTSB). The latter are investigating Sully's actions, and whether the data secured after the landing indicates that it was possible to steer the plane safely back to LaGuardia airport or to nearby New Jersey.

Sully's inability to quite comprehend the sudden mass media coverage and the spontaneous hugs and kisses he receives by the adoring public forms the crux of Eastwood's film, which is, after all, based on an action that lasted a mere 208 seconds. Hanks plays the role with a quiet, dignified humanity, something the actor has mastered in more recent years, despite not receiving an Oscar nomination since 2000's Cast Away. He is so humane in fact, that he needs to remind the NTSB that the very thing they're investigating - human error - is just that; human. Regardless of how many data checks are carried out or simulations are conducted, the human factor cannot be replicated. This was a decision made in a split second, with the knowledge that the lives of hundreds of people are in his hands weighing down on him and decades of experience guiding his hands. Hanks may not get award recognition once again here, but it is undoubtedly a terrific, understated performance.

Sully ultimately struggles with deciding how to pace itself, frequently jumping back and forth in time between the events before, during and after the landing, as well as a couple of brief scenes depicting the pilot's early days learning to conquer the skies. The events itself is also shown multiple times from different perspectives, including an air-traffic controller who believes the plane to have surely crashed after disappearing off the radar, with unnecessary focus on a collection of passengers whose stories quickly descend into sentiment and cliche. It all seems like padding for a film that would have surely worked better telling a straight-forward story of a man's act of heroism and the emotional after-effects, rather than trying to juice up the tale by turning the ones investigating the incident into little more than snarling suits. When Sully simply lets Hanks do his thing, it's great drama, and the re-enactment itself is as equally terrifying as it is thrilling, but the moments in between drag the film down into tedious waters.


Directed by: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney, Mike O'Malley, Anna Gunn
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #831: 'American Sniper' (2014)

Clint Eastwood's American Sniper is an uncomplicated film about a seemingly uncomplicated man. Bradley Cooper puts in another impressive performance as the tight-lipped, hulking marksman Chris Kyle, the most lethal sniper in U.S. military history, clocking up 160 confirmed kills over four tours of duty in Iraq. Seeing that many people assassinated through the scope of his own rifle must surely have weighted heavily on Kyle's shoulders, only we wouldn't know it as Eastwood offers such little complexity to the man that we learn virtually nothing about him.

The film is little more than one action scene after another. The opening scene, which sees Kyle faced with the awful decision of whether to take out a child he believes is holding a grenade and on his way towards a unit of American soldiers, is riveting. From then on, Kyle's scenes are a repetitive montage of enemy or civilian, shoot or don't shoot. When he's on the ground, the action is confusing, and with such slight character dimension offered to Kyle's comrades, the tragedy of their deaths hold little impact. It's also difficult to sympathise with Kyle himself, who is portrayed as little more than an ignorant racist who lives his life by his father's recognition of him being blessed with the gift of aggression.

This would all be fine if Eastwood provided any sort of context. If wars need these kind of men in order to be won, then make that the point. If the film is supposed to be an honest look at a remarkably efficient marksman of questionable ethics, then offer us a window into his motivation. Any references to a controversial war, it's legality, and the methods employed during the invasion are completely ignored. Feeling the need to stick to familiar movie tropes, Kyle is faced by a foe, the Iraqi sniper Mustafa (Sammy Sheik), who did not exist in real life. He is a faceless, near-wordless villain, someone to boo and hiss at. Like all the other enemy soldiers, no motivation, background or personality is provided.

There are a few good points. Usually the 'home life' scenes of any war movie grind the narrative to an unwelcome halt, but it's in these moments where we finally get a glimpse at Kyle the real person. His wife, played by a very impressive Sienna Miller, is a rock (but thinly written), and it's through her eyes that we see Kyle's struggles with PTSD. And Cooper is excellent, bringing what little humanity to his character as the script allows and bulking up to an enormous size to do the man he's portraying justice. But ultimately, the film left me feeling hollow. There is no feeling of the passing of time, little to engage with on an emotional level, and Eastwood's personal views on such a hot topic and divisive figure are non-existent.


Directed by: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Keir O'Donnell, Luke Grimes
Country: USA

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #333: 'J. Edgar' (2011)

The first half of the 20th century was an incredibly corrupt and conspiratorial period, particularly in American politics. A figure within this rich history was John Edgar Hoover, founder and head of the FBI from it's inception in 1935. He did much for the modernisation of police procedure, but he was also a very contentious character. He kept secret files on public figures, using them to blackmail. This also kept each new president in check, creating a position in the country who was above the law, unaccountable, and practically untouchable. His FBI was corrupt, and Hoover himself publicly stated that organised crime did not exist on the level that was claimed about The Mafia. It's interesting that it was not until Hoover's death in 1972, that the US supreme court et al began investigating and eventually prosecuting organised gangs.

Obviously this first paragraph is unable to summarise the full complexity of a man, - speculated as being homosexual (something that has never been proven) - I was expecting good things for a project directed by Clint Eastwood (who has been active over the last decade or so, producing some incredibly accomplished films), and starring Leonardo DiCaprio (who has himself been involved in great films, and performing spectacularly - despite still having the "heart-throb" label attached to him due to one film, Titanic (1997).

J. Edgar's main focus is not necessarily the full complexities of the real man. It's attention is focused upon the man as a public figure, a character that he plays himself in life. The image is important to him; he is shown as being a great PR man. In the early stages of the FBI, he influenced the content of radio shows, comic books and movies (such as 'G' Men (1935)) that were depicting the courageous activities of the bureau. Hoover's public image is portrayed as being practically identical to his private persona, keeping only three people close to him: His mother Anna Marie (Judi Dench), his secretary (Naomi Watts), and Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer), his close associate at the FBI. Tolson and Hoover were close their entire careers, leading to the speculation that they were lovers - something that seems plausible on the evidence, but has no concrete conclusion. Therefore, the film only really briefly suggest this, leaving the viewer to ponder personal conclusions.

Whilst the screenplay (written by Dustin Lance Black, who had previously won an Oscar for the fantastic Milk (2008)) fails to really explore the ambiguities, or even much of the psychological complexities of Hoover, the production is exceptional. The film's span brings it through the 1920's into the 1970's and costume, sets and cinematography is dazzlingly beautiful, and exacting of their periods. DiCaprio's performance is good, but the screen is quite often filled with prosthetically 'enhanced' pensioner's, which at times actually aggravated me. This is not to say that the make-up is bad, it is very good. This could have been less distracting had there only been one character, however, with three or more, is too much. With some great talent attached to this project, I would have expected a more interesting film. As it is, it's not the worst biopic that I have ever seen. However, for my money, if you want a film about this interesting historical figure, I would advise you watch Larry Cohen's excellent low budget The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1977).


Directed by: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts, Josh Lucas, Judi Dench
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Marc Ivamy