Review: Chino aka The Valdez Horses - 1973

Chino

Aka: The Valdez Horses

Director(s): John Sturges, Duilio Coletti

1973

Western

Chino Valdez is a lone horse breeder. This is partly by choice and partly because he is a so called half-breed. He’s unwelcomed almost wherever he goes. He has a few sanctuaries though; one is with the Indians where he spent a lot of time. He knows the way of nature and he’s a master horseman. One day a youngster named Jamie comes to him looking for work and a roof over his head. Chino tells him to keep looking elsewhere and that he has no need for ant help, he can manage on his own. But some way the two starts to like each other, almost like father and son. Chinos arch enemy – a mighty ranch owner which goes out of his way to make Chinos life miserable has a sister, Catherine. She plans to buy a Valdez horse from Chino and they end up falling in love with each other, something that is not easily forgiven by the brother who will stop at nothing to keep the two apart.

This edition has a pretty poor transfer of the film. I don’t know which the best to have is, but I figure that we’re never going to see a really good BD of this film. That’s a shame really since it has a lot of quality scenes in it! I’m not generally too fond of westerns even if I fancy a few of them of course, mainly the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns. European westerns are so superior to their American equivalents in my mind. This isn’t any film that comes up to the dirty standards of Leone but it’s still rather non-glorified when it comes to the violence and the heroism. It’s more realistic so to speak. I would have liked to call it non-romanticized but since there’s clearly an important love story to be told here I can’t really do that!

In fact, towards the end I even cry a few tears when… No, I won’t tell you what happens, but it’s quite emotional for me I can tell you! Most of the film is about injustice and racist bullshit. Chino seems to get into trouble most of the time, but I figure that it isn’t his fault. Yet he gets to take the blame with the law. I figure that this is because of the racist bullshit the film tries to tell. As far as I am concerned they try to show us just how stupid racism really is. I bet the color of our blood is the same if we’re red, yellow, white, black or blue. I bet our organs look the same too! And I bet that out feelings are the same!

Charles Bronson does the part as the half-breed great! He’s just as masculine as we’re used to see him! He might have the looks to suit a Mexican half-breed too but I think it’s mainly acting skills! Nothing will break him and the degradation is everyday life for him. Yet he can’t take it! He absolutely refuses to let them break him! His integrity is enormous! But what did you expect me to write? After all this is The Shrine…

Jill Ireland, Charles Bronsons real life wife, plays the supporting part of Catherine. You can tell that there are some real emotions going on, absolutely stunning casting! But of course, as we all know, this was neither the first nor the last time them played in the same movie!

So…we’re about to come to the bottom line here. Is this a good film? Yes! I like it a lot! Bronson once again plays the character that will not break. He would rather stand up for his cause and die trying that to give up! Or will he?

7/10

Review: Raid on Entebbe - 1976

Raid on Entebbe

Director: Irvin Kershner

1976

Drama/Action

A plane gets hijacked by Palestinian terrorists. After a few course changes they finally end up in Uganda. They demand that Israel comply and release some fifty imprisoned freedom fighters. Some of them are held in other countries than Israel of course but their main opponent remains to be Israel. Being in Uganda president Idi Amin seems to be protecting the hijackers. He claims to be doing everything he can for the hostages but his reasons are uncertain. About half of the hostages are released however and Idi Amin claims that it’s he doing, that he negotiated with the hijackers himself. Those who remain are all Jews and most of them residents of Israel. So what is Israel going to do about it? The official policy is not to negotiate with terrorists at all. They want the citizens back but are the price of letting all the “freedom fighters” out of prison – the who is who of terrorism – too high of a price to pay? A military action is initiated – operation Thunderbolt – the hostages are to be freed by force!

This is one of those “lost” Charles Bronson films. I may have been looking at all the wrong places but I haven’t been able to find in on DVD until quite recently. I’m glad it’s been released since it’s a real gem when it comes to movies made for TV. There are only a handful of them that reach the standard of “real” movies. There is Citizen X, this one and The Park is Mine but not so many more. I guarantee that I have forgotten some of them now but the general idea is that there aren’t many of them that reach this level of quality!

To be honest, Charles Bronson isn’t in it very much. He certainly does not have a major part, not even one of the bigger supporting parts. His role is quite small actually. And there are enough other stars to be sure too. There are people like Peter Finch, Martin Balsam, Horst Buchholz, John Saxon, Robert Loggia, James Woods and Yaphet Kotto to name a few. The latter’s interpretation of Idi Amin is fantastic. This might very well be Yaphet Kottos best performance of all time!

Apparently this is based on true events, I’m not too familiar with them but it makes a lot of sense. It seems pretty legit and as far as I’ve been able to dig the deaths of the named hostages and soldiers seems to be correct. One thing that bugs me though is that the lives of the higher ranking officers always seem to be worth more than the general soldiers, the privates. This isn’t anything that’s unique for this movie of course; it’s almost always portrayed that way. We have the officers and we have the cannon fodder. This might be historically correct in this case (no, I won’t get into details) but it still bothers me. I realize that it doesn’t have anything to do with the film itself really but I can’t help myself. This is the only negative thing I have to say about it!

So, this is a film very close to perfection. I’m kind of split when I’m about to grade it. Should I consider my problem with the ranking issues as such a major thing that I let it influence my grading of the whole movie or not? I really don’t know. It’s certainly an aspect of things that makes the viewing experience somewhat annoying. Well… I’d give this one…:

9/10

Review: Telefon - 1977

This is a translated and extended version of a review I wrote a few years ago in Swedish.

Telefon

Director: Don Siegel

1977

Thriller

During the cold war the Russians have a super secret weapon at their disposal. The question, who’s the best agent, is asked. The answer is those who don’t even know that they are under cover. This is the powerful weapon the Russians have planted in small communities around the USA. A small trigger code is needed for the “sleepers” to carry out their forgottem orders at once, in other words to dispose of important strategic targets. But this is a weapon the Russians never have intended to use; it’s obsolete so to speak. But… the names and locations of the “sleepers” is stolen and someone triggers one by one of them into mass destruction. To prevent that the incident causes a major conflict or even a nuclear war the Russians send special agent to the USA to liquidate the thief, they send Charles Bronson.

Until recently I thought that this film was impossible to find on DVD. My search for it can be compared to that of the Holy Grail. This means that the positive memories that I had of it might have been emphasised and some negative forgotten. Actually there was nothing bad about this movie in my mind. Its nostalgic values have prevailed!  This was a true masterpiece in my mind; the best there was with Charles Bronson!

When I saw it again after all these years I realized that it had more flaws than I remembered. It was my favourite film in my youth but still it represents a genre that I generally don’t like very much – the spy thrillers. With that in mind it’s remarkable that I remember it with such joy. But the fact is – Bronson can make any film worth while (almost). Here he acts like a real star and I can’t complain about his performance at all. Neither can I say anything negative about Donald Pleasence who plays the bad guy. The problem is the story or rather the motivation of the story. It could have used some more depth. As it is its very shallow and cartoonish. I still like it but I no longer consider it to be a masterpiece of any kind.

Obviously Quentin Tarantino love the film too since he included the triggering phrase in his movie Death Proof. I can’t stress the fact that I find Tarantino greatly overrated as a director but he knows his movies and few people are such buffs as he is. The knowledge about cult films that he’s possessing is very wide, I must give him that! It’s so great that he spent an entire career imitating what others have done before him. But since this is not a film done by him, enough of that!

This film has its place in the collection for any true Bronson fan that’s for sure. But I’m sorry to say that it hasn’t aged with grace and the visualization of the computer storage and database keeping of information is a bit too naive I think. Did they really think that computers would one day be used like that? Or was the technology already so developed that things worked this way at the time, plus a little futuristic science fiction touch of course! I would like to give this a higher grade from a nostalgic point of view but truthfully… this is a…

7/10

Review: Death Hunt - 1981

Death Hunt

Director: Peter R. Hunt

1981

Action

Johnson, an unsocial Trapper interrupts a dogfight and buys one of –almost dead – dogs against the owners will. He claims that the animal could render him more that the measly $200 but Johnson feels sorry for the dog and insists on the deal. The former dog owner complaint at the sheriff’s office but the sheriff tells him that he won’t do anything about it. Frustrated the dog owner leaves but soon starts the rumor that Johnson is in fact “the mad trapper” knows for killing fellow trappers and stealing their gold teath. The sheriff now has no other choice than to bring Johnson in. He goes to his lone cabin but Johnson won’t hear of it. He’d rather die than to give in. Knowing where the accusations might end he flees and the hunt for him begins.

Studio S Entertainment released this in Sweden a couple of years ago and I think that many of my fellow Swedes might have caught their first glimpse at it for that reason. Not the most dedicated Bronson- or cult film fans of course but the general public. But on the other hand the general public might have no interest in this. I on the other hand find it very satisfying!

The first time I saw it was in my youth when my friends and I rented all the Bronson movies we could find. I’ve liked it since then but it was a long time since I saw it prior to the review. It never occurred to me that it was so similar to First Blood! In both movies a person with extreme survival skills are haunted, the audience sympathies lies with the hunted person as he has done nothing wrong really, he only wants to be left alone. There is also mutual respect between the hunter and the hunted in both movies. The environment is different of course; this takes place in a winter landscape and First Blood in the jungle like forest where John Rambo fights of his hunters.

Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson are the perfect cast in this film. They both seen to be just the part they are playing and the complete each other perfectly. Charles Bronson is the lone trapper who a suspected killer and Lee Marvin is the police official who’d rather not go after the trapper at all. But he must do so since it’s required by his job. There you have another similarity, the political one. When things escalates and the police can’t catch the fugitive the general public in both movies makes things worse looking for the reward money. It becomes more or less a movie where the money is more important than justice and right or wrong. But on the other hand, this is everyday life in reality – the universe outside the movie. It’s the perfect reflection of the real world really.

The trapper must do what he must to survive, which means that he seems more and more guilty to the crime that he did not commit. It’s kind of a frightening thought! People die because they just couldn’t leave him alone. The police know better but the general public don’t, they are short minded and only in it for the money, the reward. Do you recognize it from somewhere around you? The general masses don’t think, they just react on instinct no matter what the consequences are!

This is based on true events which indeed make it more frightening. I’m not surprised really, I just hope that mankind will learn somewhere along the line and evolves beyond the narrow minded thinking in the future. The hunt is an honest one until the general masses are blinded by the reward. It becomes a… death hunt!

7/10

Review: 10 to Midnight - 1983

10 to Midnight

Director: J. Lee Thompson

1983

Thriller

Bronson plays this typical cop that is more or less married to his job. He has a daughter but according to her he’s never been a good father. He has always put the police work ahead of his family but on the other hand he has been decorated with countless of honorable medals. Now he’s in charge of this murder investigation where a former friend of his daughter has been murdered. It’s his job to tell the parents and there are absolutely no way he can keep his emotions out of this one, something that’s essential for good police work!

I never really thought about it that way before but this was not more than a few years old when I first saw it on an rental VHS. It never seemed to be a somewhat new film but rather something from the seventies. A flick from around the same time many of the golden Bronson flick were made. But as I said, now I realized that it’s actually from the 80s!

Bronson does not play an alcoholic cop yet. He would do that many times later but I guess this film was made just before those flicks. Here he’s actually a good cop who wants his man bad, so bad that he doesn’t hesitate to fabricate some evidence. To complicate this further he has a partner that’s not as old in the business and lacks some of the experience needed to compete with Bronsons character. This partner thinks it’s wrong to plant this evidence even if the perpetrator is guilty of horrible crimes!

To make a long story short, the trial gets cancelled and the killer is set free. Now the real struggle begins. Bronsons character starts to stalk the killer in order to make him do mistakes. The killer then sets after Bronsons daughter in order to kill her like the rest of his victims. Now the game’s a foot. Bronson never thought it would go to that and it out to stop the killer once and for all now. The time for planted evidence is now over!

I’ve seen this movie rubricated as a slasher many times over the last few years. I never understood why since my memory of it didn’t allow me such details. After today I understand why it could have got such an epithet, but I still don’t agree with it. It’s true that the killer kills his victims with a knife and that he does it in the nude but it’s still a thriller and a crime movie, not a horror flick and a slasher!

According to my experience I also think that this is a somewhat overrated movie to many people. It a good solid movie to be sure, but I don’t think it’s such a masterpiece that som of my fellow critics seems to think. Still, with Bronson you can’t go wrong!

7/10