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Reviews
Sorcerer (1977)
Trying to get my own copy of this film for AGES
I completely forgot about this film until SPEED TV played it latenight on TV and I missed nearly half of it. Ever since I've been scrounging around for it and finally specially ordered it from A&B Sound.
Sorcerer was made by the same man who made the French Connection and the Exorcist around the same time, so it definitely has that early gritty look to it which I love. The premise is brilliant. Four men on the run with lives each flushed down the hopper united in some mad and dangerous journey.
Set up.
An oil rig has blown in some forsaken hole in South America under some generic dictatorship. The rig is burning and they need to blast it out as soon as possible.
Problem The only cache of explosives big enough to do the job were kept 218 miles away and they weren't stored properly. Dynamite sticks need to be turned every so often in storage or else the nitroglycerin bleeds out the bottom and pools at the bottom of the stack. This makes it incredibly unstable and ready to blow.
Solution Drive two trucks through the most treacherous and insanely difficult terrain to get the really unstable explosives from point A to point B, 218 miles away. Offer a truckload of money and find four men desperate enough to do it. Our heroes, men on the run with nothing to lose and little to live for, who just happen to also be crack mechanics and damn good truck drivers. They're using two trucks because odds are one wont make it. They're actually carrying six times as much explosive as they need to do the job.
So after a brief road test to see who can do the job, they turn the men loose. And what you get, in my opinion, is some of the most insanely dangerous and brilliantly filmed sequences ever captured on film. This movie rocked. In this film is a moment that is on the top of my top ten list of most amazing moments captured on film. It's when the second truck, a 10 ton rig, tries to cross a rickety swaying bridge that isn't fit to hold up an anemic mule. The guide is hanging on for dear life waving the truck forward, there's a torrential downpour hammering down, there's a flooding river beneath them, and this truck just teetering on the edge of flipping over making its way across. Not one lick of computer animation in it and it totally kicks the butt of anything captured on modern film. Beautiful.
This film should be viewed by every CG-obsessed film maker to show what can be done in the real world to bring back real organic suspense.
Valiant (2005)
Totally uninspiring
Rice paper thin story and non-existent character development. Despite the fact the story took place in a potentially rich environment there was nothing rich about it. I don't even understand why some characters were even in the film. John Cleese's "Mercury" seemed to only exist to provide shlocky sight gags for Tim Curry's gang of Nazi Falcons. Yoddling is a torture technique, oh my, hilarious, my sides are just splitting.
Sorry, kids are more sophisticated than this. This is entertaining for no one. Oh, and the animation? Dull. Lots of work with a really pedestrian results. Look like a college student's first film. Lotta work and technique, but little inspiration. This is definitely a product of Disney's long trip down the hopper.