MovieMonday: Bullitt

Bullitt, now over a half-century old, is remembered still, and with justice, as an iconic action movie.  The icons, of course, are Steve McQueen and a very cool Mustang.

In fact, the story itself is well constructed.  A Mafia informant is brought from Boston to San Francisco on a Friday to testify at a trial that an oleaginous California politician, Walter Chalmers (Robert Vaughn), hopes will advance his political career.  Chalmers asks specifically for Lt. Frank Bullitt (Steve McQueen) to protect the witness until his court appearance the following Monday.  Bullitt is a local hero in the eyes of the city press.  (Did I mention that the movie is set in a distant past?)

A wild weekend ensues.

The witness is picked up at the Mark Hopkins Hotel on Nob Hill and transported by a cab driver (Robert Duvall) to a nondescript hotel room looking out over the noisy Embarcadero (then called Embarcadero Drive, apparently).  That night, while one of Bullitt's men is on guard in the dingy hotel room, the witness unlocks the door for reasons known only to himself.   The door is opened, both men are shot, and Bullitt has a mystery on his hands.

He scrambles to the hospital where a suspicious gray-haired man arrives at the emergency room, and Bullitt senses the man is up to no good.  Bullitt finds the cab driver and tracks the "witness'" movements of the previous day and again spots the gray-haired baddie.

There ensues a long chase scene all over San Francisco -- but not, I believe, in a logical geographical sense -- as Bullitt in his Mustang chases his bad guy and the bad guy's partner in their shiny black Dodge Charger.    A second set of shots is fired.

Smarmy Chalmers continues to be a pest while Bullitt's captain (Simon Oakland) stands by him.  Bullitt's research takes him from the famous Enrico's Restaurant in North Beach to a police morgue where unexpected Boston face photos are phoned in and printed out in a 20th century office, then to a motel south of the city and finally to SFO and a tense and dramatic climax of the type that never will be staged in an American airport again.   

Through it all, McQueen is resolute, calm and focused.  He is the kind of cop you would expect to drive that Mustang.   (Critics sometimes have said Steve McQueen mostly played Steve McQueen, but the same could have been said of Cary Grant and other movie stars.   In fact, McQueen's life, which included a difficult childhood and ended at age 50 of a lung disease related to work-related asbestos exposure, might be expected to yield a man like Steve McQueen, on-screen or off.) 

The weak spot in the story is Cathy (Jacqueline Bisset), Bullitt's beautiful girlfriend who seems to be there, occasionally, for three reasons:  Posing as eye candy, being in the right place at a couple helpful plot moments, and driving a canary-colored Porsche.  Toward the end she says some lame lines that are the fault of the screenwriter and not the actress.  

Still, all these years later, the film is worth watching. 

Notes

This movie was part of a revival, or perhaps a refinement, of the action genre.   It was released the year after the fifth of five James Bond movies that featured Sean Connery, another poised but very cool character.

Bullitt was followed in 1971 by the first of Clint Eastwood's five Dirty Harry movies, which also were set in San Francisco.  Eastwood's detective, Harry Callahan, also was involved in chase scenes, but his personality was more edgy and threatening -- "Make my day" anyone?  Let's remember, between 1968 and 1971, the American appetite for nonconformity had increased as the Vietnam War continued.

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The Bullitt Mustang cachet endures.  Apparently two cars were used in the filming, and McQueen, in character, drove in many of the chase scenes.  One car was assigned to get beat up in the tougher moments, and it went to a scrapyard, even over early opposition from car fans.

The remaining one was bought by an investor/auto enthusiast who held it for years and, at his death, bequeathed it to his son, who sold it at auction in January for  $3.4 million — $3.74 million including buyers fees.  

The enthusiasm has not gone unnoticed at the Ford Motor Company, which has been releasing derivative Bullitt Mustangs, presumably to eager audiences, since 2001. 

MovieMonday: Time

Amazon Prime released this film Friday.  It examines the notion of equal treatment under law in the story of a wife who raises six sons while her husband is locked up in Louisiana's notorious state prison,  Angola.

Sibil and Robert Richardson were buying a house and raising four sons on the day when, desperate for cash after a promised business loan fell through, she drove him and his nephew to a credit union in Shreveport.  Robert drew his gun but did not shoot, collected about $5,000 and was arrested almost immediately after he left the building.

The two were charged by the state of Louisiana and offered plea deals.  Sibil took hers, and Rob did not.  She was sentenced to 12 years and released in 3.5 years.  

Rob, guilty of armed robbery, got a tougher deal.  Louisiana law allows judges to assign prison sentences of 5 to 99 years for the armed robbery, which gives sentencing judges an enormous amount of leeway.  

The judge in his case sentenced Rob to 60 years in prison with no hope of parole.  

NB: Bank robbery also can be prosecuted as a federal crime.  In the federal system, the maximum prison term for armed robbery of a bank is 25 years.

Quite a disparity there.  

The film focuses less on the final effort to get Rob a chance at parole and more on home movies that Sibil, who calls herself Fox Rich,  has made for him over the years.  We see their sons as toddlers, as they grow up and as the twins start college and the oldest son receives his white coat as a newly minted dentist. 

The film necessarily cannot share much about Rob's experience, but Fox is a remarkable woman.  She speaks often at public events about the longer sentences typically issued to Black felons.  

(Think about it:  What justifies such a long sentence for a first-time failed robbery with no shooting and all the money recovered immediately?  What is to be gained by sentencing a family man unlikely to repeat his single bad act to an effective life sentence?)  

While Fox is angry, and with cause, but she also is practical.  She works to feed her family.   She is active in her church.  She is unfailingly deferential in phone calls to inquire about a long-promised but often-delayed answer to her question about Rob's possible eligibility for parole.    (My fuse goes off fast when I get the runaround from bureaucratic paper pushers -- but it may be easier for me to get results in such cases than for a person who is African American.) 

Most of all, Fox is honest.  She visits the robbed credit union and apologizes personally for the robbery to the two women who work there.  When they suggest she should apologize also to her relatives for the difficulties visited on them, she does that too.  Her sincerity and steadiness redound to the benefit of her husband and children.

The film ends on an upbeat note, sorta, but the message -- unequal justice under law -- stands.

The able film director, Garrett Bradley, won a prize for Time at Sundance in January.  She takes an interest in African American topics, and we can expect to see more from her as her career progresses. 

One minor quibble is the one-word title.  It can suggest the time spent in prison or time lost in the raising of children, but it inevitably requires an explanation to potential viewers.  Still, it is difficult to imagine a better alternative.

Notes

Rob Richardson was held in Louisiana's state prison, known as Angola.  In fact, he is not the only Black convict who has had complaints about the place.   Following are three other stories, all of them worse.  We can hope that the state's justice system has improved since these men were sentenced.

Malcolm Alexander

Alexander was 21 when he was found guilt of a rape he absolutely denied committing in 1980, and after his incompetent lawyer presented virtually no defense in a one-day trial.  He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.  

(The lawyer also promised to file an appeal but did not do so.  The lawyer was disbarred later, but too late to help Alexander.)

In 1996, the Innocence Project took up the matter and learned that the most important physical evidence -- a rape kit cultured from the woman's vagina and a semen-stained towel -- had been destroyed by 1985.  (Troves of potential DNA evidence were tossed in those years before they even could be evaluated, but the action in Alexander's case was unusually swift.) 

Alexander continued to maintain his innocence.  In 2013, more evidence from the crime scene was discovered in the police crime lab.  Three hairs, collected but never studied, were tested for DNA and found to have come from someone who was not Alexander and not the victim. 

This constituted reasonable doubt -- actually considerable doubt -- about Alexander's guilt.  He was released early in 2018 after serving nearly 38 years in Angola.  

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Archie Williams

This was another black-white rape case.  Baton Rouge police showed multiple lineups of suspects to the victim, always including Williams, and they urged the victim to identify Williams as her assailant, even though she had said that the man who attacked her was taller than she was -- Williams was shorter -- and had a scar on his chest, which Williams did not.  

Eventually, under pressure from the police, she said that her attacker was Williams.

Williams, 22  at the time, was convicted and sentenced in 1983 to life without parole.  

In 2019, just 36 years later, a judge ordered a review of the bloody fingerprints found at the crime scene. The fingerprints proved that Williams had been telling the truth.  He was released from prison after spending most of his adult life there for a crime he had not committed.  

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Glen Ford 

Ford was a yard man who worked behind a Shreveport jewelry store.  The store owner, Isadore Rozeman, was found shot dead in the store in 1983. 

 

Ford was known to be in the vicinity at the time of Rozeman's death and, afterward, with two other men, sharing materials stolen from the store.  Some of the stolen goods were found in one of the other men's homes; the same house had pawn shop receipts issued to Ford from the store.  

Ford was arrested and charged with murder.   His court-appointed lawyers had no experience in criminal law, and prosecutors issued peremptory challenges to assure an entirely white jury in a district whose population was 50 percent African American.  The judge in the case also was white.  Ford was  convicted without a murder weapon linking him to the murder and with evidence from confidential informants -- most likely including the other two men (suspects) withheld.  He was sentenced to death in 1984, sent to Angola and spent almost all of his time there in solitary confinement.

The Innocence Project raised many challenges -- white judge, all-white jury, among them -- but Ford was stuck until a confidential informant told police in 2013 that someone else confessed to him that he had committed the murder that had sent Ford to prison.

Ford was released in 2014, after 30 years of very hard time.  He was diagnosed a few months later with the Stage-3 lung cancer that progressed rapidly and killed him less than a year later.

MovieMonday: Uncut Gems

This movie, Adam Sandler's latest, was released in theaters at the end of last year.  It promised a totally new type of role for Sandler, but my thought at the time was, eh, maybe not.

The classic Sandler vehicle is 1995's Billy Madison, in which he plays the unaccomplished son of a father who forces him to repeat his school years, starting with grade one, to prove that he can manage and inherit the family business.   Indignities ensue, but it is a comedy, and all works out well.   Trivial and not very interesting.

Fortunately this story is not so simplistic.  Now middle-aged, Sandler plays Howard Ratner,  a Jewish jeweler in the New York' diamond district who lives on the edge, always on the edge. 

Howard has an exasperated wife, Dinah (Idina Menzel), and three nice children in New Jersey and an equally exasperating girlfriend, his comely employee, Julia (Julia Fox) who lives in his vulgar bachelor apartment in the city.  As the film begins, we learn that he owes his goyish brother-in-law, Arno (Eric Bogosian) $100,000.  

But of course Howard has a plan.  His ace in the whole is an Ethiopian rock studded with opals that arrives in his office in an unusual fashion and at a fortuitous moment -- when Kevin Garnett (the real one, then of the Boston Celtics) arrives, accompanied by Demany (Lakeith Stanfield), who is showing the out-of-towner around the jewelry district.

Garnett is taken immediately by the stone, which his character suspects will bring him power or luck.  He insists on taking the stone with him and plans to purchase it later.  As security, he gives Howard his diamond- and emerald-encrusted 2008 NBA championship ring.

 

Howard takes the ring and pawns it because he has a bigger plan.  He always has a bigger plan, and he's always one step away from a disaster.   And, by the way, he likes to place bets on professional basketball.

So it goes, and goes, and goes.  For those who are unfamiliar with the intricacies of NBA sports betting or the consequences of messing with unsavory characters in the diamond district, keeping up is a challenge, but but the tension is constant. 

For Sandler, the film demonstrates an acting range that he seems to have been seeking in recent years.  Same for Kevin Garnett and some character known as the Wkend -- wins all round.

For brothers Benjamin and Josh Safdie, whose last film, 2017's Good Time, was more popular with critics than audiences, this Netflix release has sold well in the U.S. and abroad, even though its full theatrical run was cut short by the pandemic.  The Safdies' approach to stories is novel and worth interest. We will be seeing more from them over time.

Said shorter, Uncut Gems is worth a watch.   

Poetry for Children: Paul Revere

 This is a great poem to share with children from the age of five or so.  It is a compelling action story in verse form.  (You can print it out below or find it online in various formats.)

What makes it so good?

1)  It needs no pictures.  Kids grow up with vivid imaginations, and hearing this lets them put those imaginations to use just with words.  It also suggests, indirectly,  that reading -- just words on paper -- can be interesting and, yes, fun.  

2)  The powerful phrasing of the piece invites the reader to render it with the needed drama to carry the ideas.  We don't get many opportunities like this in the writing we see on screens these days.

3) Hearing it 20 times or so — and children DO enjoy hearing their favorite stories many, many times — will cause young ones to remember large portions of the poem and to be able to recite them from memory, an accomplishment that is rewarded with praise from grownups.  Such attention is always gratifying to early learners.

4) It can be inclusive.  We all know that Paul Revere was not the only rider that night to warn of a planned British attack.  (Longfellow's aim was not to diminish the others but to valorize patriotism and courage as symbolized by one of the group.)  

           One of those other riders, we have learned from the New England Historical Society, was a free Black man.  This is a nice point to be able to share.

            In addition the poem works fine if you know a girl who might prefer to hear about "Paula" Revere.  (Many girls admire horses, remember.) Adding a second "a" to the first name does not disrupt the tempo.  And, hey, it could have happened.

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The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,—
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm.”

Then he said “Good night!” and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war:
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon, like a prison-bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.

Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers
Marching down to their boats on the shore.

Then he climbed to the tower of the church,
Up the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,—
By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.

Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, “All is well!”
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,—
A line of black, that bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.

Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride,
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse’s side,
Now gazed on the landscape far and near,
Then impetuous stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height,
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns!

A hurry of hoofs in a village-street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed that flies fearless and fleet:
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.

He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders, that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer’s dog,
And felt the damp of the river-fog,
That rises when the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket-ball.

You know the rest. In the books you have read,
How the British Regulars fired and fled,—
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard-wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

MovieMonday: Lost in Translation

Sofia Coppola's new movie, On the Rocks, opened in a few theaters recently and will be available on some streaming services later.  I'm not going to theaters now, but I decided instead to revisit her first release, from 2003, this week.

This first film from Sofia Coppola won an original screenplay Oscar, and it is indeed original.  

In a way, it's a small movie about the frustrations in two people's relatively small lives.  Coppola's insight was to set the story in an unfamiliar environment.  It concerns two frustrated people who meet in downtown Tokyo's Park Hyatt Hotel.

Bill Murray plays "Mr. Bob Harris," a middle-aged American film star whose career is winding down.  He's taken a lucrative gig appearing in advertisements for Suntory whisky as a break from sitting around the house with his wife and children or "being in a play somewhere."  

Harris is fully aware of the melancholy of his personal situation and the absurdity of his on-set work  --- wordy Japanese instructions boiled down to a word or two in translation.  Given his professional background, he does what is expected to make the filming work, amusingly, which is a credit to Murray's subtle talent, even for those who remember him most fondly from his more broadly comic Caddyshack days.

In a smaller room in the same hotel, newly married Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) waits for her photographer husband, who is mostly out of town on assignments.  Charlotte is lonely and facing the big existential question -- what she's going to do with her life.

Bob and Charlotte's paths cross in the hotel's New York Bar, and they see similarities in their situations.  Their friendship increases because they both are non-business guests who speak the same language.  (This is why the story could not work if the film were set in a hotel in New York or even Buenos Aires.)  

There are plenty of extracurricular events to break up the meditations and tensions of the two characters:  A young people's karaoke party in Tokyo, Bob's television appearance with
"Japan's Johnny Carson" and so on.

Still, Bob and Charlotte are kindred spirits whose relationship is important and approaches, in a way, but does not proceed to the anticipated dramatic conflict or resolution. 

The Japanese setting acts effectively as a third principal in the movie, giving it the literal  "translation" of the title that refers also to the distance between Bob and Charlotte and their respective places in life. 

If you haven't seen it, it's worth a look. 

Notes

Scarlett Johansson was still a newbie in this outing, but she has established herself as a substantial actor in it and since.  It is perhaps ironic that she has earned most of her fortune playing the Black Widow in Disney's Marvel movies; in fact, a "Black Widow" film is slated for release next year.

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And, yes, the problems of two small people in the context of 2020 don't amount to a hill of beans.