TheFearmakers
Joined Nov 2016
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It's not that Samuel Fuller was an entirely overrated director, but more modern and outright artistic auteurs, from France to America as well as the myriad of rabid Fuller fans, try way too hard finding controversial symbolism in just about everything he does...
Which is downright stretching it for FORTY GUNS, a deliberately sparse and simple 90-minute Western-Noir that somehow feels extremely long: which isn't entirely bad as several of the characters seem created for something more vastly epic and thematically significant...
All having gathered in a lawless small town controlled by Barbara Stanwyk as a cattle baron curbed by three brothers who have ridden in, literally in her horse-clomping dust... to possibly change things, Wyatt Earp style...
Particularly facing her almost hypnotic control using those titular FORTY RIDERS, including a few brash, wild-card killers and yet, with all the formidable backup, what's overcrowded are the three male leads...
Wherein Fuller's STEEL HELMET b-movie star Gene Barry, who falls in love with sassy gunsmith and overall scene-stealer Eve Brent, could have been the sole focus as wooden pacifist brother Barry Sullivan, mentoring young upstart Richard Dix, gets in the way of Dean Jagger's passive sheriff subplot and other underused townies... in what opens and closes with incredibly-filmed action sequences, playing out as bombastic as any John Ford Western headliner...
There just needed less of the corny roman chorus crooning throughout melodramatic patches of near-romantic dialogue and more strategically offensive and defensive gun-play, since both the anticipating audience and tension-filled characters deserved more of an overall fight.
Which is downright stretching it for FORTY GUNS, a deliberately sparse and simple 90-minute Western-Noir that somehow feels extremely long: which isn't entirely bad as several of the characters seem created for something more vastly epic and thematically significant...
All having gathered in a lawless small town controlled by Barbara Stanwyk as a cattle baron curbed by three brothers who have ridden in, literally in her horse-clomping dust... to possibly change things, Wyatt Earp style...
Particularly facing her almost hypnotic control using those titular FORTY RIDERS, including a few brash, wild-card killers and yet, with all the formidable backup, what's overcrowded are the three male leads...
Wherein Fuller's STEEL HELMET b-movie star Gene Barry, who falls in love with sassy gunsmith and overall scene-stealer Eve Brent, could have been the sole focus as wooden pacifist brother Barry Sullivan, mentoring young upstart Richard Dix, gets in the way of Dean Jagger's passive sheriff subplot and other underused townies... in what opens and closes with incredibly-filmed action sequences, playing out as bombastic as any John Ford Western headliner...
There just needed less of the corny roman chorus crooning throughout melodramatic patches of near-romantic dialogue and more strategically offensive and defensive gun-play, since both the anticipating audience and tension-filled characters deserved more of an overall fight.
Bass guitar maestro Bill Wyman, with his signature deadpan charm, plays a security guard at a museum containing artifacts from rock n' roll history...
Among these are Mick Jagger in drag, locked inside dusty displayed glass, reanimating and thereafter, he and Bill watch various Stones videos on a computer monitor and even a freezer door (She's So Cold). What's really fun is seeing both Bill and Mick act, doing a surprisingly decent job (Wyman in particular)... introducing videos with actual stories being told and/or the band performing their groovy tunes outright: mostly in the then-current 1980's, with a few rewinds from their previously reining, semi--youthful decade...
Anita Morris from She Was Hot Yet 1970's videos Angie and It's Only R&R go on too long yet it's nice seeing their former guitar-ringer Mick Taylor (albeit underused on these tracks); while later MTV-era tracks are more fun, being videos as opposed to promos...
Like 1973 throwback Waiting on a Friend, where Mick and Keith begin, seated on the steps of the Led Zeppelin Physical Graffiti building: strolling down the urban boulevard, meeting up with the other band members in a dive bar. While Miss You, with music from the album and Mick's voice performed for the video, and Emotional Rescue, filmed in funky blue inferred, are edited down but still seem complete...
This was really a promotional piece for the Stone's then-new 1983 album Undercover and includes exploitation style Film Noir inspired videos for Too Much Blood and Undercover (of the Night), both creatively shot yet trying too hard to push the envelope...
At this point the band were struggling with both middle age and frustration amongst Jagger and Richards, heading for an inevitable (yet ultimately short-lived) creative divorce...
Although the lightweight rocker She Was Hot, more befitting to the band's Chuck Berry-inspired origin, provides the best of the Undercover songs and video, involving the band coming unglued in the presence of red-headed siren Anita Morris, co-star of the following year's RUTHLESS PEOPLE, a comedy film that Jagger would provide a forgettable New Wave title track for, and sporadic excerpts of concert footage and interviews are thrown in for good measure, making this a pleasurably nifty gem for those rabid Rolling Stones fans who have everything else.
Among these are Mick Jagger in drag, locked inside dusty displayed glass, reanimating and thereafter, he and Bill watch various Stones videos on a computer monitor and even a freezer door (She's So Cold). What's really fun is seeing both Bill and Mick act, doing a surprisingly decent job (Wyman in particular)... introducing videos with actual stories being told and/or the band performing their groovy tunes outright: mostly in the then-current 1980's, with a few rewinds from their previously reining, semi--youthful decade...
Anita Morris from She Was Hot Yet 1970's videos Angie and It's Only R&R go on too long yet it's nice seeing their former guitar-ringer Mick Taylor (albeit underused on these tracks); while later MTV-era tracks are more fun, being videos as opposed to promos...
Like 1973 throwback Waiting on a Friend, where Mick and Keith begin, seated on the steps of the Led Zeppelin Physical Graffiti building: strolling down the urban boulevard, meeting up with the other band members in a dive bar. While Miss You, with music from the album and Mick's voice performed for the video, and Emotional Rescue, filmed in funky blue inferred, are edited down but still seem complete...
This was really a promotional piece for the Stone's then-new 1983 album Undercover and includes exploitation style Film Noir inspired videos for Too Much Blood and Undercover (of the Night), both creatively shot yet trying too hard to push the envelope...
At this point the band were struggling with both middle age and frustration amongst Jagger and Richards, heading for an inevitable (yet ultimately short-lived) creative divorce...
Although the lightweight rocker She Was Hot, more befitting to the band's Chuck Berry-inspired origin, provides the best of the Undercover songs and video, involving the band coming unglued in the presence of red-headed siren Anita Morris, co-star of the following year's RUTHLESS PEOPLE, a comedy film that Jagger would provide a forgettable New Wave title track for, and sporadic excerpts of concert footage and interviews are thrown in for good measure, making this a pleasurably nifty gem for those rabid Rolling Stones fans who have everything else.
Sergio Leone's 'Man With No Name' or 'Dollars Trilogy' was mainly interpreted as such from the second movie's sustaining title, A FEW DOLLARS MORE, sounding as if Clint Eastwood's Joe character were returning after FISTFUL OF DOLLARS... but he's named Monco here, a resilient bounty-killer with initially reluctant partner Lee Van Cleef as older, more experienced and slightly superior sharp-shooting Col. Douglas Mortimer...
The best scenes take place in the small town buildup before the screen-time's stretched twenty-minutes too far in holed-up, sparsely rural locales, where at one point Eastwood watches Cleef mentally-squaring off with the violently villainous gang, as if he too were hearing Ennio Morricone's tension-building score...
Like its epic and superior followup THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY, the comparably shorter DOLLARS MORE... although longer than FISTFUL... has the same main goal concerning a bundle of cash: here placed inside a carpenter's unique cabinet from the backstory of lead antagonist Gian Maria Volontè as El Indio, who, flanked by scruffy hunchback Klaus Kinski and Leoni regular Luigi Pistilli, goes into spooky hypnotic trances whenever making decisions...
He's also haunted by surreal recurring backstory-flashbacks concerning a slain woman, with a climactic payoff concerning one of his two hunters... yet the three main characters often feel like part of different types of thrillers: Eastwood and Van Cleef game for a more gun-blasting-adventure while the uncompromisingly brooding Volontè leans into what's darkly art-house cerebral...
The resulting combination mostly works in a narrowed hybrid of twisty heist flick and sprawling open-road-movie, where Clint Eastwood's more of a strategic referee than primary pawn, giving genre-favorite Lee Van Cleef slightly more leverage to the overall plot and theme...
Ultimately making sense since Clint's the sole hero in FISTFUL while Eli Wallach's Tuco almost completely owns UGLY: flanking the resulting trilogy connected by style instead of characters - yet the main drive here's the director and composer, who had really found their ultimately groundbreaking, combined synergy.
The best scenes take place in the small town buildup before the screen-time's stretched twenty-minutes too far in holed-up, sparsely rural locales, where at one point Eastwood watches Cleef mentally-squaring off with the violently villainous gang, as if he too were hearing Ennio Morricone's tension-building score...
Like its epic and superior followup THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY, the comparably shorter DOLLARS MORE... although longer than FISTFUL... has the same main goal concerning a bundle of cash: here placed inside a carpenter's unique cabinet from the backstory of lead antagonist Gian Maria Volontè as El Indio, who, flanked by scruffy hunchback Klaus Kinski and Leoni regular Luigi Pistilli, goes into spooky hypnotic trances whenever making decisions...
He's also haunted by surreal recurring backstory-flashbacks concerning a slain woman, with a climactic payoff concerning one of his two hunters... yet the three main characters often feel like part of different types of thrillers: Eastwood and Van Cleef game for a more gun-blasting-adventure while the uncompromisingly brooding Volontè leans into what's darkly art-house cerebral...
The resulting combination mostly works in a narrowed hybrid of twisty heist flick and sprawling open-road-movie, where Clint Eastwood's more of a strategic referee than primary pawn, giving genre-favorite Lee Van Cleef slightly more leverage to the overall plot and theme...
Ultimately making sense since Clint's the sole hero in FISTFUL while Eli Wallach's Tuco almost completely owns UGLY: flanking the resulting trilogy connected by style instead of characters - yet the main drive here's the director and composer, who had really found their ultimately groundbreaking, combined synergy.