The Sixteenth Round

Film: The Hurricane
Format: Showtime on big ol’ television.

As the list of Oscar movies I still have to get through starts to wind down, I realize there are movies I’ve avoided for a bunch of different reasons. Length for a few, lack of interest for others. With The Hurricane, I’ve stayed away for a very different reason. I remember when the movie was released, and while I also remember that Denzel Washington’s performance was widely praised, What I also recall was that the biggest knock against the film was that it was economical with sticking with the actual facts.

So let’s look at the film first, then the history. The Hurricane tells the story of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter (Denzel Washington), an up-and-coming middleweight boxer convicted of three murders in Patterson, NJ during the Civil Rights Era. Carter spent nearly 20 years in prison for crimes that both he and the film say he didn’t commit. The timeline of the film naturally goes back and forth. We’ll get some of Carter’s fights and some of his youth as well as a great deal of his time in prison.

L'Chaim!

Film: Fiddler on the Roof
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on laptop.

It would be a lie to say that I’ve been looking forward to Fiddler on the Roof. This is a film that doesn’t seem to know when to stop, clocking in at just over three hours. That’s a lot to take for any film, but even more when that movie is a traditional musical. Calling Fiddler on the Roof a “traditional” musical is true in more ways than one, since the main through story here is about tradition, family, and a changing world. I knew the story going in; I’ve seen this story performed on stage. It’s been some time, though (my age may have been in single digits), and so this felt like it was hanging over my head for ages. Well, now it’s no longer hanging over my head.

Fiddler on the Roof is the story of Tevye (Chaim Topol, typically just known as Topol), his wife Golde (Norma Crane), and their five daughters. Primarily, only the oldest three daughters are of any real concern to the plot here. We learn early on that the role of women in this Russian pre-revolution village is to essentially be married off. Tevye’s daughters come with the issue of not having a dowry, which means that their marriage prospects are more catch as catch can. They are forced to rely on the services of Yente (Molly Picon), the local matchmaker to find them husbands. Of course, since arranged marriages have been the way in this Jewish community since forever, this is not unusual.

Plea Bargain

Film: …And Justice for All
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on laptop.

When you talk about actors in their heyday, you have to hand it to Al Pacino in the 1970s. The man did a lot of good work in that decade. I’m not going to take that away from him. In fact, I’ll even credit his work in …And Justice for All, because it’s a solid 1970s Pacino performance, perhaps even vintage. The problem here is just about everything else. Okay, the cast is solid. But the plot has real issues and the music, especially at first, is terrible.

A quick summary of the film would go like this: an honest lawyer who genuinely believes in the power of the law slowly realizes that the entire system is corrupt from top to bottom. He discovers this during a series of cases that all go bad in different ways but go bad for the same reason. In the end, he has to decide between his job and his conscience, and since this is a film about the law and lawyers, that decision naturally happens within the confines of a courtroom.

Immaculate Deception

Film: Agnes of God
Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop.

A lot of general topics show up on the Oscar lists over and over again. For whatever reason, there is an awful lot of nuns on my lists. Perhaps there are people out there who find the very idea of nuns to be compelling. Perhaps it’s that nuns live such an unusual lifestyle that they are compelling by their very nature. Or perhaps it’s something else. With Agnes of God, it’s very much this something else. While based on a stage play, Agnes of God translates nicely to film in part because of its high concept.

So what is that high concept? Simple: a true innocent, a nun named Agnes (Meg Tilly) who has been raised virtually her entire life in a convent, gives birth to an unexplained child, not the least of that lack of explanation being that the mother is a nun. Just as problematic, the child is discovered dead shortly after the birth, with the umbilical cord wrapped around its neck. The court appoints a psychologist named Martha Livingston (Jane Fonda) to unravel what happened. Dr. Livingston (and yes, there are a few “I presume” jokes) is both aided and thwarted by the efforts of Mother Miriam Ruth (Anne Bancroft) who wants to both avoid further scandal and protect Sister Agnes.

The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming

Format: Streaming video from Watch TCM on laptop.

Turner Classic Movies has a service that allows people with particular satellite or cable packages to watch a collection of movies online or on a smart phone. I thought I’d check it out. There aren’t a ton of films on my lists available at the moment, but it’s always good to check out a new service. One of the films available for a few more days is The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming, which is a “very long wait” film on NetFlix. It seemed like a good choice.

It’s a good bet with a title like this one that we’re not going to be spending a lot of time dealing with heavy drama. We’re not. This is a farce, and it was made in a time when people knew how to make farces, particularly when it came to international conflict. This is from a couple of years after Dr. Strangelove and a few years before Catch-22 and M*A*S*H, after all.

A Soldier's Story

Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on laptop.

I went into A Soldier’s Story blind. I watched it more or less because I found it at the library, which is essentially the reason I choose a lot of the films I do. I had no idea going in that this is in many ways a film I’d already seen. Admittedly, when I saw it last it was called In the Heat of the Night and I’ve seen something similar called A Few Good Men. But we’re not here to talk about either of those films.

A Soldier’s Story, like A Few Good Men is about a military criminal investigation. A sergeant has been murdered on a military base and a captain who is also a lawyer is sent down from Washington to investigate the crime. In the course of the investigation, he discovers roadblocks and obstruction at every turn. Like In the Heat of the Night, at its core, this is all about race, and it handles race with the sort of complexity it needs.

That's Amore

Film: Moonstruck
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

I have trouble buying Cher as a vocalist and I have issues with her fashion sense (or lack thereof), but I’ve never had an issue with her has an actor. Say what you will about her or give me as much grief as you like, but she’s got the chops. With Nicolas Cage, the response is a little different. Cage is certainly capable of throwing together a good performance and seems to do so every now and then. Sadly, he spends most of his time acting in garbage, though. Both Cher and Nicolas Cage have their share of camp value. So what do you get when you throw them together? Well, you get Moonstruck.

Now that I’ve seen Moonstruck, I wonder exactly why I had to see it before shuffling off this mortal coil. It’s certainly a well-made movie; I’m predisposed to like Norman Jewison. It’s beautifully cast throughout—I’m also predisposed to like Olympia Dukakis, John Mahoney, and Danny Aiello. While I can’t say that there’s anything really wrong or bad, I also can’t find anything that makes this film particularly special in any way.

Race and Death in Mississippi

Film: In the Heat of the Night
Format: DVD from Rasmussen College Library on big ol’ television.


How do you make a great movie about racism? It’s a ripe subject for a film, and it’s a film that’s been made over and over, at least in terms of subject matter, but how do you do it without slamming people in the fact that it’s a movie about racism? The answer to that is simple—you create a movie about something else and place that something else in a position where the racism happens naturally. Of course, it helps to have the services of Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, and Norman Jewison.

The set up is the small town of Sparta, Mississippi, where a murder has been committed. As it happens, the victim is a Yankee from Chicago who has come to Sparta to build a factory, something the town desperately needs to get back on its feet. The factory means many hundreds of jobs locally, which makes this death a significant event. There are no initial suspects save one: Virgil Tibbs (Poitier).

Tibbs is a suspect for two reasons; he’s black and he’s a stranger in town. What the Sparta police don’t realize is that in addition to being both black and a stranger, Tibbs is the best homicide cop on the Philadelphia Police Department. Despite his reluctance, he is asked to help with the case he was initially accused of by his chief. This arrangement also comes as something of a shock to the town’s police chief, Bill Gillespie (Steiger).

Tibbs is a man good at his job, but he’s also used to more cooperation than he’s getting in Sparta. In fact, the only real cooperation he gets is from the wife of the dead man, Mrs. Colbert (Lee Grant). She demands that Tibbs be kept on the case despite the fact that it quickly becomes evident that many of the people in the town are uncomfortable with Tibbs and want him dead.

For Virgil, the best suspect in the case is Endicott (Larry Gates), who opposed the factory. That belief is enhanced by the fact that Enidcott grows orchids, and the brake pedal of the car in which Colbert was killed has the growing medium for orchids on the brake pedal. Tibbs is dead sure of Endicott’s guilt, a certainty that keeps him in town longer than is healthy.

What we have here, then, is a pretty good murder mystery. There are plenty of suspects and plenty of false arrests to go along with it. Every few minutes, a new suspect crops up, and many of these suspects can have a case made against them without too much trouble. Each time, Tibbs does everything he can to steer the case back to Endicott, while Gillespie is convinced every time that the new possible suspect is the real thing.

The most famous scene here, and it’s deservedly famous, is when Virgil first confronts Endicott with the idea that he is a suspect. With the accusation made, Endicott slaps Virgil across the face and Virgil slaps him back almost immediately. Endicott’s reaction is a mixture of fear, loathing, and horror, and he tells Virgil that there had been a time when such an action would get a man killed. Virgil walks away, and the continued reaction from Endicott is hatred, close to tears, and painful. More telling is the reaction of Endicott’s servant, who slowly shakes his head and walks away from his disgraced boss.

The racism throughout the movie is palpable and completely realistic for the late 1960s. In fact, the movie had to be filmed in Illinois because the racial disharmony in Mississippi. The movie is forthright about this racism. It never excuses it or justifies it, and doesn’t do a lot to discredit it, either. Instead, the racism is merely shown as a fact to be dealt with, almost as if racism was just another character in the film.

It’s easy to lose sight of the murder mystery here because the significant storyline of both overt and covert racism takes center stage. However, the story and the details of the murder make for a good story, even without the racism angle. It’s a smart film that works on multiple levels, and this one works on several at the same time. It’s a great crime drama, and it’s also a film that explores not the source of racism but the existence of it.

Ultimately, despite the strength of Sidney Poitier’s performance, this film belongs almost entirely to the great Rod Steiger. This is a character that Steiger inhabits completely and totally. Despite his racism, he’s a character that is easy to come to like, even respect. Additionally, while his manner and method of speaking do not change throughout the film, he changes mentally and emotionally by the end of the movie.

This one is not only still worth a watch, it’s worth discussing afterwards, both for the excellent mystery it contains and also for the racism that run through it.

Why to watch In the Heat of the Night: A good murder story and a better lesson in racial justice.
Why not to watch: You’re under the impression that there’s never been anything but happy-happy race relations.