Robert Redford

  • A River Runs Through It (1992)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2021) Closer to a tonal poem than a sustained drama, A River Runs Through It is meant as a piece of cinema fit to let you relax, unwind, meditate on life and appreciate fly-fishing. Narrated and directed by Robert Redford, it’s a multi-decade drama following a young man as he grows up in a small Montana town, goes to college, returns for a while and contemplates his option. Fly-fishing, as taught by his father and perfected by his brother, stands halfway between a sport and a creed. It’s all affectionate, nostalgic, and not particularly plot-driven except in the accumulating weight of years. Adapted from a hit book by Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It’s contemplative nature was a tough screenwriting assignment for Richard Friedenberg and an even more delicate directing task: fortunately, Redford is up to it, and having terrific cinematography does help a lot. Acting-wise, this is the film that brought Brad Pitt to nationwide attention (bolstering his place as Redford’s natural heir) and got Joseph Gordon-Levitt an “introducing” credit. It’s not really my kind of cinema, but it’s hard to be overly critical about a film that manages to reach its own objective in its own patient time.

  • The Hot Rock (1972)

    The Hot Rock (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) The amiable good humour of Donald Westlake’s Dortmunder novels carries rather well to the big screen in The Hot Rock. It’s a comedy, but it doesn’t go for the obvious laughs: instead, the fun comes from the mounting absurdity of the situations, and the way nothing is truly threatening or dramatic. Robert Redford stars as master thief Westlake, recently released from prison but almost immediately recruited into a scheme to steal a previous stone on behalf of its original African nation. Putting together a crew for the heist proves simpler than completing it, and much of the film’s distinction in the pantheon of heist movies is how complications eventually force the execution of not just one heist, but four of them with escalating degrees of difficulty. A little bit of plot helps put it all together with an extra curlicue at the end. It’s all quite amusing, and the period detail of early-1970s New York City does add quite a bit to the result. Redford is in fine form, with some good support from George Segal and Zero Mostel. The Hot Rock is the kind of film that has a tendency to disappear from popular memory, not because it’s bad but because it’s just good enough to entertain without making much of a mark. It can, however, be quite a bit of fun to revisit for a simple evening’s entertainment.

  • Earth: One Amazing Day (2017)

    Earth: One Amazing Day (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, March 2021) After years of success and an illustrious pedigree from the BBC Natural History unit reaching back decades, BBC Earth films doesn’t have to prove itself again as a purveyor of fine nature documentaries. Its standards are high, and every release has to contend with illustrious predecessors. Fortunately, Earth: One Amazing Day has enough to distinguish itself even in the shadow of illustrious predecessors. Taking as a conceit the idea of presenting one day on planet Earth, it’s an excuse to string together mini-documentaries and fly from one idea to another. As such, the film is perhaps best discussed as a series of highlights. While the film does hit upon nature film favourites (namely pandas and penguins), there are plenty of other highlights as well: prowling sidewinder snakes (and their jogging lizard prey), field mice hanging precariously from branches, fighting giraffes, swimming sloths, portaging zebras, and vertically hanging whales. The production values are sumptuous, with great cinematography throughout. The sound effects and music are a bit too much at times. Tying it all together is Robert Redford’s warm narration. One Amazing Day amounts to a great wide-ranging nature documentary, well worth seeing even for jaded adults and wide-eyed kids alike.

  • The Chase (1966)

    The Chase (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) As much as I like to point at 1967 as the year during which Hollywood changed, there were plenty of warning shots prior to Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate — the 1960s are filled with movies pushing the envelope of what was previously allowable by the Production Code, and exploring gritty filmmaking before New Hollywood ran with it. The Chase strikes me as one of those forebears: a low-energy drama with a downbeat conclusion, featuring grimy naturalistic cinematography and several stars that we would later associate with the 1970s. The core of the film looks a lot like a crime thriller, what with a convict escaping prison and his hometown steeling itself for his return. But as the dramatic non-criminal subplots accumulate, it becomes more obvious that the film is more interested in the hidden depravity of its characters, the small town’s accumulated secrets, and a refusal to bow to conventional values in wrapping up the film. The ensemble cast is stellar, in-between Marlon Brando, Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Angie Dickinson and a small early role for Robert Duvall. But the result is not quite up to its own goals. Never mind the dark-and-depressive anticipation of the soul-killing 1970s: The Chase delights in upending audience expectations and settling for a nihilistic conclusion. No one is a hero, everyone is terrible and we viewers are stuck with the results. Neither seeking satisfaction as a crime story nor able to deliver enlightenment as a small-town drama, The Chase seems stuck in-between what it would take to be effective one way or the other. We can either see it as a disappointment, or as a stepping stone to the better movies that would follow.

  • Quiz Show (1994)

    Quiz Show (1994)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second Viewing, Youtube Streaming, September 2020) I first saw Quiz Show in the mid-1990s and had kept the memory of a dense, smart, compulsively watchable drama about the early days of television quiz shows. Fortunately, a second viewing sustains those high expectations. A historical fictionalization of the quiz show-fixing scandals that roiled TV networks in the 1950s, it’s a throwback to another era but with the same human flaws. Ralph Fiennes plays a telegenic academic from a respected family who comes to accept being fed the answers by the quiz show producers, while John Turturro is the less appealing participant whose volatile personality ends up being a key element in uncovering the scandal. Directed by Robert Redford, Quiz Show is a handsome, polished mid-budget production that seldom talks down to its audience—perhaps the kind of film that is endangered today. It still has a lot to say, as it grapples with the perennial sin of fraud for entertainment, and the irresistible impulse to arrange, guide and control even that’s supposed to be spontaneous. By virtue of being a sober period drama, Quiz Show hasn’t aged much in cinematographic terms, and certainly remains of interest at an age of artifice, high and low.

  • The Clearing (2004)

    The Clearing (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, September 2020) In between the dark scary forest of genre crime thrillers and the featureless plains of straightforward drama, there is a zone that is neither—a place where crime stories can be used to illustrate human concerns without necessarily becoming genre stories nor completely fall in the vast expanses of straight drama. The Clearing is in such a zone, as the kidnapping of a rich person becomes more of a dramatic vehicle for a good cast than a conventionally satisfying story. In this case, the cast is a trio of legends: Robert Redford plays the kidnapped, Willem Defoe the kidnapper and Helen Mirren the wife who must deliver the ransom. But writer-director-producer Pieter Jan Brugge (directing his first film after a long producing career) isn’t really aiming for a visceral thrill-a-minute kind of film. Instead, he spends his time ambling along with the characters, and even misdirects the audience’s attention to stretch the story for even longer than it is. The result of such shenanigans is not what he had hoped for: The Clearing, in the end, feels like a trick more than a movie. The misdirection hides an unsatisfying ending, and distances audiences from the characters. Neither ends up being a winning move considering the coldness of the film. Despite good work from the actors, The Clearing is not only a disappointment, but something that’s likely to fade away from memory far quicker than a conventionally entertaining genre piece would have.

  • This Property Is Condemned (1966)

    This Property Is Condemned (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2020) At first glance, there isn’t much in This Property is Condemned to make for compelling viewing. It takes place in a small town whose main attraction remains the railway, features a young woman taking conscious advantage of her beauty to find a way out of town, and ends on an immense downer of an ending made even worse by how it’s casually revealed in voiceover by a minor character. But here’s the thing: The film features Nathalie Wood at her most beautiful, and a very young Robert Redford in full worldly charmer mode. Plus, it’s the second feature film directed by Sydney Pollack, right before becoming a defining filmmaker of the 1970s and 1980s. It’s an impressive pedigree, but it understates the well-oiled nature of the script, which manages to create a captivating atmosphere and compelling characters. This Property Is Condemned is still a sad love story, but there’s plenty to watch along the way as Wood and Redford push and pull, with her character’s mom meddling as much as she can and true love being no match for desperate circumstances. Despite a similar thematic concern of a young woman using her charms to get ahead, there’s a world of difference between this and Breakfast and Tiffany’s, for instance, and you can just feel the disillusionment of New Hollywood peeking through This Property is Condemned, barely a year before Hollywood shifted forever. I may not like the entire film, but there are some really interesting moments along the way to its sombre conclusion.

  • Inside Daisy Clover (1965)

    Inside Daisy Clover (1965)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) My interest ebbed and flowed as I sat watching Inside Daisy Clover, a film that seems stuck between the shiny fairytale of 1950s Hollywood and the grim revisionist 1970s. I picked it based on the cast and premise: a drama featuring a young 1930s Hollywood starlet having trouble fitting in, featuring no less than Natalie Woods, Robert Redford and a young(er) Christopher Plummer in a deliciously evil role. Inside Daisy Clover certainly looks good on paper. But it doesn’t start out all that well, what with Woods beginning a film-long struggle with an unflattering hairstyle and the film touching upon an unpleasant blend of teenage alienation and a hard-luck struggle between daughter and mother. The premise starts from pure bubble-gum “poor girl becomes a movie star” to turn into an examination of the hidden darkness behind celebrity, but it somehow doesn’t quite manage to satisfy along the way. Some scenes are quite strong (such as a meta-musical moment in which the increasingly sad song is shot from behind the scenes of a movie shoot), and the ending becomes a bit of explosive dark comedy, but the way from this to that is both too grim and not grim enough to fully satisfy. (Or, if you’d prefer, camp and yet not camp enough.) At some point, I really started wondering how much of Inside Daisy Clover was explicitly meant to evoke Judy Garland (who was still alive at the time). Unusually enough for the mid-1960s, Robert Redford plays a bisexual character—but the film doesn’t get to explore his character as more than an additional burden on the heroine. Hence my opening assertion: the same movie made in the 1950s would have been more buoyant; the same movie in the 1970s would not have pulled its punches. In the meantime, what’s left in Inside Daisy Clover is of mild interest to fans of Hollywood movies about Hollywood, but simply falls apart as its own story.

  • Brubaker (1980)

    Brubaker (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2020) Making a movie about prison reform, inspired by real-life events, isn’t exactly the most compelling subject matter. But make sure that your hero is a two-fisted reform advocate, pit him against an entire corrupt prison/town/state and given the role to Robert Redford and suddenly Brubaker gets far more interesting. Redford’s legendary charisma is well suited to his role, as he takes on an establishment that actively profits from old-fashioned prison practices. A gallery’s worth of character actors (including Yaphet Kotto, M. Emmet Walsh, Wilford Brimley and very young Morgan Freeman—recognizable by voice rather than by sight) are united against him. This being from a true story, don’t expect a triumphant ending: at most, the character gets applause and an end title card explaining the scandal that erupted afterward. Still, much of Brubaker’s entertainment value comes in seeing an incorruptible character uncover the vast web of old-boys corruption that surrounds the prison, and defending himself against attacks. It does make for dramatic intensity and narrative interest. It also represents a good entry in Redford’s filmography as a progressive champion, a role matching his political interest with his megawatt charm. Plus, he gets to shoot a shotgun, which isn’t to be neglected.

  • Indecent Proposal (1993)

    Indecent Proposal (1993)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2019) I thought I would enjoy Indecent Proposal. The subject matter is off-putting by design, but who could imagine that a film with Woody Harrelson, Demi Moore and Robert Redford could go wrong? To its credit, the film tells you almost from its first thirty seconds that it’s not going to be fun, as a couple reflects on what they had together. One flashback later and we’re quickly off to the celebrated premise of the film as our young couple struggles with money problems and Redford steps in as a billionaire playboy so smitten with her that he offers them a million dollars for a night with her. (In the mid-nineties, this became a popular party question.)  But for such a saucy premise, Indecent Proposal soon sinks in preposterousness and boredom. Directed without much energy nor precision by Adrian Lyne (from a script that reportedly toned down much of the novel’s ambiguity), it’s a film that quickly becomes a feat of endurance as we move from one obvious set-piece to another, the resolution never in doubt even despite the misleading prologue. The longer it goes on after delivering on its premise, Indecent Proposal multiplies the double standards, attempts to make heroes out of obnoxious characters and showcases retrograde ideas about, well, just about everything linked to sex and women. Harrelson is miscast as an intellectual, Moore’s beauty isn’t equalled by an equivalent acting talent, and Redford himself can’t use his charisma to hide the smarminess of his character. It’s all a bit sad, and most fatally, interminable. It took me only a few minutes to lower my expectations, and they stayed there for the rest of the film.

  • Ordinary People (1980)

    Ordinary People (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Kanopy Streaming, September 2019) I approached Ordinary People reluctantly for several reasons: Historically, I suppose I still have a grudge about it winning the Best Picture Oscar over Raging Bull. But then there’s the subject matter, taking a long look at a typical American family coming unglued after the death of the eldest son—grieving over a child’s death is high on my list of unbearable topics at the moment, and that’s only adding to the dreadful prospect of a two-hour-plus mimetic drama (adapted from a mainstream novel) that succeeded in its Oscar-baiting ambitions. But even with this baggage, I have to admit that Ordinary People worked better than I expected—I still don’t love it, but I did develop a grudging respect for it throughout its lengthy duration. It does a few things far better than expected: for one thing, it picks up months after the funeral of the family’s eldest son, sparing us many of the expected clichés about the immediate days after the death. For another, Ordinary People features one of the best and most likable cinematic portraits I can recall of the therapy process, featuring a clever but empathetic psychotherapist (Judd Hirsch, in a career-best role) helping the teenage protagonist work his way through the grieving process. Timothy Hutton is the star of the film, but Donald Sutherland is a good supporting player as a father who gets to grow out of his wife’s influence, while Mary Tyler Moore is cast against type as a sociopathic wife who acts as the film’s villain. It’s interesting mixture of elements, and one that still feels unusually against the grain of such family dramas even forty years later. Robert Redford’s direction isn’t flashy (visually, the film is … fine), but it gets the message across with a great deal of restraint and subtlety. I still think that the film is too long, occasionally very predictable (yes, like we couldn’t see that suicide coming…), unevenly interesting and perhaps lacking a further handful of hard-hitting scenes, but I still found it quite a bit better than expected. Ordinary People does remain in the lower tier of Oscar-Winning Pictures, though—there’s a limit to how pleasantly surprised I can be in this case.

  • The Old Man & The Gun (2018)

    The Old Man & The Gun (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2019) If you’re a legendary actor looking to go out on top, you best bet is to call it quits after a reasonably good film that plays to your persona’s strengths. So, while we may or may not believe 81-year-old Robert Redford when he says he’s retiring as an actor as of The Old Man & The Gun’s release (cameos happen so suddenly, and these days not even death can permanently retire an actor), it does seem like an appropriate swan song for him. Redford has always possessed off-the-chart likability, so it’s appropriate for him to carry a film on his shoulders as an affable elderly bank robber who manages to rob a succession of banks with nothing more than a pleasant disposition and the quick flash of a gun in his hands. The film around him is not quite the same old chase thriller—our dogged policeman on the case ends up having little to do with our anti-hero’s capture, doesn’t have marital problems brought on by the case and only interacts with his prey two or three times. Much of the film spends its time trying to imagine the mindset of an old man only happy when committing (non-violent) crimes. Director David Lowery is quietly building a reputation as a canny explorer of unusual premises, and the result here is both elegiac (for Redford) and comfortable (for the viewer). Touches of humour, irony and flashbacks keep things interesting even when the plot won’t surprise anyone. For Redford, The Old Man & The Gun means going out on a relatively high note, and a powerful reminder of how good he could be just banking on his personal charm.

  • Legal Eagles (1986)

    Legal Eagles (1986)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, June 2019) I don’t think anyone would remember Legal Eagles today if it wasn’t for Daryl Hannah and Robert Redford, but that’s kind of the point of casting stars. The premise of the film has Redford and Debra Winger as competing lawyers who somehow agree to investigate the case they have in common—a sombre painting robbery that turns out to have links with the death of an artist killed eighteen years earlier. As our romantic pair bickers themselves into a healthy romantic tension, we’re free to enjoy the sight of middle-aged Redford at his most charming self, extremely cool even when slightly bumbling. Meanwhile Hannah plays the seductress with dull practice, leaving Winger as the film’s MVP as a combative attorney. Consciously written to feel like a 1940s belligerent romantic comedy, Legal Eagles is definitely middle-of-the-road stuff: there’s a substantial plot, but it’s a star vehicle almost designed to leave viewers with a pleasant feeling that soon evaporates—I’m not sure anyone can recall the details of the narrative even a week later. Still, fifty-year-old Redford is a joy to watch, and the film moves through the motions of its plot so confidently that it does give the impression of going somewhere even despite the banter. I quite liked it, but I can’t guarantee that I’ll remember why in a few months.

  • The Natural (1984)

    The Natural (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) Much as baseball is the great American pastime, I’m starting to suspect that baseball movies are the great American cinematic comfort food. Americans understand the rules, they know the game inside-out, they are comfortable with the pacing and they will find the tiniest of evidence to prove that baseball is life and life is baseball. Or something like that. Watching The Natural isn’t quite as mystical as other baseball movies (Looking at you, Field of Dreams), but it’s still not quite realistic, not quite ordinary, not quite believable either. (A prologue with a bat being carved out of wood felled by a lightning strike at least establishes the tone early.)  What The Natural does have going for it is Robert Redford being effortlessly charming, and a roster of supporting actors that include Robert Duvall, Glenn Close, Kim Basinger, Barbara Hershey and Wilford Brimley. The big hook of the film has to do with our protagonist being felled by a bullet from a psychotic fan before becoming a star, and then coming back to the game a decade and a half later as a natural talent. There’s a mystery to it that proves less impressive than imagined, but the rest of director Barry Levinson’s film does run on rails all the way to a crucial win. What keeps the film interesting are those incidents approaching the supernatural that are littered around the main plot. By the time our protagonist hits a climactic pitch right into the stadium lights and creates fireworks, you’re either so solidly in the film’s distinctive logic that you’ll cheer, or roll your eyes one last time and say “That’s it, I’m done.”

  • The Great Gatsby (1974)

    The Great Gatsby (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, April 2019) As someone who’s lukewarm about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby but enthusiastic about the first half of the 2013 Baz Luhrmann adaptation, I was curious to see what the sometimes-derided 1974 film adaptation had to offer. Clearly, it couldn’t touch the CGI-fuelled exuberance of the Luhrmann version, but did it have its own strengths? As it turns out, director Jack Clayton’s earlier The Great Gatsby is far more mannered, significantly more realistic, but not distinctively dissimilar from other versions of the story: Love and lust on Long Island, and the unbolting of a man’s statue. I may dislike flapper fashions, but the party scenes are fun and the story moves through the expected beats. The film isn’t without its own stylish elements: There’s at least one good scene transition reusing symbolic imagery. Despite a remarkable cast (Robert Redford! Mia Farrow!)  The actors aren’t particularly remarkable, but the atmosphere is. Otherwise, it’s pretty much the same thing, done mid-1970s style. There is some humour: I had to laugh at the line “I’ll travel somewhere, to Montréal maybe.”  The ending does feel drawn-out, however, going on much longer after the final shocking events of the climax. Still, as an adaptation, I can see how The Great Gatsby managed to portray some tricky material, and how it clearly could be improved upon.