Robert Redford

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.

The Way We Were (1973)

The Way We Were (1973)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2019) The New Hollywood of the early 1970s was so depressing that even its romances were doomed to death or divorce. A prominent case in point: The Way We Were, a multi-decade chronicle of the love story between two characters (played by Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford) throughout their hook-ups, breakups, and intervening ups and down. While there’s nothing conceptually wrong with that premise, the execution is severely underwhelming. Under director Sidney Lumet, the film feels like a mosaic of scenes set years apart, not really building on anything nor proposing a coherent dramatic arc other than “they won’t end up together.” There are some vexing narrative decisions that undermine anyone’s attempt to suspend disbelief or in sympathizing with the characters. For instance, much is made of the female lead’s political activism… but the plot doesn’t present an interesting antithesis despite a rich historical potential. Streisand and Redford do look good, but their characterization isn’t particularly deep other than becoming incarnated arguments. Where the film does a bit better by virtue of being a big-budget production is in looking back at a few decades of American history, showing in retrospect what could not be shown on-screen during the Production Code years—including the impact of the blacklist on Hollywood. It’s not particularly dismissive of The Way We Were, but that’s more out of resignation for the nature of the films at the time. I’m not volunteering to see it again any time soon, though.

The Candidate (1972)

The Candidate (1972)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On TV, December 2018) Over a sufficiently long timeline, one of the problems with the world is its tendency to evolve toward a parody of itself, becoming the thing that earlier generations tried to satirize. So it is that I finished watching The Candidate having found it a reasonably tame description of an American political campaign, only to read up on the film and find out that it had been conceived as a satirical comedy. Of course, satire is dead under the current American presidency, and so The Candidate does appear a bit staid today, dealing with a far gentler and more rational era in US politics. This, mind you, is not necessarily a problem—I’m a political junkie and I’m more receptive than most to a movie taking us through an entire senatorial campaign without resorting to huge melodramatic twists à la Primary Colors or The Ides of March. (Which is for the better, given that most post-Clinton US political thrillers seemed to have the same resolution in mind.) Robert Redford is quite good in the film, playing an idealistic candidate who progressively waters down his message in an effort to be elected. The film seems to regard this as a soul-destroying process, but I may be showing my progressivist centric technocrat inner nature when I say that this feels perfectly reasonable and perhaps even admirable. The film isn’t without its funny moments, although some minor plot threads (such as the candidate’s affair with a staffer) get lost in the mix, and I don’t quite think that the protagonist gets a good chance to show his late-campaign desire to win taking over his idealistic convictions. It’s also dated in terms of references and technology but come on: It’s a forty-six-year-old movie. As such, The Candidate has aged nicely enough. I’ll add it to my growing list of essential movies about American politics.

Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

Jeremiah Johnson (1972)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, November 2018) The 1970s were an interesting time for the western genre. Its heydays were clearly over, and the New Hollywood atmosphere was pushing filmmakers toward a revisionist approach to the genre, especially when it came to its portrayal of Native Americans, or newfound environmental attitudes toward the wilderness. All of this can be found in Jeremiah Johnson, arguably less of a western and more of a survival film in which a white protagonist learns to live in nature and fight enemies both natural and human. (It does feel a lot like The Revenant at times.) Native Americans here are portrayed anywhere from helpful to bloodthirsty, but with understandable motives. The on-location footage (nearly the entire film was shot outside studios) is fantastic and does drive home the loneliness of the protagonist against the elements—not to mention the famously slow pacing of the film. Robert Redford stars in nearly every scene as the title character, but frankly the natural landscapes steal the show. The result may not be for everyone, but it’s certainly striking in its own way. Hilariously enough, Jeremiah Johnson remains more noteworthy today as the source of an animated GIF showing Redford (somehow mistakable as Zach Galifianakis) nodding in approval in the wilderness. I’m OK with that if it leads even one person to have a look at the original film.

A Bridge Too Far (1977)

A Bridge Too Far (1977)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, November 2018) Watching A Bridge Too Far, I was struck at how closely the film initially seemed to follow the template of The Longest Day: A lengthy WW2 drama covering both sides of the war, with a lavish re-creation of the fighting and an ensemble cast of superstars including Sean Connery, adapted from a non-fiction book by Cornelius Ryan. But the comparisons only go so far, especially as the movie advances and the military operation goes sour. It’s certainly worth noting that a significant cultural shift happened in-between 1964’s The Longest Day and 1977’s A Bridge Too Far: The Vietnam War did much to affect the public perception of war and audiences having digested MASH and Catch-22 and Kelly’s Heroes in 1970 alone were far more willing to embrace a film about an unsuccessful operation. (Even A Bridge Too Far’s opening narration is a bit off-kilter, suggesting a level of built-in cynicism that would have been unheard of fifteen years earlier.) While there are plenty of enjoyable wartime heroics in A Bridge Too Far, mistakes in planning, insufficient intelligence, bad communications and plain old happenstance all contribute to a costly failure. Still, if the events described by the film may be frustrating to watch, the film itself is entertaining enough. The historical re-creation of the massive airdrops is impressive, the massive explosions are numerous and the sheer number of recognizable actors is also notable. Connery gets a great character to play, but there are equally interesting moments for Michael Caine, Robert Redford, Gene Hackman and even Anthony Hopkins in a very early role. The film does not describe a particularly glorious moment for the allied forces, but that may add to the sense of discovery while watching it—I’m a modest WW2 buff thanks to having read many histories of the era as a teenager, but I had either not learned or forgotten much of Operation Garden Market until A Bridge Too Far refreshed my mind. It’s quite a spectacle, and it’s not quite as well-known as other WW2 movies. In any case, it’s worth a watch if the subject matter interests you.

The Horse Whisperer (1998)

The Horse Whisperer (1998)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(In French, On TV, October 2018) There isn’t much of a step between earnestness and ridiculousness, and I suspect that The Horse Whisperer can fall in either depending on how susceptible you are to the film’s manipulation. There is a way to state the plot as a Lifetime movie (Following a terrible accident, a woman goes to a ranch in Montana to heal her daughter) and then as a Lifetime movie on steroids (Following a terrible accident, a woman goes to a ranch in Montana where an impossibly perfect guy heals her horse, brinks back her amputated daughter from the brink of suicide, and makes her realize the true meaning of passion even though she doesn’t really like the guy she’s been married to for nearly twenty years). Both are true, even though my own sympathies clearly lies with the most sarcastic version. But then again, I’m clearly not part of the film’s target audiences. It does help that The Horse Whisperer is often very nicely directed by Robert Redford—the cinematography is terrific whenever it can use Montana as a backdrop, although it clearly suffers whenever it’s time to present horrific events: Redford (or his editor) relies far too much on incomprehensible quick-cutting that gives an impression of what’s going on rather than what is happening. Whenever The Horse Whisperer can take a breath (and at its nearly-three-hour duration, it often does), it can take advantage of lush backdrops. It also helps to have actors such as Redford in the title role, and Kristen Scott Thomas as the heroine: while the characters are ridiculously over-written as wish-fulfillment superheroes on the page (he’s a wise cowboy with an urban past who knows how to tame horses, unshackle teenagers and romance women; she’s a workaholic New Yorker magazine editor with an upper-class lifestyle but personal issues), their portrayal on-screen works significantly better. This being said with a small dose of hard-won humility, I feel increasingly uncomfortable to deride other people’s wish-fulfill fantasies—everybody needs a few, and it’s not as if white-middle-class-geek wish fulfillment isn’t an overbearing feature of today’ cinema landscape. If The Horse Whisperer works for some, then let it work. If viewers can find some measure of inner peace and entertainment in what sometimes felt like an excruciating test of endurance to me, then I should just shut up and not spoil anyone’s squee. The recent nerdification of American cinema is not always a good thing, and we definitely need more Horse Whisperers twenty years after its release.

The Sting (1973)

The Sting (1973)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, June 2018) If The Sting doesn’t play quite as well today as it did back in 1973, it’s largely its own fault—it was so influential that, having birthed an entire sub-genre of con movies, it finds itself imitated to the point of irrelevancy. This is not to say that the film isn’t worth a look—in between Paul Newman and Robert Redford in the main roles (Redford being a touch too old, but who cares), some playful directing by George Roy Hill, and a rather charming recreation of mid-thirties Chicago, The Sting was and remains a top-notch crowd-pleaser. Where it fails is in keeping a sense of surprise. Even without having seen the film before, the ending is utterly predictable … not because it’s badly written (in fact, it was quite surprising to audiences at the time), but because the basic tenets of the entire ending have been endlessly duplicated by other lesser conman movies since then. Of course, the conman is in perfect control of the plot. Of course, the con is so big as to envelop even the structures in which the con operates. Of course, you have to confuse and whisk away the victim without them even suspecting the truth. Of course, even the authorities aren’t. Surprise: zero. But… Pleasure: quite high. Mixing memorable ragtime music, fancy scene transitions and even fancier title cards, The Sting is made for fun. It’s early enough in the post-Hays code to be cheerfully amoral, but not quite dedicated to the darkness that engulfed Hollywood cinema in the early seventies. 

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, October 2017) One of the peculiar pleasures of re-watching older movies is that you get to experience the same mystifying questions as previous generations of moviegoers. In Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, that means watching the “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” montage and smiling while wondering what such an atonal sequence is doing in a western movie. Reviewers have been asking that question for nearly fifty years, so I feel in good company. Not that this is the only question left unanswered by this film, which seems dead-set on not doing things the conventional way. While the buddy chemistry between Paul Newman and Robert Redford is next-level fantastic, everything else seems made to defy convention. Our charming but quixotic characters are out of time, too late for western heroics and too early for gangster drama. They flee rather than fight, but find themselves caught by fate several minutes later. There’s comedy overlaying a heavy drama (and one of the most famous tragic endings in movie history, overlaid with comic markers). But it works, largely because screenwriter William Goldman knows what he’s doing, and because of the great actors taking on the lines. The comic moments work—the “enough dynamite” sequence is still very funny. The result has survived the year reasonably well, largely because few studios would be willing to take that many chances with a big-name film these days.

Truth (2015)

Truth (2015)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, July 2017) In many ways, Truth is a tough movie to watch. Whereas other movies will eulogize journalists as fearless truth seekers whose work helps change the world, this 2015 film uses the 2004 Killian documents controversy to deliver a story uniquely suited to 2017’s sadly post-truth era. It’s about journalists doing their best to report explosive documents on a presidential candidate … and then being unable to defend themselves against accusations of biased reporting. Based on journalist Mary Mapes’s memoir of the events, Truth is a stomach-churning docudrama about the nitty-gritty of reporting in a politically charged environment and how truth itself can be elusive despite everyone’s best efforts. Led by the always-excellent Cate Blanchett as Mapes and Robert Redford as a convincing Dan Rather, Truth takes us behind the scenes of TV investigative journalism in all of its quirks in marrying reporting with TV presentations. Alongside them, Topher Grace delivers one of his most animated performances, while Bruce Greenwood, Elizabeth Moss and Dennis Quaid have valuable input in smaller roles. It’s often absorbing viewing, but don’t expect an All the President’s Men triumphant finale here as much of the film’s second half is spent dealing with allegations of partisanship, and the ending offers little certitude in who was right. As 2017 unfolds alongside a misleading chorus of “fake news” allegations, Truth takes on a particularly bittersweet quality for anyone who’d like sanity and reason to come back to the mainstream discourse—it feels like an exposé of the primitive tactics that have since then been weaponized to a virulent degree. But then again, movies don’t owe anyone any comfort.

A Walk in the Woods (2015)

A Walk in the Woods (2015)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, June 2017) Adapting a novel to the big screen is tough enough, but adapting a non-fiction book as a movie seems even tougher—it’s about jettisoning the informative material and building up the story, even if it means adding more to it. Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Wood (which I read between seeing the movie and writing this capsule review) is a compulsively readable account of a forty-something man’s attempt to walk the Appalachian Trail, occasionally alongside an old friend who’s even less in shape than he is. In doing so, Bryson gets to talk about the state of American natural preserves, the environmental collapse of some tree species, the nature of the Appalachian trail, what kind of person voluntarily hikes 3000 miles in a few months, and assorted topics that come to mind while walking a few miles every day for weeks on end. The film elides the details, although a surprising amount of top-level information still finds its way in the dramatization. As a movie, A Walk in the Woods wisely focuses on the difficult relationship between the two hikers, and the various incidents that can take place along the trail. Much of the film’s first half sticks impressively close to the book—but both diverge later on as the book itself becomes less storyable and the film feels the need to build everything to a dramatic conclusion. Robert Redford is very likable as Bryson, given his weathered features and sympathetic persona. Playing opposite him, Jeff Bridges makes for a capable foil as “Stephen Katz”, an out-of-shape screw-up who tags along for the hike. A few name actors pop up in amusing small roles (Emma Thompson as an understanding wife, Kirsten Shaal as an intolerable hiker, Nick Offerman as a hiking gear salesman) but the focus here is on Redford, Bridges and the trail itself. The dramatic climax doesn’t quite work (it feels shot in a studio, far too engineered to feel natural, and on-the-nose as to what the characters learn from it) but the rest of the film has a warm feel to it—kind of an extraordinary adventure achievable by ordinary people. Some of the scenery is spectacular enough to kindle a diffuse desire to walk the trail, but in this case please do read the book—better than vicarious adventure, it’s detailed enough to make anyone reconsider ever walking the Appalachian Trail.