Sidney Lumet

  • Critical Care (1997)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) There’s something fantastically creepy about Critical Care’s darkly comic approach to the American medical system, so advanced that it can keep anyone alive but only if the money is there. James Spader plays a young doctor who learns the real world in between a cynical mentor and two sisters trying to seduce him into pulling the plug on their dearest, richest father. Under the direction of a sardonic Sidney Lumet, the film never cracks a smile and so, perhaps, doesn’t tip its hand as to whether it’s really a comedy. The clinical set design borrowing (still) from science fiction doesn’t necessarily make things any funnier, although if you’re not cracking a smile at the seduction scenes, then you may not be paying attention. The god complex of doctors is fully scrutinized and the deeply unhealthy relationship between patient care and their financial means also goes under the microscope. While Critical Care was not a commercial success, it’s got an interesting cast that becomes stronger with time. Just have a look at these names: Kyra Sedgwick, Helen Mirren, Anne Bancroft, Albert Brooks (terrific and terrifying), Jeffrey Wright, Margo Martindale, Wallace Shawn, Colm Feore… that’s a nice cast. The film is not without missteps and missed opportunities: the move to a courtroom late in the film breaks its spatial unity, and I’m not sure that all of its thematic opportunities have been equally well explored. But Critical Care is still acerbic enough to classify as a bit of an overlooked film — not a classic, not even a gem, but something surprising enough to be worth a look if deadpan comedies with a bitter edge have any appeal.

  • Stage Struck (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) It took me about ten minutes too long to figure out that Stage Struck was a remake of the 1933 Katharine Hepburn vehicle Morning Glory, but that’s the least of the film’s problems. No, the problem with the film is one you rarely expect — an overacting, over-articulating, falsely cheerful, badly cast (or directed) lead actress: Susan Strasberg. I get that the film is the story of an overeager girl from the sticks heading to the big city and finding out that reality doesn’t measure up to her dreams. In that context, it makes perfect sense for the character to be exuberant, annoyingly upbeat and pretentiously mannered… at least at first. Similarly, you don’t need to point out that Hepburn was doing even more overacting back in 1933: that was the acting style at the time, and she made it work for herself. The problem with Strasberg is that she stays at eleven out of ten on the theatricality scale during the entire film, well after reality should have brought her down to earth. What a wasted opportunity, and an inexplicable lack of directorial judgment from Sidney Lumet, who would go on to direct several much-lauded films. It’s all the more regrettable, given how the rest of the film (filmed in colour on location) offers a rather wonderful look at Broadway circa 1958 in its grittiness and vitality. Henry Fonda is on hand as an older producer who, inevitably, falls in love with the half-as-young woman; other notables include Christopher Plummer as a writer (his first film) and Joan Greenwood as an acting rival. Stage Struck itself would be fine if it wasn’t for the way Strasberg uses highly stylized theatrical acting in an otherwise normal film — she stands out in a bad way and actively harms the rest of the film.

  • Running on Empty (1988)

    Running on Empty (1988)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) I didn’t expect to develop much sympathy for the adult protagonists of Running on Empty. As the film quickly sketches out, here are two ex-activists who ended up maiming a janitor in a laboratory bombing in the 1970s, then spending the 15 previous years on the run while raising two boys. Who can empathize with people like that? Fortunately, though, the emphasis of the film is on their elder son, a gifted pianist who is getting fed up with uprooting himself every few years, as his parents are terrified of being discovered by the authorities and keep a nomadic lifestyle. The script does a fine job of portraying the toll that regular uprooting can take, especially outside a controlled context providing support. The protagonist is played by River Phoenix, going a rather good job as the one most affected by the decisions of his parents. There’s a mixture of social drama and paranoid thriller going on here, especially when the runaways themselves keep suffering for not turning themselves in. From a narrative perspective, Running on Empty is messy: While it has a clear moral centre in the eldest son, it does spend some time on tangents related to other family members – it shouldn’t work, but somehow it coheres into a strong conclusion that is no less effective from being predictable long in advance. Director Sidney Lumet is at ease with a complex, politically aware script, and the cleanliness of his work does much to untangle a script filled with tangents.

  • Strip Search (2004)

    Strip Search (2004)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2020) It goes without saying that I can appreciate any film that reinforces my values and outlook on life. But it sometimes happens that a film simply goes too far, preaches too much and wears its politics too visibly on its sleeve that I can turn on it in the worst way. Look: I was around and awake in 2004. I remember how Americans were practically forbidden from speaking ill of any anti-terrorism initiative. I remember the public discourse curdling against any dissenting voice, and anyone trying to introduce any kind of sophisticated analysis being branded as anti-American. I remember the hysteria of the War on Terror and how anyone who thought it may not have been an unqualified good felt so alone. The fact that Strip Search, which makes explicit parallels between terrorism and American values, was made at the time (even as a TV movie!) was nothing short of amazing—which explains why, according to Wikipedia, the film almost immediately disappeared after its HBO premiere. (I ended up seeing in French translation, which is probably significant.) The premise is simple: An American woman gets detained and interrogated in an unspecified Asian country, while an Arabic man gets detained and interrogated in the United States. The parallels between both situations are not meant to be subtle: much of the dialogue is repeated word-for-word in both strands of the plot. Which ends up being the single worst irritant of the film: As a good third of it simply repeats itself with very few variations, the touches of wit of the dialogue get dulled fast, and once you realize that this is what the film is going to do for the following hour, well, you’re stuck with it for the following hour indeed. There’s quite a bit of talent assembled here: Directed by Sidney Lumet and starring no less than Glenn Close (as the American interrogator) and Maggie Gyllenhaal (as the American prisoner), the film hits above its weight in terms of star power. Alas, this comes to naught thanks to the heavy-handed nature of its discourse. Even when I agreed with the intent of the film, I felt irritated by the brute-force nature of its repetitiveness. A savvier script would have intercut into both conversations as a way to show how both were the same, but Strip Search simply re-rolls the tape with very minor variations, with us knowing the exact words about to be repeated for the next few minutes. It probably doesn’t help that, fifteen years later, we don’t need to be convinced about the film’s then-upsetting thesis. We now know about the horrors of Abu Ghraib, of Guantanamo, of secret detention camps and the 2004–2008 period. Strip Search was brave and bold and misguided upon first broadcast. Now, it simply seems misguided—not for the core of what it’s saying than the way it says it, then forces us to listen to it again.

  • The Anderson Tapes (1971)

    The Anderson Tapes (1971)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) At its core, The Anderson Tapes can be summarized as a heist film—during the course of the story, an ex-con recruits a team to plan a large-scale robbery of an upper-class Manhattan apartment adjacent to Central Park. It takes us through the conception, the planning, the execution of the robbery, as well as its bloody aftermath. But as the computer-fond opening credits title font suggests, there’s a whole new wrapping around this noirish kind of plot: The presence of surveillance cameras, TV screens, computers and consumer electronics. Throughout the film (supported by beepeetee-doo computer noises), our protagonists are watched, recorded and itemized by various law enforcement and surveillance outfits. The Anderson Tapes’ big irony, of course, is that none of this surveillance actually works to prevent the robbery—each unit being concentrated on their own purposes, they completely miss the pieces being assembled in front of their eyes. Ultimately, it’s not surveillance that defeats the robbers but a ham radio and the power of concerted citizens half a world away. In the hand of directory Sidney Lumet, this proto-technothriller adapted from the Lawrence Sanders novel also offers plenty of touches that round out a suspense film: laughs, chills, thrills and action are dolled out in careful fashion, with surprisingly strong character work (including a very funny turn by veteran actress Judith Lowry) and a dependably likable turn by Sean Connery as the lead. The other big casting surprise here is a tall but very young-looking Christopher Walken in his first film role. What was a solid film upon release is now greatly enhanced for modern viewers by seeing then-primitive but scary technology being lavished with attention, and well-observed details to make it all credible. In that, The Anderson Tapes is clearly from the same director who later did Dog Day Afternoon and similarly raised a generic premise into something far more interesting.

  • The Group (1966)

    The Group (1966)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2020) In adapting Mary McCarthy’s bestselling novel to the screen, The Group runs into a few problems, most of them having to accommodate an ensemble cast of eight women, plus the men who usually make trouble in their lives. Even at 150 minutes, it’s a bit of a challenge—especially since the story spans years from 1933 to 1940 and multiple heartbreaks as the eight women don’t quite achieve their idealistic goals after graduation. It’s not exactly the most riveting of premises, but seeing Sidney Lumet’s name as director drew me in, and the rest of the film gradually grew on me. The film is clearly a 1960s feminist drama—the well-educated, intelligent protagonists have dreams of intellectual lives that are gradually ground down by the demands of marriage, children and household. You could pretty much tell the same story about just any graduate class since then. It does feel melodramatic and overdone by today’s standards, but you can feel how daring The Group could have been to a mid-1960s audience. As you’d guess from the premise, men don’t come across particularly well here—and bring much of the drama. With such a large cast, some of the names are familiar: Candice Bergen, Hal Holbrook and Larry Hangman, most notably. Director Lumet manages the action effectively with the succinct script he’s given—among other things, there’s an interesting visual device of typewritten alumni letter updates typed on screen as context. With such a sprawling melodrama, there was bound to be something interesting for everyone—in my case, having a look at a drunken playwright and a literary agency. Nowadays, The Group would be best adapted as a TV series—in trying to retain the novel’s details, the film does rush through a lot and delivers mere bites of drama. Still, it does have an impact.

  • The Hill (1965)

    The Hill (1965)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2020) Now here’s something as merciless as it’s interesting—a WW2 film in which the heroes are British soldiers and the villain is… the British Army. Taking place at a military prison camp in which punishment is delivered to break the prisoners, The Hill is a film that goes against undeserved authority, against military leadership, against the idea that armies are all perfectly aligned against the enemy. Sean Connery stars as one of five new prisoners introduced to the titular Hill—a massive stack of rock and sand used to torture prisoners under the blazing Saharan sun. Our protagonist can’t stand the abuse inflicted by the camp’s leader, but fighting back is tricky in a military context. It’s all crisply directed by Sidney Lumet, who ably portrays the unrelenting heat and the claustrophobia of having nowhere to go. The opening cleanly establishes the area, and the ending is substantially bleaker than expected. Connery is very, very good here, consciously shedding his James Bond image in an attempt to avoid typecasting. Be sure to turn on the subtitles, as some of the dialogue is difficult to hear. More a prison film than a war movie, The Hill is nonetheless a successful drama.

  • 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.

  • Serpico (1973)

    Serpico (1973)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, February 2018) As I watch more and more movies from the sixties and seventies, it seems to me that the characteristic grittiness of the seventies was as much of a reaction to the breakdown of the Hayes Code (and associated social conventions) as anything else. Suddenly free to show the world is as much unpleasant detail and harsh language as they wanted, filmmakers went far overboard and the result speaks for itself. (The tendency corrected itself in the late seventies with the rise of the audience-friendly blockbuster, but that’s a thesis best discussed elsewhere.) Serpico clearly redrew the classic template for most undercover-cop movies, delving deep into matters of police corruption through the eyes of an idealistic young police officer played by the explosive Al Pacino. (Sadly, the worst consequence of catching the film on a French channel is losing Pacino’s distinctive voice.)  The film feels grimy and ugly, set during New York’s increasingly desperate period and reflecting the exploitative atmosphere of the time’s films. It’s still rather good, but some of the atmosphere can feel overdone at times. Pacino himself is very likable, which helps in navigating the bleak moral landscape of a police force thoroughly corrupted by a culture of graft and payouts. It’s not quite as violent as expected, but the atmosphere does help in creating an atmosphere in which the worst can always be expected. Sidney Lumet’s direction is solid enough that the film only feels a bit too long today—and much of that length is due to sequences that have been redone so often that they feel like clichés today. It may not pleasant, but there is an undeniable atmosphere to Serpico that still resonates.

  • Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

    Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, April 2017) Forty years later, there is still something remarkable about Dog Day Afternoon’s off-beat crime thriller. Based on a true story in a way that sets it apart from most formulaic fiction, this is a bank robber/hostage thriller with enough unusual moments to feel fresh even after four decades of imitators. The closest equivalent I can think of remains 2006’s Inside Man—down to the very New York feel of the story. Watching the film is a reminder of Al Pacino’s early explosive screen persona—there’s a good reason why the “Attica!” sequence will forever be part of his highlight reel. Otherwise, the stars here are the quirky screenplay (in which the lead hostage taker has numerous scenes outside the bank and a complicated personal life) and Sidney Lumet’s matter-of-fact direction. Dog Day Afternoon is a film of moments—not necessarily the predictable ending, but the way it still twists and turns familiar genre convention into something that feels real and credible. Witness, for instance, the incredible over-reaction to a single gunshot midway through the movie—a welcome change of pace after movies in which entire magazines of ammunition get emptied without as much as a shrug. It is, in other words, still a remarkably enjoyable film. It has become a great period piece, and little of its impact has been blunted by the usual Hollywood formula.

  • Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007)

    Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, January 2017) As far as mean and slightly seedy crime dramas go, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead hits most of the right notes. Featuring great performances (most notably from an often-naked Marisa Tomei, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, unfortunately playing a heroin addict) and a script that ping-pongs in time, this is the kind of low-stake but well-executed crime drama that doesn’t set the box office on fire but should feature in every moviegoer’s diet. (And I say this having missed the movie in theatres, only to catching a decade later on DVD.) The film does get grim as the consequences of “a simple theft” go awry in increasingly dramatic ways. By the end of the movie, you can expect a few deaths, a family torn apart and no one feeling particularly happy about the whole thing. Nonetheless, in the hands of veteran director Sidney Lumet, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead steadily moves forward despite a slightly too long running time, and has a few surprises in store until the end. Not bad, even though I’d be surprised if viewers will be able to recall much of the plot weeks after seeing the film.