Willie Nelson

  • Songwriter (1984)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2022) I don’t have much to say about Songwriter’s plot – it’s something about country singers, the predatory elements in the genre, and holding on to song rights – but neither does the film itself: It’s a film of moments and observations loosely structured around a narrative clothesline. I do have much nicer things to say about the film’s quasi-documentary atmosphere, its portrayal of the country music industry and its performers: Director Alan Rudolph makes the good choice to film things as if the camera was almost irrelevant to the staging and actors, and this allows the performers to be showcased in a quasi-documentary fashion. It certainly helps that the film was first conceived by singer-actor Willie Nelson as a semi-autobiographical rant, and that he was able to rope in the always-likable singer-actor Kris Kristofferson as co-star. They know what they’re talking about, and that credible authenticity carries to the end product. The music is terrific if you’re in that genre, and having Nelson and Kristofferson as performers makes for a nice time-capsule capture of their performances. Kristofferson had a great run of films in the 1970s and early 1980s, and you can add this film to the list – he always comes across as compelling. The echoes of New Hollywood are apparent in this mid-1980s effort, through gritty cinematography and de-glammed presentation. Songwriter is not going to be for everyone, but country fans will enjoy this throwback to the 1980s, and everyone looking for a specific portrayal of a musical niche at a specific time and place will get the full immersion.

  • Thief (1981)

    Thief (1981)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, May 2020) You can take a look at Thief and not immediately get how many things had to come together in exactly the right way for it to succeed. First up, you have writer-director Michael Mann in his feature-film debut, taking a few years of experience doing TV and applying a meticulous eye for detail at this drama featuring a master thief trying to get out of the business. There’s also the cinematography proper to an early Bruckheimer production, making splendid use of darkness and light to heighten what could have been handled as just another thriller. You’ve got James Caan, also precise in the way he plays a professional safecracker with an almost abstract idea of what he would do once away from the outlaw lifestyle. It features an able performance from Willie Nelson, as well as the big-screen debut of James Belushi and Dennis Farina. You have exact technical details, a strong sense of place for Chicago, some strong neo-noir style, plenty of elements anticipating Mann’s later movies (Heat, notably), and enough sordid details that not everything is settled by the film’s end. Thief is a strong debut for Mann, an intense role for Caan, and a great throwback watch for twenty-first century viewers.