Robots

I unintentionally ran into a 30-minute show on Reelz Channel the other day about the Top 10 Movie Robots, and needless to say, I thought the list sucked.

I can't find it exactly, but some of the egregious errors surrounded the inclusion of Russell Crowe's character, SID 6.7 from Virtuosity, HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey (he's not even a robot, he's a computer), the ED-209 from Robocop (why not just, you know, include the title character?) and finally, not one, but two of the androids from Alien (Ian Holm) and Aliens (Lance Henrikson), respectively.

Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still ('51) and Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet ('56) are two of the greatest robots in film history - Reelz Channel didn't think so.

Apparently no one at the Reelz Channel has ever even seen Robert Wise's The Day the Earth Stood Still ('51) or otherwise Gort would have been in the Top 3, no question - they were too busy gushing over Wall-E.

WWII #11: The Train (1964)

"THE TRAIN" (John Frankenheimer, 1964)
United Artists, 133 mins.

Burt Lancaster is a French railway inspector bent on stopping a German train just days before Allied liberation in this underrated, screw-tight World War II action-thriller. The train in question, en route to Berlin, is carrying millions of dollars worth of French art - Picasso, Renoir, Matisse, etc.

When asked initially, Lancaster (playing the resourceful and obstinate Paul Labiche) scoffs at the idea of risking his life for senseless artifacts, but as the film and that wealthy German train roll along, he witnesses the depth and affluence of national pride first-hand, molding The Train into a beautiful coalescence of first-rate action filmmaking and plucky patriotic collaboration.

Shot genuinely and meticulously with real trains on location - opposed to the application of miniatures or process screening - The Train has a rare industrialized authenticity in its tilted angles and geographically perceptive cuts that are heightened by Jean Tournier and Walter Wottitz's black-and-white cinematography. (Director John Frankenheimer once proudly remarked that it was "the last action film shot in black-and-white.")

As the chief saboteur, Burt Lancaster displays both virtuoso heroism and timidity - someone caught between belief and morality. His on-the-job transformation from caretaker to revolutionary provides the film with an all too rare emotional through-line.

As he stands face-to-face with his German counterpart in the final moments, the art thief vehemently, and perhaps accurately, questions the saboteur's motivations - "Now this minute, you couldn't tell me why you did what you did."

With a glance at a gunned-down, motionless pile of former French hostages, Labiche doesn't know how to answer, but he doesn't need to, the final juxtaposition between art and life speaks for itself. Labiche is a man who doesn't firmly believe in the cause, but if it's worth the lives of his countrymen, that's sufficient enough for him. [A]

WWII #10: The Dirty Dozen (1967)

"THE DIRTY DOZEN" (Robert Aldrich, 1967)
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 150 mins.

An iconoclastic genre-buster, Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen ('67), with its antagonistic cynicism and colorfully-flawed antiheroes, helped pave the way for similar wartime tales of goofy military insubordination like Kelly's Heroes ('70) and Inglourious Basterds ('09).

Faced with death or life in prison, twelve convicts are given the opportunity to participate in a covert mission behind enemy lines with the promise of a reduced sentence. Major John Reisman (Lee Marvin), a pesky, argumentative officer, resents the assignment to train and lead the mission, viewing it as a nothing less than suicide.

The majority of the film's jesting anti-military slant comes from the uptight, authoritative appearances of Colonel Dasher Breed (Robert Ryan) and Major General Worden (Ernest Borgnine), who fuel both Reisman and his squad's petulance and overall disdain.

Among the more memorable supporting turns are a demented Telly Savalas and a cross, screwy John Cassavetes, who take center stage in the early training scenes allowing the brutes played by Charles Bronson and Jim Brown to take over once the bullets start flying.

If there's one letdown in this raging, ruthless 150-minute excursion, it's that the much-talked about final mission at a countryside mansion, deep behind Nazi lines, is a bit of a comedown - a touch inert and flavorless, although it boils to a fiery eruption.

But what drives The Dirty Dozen - and what no doubt fuels its immortality and timeless relevance - is that it's the ultimate action film about redemption, vindication and sticking it back to the world that rejected you with a sly grin and a machine gun firmly in hand. [B+]

WWII #9: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)

"THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO" (Meryn LeRoy, 1944)
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 138 mins.

Although a little soggy around the edges, Mervyn LeRoy's Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo ('44) is a wrenching, tense war film about the retaliatory bombing mission on Japan just months after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Written by the famed Dalton Trumbo (before he was a member of the Hollywood Ten), the film is based on the novel of the same name written by Captain Ted W. Lawson, a real-life pilot who participated in the raid and is portrayed on screen by Van Johnson.

Trumbo's script is a little cluttered with goofy supporting characters and gushy romance, but for the way that it amounts tension through authenticity and for its brave use of flashbacks in the second act, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo is one of the most uncompromising and revealing films made during the war.

It follows a group of B-25 pilots who volunteer for an undeclared mission to be headed by Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, who is played by a seldom seen Spencer Tracy. Thankfully for this reviewer, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo isn't another air-combat film about authoritative leadership and the relationships between pilots and officers, instead choosing to focus on the details of the mission and the crew of one bomber in particular.

The aforementioned Van Johnson plays Ted W. Lawson (the real-life writer of the novel) who pilots "The Ruptured Duck," a five-man B-25 that participated in the raid on Tokyo before landing in Chongqing, China. The great Robert Walker and Robert Mitchum round out a strong supporting cast, with Phyllis Thaxter playing Lawson's wife.

By focusing on just "The Ruptured Duck," the film creates a sensational feeling of anxiety and isolation as we're with them every step of the way, from the tricky take-off to the crash-landing. Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo is one of the first air-combat films I've seen that bothers to cover the anatomy of a bombing mission - the delegations of the crew, the exposedness of the air and the helpless visibility of the landing.

As Lawson and his crew attempt to get back to the States, the film certainly knows how to tug all too forcefully at the heartstrings. A series of flashbacks from Lawson's point-of-view and a Chinese rendering of "The National Anthem" provide enough bait for sensitive audiences, but LeRoy and Trumbo just don't let up.

It's a great film if you like your war with a side of syrup, but even so, this rigid and distressing aerial attack has enough to win over even the most cynical viewer. [B+]

WWII #8: Kelly's Heroes (1970)

The goofy cousin to The Dirty Dozen ('67), Kelly's Heroes ('70) may not quite be as directly hostile as its obvious inspiration (even going so far as to borrow a few cast members), but its tongue-in-cheek depiction of soldier insubordination and piecemeal squad makeup certainly bears a strong resemblance.

Chronicling a rag-tag group of soldiers who abandon their post and undertake a reckless mission to steal $16 million in Nazi gold, Kelly's Heroes reunites director Brian G. Hutton and star Clint Eastwood, who teamed up for the thrilling and comparatively straight-faced Where Eagles Dare ('68).

With a well-stocked stable of comedians, including Telly Savalas and Don Rickles, plus a tank-riding hippie named "Oddball" played by Donald Sutherland, the film works wonders with the way it plays off of Eastwood's quiet, casual serenity.

Beginning with a stormy night in a German outpost, we see the familiar stare and clenched-jaw of our hero just before he's pointed-out by a Nazi officer. His floors the Jeep he's sitting in and as he makes his getaway, Mike Curb Congregation's "Burning Bridges," with its harmonized vocals and hippie-jam vibe kicks in and immediately we know what we're in for.

There's also a jocular Dirty Dozen-like anti-establishment jab at military officers in the way Carroll O'Connor goofily plays General Colt as a Mel Brooks wannabe who confuses disobedience with courage and remains ignorant throughout of Private Kelly's master heist.

At one point during the final action set-piece, which to the audience's delight runs almost a full hour, a self-satirizing Clint Eastwood willingly reenacts the standoff from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, replacing Lee Van Cleef with a German Tiger tank.

By this time, Kelly's Heroes has ceased in its ability to surprise - the World War II farce that it is has taken a hold of us so much so that we've come to expect anything, and luckily, we get it in spades. [A-]

Two More

The ongoing WWII marathon started off with a measly 8-9 films, but now it has ballooned to 17. I can't help it, I just keep adding stuff. John Frankenheimer's The Train ('64), which I hear is awesome, and Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen ('67) are the two newest entries.

WWII #7: Across the Pacific (1942)

"ACROSS THE PACIFIC" (John Huston, 1942)
Warner Bros., 97 mins.

John Huston's Across the Pacific ('42) is a convoluted makeshift potboiler starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor and Sydney Greenstreet in a blatant The Maltese Falcon ('41) reunion. It's one of those lesser Bogart vehicles that's more about the fedora and the wisecracks than anything else.

Essentially a noirish spy-thriller set just days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, it follows a U.S. spy (Bogart) who boards a Japanese ship en route to China where he meets two fellow passengers, a large, quietly observant oaf (Greenstreet) and a flirty Canadian (Astor). All of them seem to have secrets to hide and it's only a matter of time before they (and the audience) can figure it out.

But in a film like Across the Pacific, where revelations and twists pile up like timber, it's best to simply enjoy the actors and the conceited, sharp-edged dialogue - trying to decipher the ins and outs of such a half-baked espionage whopper in retrospect seems fruitless.

Firstly, the mere title is bamboozling and misleading, given that the Genoa Maru, the ship that Bogie and company hook up on, doesn't even come close to crossing the Pacific but rather eludes to the oncoming threat of war. Secondly, uncovering the axis plot at hand reveals a batty scheme to flood the Panama Canal. (You can't make this stuff up.)

Luckily by the end of this whiz-bang spy-puzzler, the sides are aligned and the task at hand plainly evident. Bogart carries us through the more nebulous and inane plot turns, even through an unintentionally hilarious use of a model plane in the climactic action scene. Finally, Bogie saves the day - what he did exactly, and how, we're still not really sure. [B]