Category: Action film

King Solomon’s Mines (1950)

Travelogue journey through the jungle is the main appeal here, in an otherwise bog-standard adventure tale

Director: Compton Bennett, Andrew Marton

Cast: Deborah Kerr (Elizabeth Curtis), Stewart Granger (Allan Quatermain), Richard Carlson (John Goode), Hugo Haas (Van Brun), Lowell Gilmore (Eric Masters), Kimursi (Khiva), Siriaque (Umbopa), Sekaryongo (Gagool), Baziga (King Twala)

H Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines was one of the definitive ‘ripping yarns’, schoolboy tales of daring do in places far away from England’s cricket pavilions. This travelogue epic strips down Haggard’s story to a minimum, its main purpose being giving viewers over an hour of location footage from the African safari, all in glorious technicolour. It’s perhaps not a surprise that it was a massive box-office success, bit it is to think this very average adventure went up against All About Eve and Sunset Boulevard for Best Picture. Surely only its mega-bucks takings at the Box Office can explain that.

Allan Quatermain (Stewart Granger), the world’s most famous hunter, has made his life shepherding wealthy Europeans in front of exotic animals they can shoot. Tired of the life and sick of arrogant tourists, so he’s not interested in joining what he considers a damn-fool crusade – a trek through the jungle to find Henry Curtis, missing in search of the mythical treasure of King Solomon. Money talks however, if he can’t stand what he sees as the pampered arrogance of his new employer, Curtis’ wife Elizabeth (Deborah Kerr). She, in turn, is infuriated by his arrogance and rudeness. This odd couple trek off, accompanied by Elizabeth’s brother John Goode (Richard Carlson), Allan’s trusted bearer Khiva (Kimursi), picking up mysterious Umbopa (Siriaque) along the way.

King Solomon’s Mines already re-mixed the novel to introduce a (inevitable) female character: the novel has Henry Curtis searching for his brother. But you can’t have an adventure epic without a opposites-attract love story blooming, and it’s not the greatest surprise that’s what happens between Kerr and Granger’s. (Apparently, it also spilled over into real life as well). “You keep watching each other, what’s wrong” queries the clueless Goode halfway through as Kerr and Granger squabble, bicker and mentally undress each other for over an hour before a late-night clinch up a tree. That is, to be honest, kind of it in the film which otherwise is almost completely free of plot.

Instead it focuses overwhelmingly on the opening section of the novel, the actual journey to the mysterious mines. This swallows up over 70 of the film’s 108 minutes, showcasing the extensive location shooting across Uganda, Kenya and the Congo, with Richard Surtees’ (Oscar-winning) cinematography capturing a never-ending parade of animals, jungle foliage, crocodile-infested rivers, vast plains and a parade of indigenous tribes all happy to co-operate with the filming (as well as supplying much of the cast). So much footage was shot, that b-roll footage collected by Surtees found its way into dozens of MGM films for years-to-come.

And it was catnip for the punters, stunned by seeing the sights of the safari in glorious technicolour, soundtracked by brief bursts of tribal music (there is no orchestral score at all, rare for the time). King Solomon’s Mines feels like a National Geographic film with a plot very loosely attached. So gorgeous was the outside footage, the parts shot on studio sets do stick out (Hugo Haas, popping up as a rogue hunter with a villainous agenda, all too obviously never stepped foot out of California to shoot the film). The photography still looks impressive today, distressing as it is to find out an elephant gunned down in the opening (and mourned by his herd) was shot for real.

Did it matter that there is no real plot half the time? I guess not, when audiences are there for that photography. There is more than a whiff of colonialism about the whole thing, but Haggard’s attitudes were always more advanced than many give him credit for, carried across here. Like his novel version, Quartermain is respectful of (and genuinely likes) the indigenous people he encounters, learning their languages, forming friendships and mourning any deaths sincerely. Sure, he’s also an Edwardian paternalist, but it’s strikingly compared to the dripping contempt we see him treat most Westerners with. Granger plays him with a matinee-idol gruffness (Errol Flynn was the first choice).

Opposite him, Kerr has the typical ‘woman’s’ role in such stories. Although much is made of her toughening up on the journey – casting off her corsets, going by foot and taking a gun – she’s still required to regularly shriek and faint when danger calls. There’s a hilarious moment (even the original audiences laughed but it had to be kept in) when we cut from Kerr chopping off her flowing locks with a pair of scissors, to shampooing, to luxuriating in the sun with a hairstyle that looks like she’s spent hours in the make-up chair. Kerr could, of course, play these prim-and-proper types who really love the bad boy standing on her head, and the role is hardly a stretch.

The focus on the wildlife footage leaves almost no time for the actual plot of King Solomon’s Mines which is crammed into the film’s final half-an-hour, as mysterious bearer Umbopa (one of the novel’s main characters, here reduced to an almost wordless plot device) reveals himself as rightful king of the mountains and our heroes discover, enter, get trapped in and escape the mine (this takes about 6 minutes of screen time). Whether the actual plot was so heavily cut-back because the producers didn’t trust the Indigenous actors they cast to carry it or it was felt the 50s audience wouldn’t be interested in seeing an African story led by actual African characters is entirely up to speculation. Not a single African character in the film is really given an individual personality let alone a plot arc, a major disappointment considering the strikingly memorable, rich African characters (both heroic and villainous) in Haggard’s original story.

The film suddenly into a mad, often tough to follow for newbies, rush after an elongated trek through the jungles (Hugo Haas’ sudden Act Two appearance as a mid-trek baddie was introduced, solely to give us an antagonist of sorts on the journey). It proves that the main appeal was that safari trek photography (with an opposites-attract romance as a bonus). King Solomon’s Mines, truthfully, isn’t nothing special – everything it attempts to do would be done infinitely better a year later in The African Queen – and it remains a truly odd entry in the list of Best Picture nominees.

One Battle After Another (2025)

Fabulously made film, a brilliant merging of half-a-dozen genres is one Andersons’s finest

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio (Pat Calhoun/Bob Ferguson), Sean Penn (Colonel Steven J Lockjaw), Benicio del Toro (Sergio St Carlos), Regina Hall (Deandra), Teyana Taylor (Perfidia Beverly Hills), Chase Infiniti (Willa Ferguson), Wood Harris (Laredo), Alan Haima (Mae West), Paul Grimstad (Howard Sommerville), Shayna McHayle (Junglepussy), Tony Goldwyn (Virgil Throckmorton), John Hoogenakker (Tim Smith)

What is revolution – changing the world or just the relentless grind of One Battle After Another? It’s as hard to define as it is to define Paul Thomas Anderson’s incredibly striking Thomas Pynchon adaptation. Look at it one angle, and it’s a sharp political commentary on America; from another it’s a satire on the insular, self-defeating rules of secret societies; from a third it’s a pulpy chase-thriller; from a fourth a touching coming-of-age story of a daughter growing closer to her dad. Anderson’s skill here is that it’s basically all these and more at the same time, an electric, frequently laugh-out loud funny, hugely eccentric film that defies all categorisation.

Pynchon’s novel Vineland saw the radicals of the 1960s pulled, clumsily, back to life in the 90s. Anderson keeps the time skip, but moves the start to the late 00s and the destination to today. Pat (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a dishevelled, but true-believing, junior member of The French 75, a radical Atifa-style organisation on a wave of armed anti-government action. He’s in love with Perfidia (Teyana Taylor), an adrenalin-fuelled militant whose radicalism is often secondary to the rush she gets from guns and bombs. She’s the source of perverted sexual obsession for bottled-up, socially-striving US army officer Stephen Lockjaw (Sean Penn). After Perfidia makes a terrible choice, 16-years later the disillusioned, frequently doped-out, Pat (now living under the alias of Bob Ferguson) is raising their teenage daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) when Lockjaw explodes back into their life, desperate to clean up his past indiscretions in case they imperil his acceptance into a secretive Neo-Nazi organisation of wealthy American, ‘the Christmas Adventures Club’. Cue a wild and crazy chase.

Anderson’s film bowls along with a whipper-cracker pace, over-flowing with confidence that it doesn’t need to spoon-feed us timelines, details or locations but trusts us to go with narrative flow. Which I for one really did. It’s a film that throws you straight into the mix – a French 75 raid on an immigration detainment facility – and barely lets up from there. Within the first half an hour we’ve seen a wave of direct action events from blowing up campaign offices (after warning phone calls) to sabotaging a city’s electricity supply – alongside Pat and Perfidia overcome with giddy, sexual thrills at thumbing their nose at the system. It’s a great way of grasping what an addictive rush fighting the man can be, something that’s all too-clear in the excited whooping, cheering and bombastic speechifying of many of its members.

These good times can’t last, but Perfidia wants to enjoy them as long as she can. In a blistering, force-of-nature performance from Teyana Taylor, Perfidia acts completely on impulse, thrilled with her life of action, pulling the naïve Bob in her slipstream. Danger of all sorts is addictive, from bombs to risky liaisons. She’ll spontaneously attempt to sexually humiliate Lockjaw on their first encounter (essentially ordering him to ‘stand to attention’ for her), then throw herself into an off-the-books sexual relationship with him (after he obsessively tracks her down for more humiliation) seemingly for kicks. She embodies the risky, thrilling excitement of the revolutionary world.

She’s also what leads to its destruction (her fellow revolutionaries are reduced to frightened shadows of themselves when, during a bank raid. Perfidia actually uses the lethal force everyone else has just talked about). Anderson’s film, after its propulsive start (assembled like an extended montage across an entire act), jumps to a very different future, where the thrills and spills of the underworld are subtly undermined, firstly by the hilarious dark comedy of all communication being managed through obsessive codeword rules and then by comparison with a far more quiet, but far more effective, underground railroad for migrants run by Benecio del Toro’s (underplaying brilliantly, his natural charisma flowing off the screen) Latin community leader and Taekwondo-sensei.

It’s also clear how hard it is to keep the revolutionary fire-burning. One Battle After Another superbly exploits the vulnerability and anxiety that underpins many of DiCaprio’s best performances. For all his involvement with radical violence, Pat/Bob is a sensitive, true believer starry-eyed, but with an appreciation for every-day duties that his fellow revolutionaries lack. It’s him who believes family and their daughter should come first (Perfidia, in the midst of post-natal depression, even admits she’s jealous of her daughter for absorbing so much of Pat’s love and attention).

DiCaprio brilliantly finds in Bob a good heart, whose desire to do the right thing is undermined by his own incompetence. In disappointment, he’s become a paranoid grouch, grumbling about pronouns, like any other middle-aged man adrift in the modern world. DiCaprio burns through the desperate energy of the part, but mixes it with a rich vein of black comedy at Bob’s frequent inability to cope with his situation. It’s a perfectly judged performance of loyalty and love, mixed with exasperation, panic and frequent well-meaning poor judgement.

The second-act leans into the satirical comedy of these middle-aged revolutionaries, bought crashingly to life. In a neat comic touch, Bob spends most of the film on the run, desperately trying to find Willa, while dressed, Arthur Dent-style, in the same scuzzy dressing-gown he was wearing before Lockjaw’s raid. Time-and-time again, he’s reduced to swearing impotently down a phone-line like any other middle-aged consumer fed-up with unhelpful customer service, as he repeatedly fails to dredge vital codewords up from his stoned memory. During his escape, he’ll fall off a roof while evading the law, blanch at jumping from a moving car and spectacularly bungle a shoot-out. But what never waivers is his determination to help his daughter. One Battle After Another plays at times like a version of Taken where Neeson’s character had let himself get out of shape but still threw himself into the chase.

Anderson has fun with the bombastic self-importance of revolutionaries and the intricate insularity of their world. But he also has respect for their underlying desire to change the world for the better, even if the film suggests that the carefully, unflashy work being carried out by del Toro’s railroad is a better approach. Among the revolutionaries, there is a genuine warmth and feeling, embodied by Regina Hall’s loyal and humane Deandra (another superb performance in a film packed with them). There is a loyalty and protectiveness among the revolutionaries that bonds them together. And Sergio – del Toro outstanding as a never-fazed Sensei, a performance bubbling with dry wit – has built a community founded on mutual respect and looking out for each other.

And One Battle After Another has no respect at all for the alternative. The Christmas Adventures Club, the bizarre neo-Nazi group Lockjaw dreams of joining, shares the ridiculous language of secret knocks, handshakes and codewords. But it’s repellent in its instinctive racism and treats its members not as allies to be protected, but assets to be exploited and disposed of as needed. And their insidious extremism of its powerful white guys, with their hands on the gears of power, poses a far more dangerous threat.

Lockjaw is superbly played by Sean Penn as a ball of righteous, inadequate anger – from his ludicrous hair (which he frequently combs into an aggressive thrust), his tight t-shirts to accentuate his muscles to the lifts in his shoes to make him taller. Lockjaw is desperate to be a somebody, after a lifetime of social insecurity. Lacking any sense of imagination, with the emotional maturity of a disgruntled teen, Penn makes Lockjaw the embodiment of angry male entitlement trying to grab what power they can.

Anderson fuses all these elements into a film that takes us through several propulsive acts, from it’s French 75 prologue, to Bob’s desperate attempt to evade Lockjaw’s troops to a dusty road-chase that superbly carries an air of Mad Max. But Anderson does this, while never letting the film’s focus slip from the twisted family relationships at its centre: from Bob’s genuine, protective fatherly love, to Lockjaw’s incel jealousy and their twisted struggle for Willa (beautifully played by Chase Infiniti, in a star-making turn, as young woman finding a strength and idealism within herself that surprises her). It finds space for a genuinely moving series of personal relationships, just as it also skilfully shows Willa’s self-belief and social imagination flourishing under insane circumstances.

It’s part of a compelling, exciting, blackly comic and compelling film, which is not afraid to go to extreme, satirical lengths one moment and then pull you up with a scene that is gentle, earnest and heartfelt the next. It also avoids the trap of too directly preaching about America today, while asking several searching (and uncomfortable questions) about where we are now. Superbly acted across the board, it again shows Anderson is one of the finest directors working.

Captain America: Brave New World (2025)

Pure, unfiltered, content nothing more. Full of stuff you’ve seen, doing things you expect.

Director: Julius Onah

Cast: Anthony Mackie (Sam Wilson/Captain America), Harrison Ford (Thaddeus Ross/Red Hulk), Danny Ramirez (Joaquin Torres/Falcon), Tim Blake Nelson (Samuel Sterns), Shira Haas (Ruth Bat-Seraph), Carl Lumbly (Isaiah Bradley), Xosha Roquemore (Leila Taylor), Giancarlo Esposito (Seth Voelker/Sidewinder), Liv Tyler (Betty Ross)

Welcome to a Brave New World of Content. There’s nothing really wrong with Captain America: Brave New World. But there are also feels like no real reason for it to exist. Let it pass before your eyes for a couple of hours and you’ll have a decent time: then you’ll barely remember it, leaving you as brainwashed as it’s villain’s Mr Blue Sky programmed minions. It exists because the MCU is a gargantuan shark that has to keep moving forward, consuming more and more of the cultural conversation to stay alive.

What’s it about? Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) is our new Captain America, still air-bound with his Falcon wings (now powered up with some Wakandan science) but without the super-serum that made Steve Rogers near-invulnerable. His new boss, ex-General-now-President Ross (Harrison Ford, replacing the late William Hurt), has his doubts – but is also dealing with his own anger-management issues. Ross is being manipulated by imprisoned evil genius Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson) who wants Ross’ hypocrisy exposed to the world – and to turn him into Red Hulk for good measure. Since every single scrap of publicity material reassured us Red Hulk appears in the film, it’s not a surprise to find out he succeeds.

It’s all told in a reassuring way: another film pressed out of the MCU cookie-cutter. There is an interesting story dealing with Sam’s doubts about his worthiness, not least since he lacks Steve’s strength and speed. It’s so interesting… that Marvel has already made a TV series about it. Brave New World offers a less interesting, crib notes version of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, while anxiously dancing round that series’ engagement with the moral complexities of a Black man taking on the name of Captain America, representing a country whose track-record on race is not something to boast about.

All the best stuff has already been rinsed once through the MCU content machine. Sebastian Stan pops up to repeat the moral message of that series in a single scene. Carl Lumbly returns as an aged Black Captain America, ill-treated by the government (although his background is skirted round by a film, terrified of being accused of any form of political statement). Sam, just as he did in the series, wonders about powering himself up to Steve levels and decides not. For anyone who has seen the series, it’s a shallow retread. For anyone who has not seen it, it makes very little impression.

Brave New World struggles to find its purpose and reason for being. There is an astonishingly large amount of exposition in it, constantly explaining and reminding us what everything is. Brave New World serves as a sort of side-ways sequel to two of the franchise’s least liked, least remembered films (The Incredible Hulk and Eternals), as well as being a thematic remake of a TV series. It feels like what it is: a film shot and reshot over years, until all sense of its tone and originality has been ironed out into the most generic, safe and pointless film you can imagine.

Marvel could sort of tell everyone was wondering why on Earth they should make this film, so dangled Red Hulk before us like a hook desperate that it would get bums on seats. There is something quite tragic about the series being reduced to spoiling their own ending. Particularly as all this transformation really just leads into a fairly familiar end-of-film smackdown in an all-too-obviously CGI created backdrop. This was probably a legacy of the years of delays and reshoots, the film tottering awkwardly between various political issues: hence it’s timid handling of issues from #blacklivesmatter, it’s attempt to not put off the anti-Woke brigade, to it’s meek fear of including an Israeli character in a leading role.

Perhaps that’s why we end up with something as formulaic and straight-forward as this. Anthony Mackie gives of his very best (although he has said in interviews, he prefers the long-form character building opportunities of TV shows – and who can blame him) and makes a winning argument for himself as a figurehead for a struggling franchise. Harrison Ford looks slightly bemused that he’s even in here (and I’ll eat my hat if we see him again in an MCU property), autopiloting through his gravelly grumpiness until he transforms into a big red monster with stretchy pants.

There are some decent action sequences. Giancarlo Esposito gets to riff on his Breaking Bad role in a character (again, some what obviously) added in reshoots years after the project completed filming. A mid-air battle over Japanese waters is gripping enough, if nothing special. A chase scene through the White House and across Washington lands well. Tim Blake Nelson does a decent job as a villain powered by intellect rather than strength. None of this is remotely new, original or particularly different from dozens of other MCU films (did they decide on locations based on where they haven’t really been before?) but its all entertaining enough.

It’s also though painfully, pointlessly, predictable. As inevitable as the arrival of the Red Hulk (a sure sign that the MCU was terrified the film was going to bomb, was when they smacked that guy all over the posters and trailers), every beat feels like dozens of other MCU films. It feels like a middling entry that will be easily skippable for what passes now for the series overarching narrative. Every moment feels fundamentally pre-packaged and shorn of any personality. It’s a highly professional, well-oiled, well-assembled film and you’ll forget almost every single thing about it within about an hour of it finishing. It’s just content from a series that needs new stuff like a lung needs oxygen.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)

Fun entry in the MCU, bright, pacey and entertaining – but never engages with its deeper issues

Director: Matt Shakman

Cast: Pedro Pascal (Reed Richards / Mister Fantastic), Vanessa Kirby (Sue Storm / Invisible Woman), Ebon Moss-Bachrach (Ben Grimm / The Thing), Joseph Quinn as (Johnny Storm / Human Torch), Julia Garner (Shalla-Bal / Silver Surfer), Ralph Ineson (Galactus), Sarah Niles (Lynne Nichols), Mark Gatiss (Ted Gilbert), Natasha Lyonne (Rachel Rozman), Paul Walter Hauser (Harvey Elder / Mole Man)

It’s taken almost seventeen years (can you believe the MCU has been going for so long?!) but ‘Marvel’s First Family’ finally make it to the party, escaping one of those legacy rights deals the comic giant signed before working out it could make films itself. Since, for those interested, there are already three Fantastic Four origins-films for you to seek out (they gained their powers from flying through a space storm), Fantastic Four throws us straight into the second Act of our heroes lives, communicating their origins in an in-universe TV show celebration of their achievements (including a montage of them defeating a parade of second tier villains, including Mole Man and an army of super-intelligent chimps) before throwing them up against their biggest challenge yet.

For their unofficial leaders, Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal – whose real life super-power seems to be that he appears in all movies) aka Mr Fantastic science super-genius and master strategist with limbs of rubber and Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby) aka Invisible Woman, the world’s greatest diplomat, who can create forcefields and make herself (and others) invisible) there is the challenge of impending parenthood. And for the whole gang, also including scientist and wild-child Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) – he can set his body on fire – and Reed’s best friend, astronaut and Herculean powered made-of-stone Ben Grimm – it’s the threat of Galacticus (Ralph Ineson) a planet-eating giant whose herald (Julia Garner) arrives on a silver surfboard and announces Earth will be his next snack, unless the Four hand over Sue’s unborn child.

The Fantastic Four’s decision to skip the origins story throws us straight into a story that’s a lot of fun. A very enjoyable romp with some well-sketched out characters (played by engaging and charismatic actors), a few extremely well-made set-pieces, plenty of humour, just enough heart and a decent, city-crushing, smackdown at the end. It’s directed with a lot of bounce and joy by Matt Shakman and despite being about literally earth-shattering events manages to keep the focus tightly on the family at its core (perhaps a little too tightly, but more on that later).

It’s also a delightful triumph of design. Set in a sort of cyber-punk 1960s (the idea being that Richard’s intellect has super-powered mankind’s development), it’s a gorgeously realised world of 60s design, all curving surfaces and primary colours, intermixed with souped-up 60s technology like ingenious androids that run on cassette decks and flying cars, like The Jetsons made flesh (doubly engaging as the film so obviously committed to real sets rather than blue-screen invention). I also rather liked the implied joke that the world has progressed only in the areas Richards’ considered worthwhile: so this world has faster-than-light travel, flying cars and abundant energy sources, but totally lacks hi-def television or social media (and who can blame Richards for that).

There is also a certain charm in how the Four are universally beloved heroes. Everywhere they go, they are flooded by admirers and merchandise wearing children (it’s quietly never explored if the Four paid for their colossal, futuristic tower and private space base with a fortune in image deals). Reed fills time between inventing the future with hosting a TV show about science for kids, while Sue essentially runs the United Nations. Johnny is the star of every social event and Ben bashfully lifts the cars for the kids in his Brooklyn neighbourhood and flirts shyly with a primary school teacher (Natasha Lyonne).

This world is pleasingly shaken up by the arrival of the Silver Surfer, a charismatically unreadable turn from Julia Garner (under a CGI naked silver body). First Steps successfully uses this threat to humanise a group of heroes who otherwise might have proved too good to be true. For starters, their confident assurances all will be well when they head for space turns out to be far from the case when they are comprehensively outmatched by an immortal planet eater and his physics-defying silver herald. First Steps most exciting and thrillingly assembled scene is their retreat from a first encounter with this giant, a brilliantly managed high-octane chase around a black hole with a few extra personal perils thrown in on top, made even more gripping by Michael Giacchani’s pitch-perfect score.

That’s before the devilish conundrum of balancing the fate of seven billion people with Sue’s unborn son. If First Steps refuses to really dive fully into it, it does successfully raise the emotional stakes. It’s also a ‘reasonable’ offer from Galactus, a surprisingly soulful anti-villain, played with a mix of disdainful arrogance and death-dreaming melancholy by Ralph Ineson (there is a lovely moment when he takes a break from imminent city-smashing to pick up and sniff a fistful of Earth as if he’s forgotten the smell) desperate to escape the cycle of endlessly devouring planets to maintain his interminable life.

Horrific as it is to imagine a baby taking his place, First Steps avoids really delving into this intergalactic trolley problem. Because, at heart, it’s a film where superheroes alarmingly make decisions for billions of people with no oversight or pushback. Having unilaterally decided to reject Galactus’ offer, the Four seem surprised the rest of Earth are less than thrilled at their impending demise because the Four won’t make a Sophie’s Choice. There is some rich potential here to really delve into the way the Four are, arguably, benign dictators, reshaping this world in their own image and accepting adulation and unquestioning following. First Steps ignores it – the world’s discontent underdone by a single speech from Sue – and only for a split second is the moral quandary treated as something meriting genuine debate. As the surfer points out, if the kid was an adult he would certainly accept: is it right to take that choice from him?

But it’s a comic book movie, right? So, let’s not overthink it. And Marvel was never going to darken its First Family with hints of elitest oppression, demanding sacrifices from others (and the world makes huge sacrifices to protect their child) but not themselves. First Steps is a fun film. I liked its vibe, like a live-action Incredibles (only not that good), I enjoyed the BB4-like robot Herbie, all four of its leads are highly likeable with excellent chemistry. So, I’m trying to just not think about where this onrushing trolley is going and instead enjoy the view.

HMS Defiant (1962)

Interpersonal conflict on the high seas, in this serviceable romp upon the high seas

Director: Lewis Gilbert

Cast: Alec Guinness (Captain Henry Crawford), Dirk Bogarde (Lt Scott-Padgett), Anthony Quayle (Vizard), Tom Bell (Evans), Murray Melvin (Wagstaffe), Maurice Denham (Dr Goss), Nigel Stock (Mdspman Kilpatrick), David Robinson (Mdspman Crawford), Bryan Pringle (Sgt Kneebone), Richard Carpenter (Lt Ponsonby), Peter Gill (Lt D’Arbly)

HMS Defiant, despite what its poster suggests, isn’t really non-stop rollicking adventures on the high seas. Instead, it’s about internal conflict: between officers and crew, between captain and first officer, between sailors and admiralty. In 1797, Britain is sailing into war with Napoleon and the press gang is seizing sailors off the streets. But no-one is getting paid fairly, something a proto-trade union of sailors led by Vizard (Anthony Quayle) is determined to sort out even if that involves mutiny. Mutinous thoughts abound on his ship Defiant, as stoic Captain Crawford (Alec Guinness) is engaged in a battle of wills with his ambitious and vicious first officer Lt Scott-Padgett (Dirk Bogarde), with Crawford’s son (a young midshipman on board) caught in the middle and paying a heavy price.

Interestingly, both of its two leads would probably have preferred it if the film had sunk to the bottom with trace. Guinness considered it one of the worst films he was involved in, while Bogarde saw it as little more than a pay cheque with sails, the sort of box-office he needed to do to pay for films like Victim. That’s harsh on a perfectly serviceable slice of Forrester-inspired nonsense, the sort of film that has become a staple of Bank Holiday TV. There is nothing wrong with HMS Defiant (God knows you’ll see a lot worse) and if it’s not inspired, it’s also not a disgrace.

It’s competently assembled by Lewis Gilbert, who ticks off the various nautical boxes with aplomb. Over the course of the film we get multiple floggings, a man falling from the yardarm (an all-too-obvious dummy), sails puffed with wind, cannon-firing action against the French, an amputation, cutlass-shivering feuds, grumbling below decks and a parade of fists slammed into hands behind backs. Everything you have grown to expect from Hornblower is here, all put together with an assured professionalism that means you are never anything less than entertained.

The action, when it comes, as ship goes against ship, is actually less interesting than the complex inter-personal dynamics on board. It’s perhaps one of the most interesting films in presenting a Naval ship as an insular little world, a sort of boarding school on the seas, with head boys and scroungers. At its heart is the clash between two potential headmasters: Alec Guinness’ decent Crawford, who leads through a sort of unimpeachable example of British reserve, and Bogarde’s Scott-Padgett a charismatic bully who is basically a sort of Flashman of the Seas.

They both have very different ideas of what the boat should be. Crawford sees it as a tool to deliver the Admiralties orders, with everyone fitting perfectly into their assigned role and never for a moment thinking outside it. Scott-Padgett sees it as an opportunity for social climbing, who feels since he’s uniquely special the rules shouldn’t apply to him and will go to all manner of petty ends to get what he wants, not giving a damn who gets hurt. Crawford would govern with a firm but fair hand, letting a cross word communicate his displeasure. Scott-Padgett walks around deck with a coiled rope in his hand to literally whip the sailors on, handing out thrashings like their going out of business.

He’ll also pick on the vulnerable, roping bullies like Nigel Stock’s ageing senior midshipman (a man who reeks of failure) to hand out beatings to those who can’t protect themselves. And, like the sort of unpleasant reader of men he is, Scott-Padgett works out the Captain’s pressure point is to line up Crawford’s son for as many beating as possible and subtly threaten more unless he basically gets his way on the ship. It’s a sort of under-hand dealing that the decent Crawford is totally unprepared for, a complete disregard for form and rules of conduct that’s outside of his experience.

It’s telling that Crawford has more in common with Vizard. Anthony Quayle, in the film’s finest performance, is cut from the same cloth: a reasonable man with a sense of fair play who feels a petition and a careful argument placed to the Admiralty will get everything he wants with no chance of violence rearing his head. It’s not that much of a stretch for the audience to guess he might be wrong, not least because his number two is the increasingly bitter, class-conscious Evans, played with a surly mean streak by Tom Bell. Not least since the quick to anger Evans is also happy for other men to take the rap for his actions and never considers anyone’s needs but himself. Vizard’s number two shares more than a few characteristics with his bête noire Scott-Padgett (one of many ways Vizard and Crawford are alike).

It leads to an inexorable show-down, with Bogarde’s patrician contempt and self-satisfied assurance like a red rag to everyone he encounters. (You could say HMS Defiant is an interesting warm-up for Bogarde before he tackled the satanic butler in The Servant). Guinness fares less well, probably because he has a much less delicious part, all to clearly struggling to raise any interest in the character he’s playing (HMS Defiant is one of the best examples of Guinness on terminally-bored autopilot, rarely stirring himself to do anything other than go through the motions).

But it’s still an entertaining film, in a Sunday afternoon sort of way (the exact time I watched it). There is something endearing about the sailors’ naïve plans to win their rights, just as there is something wonderfully pantomimically hissable in Bogarde’s odious lieutenant, a lovely embodiment of upper-class entitlement that literally makes every situation worse. Sure, nothing is re-invented, but as a vessel for some interesting character beats and some serviceable naval action, it more than holds water.

28 Years Later (2025)

Belated sequel successfully compliments gore with thoughtfulness and surprising sensitivity

Director: Danny Boyle

Cast: Alfie Williams (Spike), Jodie Comer (Isla), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Jamie), Ralph Fiennes (Dr Kelson), Edvin Ryding (Erik), Chi Lewis-Parry (Samson), Christopher Fulford (Sam), Amy Cameron (Rose), Stella Gonet (Jenny), Jack O’Connell (Jimmy)

Following on not quite 28 years since the original (23 Years Later wouldn’t have had the same ring to it), 28 Years Later sees Danny Boyle return to the post-apocalyptic hell-scape that is a Britain over-run by rage-infected, super-fast, permanently-furious, adrenaline-filled humans (don’t call them zombies!). But those expecting a visceral, gut-punch of blood-soaked violence may be in for a surprise. 28 Years Later is a quieter, more thoughtful film, where the battlefield is for the sort of values to embrace in a world gone to hell.

After a viciously terrifying opening set on the day of the original outbreak – in which vicar’s son Jimmy flees, terrified, from his home after a gang of infected literally rip-apart or infect his family sand terrified telly-tubby-watching friends – we flash-forward decades. Britain is now quarantined and nature has reclaimed large chunks of the land. The few remaining survivors live in protected communities, like a group on Lindisfarne, protected by a causeway flooded at high tide. In the community, 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams), is taken to the mainland by his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) to claim his first infected kill, while his confused and ill mother Isla (Jodie Comer) sits at home. But Spike will learn things about himself and his father on the mainland – enough for him to decide to risk taking his mother to meet with the mysterious Dr Kelson (a magnetically eccentric and softly-spoken Ralph Fiennes, in a performance that defies all expectations), who lives in isolation and may just know how to cure her.

Boyle’s film is kinetic and vicious at points, but also has a magnetic beauty as his camera flows across a world in some-ways unchanged from 2002 and in others utterly alien. Scavenged supplies are full of technology from the earlier noughties. The remains of things like Happy Eater restaurants are everywhere, and (proving not everything is bad) the Sycamore Gap tree remains standing. Buildings and villages are overgrown with plant-life and trees. Colossal herds of deer – enough to shake the earth – roam the countryside. In many ways the future is once more the green and pleasant land, with the Lindisfarne community sharing supplies and relearning skills like farming and archery (echoing the days of Henry V, with Boyle calling back to this with a series of shots from OIivier’s film, it’s a compulsory skill as the safest way to kill infected).

There is no chance of salvation or change here. That’s made very clear to us, with the Act Two arrival of Edvin Ryding’s scared Swedish soldier who tells us plainly that being stranded on the island is a death sentence. The world has left Britian behind and they way Erik describes it, all iPhones and Amazon deliveries, is as familiar to us as it is utterly incomprehensible to young Spike. This is not a film about fixing, averting or liberating the island. It’s a film about existing in a permanent state where mankind is no longer the apex predator.

Boyle’s film, with an excellent and thoughtful script by Alex Garland, is therefore all about defying expectation. Spike’s journey with his father is less about a terrifying chase from hordes of infected (though there is plenty of that), or him hardening himself in a brutal world. Instead, it’s about Spike’s nagging doubts about his father being confirmed. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is a very good as a man who is brave and protective, but morally weak and desperate for approval. He’s the sort of man who harangues his son into executing restrained infected (even children) and takes every opportunity in between dutiful caring for his wife, to slip off to his girlfriend. A man who brags on their return as if his son was some sort of Hercules, when Spike knew he spent most of his time missing with his arrows and in a constant state of terror.

28 Years Later captures that sinking feeling children can have when they realise beyond doubt that their parents aren’t perfect. Alfie Williams is excellent as a caring boy, who doesn’t see sensitivity and humanity as weaknesses in the way you suspect his father does. Who sees through his father’s need to promote himself and is disgusted by it. And finds himself drawn closer to his sick mother (a carefully vulnerable performance from Jodie Comer) and finding he has more affinity for a world that still has a place in it for decency, where going back to help someone is not written off as foolishness.

It’s a film that raises fascinating questions about the infected themselves. While millions of infected passed away – their rage filled minds unable to carry out basic tasks like eating or drinking – the small percentage who survived, seemed to retain enough of themselves to maintain some sort of life. They move in herds – or, as some of the obese ground-crawlers do, in a bizarre family unit – and they even have leaders. ‘Alphas’ – those who the disease caused to grow to humongous proportions (in every organ) – direct their charges. And they have intelligence: our main Alpha ‘Samson’ enraged at the death of his comrades, holds back from an attack until the moment is right, mourns the loss of a female infected and maintains a relentless pursuit for reasons we’d recognise from thousands of movies.

28 Years Later uses this to force us to ask questions about ourselves and when human life ceases to matter. To Jamie, the infected have ceased to be human and killing them a duty. But Spike is forced to start to ask: what right do we have to decide there are less human than us, these people who were like us perhaps moments before? Beyond self-defence, is killing them as noble as all that? 28 Days and Weeks Later featured the instant slaughter of anyone with even a suspicion of infection. Years questions this like never before. Everyone on this island is a victim, and the infected deserve just as much memoralizing as victims as the uninfected.

It makes for a surprisingly quiet and meditative drama – even if it is punctuated by moments of shocking blood and gore, from heads and spinal cords being ripped out to a blood-spatted TellyTubbies screening in a vicarage – and one that demands you think almost more than it demands you be thrilled. With exceptional performances, especially from Alfie Williams, it’s a different but mature sequel that redefines aspects of the series. And, based on its jaw-droppingly bizarre ending, its sequel will only take this thinking further.

Mission: Impossible: The Final Reckoning (2025)

Cruise’s final mission is really a tribute to the star himself and his never-ending force of will

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Cast: Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt), Hayley Atwell (Grace), Ving Rhames (Luther Stickell), Simon Pegg (Benji Dunn), Esai Morales (Gabriel), Pom Klementieff (Paris), Henry Czerny (Eugene Kittridge), Angela Bassett (President Erika Sloane), Holt McCallany (Serling Bernstein), Janet McTeer (Secretary Walters), Nick Offerman (General Sidney), Hannah Waddingham (Rear Admiral Neely), Tramell Tillman (Captain Bledsoe), Shea Whigham (Briggs), Greg Tarzan Davies (Theo Degas), Charles Parnell (Richards), Mark Gatiss (Angstrom), Rolf Saxon (William Donloe), Lucy Tulugarjuk (Tapeesa)

Almost thirty years after the first film trotted into the cinema, Tom Cruise signs off (he claims) his franchise of death-defying stunts with a final entry that dials the global threat up so far you can almost hear the desperate whirring as the doomsday clock tries to keep up. Mission: Impossible: The Final Reckoning is big in every single way, packed with set-pieces, dense procedural plot mechanics that require reams of exposition, global annihilation round every corner and at the centre the towering, chosen-one aura of Ethan Hunt himself, the only man who can save the world.

The Final Reckoning takes off a few weeks after the now-rechristened Dead Reckoning (after it under-performed they didn’t want to scare people off with a Part 2 subtitle). AI demigod The Entity is hellbent on gaining control of the world’s nuclear arsenals so that, having presumably binged Terminator, it can SkyNet-like wipe out humanity. Ethan (Tom Cruise) is on the run, but he has a plan. Dig out the sunken Russian sub where the Entity was ‘born’, fish out its source code, hook it up to an Entity-killing virus and trap the AI would-be-overlord in what’s essentially a glowing USB drive. This mission will involve lots of running, fighting, defusing of nukes, diving to the bottom of the ocean, jumping between bi-planes mid-flight… he might as well chuck the kitchen sink as well.

Mission: Impossible: Final Reckoning has plenty of fun, even if it is hellishly overlong. It’s the sort of crowd-pleaser that gets people clapping at the end (as several people in my packed-out screening did). When the stunts come, they’re hugely well-staged. As always the Tom Cruise USP is front-and-centre: if you see him do it, he did it. Yes, Tom really did jump out of a naval helicopter into the raging Atlantic. Yes, that really is Tom, climbing over a speeding bi-plane thousands of feet-up with only a pair of goggles to keep him safe. It’s no-coincidence the villain is an AI who creates an artificial digital reality. The Mission: Impossible films are all about it keeping it solidly real.

But, once the initial adrenaline rush subsides, I’m wondering if its pumped-up thrills are going to be a bit more wearing second-time around. What struck me about The Final Reckoning is, that for all the huge amount of stuff going on, there is precious little heart in it. More than any other M:I film since the little-loved M:I:2 (practically the only film in the franchise not to get a shout-out here), the act of saving-the-world here is a job for one never-wrong superhuman. Cruise does almost everything, his team’s main role being getting into the right place to send him a message or wire up a computer. On top of that, the best of the series set-pieces had flashes of Ethan’s stress, fear and sense of ‘I cant believe I have to do this’ humour – all of that is mostly missing here.

The Final Reckoning loses a lot of the heart of what made the earlier films so rewarding. It loses the moments of friendship or sparky interplay between the team. Cruise and Pegg, the series main comic relief, share almost no scenes together. Klementoff and Davies do virtually nothing as new team members, other than shoot guns and get captured. Cruise shares more time with Atwell, but the bizarre is-it-a-romance-or-not between them is as oddly undefined as Ethan’s relationship with Rebecca Ferguson’s Elsa was (in fact it makes you realise the most sexual thing Ethan has done since film three is hold someone’s hand). Cruise is so often on solo missions, that the film could probably have dispensed with the team altogether with only a small plot impact.

The film only affords to slow down to give Ving Rhames (the only other guy to appear in every film) a moment of genuine emotion – though special mention must go to Rolf Saxon and Lucy Tulugarjuk who from small moments craft characters I genuinely grew attached to and worried about. Otherwise, the bonds of friendship that powered the franchises most successful non-stunt moments are absent. In fact, also missing are the heist caper set-pieces – even the famous face-masks are only employed very briefly.

The Final Reckoning dials the stakes up so much, they are effectively meaningless. In previous films, high-stakes were mixed with personal ones: we were always more invested in whether Ethan save his friends rather than the word. The film also struggles without a real antagonist. Its nominal human opponent, Esai Morales’ Gabriel, little more than a smirk and an obstacle. Shorn of the most-interesting element of his character – his fanatical loyalty to his AI master – Gabriel is neither particularly interesting or a threat. In its vast runtime, Final Reckoning has no time to actually explore what the personal link between Ethan and Gabriel actually was, making you wonder why on earth they bothered to put it in both films in the first place.

It’s not helped by the fact that the film is so constantly in motion, that virtually every single scene of dialogue is about communicating what’s going to happen next. There are constantly (admittedly skilfully batted around) conversations explaining why Ethan has to go there, get this, bring it here, do this to it, put it in that all within a ridiculously small window of time. Sometimes, to shake it up, we cut across to the US bunker where a gang of over-qualified actors (Bassett, Offerman, McCallany, McTeer and Gatiss) similarly explain what the Entity is doing to each other. (Although, like Rhames, Bassett gets the most interesting stuff to actually act as a President facing a Fail Safe like terrible choice).

What you realise is that The Final Reckoning is pretty confident that what really pulls the audience in is Tom Cruise doing crazy stunts, so that’s what it gives us. In fact, rather than a tribute to the series (despite closing plot points from Missions 1 and 3) what the film really feels like is a tribute to Cruise, the last man-standing among the old-fashioned superstars. Most of the dialogue puffs up Cruise’s Ethan into Godlike status (it’s not quite “living manifestation of destiny” like Rogue Nation put it, but close). Cruise carries out two extended fight scenes in his pants (though if I looked like that at 61 so would I). No other actors intrude on his stunts or messianic sense of purpose.

Which is amazingly done of course. Literally no-one does it better than Cruise. The fact that the movie feels like Cruise effectively shot most of it alone with just the crew, means it almost doesn’t matter that its plot is merely to link together set-pieces. And if someone deserves a victory lap – which is what this is – then that guy is Cruise. I’d have wanted more of the fun, humour and warmth that made most of the other films such massively rewarding hits. But The Final Reckoning gives more of what the series does that no other series does. And I guess that’s a fitting finale.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023)

Transformers serves away from the charm of Bumblebee back to the tedious machismo of Bay

Director: Steven Caple Jnr

Cast: Anthony Ramos (Noah Diaz), Dominique Fishback (Elena Wallace), Dean Scott Vazquez (Kris Diaz), Luna Lauren Velez (Breanna Diaz), Peter Cullen (Optimus Prime), Ron Perlman (Optimus Primal), Peter Dinklage (Scourge), Michelle Yeoh (Airazor), Pete Davidson (Mirage), Liza Koshy (Arcee), Colman Domingo (Unicron)

Somehow the Transformers franchise lucked out and managed to make a film I actually wouldn’t feel awkward showing to a child. Bumblebee avoided the crude sexualisation and graphic violence (hidden by the fact you are watching CGI engine oil and bits of metal flying around, rather than blood and bits of human flesh) of Michael Bay’s films. I really enjoyed it. I can’t really say the same about this follow-up. I’d at least let a child watch it – although it’s the cinematic equivalent of letting them have a Big Mac for dinner.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts could have continued in the tone of Bumblebee, a delightful mix of cartoon and Buster Keaton/Laurel and Hardy. Instead, it takes tiny elements of that, then mashes them up with the throw-it-all-at-the-screen style of Bay. It’s not a happy marriage, and Rise of the Beasts is tired and overly familiar, crammed with crude banter and the sort of mass smackdown we’ve seen done time-and-time again. Give me strength. Rise of the Beasts isn’t really a sequel to Bumblebee – the events of that film are referred to only in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference. The boyish charm of Bumblebee is drenched in audio clip quotes from Scarface and the like. Instead, it’s another “end of the world seconds away from a giant robot monster” flick.

Far in the future Unicorn (voiced with regal indifference by Colman Domingo), the planet eating robot from the 1985 film (when he was voiced by a final pay-cheque collecting Orson Welles) is trapped in another dimension, but wants to break into ours. He sends his minion Scourge (Peter Dinklage, dialling it in big time) to 1990s Earth to hunt down the MacGuffin that will do it. Only Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen) and his Autobots can stop him, allied with an ex-soldier desperately trying to help his kid brother Noah Diaz (Anthony Ramos) and Elena Wallace (Dominique Fishback) a junior archaeologist who can unearth the MacGuffin from where it has been hidden centuries ago by the Maximals, a group of transformers descended from our Autobots who transform into giant mechanical animals (their leader Optimus Primal is a Kong style ape).

It all seems a million miles away from the charm of the first film, with a teenage girl bonding with her first car who just happens to be a clumsy robot. There is precious little charm at all Rise of the Beasts. The human characters are either faintly forgettable, loud and brash or serve only as plot points. Anthony Ramos has to do a lot of digging to find any depth in a character given only a cursory plotline of desperation to provide for his mum and brother. Dominique Fishback’s archaeologist has the faintest of backstories about being cheated out of the credit for her work, before she’s fiddling with MacGuffins with handwave lines. The action zips across two universes and two continents, but never seems to really find firm grounding for itself.

There’s also something rather sad about the film swopping out the fairy tale elements of Bumblebee with a far more conventional Bro-romance. Ramos’ street-wise ex-soldier is paired up with Peter Davidson’s Mirage, a loud-mouthed Autobot who, despite a few witty lines, basically comes across as a street-wise bro with a hot streak of immaturity. There is a streak of laddish banter throughout the film – none of it, thank God, as appallingly sexist or racist as what passes for this sort of chat in Bay’s films – that essentially doubles down on restoring the franchise to something that appeals only to teenage boys and adults who wish they still were teenage boys.

After the broadening out of Bumblebee with a female lead given actual agency, this feels like a retrograde step. Rise of the Beasts does manage to pay this Bros plotline off with a surprisingly effective scene of self-sacrifice – but does so while not shirking on red-blooded (or red-oiled) young men whooping and cheering as they blast stuff out of the sky. It’s a step firmly back towards a territory that places male relationships at a premium – be it bros or actual brothers – and the bonds between men a world that leaves women on the outside looking in.

Not to mention the plot continually readjusts its stakes and characters depending on the requirements from scene to scene. Scourge is an unstoppable killing machine… until the plot requires him not to be. Characters are killed off… until the plot needs them to come back to life. Characters are fixated on their own needs… until the plot needs them to be altruistic. It combines that up with a final battle sequence that feels painfully derivative of the end of Avengers: Endgame, with Scourge mustering an army of rent-a-baddies to slow down the heroes while he slowly plugs a thingamee into a do-hickey.

Even Optimus Prime takes a backward step. While Bumblebee salvaged some likeability out of this hero, Rise of the Beasts very much returns him to Bay form: a deeply flawed leader with anger-management issues, who slices and dices foes with reckless abandon, rips off heads and uses neat kiss-off lines like “Then DIE”. I suppose he doesn’t execute at point-blank range a surrendering foe begging for mercy (Bay did this twice!) but he still hardly feels like an admirable hero. Rise of the Beasts vaguely acknowledges this by having Prime go on a loose arc of learning to put the needs of humans on a level with the Autobots (yup he’s also a proto-racist at the start) but it’s a very loose peg to hang a hero on.

Rise of the Beasts gives up on any pretensions of doing something fresh, engaging or different with the series. Even the beasts, for all their animalistic looks, are basically barely characters, more different looking toys imported into a flagging cinematic universe (Ron Perlman and Michelle Yeoh lazily yawn their way through terminal dialogue). While Bumblebee took the starting principles of the franchise and found the joy in them, Rise of the Beasts is a teenage wet dream of toys hitting each other to no great purpose, that places male relationships at its heart and leaves you with nothing to really care about. It’s a callback to everything bad about this franchise.

In Old Arizona (1929)

Early Talkie Western has moments of invention, around some awkwardly dated acting and plotting

Director: Irving Cummings, Raoul Walsh

Cast: Warner Baxter (The Cisco Kid), Edmund Lowe (Sergeant Mickey Dunn), Dorothy Burgess (Tonia Maria)

In Arizona, is a public nuisance is plaguing the authorities: The Cisco Kid (Warner Baxter), a charming bandit who holds up stagecoaches, flirts with women and evades the lawmen with a swagger and a smile. But he’s a decent thief: he only takes from those who can afford it (he’ll hand the money back if he finds out otherwise). His Achilles heel is the flirtatiously ruthless Tonia Maria (Dorothy Burgess), a vivacious sexpot who merrily cheats on him left, right and centre. She’s also quite happy to sell him out if she can get her hands on that generous reward money offered by Sergeant Mickey Dunn (Edmund Lowe) – who soon falls for her charms as well.

In Old Arizona was the first Talkie Western – and it stands out from other early Talkies that it’s not set in rigid sets with bolted down cameras, but on location. Imagine the excitement of audiences sitting down to watch a scene in a bustling market, to actually hear the sounds of a church bell ringing (it’s showpiece opening), carriage wheels, passengers bickering and Mariachi bands playing, while the camera tracks through the scene. Of course, much of this was accomplished via synchronised sound, applied after shooting – most of the dialogue scenes are shot with a far more rigid style – but it was still gripping. Never again in film history, would a shot of bacon sizzling (audibly) in a pan attract as much comment as it did with the reviewers of this film.

Other parts of In Old Arizona teeter between sound and silence. As mentioned, when the dialogue kicks in the film falls back on theatrical-front-row framing. All three of the principles – the only actors billed – give performances leaning into the principles of silent acting, with the framing and make-up frequently giving added prominence to their eyes (the main form of communication in silent cinema). Dorothy Burgess, in particular, makes her film debut but finds all her prepared awkward theatrical poses to communicate emotion look increasingly out-of-date (much as she’s clearly enjoying playing this ruthless, faithless schemer).

She’s not alone in this. Warner Baxter lifted one of the first Best Actor Oscars and it’s an entertaining performance, full of swaggering, alpha-male cheek. Baxter makes the Cisco Kid somewhere between a scheming rogue and a Robin Hood. But he also strikes a pose a little too frequently and tends to over accentuate gestures and reactions, a clear hangover of his silent career. He does, however, dance through the dialogue with a rolling Spanish accent, and if the character ends in a slightly awkward territory between camp and ruthless, it’s not really his fault so much as the script. He’s certainly far more entertaining than the wooden Lowe, whose voice is flat and uninteresting.

In Old Arizona quickly turns into two shaggy dog stories, stretched out over about 90 minutes. It’s surprising how little plot there is: it could easily have zipped by in 60 minutes. The first act covers the Cisco Kid’s hold-up of a stagecoach and the aftermath; the second an unwitting game of cat-and-mouse where Dunn is at a serious disadvantage as he has no idea what the Cisco Kid looks like; the third the mutual seduction of Dunn and Maria, their attempt to kill the Cisco Kid for his ‘dead-or-alive’ ransom and the Cisco Kid’s ruthless foiling of their scheme. Each feels like a short story, joined together, so it’s not surprising to find it’s adapted from exactly that from O Henry.

By all accounts O Henry’s Cisco Kid was a far more violent and brutal character than Baxter’s jolly, tuneful, gadabout. Sure, the Cisco Kid can handle himself – there’s a fine little action sequence, where he plays possum to gun down three would-be ransom collectors – but by and large he’s a romantic, and it’s clear he’s genuinely in love with the shallow and unfaithful Maria. This feels like it’s been designed to make her betrayal carry some bite, but since she is so blatantly unfaithful it actually makes the Kid look rather dim and slow on the uptake.

Maria is interesting as a Pre-Code character nakedly open in her sexuality – it’s pretty apparent she’s, at-best, a good time girl. She very smoothly seduces the straight-as-an-arrow Dunn (who up until meeting her, makes a big thing of constantly checking his treasured photo of him and his sweetheart). Dunn is of course not the smartest tool – the Cisco Kid runs rings around him during their first meeting, deftly picking him clean of information while not only giving him no idea who he is, but also making Dunn rather enjoy the company of the man he’s meant to be hunting.

It leads into what feels today a troubling conclusion to In Old Arizona. Primed from so-many Westerns that followed, we expect a gun-on-gun ending between the rivals from opposite ends of the law (and, the film eventually suggests, opposite ends of the moral spectrum – the Kid is loyal and decent, Dunn a hypocritic and treacherous). Instead, it becomes more about the Cisco Kid’s deliberately deadly punishment of a woman who has wronged him. It’s hard not to feel that, selfish as Maria is, she doesn’t quite deserve the fate she meets – or the Cisco Kid’s triumphantly heartless Bondian one-liner afterwards.

It’s an uncomfortable ending to a film that in some areas pushes forward the world of commercial film-making (it’s hard not to credit Walsh for the film’s pacier, on-location sequences with their pre-Fordian landscapes, galloping horses and gun-toting action) but in others still has an awkward foot in both silent cinema and the clumsy world of the early Talkies. There are proto-Western ideas here – the sort of narrative ideas that the likes of Ford and Hawks would later finetune and master – but it feels a little too much like a historical curiosity today.

The Alamo (1960)

Wayne’s historical epic is a mediocre labour-of-love that takes a very, very long time to get to its moments of interest

Director: John Wayne

Cast: John Wayne (Col Davy Crockett), Richard Widmark (Col. Jim Bowie), Laurence Harvey (Col. William Barrett Travis), Richard Boone (General Sam Houston), Frankie Avalon (Smitty), Patrick Wayne (Captain James Butler Bohham), Linda Cristal (Graciela), Joan O’Brien (Sue Dickinson), Chill Wills (Beekeeper), Joseph Calleira (Juan Seguin), Ken Curtis (Captain Almaron Dickinson), Carlos Arruza (Lt Reyes), Hank Worden (Parson)

John Wayne believed in America as a Shining City on a Hill and he wanted films that celebrated truth, justice and rugged perseverance. To him, what better story of fighting against all odds and to the bitter end for liberty, than the Battle of the Alamo? There, in 1836, a few hundred soldiers and volunteers from the Republic of Texas bravely stood before an army of over two thousand Mexicans to defend the Texas Revolution’s independence from Mexico. Wayne put his money where his mouth was, pouring millions of his own dollars into bringing the story to the screen. Furthermore, he’d direct and produce himself, convinced only he could protect his vision.

The end result isn’t quite the disaster the film has gained a reputation for being – nor is Wayne’s directorial efforts as useless as his detractors would like. But The Alamo is a long, long slog (almost three hours) towards about fifteen minutes of stirring action, filled with pages and pages of awkward speechifying, hammy acting and painfully unfunny comedy. While a bigger hit than people remember, Wayne lost almost every dime he put in (he said it was a fine investment) and even a muscular series of favour-call-ins that netted it seven Oscar nominations (including Best Picture!) couldn’t disguise that The Alamo is a thoroughly mediocre film that far outstays its welcome.

Wayne collaborated closely with his favourite writer, James Edward Grant. Both had a weakness for overwritten speeches and there is an awful lot of them in The Alamo’s opening half as we await the arrival of the Mexicans. Wayne gets several speeches about the glories of the American way such as (and this is cut down) “Republic. I like the sound of the word…Some words can give a feeling that makes your heart warm. Republic is one of those words” or a musing on duty that takes up a solid five minutes (it’s ironic Widmark’s Bowie refers to Harvey’s Travis as a long-winded jackanapes, since Wayne’s Crockett has them both beat).

There is only so much portentous, middle-distance-starring talk one can take before you start twitching in your seat, even for the most pro-Republican viewer. With complete creative control, there was no one to tell Wayne to pick up the pace and trim down these scenes. So enamoured was Wayne with Grant’s dialogue, whole scenes are taken up with the Cinemascope camera sitting gently in rooms watching the actors pontificate about politics, strategy and duty at such inordinate length you long for the Mexicans to damn well hurry up.

For a film as long as this, there is an awful lot of padding. The first hour shoe-horns in an immensely tedious romantic sub-plot for the increasingly-long-in-the-tooth Wayne (who had been playing veterans for almost 15 years by now) with Linda Cristal’s flamenco-dancing Mexican. We know she’s a hell of a dancer, since we get several showcases for her toe-tapping skills as Crockett’s Tennessee volunteers wile away the evenings. There is a sexless lack of chemistry between Wayne and Cristel, re-enforced by Crockett’s gentleman-like rescuing of Cristel from a lecherous officer, and the whole presence of this sub-plot feels as like a box-ticking exercise to appeal to as many viewers as possible as does the casting of young heart-throb Frankie Avalon in a key supporting role.

This is still preferable to the rather lamentable comic relief from a host of Wayne’s old muckers, playing a collection of Good Old Boy Tennesse volunteers. These jokers swop wise-cracks, prat-falls, good-natured fisticuffs, but (inevitably) also drip with honour and decency. Chief among them is Chill Wills as Beekeeper, a scenery-chewing performance of competent comic timing that inexplicably garnered Wills an Oscar nomination. Wills made real history with an outrageously tacky campaign for the golden man, shamelessly publicly pleading for votes and including a full-page Variety advert (‘The cast of The Alamo are praying harder than the real Texans prayed for their lives in the Alamo for Chill Wills to win!’) that even Wayne denounced as tasteless.

Wayne believed the real Oscar nominee should have been Laurence Harvey as ram-rod stickler-for-form Colonel Travis, commander of The Alamo. He’s probably right (if you were going to honour anyone here), as Harvey’s abrasive style and stiff formality was a good fit for the role and he turns the brave-but-hard-to-like Travis into the most interesting character. He’s more interesting than Widmark’s rough-and-ready Bowie, who looks uncomfortable: he would have been better casting as Crockett. That role went to Wayne, after investors said his presence in a lead role was essential for the box office (reluctant as Wayne was, he still cast himself in the most dynamic, largest role).

There are qualities in The Alamo – and they are largely squeezed into the final thirty minutes as the siege begins in earnest. This sequence is very well done, full of well-cut action and shot on an impressive scale. The money is certainly up-on-the-screen – The Alamo built a set only marginally smaller than the actual Alamo and recruited a cast of actors not too dissimilar from the size of the actual Mexican army. (The only nominations The Alamo deserved were related to production and sound design, both of which are impressive). The relentless final stand is undeniably exciting – whether it’s worth the long wait to get there is another question.

The Alamo largely avoids vilifying the Mexicans. Their commanders may be little more than extras, but Wayne’s was aware that in the Cold War, allies were crucial so the film is littered with praise for the bravery, courage and honour of the Mexicans as battle rages (‘Even as I killed ‘em, I was proud of ‘em’ one volunteer muses). However, in many ways, The Alamo is incredibly simplistic and naïve about American history – especially the ‘original sin’ of slavery, the banning of which in Mexico was one of the main reasons for the Texans revolt. It’s hard not to feel it’s a bit rich for Wayne to make a big speech about freedom, when Crockett and co were literally laying down their lives for the Texan Republic’s right to keep slaves. The only slave in the film is so overwhelmingly happy with Bowie, he literally refuses his freedom and lays down his life to protect his master.

But then that’s because The Alamo is a proud piece of propaganda, celebrating a rose-tinted view of American History that avoids complexity and celebrates everyone as heroes. It’s not the disaster you might have heard about. It has its moments. But its still a dull, tedious trek.