Foreign Language Film 1: The Seventh Seal (Sweden, 1957)

As we have continued along this project, we’ve begun to notice that there aren’t any international films taking home the ‘Best Picture’ trophy. While we’re reviewing the main winners then, we’ve decided to recognise some of the most famous non-English speaking pieces every three weeks, starting with Ingmar Bergman’s renowned film The Seventh Seal.

Plot Intro

A knight (Max Von Sydow) returns from the Crusades to his home of Denmark, where the plague is killing people off left, right and centre. He meets Death (Bengt Ekorot), who wants to take the knight, but the knight convinces Death to have a Chess match. If the Knight wins, Death will leave him to live a longer life. With his demise delayed, the Knight sets off on a series of encounters to try and have a meaningful experience, because he’s found that his life has been empty (poor thing).

Doug says...

I hardly know how to review this film, having not really been able to make head or tail of it. But here goes…

It feels like a deliberately allegorical piece (similar to mother! last year) with overly floral language and Death hovering around and playing a deeply symbolic game of chess with The Knight. It’s also got huge set pieces - the moment when a whole parade of flagellants chorus in, whipping themselves, is tremendous. 

But it’s not entirely clear to me, on a first watching, what the allegory actually is. Certainly something to do with death - that’s obvious. But as a piece, it feels like a nightmarish collection of scenes about mortality and plague, all artfully shot with Camera Angles and monochrome symbolism. I’m sure it has many layers of meaning, and a quick glance at the wikipedia page shows that it is very highly regarded and considered a masterpiece of cinema. 

It’s just that none of these layers particularly presented themselves to me upon watching. I fully accept that these may be films where one has to go back and watch repeatedly to extract a proper understanding, but surely there has to be something keeping you engaged? As it was, I wasn’t bored but I was often confused. 

Ultimately I don’t have much to say about it, because of the non-comprehension. But whereas with other films I found them dull and unimpressive, I can’t help but feel with this one that I was simply not getting it. It felt somehow important and influential, but I don’t think I’m of the right mindset to get it, or be prepared to dig into it further. 

I was confused and felt like I wasn’t understanding it, but couldn’t shake the feeling that it was me not getting it, rather than the film not being excellent. 

Highlight 

I really did find the flagellant scene huge and impressively done. It was a shake-it-up moment for the slow moving and quiet pace of the rest of the film. 

Lowlight

I didn’t really understand what was going on, and I do think some of the bits - including a woman who could ‘see the devil’ were just a bit too odd for me. 

Mark 

4/10 

Paul says...

So, I woke up this morning, right, and I had a mild symbolic hangover, so I had a symbolic snooze. When I finally got up, I had such a depressing sense of nihilism that I made a symbolic cup of coffee and finished my most recent symbolic Netflix binge, and that made me feel a lot better. I also had a symbolic tidy up of the flat and ate two symbolic bagels as well, but then I worried that I had succumbed to the puppet strings of global materialism, so I flagellated myself profusely to achieve spiritual atonement. 

This is basically a Day in the Life of Ingmar Bergman, an innovative and artistically-driven director who famously had bad experiences with heavily religious father figures whilst growing up. The Seventh Seal was his first international big hit, and sealed him (pun intended) as one of the most prolific movie directors in the world. It also threw Max Von Sydow into the public eye too. 

The Seventh Seal gets a lot of mockery, and for good reason. Monty Python, French and Saunders and one of the Bill & Ted movies are among those who have exposed the film’s obscure and esoteric nature. The film is basically a series of vaguely-connected scenes which each dissect man’s preoccupation with death, as well as the way in which man uses their faith and an intangible God to cope with Death, and the true value of life in the knowledge that Death is inevitable. It’s not exactly Bridget Jones’ Diary, is it?

During the film, man faces Death mostly due to the onslaught of the Black Plague, which either kills off characters or drives other characters to murder their peers in the name of God or survival, such as a woman being executed for seeing Satan, or a cuckolded man trying to avenge himself on the man who stole his wife. The Knight watches all this with emotional detachment and sense of shame for his species, and is tired of slaughter and death, hence his obsession with finding meaning in a world that is decaying. Parallels can easily be made between the Crusades in this film and the Second World War in real life, with war-weary soldiers returning home searching for peace and unity. The Plague that ruins the Knight’s hopes of solace could be a recreation of further conflicts in the world in or before the late 1950s, or the wave of paranoia around Communism. But whatever political or social events Bergman was influenced by, I think he is basically saying that mankind constantly searches to peace, but also constantly hurts and destroys each other, using religion or faith as their excuse. Can the Knight find one example of true humanity amidst this torment? Will humanity prove itself to be worthy of life? Is Death not cold in that flowing black cape which I’m pretty sure can be found in the darkest recesses of Zara? 

These are big and complex questions, and I can see why Film Studies students get so orgasmically excited about this film. Whilst the attempts at philosophising are interesting and perfect for an emotional discussion after several bottles of prosecco, the film is heavy going. If you try and understand it, your head hurts, and as Doug says, it probably needs several viewings to fully connect everything. There are several small scenes such as a church architect drawing a caricature of himself, some songs and play-within-play performances and a squirrel on a tree stump which I know from my experience as an English Literature student bear a huge amount of meaning and are probably mentioned in the myriad of essays written about the film. If you try to watch the film casually without getting involved in the Bigger Issues, you’ll see just a weird collection of scenes and indistinguishable Scandinavian peasant folk.

As much as I was interested in The Seventh Seal, films like this are not great entertainment (unless you wear all black and hate capitalism). It surpasses Shakespeare’s tragedies in the amount of philosophical layers it has, and indeed much of it felt Shakespearean with the morbid humour, asides, and flowery soliloquies. I think it would have been easier to read the script rather than see it performed. I think I’m going to have to watch The Golden Girls to fully recover from this thoughtful, nihilistic slump I have found myself in.

Highlight

The Dance of Death at the end is pretty haunting. You can find pictures of it - Bergman filmed it on the spur of the moment and made the actors improvise because he wanted to film it in front of a particular cloud formation that he saw. Artists, eh?

Lowlight

The attempts at humour are awkward and contrived. God knows whether we’re supposed to laugh. Or feel anything other than dread at the onward march of DEATH.

Mark

3/10

47. The Godfather Part II (1974)

Plot Intro

Several years after the events of the first Godfather, Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) continues his life as ruthless head of the Mafia by going into business with one Hyman Roth (Lee Strasberg). But both Roth and Michael come to blows and end up plotting against each other. Meanwhile, in a series of flashbacks, we see the life of Michael’s late father, Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro). After his parents and elder brother are murdered in Sicily, 9-year-old Vito emigrates to New York City, and as a young man begins to gain increasing power in business and community…

Paul says...

And here we are again - back in the lives of the Corleones. It’s quite a feat for a sequel to have won, let alone get nominated for Best Picture. This, and the third Lord of the Rings film, are the only direct sequels to have ever won. You could make a case for Silence of the Lambs but we won’t open that can of worms just now. 

I can only assume that audiences of 1974 were still riding the wave of “Godfather hype”, because this sequel is far inferior to its predecessor. In fact, this film was already in pre-production before the first film was released, such was the level of this hype. The Godfather Part II never quite reaches the same intensity of the first. I think the problem is that the non-linear alternating between the present day action and the flashback sequences renders the plot disjointed and lacklustre because it never gets time to build up before jumping to another timeline. Men kill and betray each other for various reasons, and then they’re doing the same thing in the past but for different reasons. It’s like a tired old car that keeps stopping and starting.

As a result, character motivations and developments get lost in the mire. Diane Keaton gets nothing to do other than sit in the background, and then suddenly she’s decided to leave Michael approximately two hours in. Her reasons are obvious, but it comes from nowhere. No full explanation is really given for Fredo’s betrayal of his brother Michael, Cuban politics are summarised quite insultingly just to get the characters there for a little bit, and Talia Shire’s Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress demands an explanation bearing in mind that she barely appears and a quick re-write could have eliminated her entirely. Are people really so obsessed with this franchise that they’ll vomit awards at it?!

At this point in the project, we are in an age referred to as New Hollywood. With new laws around who owns the actors and the movie theatres, less restrictions on sex and violence, and televisions becoming more prevalent in households, Hollywood had to change. As a result, younger producers and directors came to the forefront. Francis Ford Coppola was in his early 30s when directing these films, and 29-year-old Spielberg would be releasing Jaws the following year. These educated youngsters were heavily influenced by European, Asian and art house cinema, and now non-linear storylines, unresolved stories, character and atmosphere-driven plots and blood and boobs were more the order of the day. As we have seen, in some instances this works. But The Godfather Part II, which ticks every New Hollywood box, may have been fashionable at the time but for me it hasn’t lasted. It’s limp and lifeless and needed the intensity and innovation of the original.

A saving grace are some of the flashback scenes. De Niro does a great impersonation of Marlon Brando’s iconic performance, and his story provides much insight into the lives of impoverished Italian immigrants in New York. When Michael comes up against adversity, I noticed that the film makes a strong comparison between the two eras. While Vito was able to establish himself as a renowned Mafia boss in a time when his community was neither policed nor provided for, Michael is trying to maintain this Sicilian vigilantism in an age when laws were becoming tighter and provision for the poor was improving. Michael’s culture and masculine politics are becoming obsolete. It’s just a shame that the film takes so long to get there, and loses focus from it pretty quickly.

I’ll probably watch the third film at some point in my life. But it was nominated in 1990 and lost to Dances With Wolves, so we won’t need to write 500 words each on it.

Highlight

 The opening flashback sequences showing Italian immigrants arriving at New York and looking at that famous symbol of American hope- the Statue of Liberty. There is a sense of great promises and great opportunities ready to be broken or lost. Almost like this film!

Lowlight

That’s exactly the problem with this film- it’s constantly in lowlight. Even when someone was holding a gun on someone else (God knows who or why), I felt it more urgent to shout “Turn a light on!” rather than “Duck!”

Mark

2/10

Doug says...

Hollywood I have a problem. Or rather you have a problem. You’re size-obsessed. But as any experienced person will tell you, it’s not the size that matters, rather what you do with it. 

Hollywood, what is your obsession with having THREE HOUR FILMS? FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, YOU DO NOT NEED THREE HOURS. The number of films that actually succeed in holding attention and being good for a full three hours is tiny. The only one I can think of, off the top of my head, is Titanic and that’s because it changes from a romance film to a disaster movie halfway through, effectively rendering it two 90 minute films. 

But here we are again, faced with another three hour film about a bunch of irritating Italian gangsters all muttering about revenge while standing annoyingly so far in the shadows that you spend most of the scene squinting at the screen and saying ‘is that the brother’s friend who stabbed whatshisface?’ 

Put simply, I do not care. I don’t care about any of them. Al Pacino is staring at the screen trying to look haunted. Diane Keaton is so dull that her best bit is when she rolls off a bed covered in a sheet trying to avoid being shot. The script is so bad. Sample line: ‘at this moment I feel no love for you at all.’ It is hackneyed, unrealistic and plain boring. 

I actually tried to take a nap halfway through in the hope I’d wake up at the credits. This was three hours of endurance. It may well make intelligent points about the nature of crime or corruption, but it does it in such a contrived, muddled manner that you begin to think the random person who slits his wrists in a bath had the right idea. And what was that person’s role in the film? Your guess is as good as mine. 

I think we’ve established that I spent this three hours bored and confused. Minor highlight: Robert de Niro was alright. And if the film had actually eschewed Boring Michael and His Boring Descent Into Staring Into Distances, and spent a sensible amount of time (what the hell is wrong with ninety minutes?!) plotting the path of Vito Corleone’s past and rise to power - it could have been interesting. The rise of an oppressed individual into a person of power is infinitely interesting. Or just watch Scarface which shows you the entire 6 hour Godfather cycle of rising and falling power in UNDER THREE HOURS. 

Let’s just take a minute. Moana is ninety minutes. It is a film that encompasses multiple strands and backstories; features comedy, adventures, failure, succeeding, discovering one own’s inner strength, and a beautifully illustrated point about evil and darkness actually coming from unhappiness and anger. And it’s ninety minutes. And a children's film! 

No. This is not good enough. This should not have won. They should put a higher wattage in their bulbs, cut their films in half and get better scriptwriters. Al Paci-NO. 

Highlight

I found an excellent recipe for Mexican Baked Eggs on google when I gave up trying to follow any of the confusing, overwritten strands, and I’m very excited to try it for brunch soon. 

Lowlight

Egotistical film-makers who think they can ask audiences to sit through three hours of their unlikeable dull work. Do better. 

Mark

0/10

46. The Sting (1973)

Plot Intro

Chicago, 1936. Two grifters named Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford) and Luther Coleman (Robert Earl Jones - father of the voice of Darth Vader, James Earl Jones) play an old con trick on a seemingly innocent bystander and steal his money. Unfortunately, this bystander turns out to be an employee of a notoriously ruthless crime boss, Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw). Lonnegan is furious about this humiliation and has Coleman murdered and sends men after Hooker too. Hooker escapes and gets in contact with another friend of Coleman, Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman). Together, Hooker and Gondorff develop an elaborate plot to bankrupt and gain vengeance on Lonnegan.

Doug says...

The Sting is both fitting and an odd addition to the ‘70s films we’ve seen so far. It has the same grittiness and real-life elements - we see men in vests, unmarried sex and tatty rundown burlesque clubs - but what it brings to the table is a welcome slice of lightness and fun. It’s not a comedy by any means and there’s no laugh out loud moments, but nor are there millions of tortured close-ups of drug-addled gangsters’ faces. It’s refreshing. 

It does suffer slightly from a modern point of view. And this is for one simple reason - Hustle. The BBC show starring Adrian Lester and a whole host of cracking actors, featured a bunch of Robin Hood-esque con artists wreaking havoc on London, and over the course of several seasons shows the inner workings of most cons. And the twists-and-turns style of The Sting is marred by the fact that a modern viewer who has seen Hustle will actually be ahead of the game. I saw the ending coming and so what would have thoroughly surprised 1973’s cinema audience actually came as no great shock to me. 

Having said that it’s still a pleasure to watch. Paul Newman is oh so handsome and charismatic to boot and he leads a strong cast including Robert Redford as the wronged con-artist seeking revenge, Eileen Brennan as Billie, the tough no-nonsense owner of the local bar/brothel and a tiny but fun cameo from Sally Kirkland as Crystal - a fame-seeking burlesque dancer. It’s a fairly well paced film with lots of examples of cons, and jaunty piano music throughout which negates some of the nastier moments (we do see quite a few people shot in the film). 

It’s not a masterpiece, but it is great fun, and such a welcome relief from the stodgy dark films of recent times. I’ve actually had a bit of a revelation about why I don’t really like the ‘70s so far. It’s not that they’re dark films - my favourite film is La Vie En Rose, an almost unrelentingly bleak biopic of Edith Piaf - but it’s the turgic, stolid tone that they seem to take. They are bound up in their own darkness, and it all feels a bit too try-hard art-house to me. But I imagine this is because they were actually breaking new ground, and ground-breaking pieces tend to be a bit overdone because they have no precedents to guide them. I should be a bit more forgiving on the 1970s films, but working from a place where we have built upon them, I find them often a tad insufferable in their abject misery. But The Sting was a pleasant change - mixing lightness and slick choreography into the mix. 

Highlight 

The moment when Billie carries a tray of drinks into the con-artists’ private den, having just warded police off from bursting in there. She moves at a normal pace, yet you can feel the tension underlying the scene as she needs to get in there and warn them. Great, understated moments that do so much for the viewer. 

Lowlight

The film is made of fairly short scenes and yet feels a little longer than its two hour running time. I wonder if it would have benefited from a cut to 90 minutes…

Mark 

7/10 

Paul says...

We continue through our crime spree (so to speak) but, as Doug says, with a greater sense of fun. If you like the 2001 remake of Ocean’s Eleven in which George Clooney and Brad Pitt gain vengeance on a nefarious casino owner by robbing his vaults, then you’ll enjoy this earlier tale of two buddies doing similarly criminal shenanigans to bring down a Bad Man. In fact, it’s so similar that Paul Newman could pass for George Clooney’s father and now I’m completely certain that Brad Pitt had facial surgery to look exactly like Robert Redford. The resemblances between the two generations of actors is uncanny.

The Sting benefits from tremendous charisma from the two leading men, and if you’ve never heard of them you can just Google search “Actors your mum is in love with” and they’ll pop right up. Newman and Redford had worked together before along with director George Roy Hill in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. They were good friends, played pranks on each other behind camera, and as a result a natural chemistry shines through. 

I also really enjoyed the villain of the piece, Doyle Lonnegan played by Robert Shaw who we last saw in this project as the mercurial Henry VIII in A Man for All Seasons. His character is more mannered here, but what I enjoyed was that he’s not a super-humanly capable villain who is seemingly impossible to defeat. He repeatedly becomes a victim of his hot temper and lust for money. In other words, he’s a typically immoral businessman but with so many skeletons in his closet that it’s a delight to see Newman and Redford bring him down. The scenes in the fake betting parlour are especially tense and amusing. Lonnegan is under the impression that he is betting on winning horses. In actual fact, the races have already happened, and every single person from the bartender to the radio announcer to the other gamblers, are actors in league with our heroes. The big kick the audience gets from The Sting is being in on the act with our handsome heroes, and seeing a complete arsehole be made to look like a fool. No matter how much of a good person you are, any audience member enjoys seeing someone become victim of an intelligent con- as long as the con artist is attractive and charismatic of course.

The intricate story-telling also kept me hooked. There are cons within cons, unexpected betrayals and reveals to discover that someone is not who they claim, or not in league with who we thought. A couple of times, after spending two minutes looking up IMDB facts about the film, I found that when I returned my attention to the film, I had missed an important plot point very easily. The film is fast-paced and complex, so if you do give it a go I’d advise concentrating for the full two hours to keep up.

I can’t fault this film too majorly. A niggling point is that I didn’t have a huge amount of emotional investment. The Sting may be thrilling and I enjoyed working out how the characters were going to double-cross each other, but I didn’t care much if the heroes succeeded or not. Any wins they gain throughout the story garnered more of a “oh I see” reaction from me rather than ecstatic cheers. This is a minor failing though - overall, The Sting is addictive and exciting and a breath of fresh air in a movie era fraught with darkly-lit depravity and despondence (indeed, another nominee this year for Best Picture was The Exorcist and you don’t get much darker than that).

Highlight

Gondorff’s Poker game with Lonnegan and his associates is a great set of scenes. Newman is evidently having the time of his life pretending to be drunk and putting the arrogant crime boss down at every opportunity. 

Lowlight

Perhaps we needed more urgency in the good guys’ motivations towards bringing down the villain. Lonnegan could have been given more villainous actions to make us hate him more to gain more emotional interest.

Mark

9/10

45. The Godfather (1972)

Plot Intro

Don Corleone (Marlon Brando) is head of the New York-based Corleone family, namely his sons Sonny (James Caan) and Michael (Al Pacino), and his adoptive son/lawyer Tom (Robert Duvall). Corleone runs his Empire by providing dodgy, law-avoiding favours to various people in exchange for their loyalty and allegiance, and as a result he is influential in politics, the media, the police and even Hollywood. But when a rival family makes a near-fatal attack on Corleone in an attempt to bring the family down, it is up to his sons to do battle, seek out the traitors and re-establish the family’s power without getting killed…

Paul says...

We’ve reached a film with icon status again. The Godfather is right up there with Gone With the Wind, Citizen Kane, Casablanca and Lawrence of Arabia in the “top 10 films of all time” lists. Empire magazine does regular features titled something along the lines of “Why Everyone Loves The Godfather” and anyone over the age of 50 will have seen it cinematically. 

My first viewing of The Godfather 3 or 4 years ago left me with not much good to say about it, in all honesty. I struggled to follow the complicated plot and generally found it to be just a long, darkly-lit film about sweaty Italian men, which usually wouldn’t be a problem for me. I was also uncomfortable with what I perceived as a celebration of vigilantism and the terribly old-fashioned view that real men take matters of conflict into their own hands.

This repeated viewing, within the context of 1970s cinema, gave a much more positive feel and greater understanding of the film’s legacy. The Godfather tapped into ‘70s fascination with sex, violence and corrupt politics in a far more extensive way than The French Connection and Midnight Cowboy. In 1972, we are well in the wake of the Watergate Scandal and the controversies of the Vietnam War. The idea of the mafia having ultimate power, rather than the smug-faced politicians, the glistening movie stars and the disingenuous media, would have been fascinating whether it was true or not. Such ideas certainly became far more fascinating to me after having watched similarly-themed TV shows about the underhandedness of Presidents and Kings such as House of Cards and Game of Thrones. With the Trump administration and even the inner-workings of the Brexit process being under huge scrutiny for corruption, The Godfather has a renewed relevance in the late 2010s.

For me to initially dismiss the film as a celebration of taking the law into one’s own hands was very wrong. The film condemns it entirely, but acknowledges that such a culture is hard to beat. While Don Corleone obstinately steers clear of murder and drug trafficking (which eventually leads to the rival families trying to bring him down), his son and eventual successor Michael is far worse. The film ends with Michael seizing control through multiple murders, and then lying to his wife (Diane Keaton) about all of it. As the film blacks out on Diane Keaton’s distrusting face and Michael’s secret meetings with his allies, the end credits leave us with a sense of despondency and nihilism. What is the point in resisting, when even the alleged vigilantes are helping the corrupt politicians when it suits them? What is the point in taking a side, when that side can be brought down with just a handful of machine guns? These questions remain unanswered.

The film’s not entirely perfect. I would have liked more exploration of Michael’s movement from remaining outside of the family “business” and his decision to get involved. He seems to take it up so willingly and easily that it didn’t leave as much character development as I’d have liked. I would have also liked some more insight into the female characters. Diane Keaton gets nothing more to do other than pine after Michael, and his sister Connie (Talia Shire) swings inexplicably between cowering from her abusive husband to mourning his death. If this were made in the Age of Netflix, we could have had a ten-episode miniseries to fully dissect these important players. 

But nonetheless, The Godfather is essential viewing. If you’re thinking about getting involved in a light bit of nepotism, then you might want to see this film as a stark warning.

Fact: Marlon Brando turned down his Best Actor Oscar for this role and boycotted the ceremony as a protest against Hollywood’s and the government’s treatment of Native Americans. In his place, he sent activist Sacheen Littlefeather to explain his reasons. Her speech was much shorter than intended, as the ceremony’s producers forced her to cut it down, and she was met with a mixture of booing and applause from the audience.

Highlight

Michael’s first assassination is full of tension. An elaborate, carefully-directed moment that has you questioning if he will go through with it right until the climax.

Lowlight

I mean, how DO they manage to get that horse’s head into the bed without waking up the film producer?!

Mark

8/10

Doug says...

Like Paul, I have watched The Godfather before - in my case about ten years ago. I remember being utterly confused and so bored that I ended up watching it split across two days, so I approached this time with trepidation. 

And like Paul, I was pleasantly surprised. It’s never going to make my top ten films of all time, and I wasn’t particularly compelled to keep watching except in a few instances, but I actually understood the plot this time. So that was nice. 

What I think people (and especially Empire-reading gangster-film-loving audiences) clamour about in this film is the cinematography and acting performances. And while Marlon Brando turns in yet another overrated performance (I mean, sticking cotton buds in your cheeks and mumbling the entire thing - really?!) I was taken aback by quite how good Al Pacino is. 

He delivers what - for me - is the point of the film. It’s a study in character development, more specifically the corruption of a once-good man. It’s the classic narrative - Scarface is another example - and it doesn’t really get old. We’ve also seen it previously in this project with All the King’s Men, and here Al Pacino as Michael takes us from a earnest, thoughtful young man who wants to stay outside the realms of his crime-riddled family, to becoming the darkest and most violent core of it. 

We get to see how this happens over the very long running time, which if I’m honest is definitely too long. ‘Epic’ and ‘3 hours long’ aren’t always synonymous, as Three Billboards Outside Epping, Missouri showed earlier this year with its two hour running time and extraordinary depth. I found Ford Coppola focused a bit too much on ‘setting up the tension’, trying to make you anticipate events which were clearly going to happen anyway. 

Is it a great film? Not by my book. But then I don’t like films that centre mostly around violence, and I certainly don’t like films that don’t have major roles for women. Diane Keaton and Talia Shire get a couple of shots, but ultimately it’s a film about a lot of men being violent. Which for me has gotten a bit old. It’s certainly well made and I can see why people who like this genre will call it a masterpiece. I don’t hate it as my 16 year old self did, but if it was a toss up between watching this and Legally Blonde, I know what I’d be watching right now - and it would involve Reese Witherspoon far more than Marlon Brando. 

On a side note, I think what’s lacking from a lot of these ‘70s films, is any sense of humour or fun. This is the era of terribly earnest, striving-to-be-dark pieces. And I am always drawn towards something that will make me laugh at least once during the whole thing. Life isn’t all doom and gloom the whole time you know…

Highlight

Al Pacino does turn in a great performance, going from hopeful young man to glassy eyed villain.

Lowlight

Too long and too in love with itself. Get a sense of humour occasionally! 

Mark

5/10