This is an elusive movie to see. As a McGoohan fan it had a particular fascination for me. After all the moonshine that has been written about him I was curious to see what 'The Prisoner' actually did do next :-) A maddeningly ill-executed movie seems to be the answer. That's not to say it's a bad movie. Elmore Leonard had stopped writing cowboy books around the late Sixties and as he progressed toward the modern noir he has become feted for, he wrote this story. The movie clearly was meant to tell a tale that began with whimsical criminality but segued into dark, wicked evil - a modern moral fable that reminds us that vice is Vice, however entertainingly dressed-up it might be.
Unfortunately the film-makers failed to 'make the segue' and so the whimsy just becomes increasingly and uncomfortably sinister; without it's moral 'message' becoming clear. Nowadays, with our experience of the Leonard formula, the viewer can figure out what is going on. In 1970 I suspect the audience was just baffled by what must have seemed a wholly inappropriate approach to evil. A contemporary and more popular movie, 'Kelly's Heroes', was similar in mood and execution I felt. The advantage Kelly had was that it had a briefly dark opening scene and then the rest of the tale was whimsy.
The performances in the movie by Widmark and McGoohan are impressive. Widmark goes right back to his roots in movies. He has a confederate (Lee Hazelwood) to carry out Widmark's 'Tommy Udo moves', which left the great man free to exhibit a lazy, lecherous side to his gangster-dentist caricature. An innocent couple in a diner are stripped naked because Hazelwood "likes the look o' their duds" Hazelwood later commits the psychotic murders that should have switched the mood of the movie around, but didn't.
Meanwhile McGoohan explores the role of a greedily foolish, slightly cowardly, villain. His revenue-agent is humiliated by the Moonshine Hillbillies, in a scene where he is 'de-bagged' and hung out of his hotel window. Angrily he brings in the dentist enforcer but the hapless 'Revenoor' is soon overwhelmed by the sadism of real criminals. Swept along by a tsunami of terrorism, McGoohan's character is increasingly out of his depth and belatedly seeks the shore of virtue by switching sides to help Alan Alda repel the Widmark tide. However, before that he has succumbed to the greedy temptation of leading his fake Revenue Enforcement team on a search for booze, and half-heartedly participated in the threatened lynching of Alda's only friend, his black retainer. (This scene bears an eerie resonance of one from another McGoohan movie: 'Dr. Syn')
Alda is curiously blank throughout the movie. A host of interesting people swim around him but he seems oblivious to all of it. The climactic scenes rely on him having become ostracised as a result of his refusal to hand over his cache of booze. This obstinacy brings Widmarks' reign of terror upon the neighbourhood. Those neighbours not only refuse to help Alda in his final stand-off but actually assemble on the nearby hill to watch his expected demise at the hands of the gangsters. Alda's only friend is the black man, and the repentant 'Revenoor'. There was probably a lesson in all of this, but Alda's inability to engender our remotest interest in him, just makes the viewer a tad confused.
McGoohan ends the movie, sitting on a barrel, looking deeply disappointed. I wonder if he'd just viewed the last 'rushes'? Flawed as it is, this film deserves viewing because it has some great stuff going on and all concerned at least can boast that they spotted the potential of Elmore Leonard earlier than most.
McGoohan and Widmark together has got to be worth an hour and a half of anyone's time :-)
Unfortunately the film-makers failed to 'make the segue' and so the whimsy just becomes increasingly and uncomfortably sinister; without it's moral 'message' becoming clear. Nowadays, with our experience of the Leonard formula, the viewer can figure out what is going on. In 1970 I suspect the audience was just baffled by what must have seemed a wholly inappropriate approach to evil. A contemporary and more popular movie, 'Kelly's Heroes', was similar in mood and execution I felt. The advantage Kelly had was that it had a briefly dark opening scene and then the rest of the tale was whimsy.
The performances in the movie by Widmark and McGoohan are impressive. Widmark goes right back to his roots in movies. He has a confederate (Lee Hazelwood) to carry out Widmark's 'Tommy Udo moves', which left the great man free to exhibit a lazy, lecherous side to his gangster-dentist caricature. An innocent couple in a diner are stripped naked because Hazelwood "likes the look o' their duds" Hazelwood later commits the psychotic murders that should have switched the mood of the movie around, but didn't.
Meanwhile McGoohan explores the role of a greedily foolish, slightly cowardly, villain. His revenue-agent is humiliated by the Moonshine Hillbillies, in a scene where he is 'de-bagged' and hung out of his hotel window. Angrily he brings in the dentist enforcer but the hapless 'Revenoor' is soon overwhelmed by the sadism of real criminals. Swept along by a tsunami of terrorism, McGoohan's character is increasingly out of his depth and belatedly seeks the shore of virtue by switching sides to help Alan Alda repel the Widmark tide. However, before that he has succumbed to the greedy temptation of leading his fake Revenue Enforcement team on a search for booze, and half-heartedly participated in the threatened lynching of Alda's only friend, his black retainer. (This scene bears an eerie resonance of one from another McGoohan movie: 'Dr. Syn')
Alda is curiously blank throughout the movie. A host of interesting people swim around him but he seems oblivious to all of it. The climactic scenes rely on him having become ostracised as a result of his refusal to hand over his cache of booze. This obstinacy brings Widmarks' reign of terror upon the neighbourhood. Those neighbours not only refuse to help Alda in his final stand-off but actually assemble on the nearby hill to watch his expected demise at the hands of the gangsters. Alda's only friend is the black man, and the repentant 'Revenoor'. There was probably a lesson in all of this, but Alda's inability to engender our remotest interest in him, just makes the viewer a tad confused.
McGoohan ends the movie, sitting on a barrel, looking deeply disappointed. I wonder if he'd just viewed the last 'rushes'? Flawed as it is, this film deserves viewing because it has some great stuff going on and all concerned at least can boast that they spotted the potential of Elmore Leonard earlier than most.
McGoohan and Widmark together has got to be worth an hour and a half of anyone's time :-)