The Killer Elite

"Lay me seven to five, I’ll take the little guy."

Background
In what was starting to become a pattern, Peckinpah responded to the box office failure of a small, personal picture (‘Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia’) by latching onto a commercial assignment. He had conjured massive returns and a storming comeback for Steve McQueen with ‘The Getaway’ after ‘Junior Bonner’ flopped, and still made what was obviously a Peckinpah film. ‘The Killer Elite’ was different beast to ‘The Getaway’, though.

Adapted by Marc Norman and Sterling Silliphant from Robert Rostand’s novel ‘Monkey in the Middle’ (thank God they changed the title!), this overplotted tale of CIA shenanigans and internal power struggles had a high profile cast – headlined by James Caan and Robert Duvall – and box office potential written all over it. Unfortunately, nothing in the material interested Peckinpah and his approach to the project was the antithesis of his dedicated professionalism on ‘The Getaway’. It didn’t help that Peckinpah developed a cocaine habit on set. The drug superseded alcohol as his addiction of choice.

‘The Killer Elite’ enjoyed a successful opening weekend before audience interest dropped off in the wake appalling reviews. Nonetheless, it did enough business that Peckinpah was offered two big-budget studio productions, both anticipated to be blockbusters: ‘Superman’ (which was) and the Dino de Laurentis produced ‘King Kong’ remake (which wasn’t). Peckinpah passed on both of them to make ‘Cross of Iron’.

Synopsis
ComTeg is a shadowy covert-ops outfit, that may or may not be CIA-approved, run by Arthur Hill (Cap Collis) and Lawrence Weyburn (Gig Young). Agents Mike Locken (James Caan) and George Hansen (Robert Duvall) are assigned to babysit Russian diplomat Vorodny (Helmut Dantine) at a remote safehouse. It’s here that Hansen goes renegade, killing Vorodny and disabling Locken by shooting him in the leg. Hansen then goes underground. Locken’s recovery is slow and painful. ComTeg earmark him for a desk job, which adds insult to his quite literal injuries. Then Weyburn, apparently operating independently of Collis, offers Locken a field assignment protecting Yuen Chung (Mako), a Japanese statesman who is openly opposed to San Francisco based Triad boss Negato Toku, with the caveat that the operation could well bring him back into conflict with Hansen. Weyburn encourages Locken to put his own team together. Eager for a chance to settle the score with Hansen, Locken agrees. But is he being manipulated? Is there a bigger picture here than the Chung/Toku and Locken/Hansen antagonism?

Analysis
I’ve just wasted five minutes and 180 words on the above synopsis. If Peckinpah’s nakedly evident contempt for ‘The Killer Elite’ – which almost seems to permeate the very celluloid – is anything to go by, he had even less time for it. The opening credits sequence is a case in point. Against an uncontextualised soundtrack of children singing (the concept of children as witnesses to the very worst the adult world has to offer is the only signature Peckinpah trope that makes an appearance in ‘The Killer Elite’), Peckinpah assembles a montage so risibly cliched in its imagery and po-faced in execution that in can only be an exercise in parody. The camerawork is shadowy, the editing urgent, the children's voices swiftly replaced by an overly melodramatic score. A masonry drill burrows into brickwork, fetching up plaster and brick dust. Plastic explosive is tamped into the hole. A cable drum spools detonating cord. Sticks of dynamite are affixed to some pipework. Someone sets a timer. Someone else pours gasoline over a concrete floor. Replacing Jerry Fielding's score with the ‘Pink Panther’ theme is all it would take to make the joke explicit rather than implicit.

Throughout the montage, the credits appear in notably small lettering. Even on the big screen it must have had audiences squinting; on DVD it’s barely legible. It’s as if Peckinpah is seeking to spare the blushes of everyone involved in the making of such a soulless and formulaic movie. And that goes doubly for Peckinpah himself. Apart from having his name removed entirely, it’s hard to see how he could have distanced himself any further. Consider his "directed by" credit:

Yep, that’s right. The words "directed by", all on their ownsome, then seven cuts - seven fucking cuts - then his name, again on its ownsome, as if Peckinpah were saying "Who? Me? Direct this?"* And before you there’s any risk of the cinema-goers of 1975 putting two and two together and realising that, yes, actually this was directed by the man who made ‘The Wild Bunch’, he cuts from those tiny letters lost on a dark screen to a completely gratuitous display of pyrotechnics (why do Locken and co. blow up the building exactly? fucked if I know). Is he trying to burn away his association with the film? Quite probably. For most of the remainder of the running time he simply rubbishes the very movie he’s calling the shots on. The astounding thing is that everyone else seems to be in on it.

Caan and Burt Young (playing Locken’s wheelman) share as many embarrassed glances as they do facetious asides. Arthur Hill and Gig Young mumble their way through supposedly intense scenes as if they’re just killing time waiting for the pubs to open (which, in all likelihood, their director probably was). Duvall punctures an early scene by braying with manic laughter, as if he’d set eyes on the script for the first time. The kung-fu, ninja and swordplay scenes are staged almost comedically. The gunplay and slo-mo are incorporated so deliberately and inelegantly you’d think you were watching a send-up of a Peckinpah movie that just happened to be directed by Peckinpah himself. Then there’s the dialogue. Denied rewrite duties on the script, Peckinpah encouraged his cast to ad-lib sarcastic dialogue which accounts for James Caan and Burt Young’s tension-deflating banter during the climatic swordfight between Chung and Toku ("lay me seven to five," Caan grunts as the oriental antagonists lock swords, "I’ll take the little guy").

If this makes ‘The Killer Elite’ sound like it’s as funny as canister of laughing gas, to a certain degree it is. The very fact that Peckinpah elected to take the piss out of the material is what makes ‘The Killer Elite’ highly watchable. The action scenes, though bordering on parodic, are effective. Excellent use is made of locations, particularly Locken’s recruitment of Miller (Bo Hopkins) while the latter is clay pigeon shooting over the Golden Gate Bridge! Likewise, the climatic scene at a maritime "graveyard" for decomissioned naval vessels is atmospheric and memorable. Philip Lathrop’s cinematography makes good use of ’Scope and his compositions are good. The film as a whole is never less than entertaining.

And yet, for me, ‘The Killer Elite’ is a dispiriting. It heralds the last decade of Peckinpah’s life as a filmmaker - a decade in which he made, with the exception of ‘Cross of Iron’, the least interesting, least personal and most generic films of his career. It offers precious few of the Peckinpah Irregulars in keynote roles (Bo Hopkins returns from ‘The Wild Bunch’ and ‘The Getaway’ and Gig Young from ‘Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia’ and that’s your lot. It links into none of the themes and concerns that define him as at artist (even ‘Convoy’ can be viewed as a contemporary western, truckers replacing cowboys, while there’s a small case to be made for ‘The Osterman Weekend’ as a critique on the intrusive/destructive influence of technology and the small screen as the bastardisation of cinema). True, it’s not the sprawling, incoherent, narratively pointless mess that ‘Convoy’ is. At the very least, it tells a story - albeit an overplotted and not particularly engaging one. But that’s not the point. The point is that ‘The Killer Elite’ was the first time Sam Peckinpah directed a film and didn’t give a shit. That’s what’s so depressing.


*I’ve wracked my brains, conferred with other cineastes and interrogated the internet and I can’t come up with any other film where the director cuts himself loose from his own credit.

MICHAEL MANN WEEK: Thief

Radiator Heaven's Michael Mann week concludes today. Kudos to J.D. for hosting a successful and fascinating blogathon. I've looked forward to logging onto the internet each evening to check out the ever-growing link list. Contributions have been varied, exploring all aspects of Mann's career, and the standard of writing has been consistently high.

Three things that have emerged as a through-line in Mann's filmography:

i) his protagonists are defined by rigorous masculine codes; no matter how bad the things they do (some of Mann's finest creations are career criminals), a sense of honour underpins their actions and the worst betrayal imaginable is the betrayal of the self;

ii) he immerses himself completely in the theme, setting and psychology of each of his films; his attention to detail is precise and what other directors would consider minutaie, Mann adopts as a raison d'etre;

iii) he is more interested in the accretion of incident and the momentum of events than conventionally structured narrative or exposition.

This latter can sometimes be a weakness. I'm probably in a minority, having read so many favourable reviews of it in this blog-a-thon, but I find 'Collateral' at best an interesting failure. Yes, the high definition digital camerawork allowed for noctural scenes that were at once dreamily disconnected and poetically vivid, but other sections of the film looked flat and amateurish. Also, with DV unable to achieve of the depth of focus of conventional film, set-pieces such as the shoot-out in the nightclub lacked any sense of spatial awareness. I thought 'Miami Vice' similarly afflicted and spent two and a half hours bitterly wishing Mann had shot it on film. Another flaw in both films was that Mann's visual experimentalism (an enquiry into the aesthetics of DV in 'Collateral'; a deconstruction of narrative perameters in 'Miami Vice') seemed glaringly in opposition to the thrilleramics of the scripts, the dynamics of the character interactions and, post-'Heat', audience expectation of cool intellectualism married to visceral action in a ceremony witnessed by sumptuously gorgeous visuals.

'Thief', Mann's second feature length project (after the TV movie 'The Jericho Mile'), is a thing of wonder to revisit*. It presents you, at the very outset, with all of Mann's strengths and none of his weaknesses.

James Caan (in a joint career best with 'The Godfather') plays Frank, a career criminal who specialises in relieving safes of diamonds. He works with a small and trusted crew, uses an equally trusted fence, and keeps himself to himself. When an associate encourages him to "meet some people", Frank's response is, "I want to meet people, I'll join a fucking country club." He runs a car lot as a front and has business interests in a bar. His relationship with barmaid Jessie (a never-better Tuesday Weld) is up-and-down, while his oldest friend and mentor Okla (Willie Nelson) languishes in prison and worries that he'll never leave the joint alive. Frank has the money - evidenced by the designer suits, the silk shirts and the gold watch - but with Jessie unable to have children and the adoption system not enamoured of Frank's prior stints in jail, it's what he can't have that stings the most.

Then his fence turns up dead, $85k of Frank's money lifted from his corpse. Frank goes after the money. He gets it back, but at a price that will soon prove way too high. In one fateful meeting, Frank goes from being Mr Anonymous to his reputation proceeding him. Mob boss Leo (Robert Prosky) makes him an offer: a handful of high-profile takes, maximum risk but big money and the cops and the judges paid off if the shit hits the fan. Frank's cagey but Leo sweetens the deal: he sets Frank and Jessie up with a house, arranges an adoption, plays the father figure.

But when Leo stiffs Frank on his cut after a daring heist (prompting Frank to lose his rag and announce that he wants out), a different Leo emerges. Earlier in the film, during the heart-to-heart that stabilises Frank and Jessie's relationship, he recounts his time in prison, in particular how he survived because he had nothing to lose. That sense of nihilism communicated itself to the other inmates. Frank has continued to live by this code on the outside. "I'm the last guy in the world you want to fuck with," he tells an antagonist at one point, pulling a piece on the guy and giving every impression that he's ready to use it. Later, pissed off at Leo's duplicity, he reacts like a bull in a china shop instead of exercising caution or circumspection.

It's Leo who brutally throws into relief just how far Frank has deviated from who he truly is: "You were one of those burned-out, demolished whackos in the joint - you're scary because you don't give a fuck. But don't come on to me now with that jailhouse bullshit, 'cause you're not that guy anymore. Don't you get it, you prick? You've got a home, a car, businesses, a family. And I own the paper on your whole fucking life. I'll put your wife on the street to be fucked in the ass ... Your kid's mine because I bought it. You've got him on loan. He is leased. You are renting him."

Ultimately, with everything he's sold himself out for at risk, Frank has no choice but to throw it all away. In what plays out like Tarkovsky's 'The Sacrifice' by way of 'Mean Streets', Frank tears down the artificial construct he thought was the life he wanted and reintegrates with himself.

Impressively constructed, tightly directed, atmospherically shot and crafted with perhaps the strongest sense of narrative evidenced anywhere on Mann's CV, 'Thief' manages to be, in its shattering denouement, a morality tale, a work of bleak existentialism and a fuck-off good action thriller all rolled into one.

*Although not necessarily in the director's cut. Tim's review at Antagony & Ecstacy will tell you why.

PERSONAL FAVES: The Godfather and The Godfather Part II

‘The Godfather’ is not so much an adaptation as an act of alchemy, taking the base metal (or rather purple prose) of Mario Puzo’s potboiler and rendering it into cinematic gold.

‘The Godfather’ is quite simply one of American cinema’s finest achievements, an instant classic on its original release and a film that continues to improve with age. Its sequel, if anything, is even better.

Both films (let’s leave the occasionally inspired but mostly just average ‘Godfather Part III’ out of it) are about family, honour and loyalty. They’re also about how these concepts are variously rationalised, compromised and bastardised.

‘The Godfather’ opens with an extended set-piece in which Don Corleone (Marlon Brando) is obliged, on the occasion of his daughter’s wedding, to grant favour to any who seek it. “I believe in America,” the craven Bonasera (Salvatore Corsitto) declares, then goes on to ask the Don to do violence on his behalf where the legal system has failed him. Like anyone else granted favour, he is counselled that “some day, and this day may never come, I might call upon you to do me a service”. All of this takes place in a darkened room, while the celebrations unfold in bright daylight outside. Still, even as a heart-throb crooner entertains the crowd and guests applaud the bride, tension is in the air: the Don’s son Michael (Al Pacino) has arrived – in uniform.

Unlike his natural brothers Sonny (James Caan) and Fredo (John Cazale) and his adoptive brother Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), Michael Corleone has elected not to join the family business but enlist in the Marine Corps. And when the family business is crime and the credo, as the Don chastens Sonny early in the film, is “never let anyone outside the family know what you’re thinking”, this is a decidedly unSicilian thing to do. In fact, it’s downright American, patriotic and commendable. No wonder Michael’s the black sheep of the family. Oh, then there’s the matter of the white-than-white nice girl, Kay (Diane Keaton) he gets involved with.

Then there’s an assassination attempt on the Don and Michael finds himself filling the breech. What happens like is like ‘Richard III’ if the Richard III was quite a likeable and all-round kind of guy in the first act. Michael’s transition from war hero to mob boss, from hero to anti-hero, from humanity to villainy isn’t a gradual or incremental thing; it all hinges on one act. Michael proposes and carries out the execution of rival mobster Sollozzo (Al Lettieri), the guy who ordered the hit on his father, as well as Sollozzo’s partner, the corrupt policeman McCluskey (Sterling Hayden).

Michael is quickly whisked off to Italy while the heat dies down. Deserting Kay in more ways than one, he romances and marries local beauty Appollonia (Simonetta Stefanelli). When she dies in a car bomb meant for him, Michael returns to America and glibly takes up with Kay again. Sonny’s betrayal and death at a toll booth ambush (I’m not bothering with any spoiler alerts in this post – really, if you haven’t seen ‘The Godfather’ there’s no hope for you), and the Don’s retirement following a reluctant making of peace with his enemies, sees the family business turned over wholesale to Michael.

Here’s where the real ‘Richard III’ stuff kicks in: Michael becomes corrupted by power and villainy, not in an egomaniacal or even necessarily a psychotic sense, by characterised more by an utter coldness and inhumanity; a complete moral and emotion disconnection.

One of the most quoted lines is “it’s not personal, it’s strictly business” – a sentiment Michael certainly adheres to, and with bitter irony since those were Sollozzo’s words to him following the unsuccessful hit on the Don.

Coppola continues to chart Michael’s heinous premiership of the Corleone clan in ‘The Godfather Part II’, contrasting his barren life against the rise to power of the young Don Corleone (Robert de Niro). The Don’s actions, while undeniably criminal, are socially motivated (his murder of a neighbourhood crime boss is done for the betterment of the community). The seeds of the first film’s focus on family and loyalty are sown here. And also cut down as Michael alienates his wife – after losing her baby, Kay confronts Michael with the truth: “It wasn’t a miscarriage, it was an abortion. An abortion, Michael … I had it killed because all this must end … this Sicilian thing that’s been going on for two thousand years” – and, in the most shocking scene, orders the death of his brother, the weak-willed Fredo after he’s coerced into a business agreement than compels him to betray Michael. That he has this order carried out after feigning forgiveness and welcoming Fredo back into the household is the final bastardisation of everything his father held sacrosanct. It is this – and never mind the quasi-religious musings of ‘Part III’ – that completes Michael’s transition to the monstrous; that places him beyond redemption.