AUGUST 2010 : ‘Knight and Day’ [6/10]; ‘Salt’ [3/10]; ‘The Cincinnati Kid’ (1965) [5/10]

Published on: August 27th, 2010

French poster (title making even less sense than the original.)

.Knight and Day. : [6/10] : USA 2010 : James MANGOLD : 109m : {15/28}.
   Undemandingly enjoyable mid-summer popcorn/multiplex comedy-action spoof, with Tom Cruise* lampooning both his Ethan Hunt persona from the Mission Impossible pictures – and also his own off-camera reputation for oddball/weird behaviour – as a CIA agent who may or may not have “gone rogue.”
   Cameron Diaz, as the “ordinary” Kansas vintage-car restorer who inadvertently stumbles into Cruise’s globe-hopping world of full-tilt espionage shenanigans, is similarly game, essaying a steady transition from screaming, distressed damsel (who doesn’t even own a passport) to something closer to her gun-toting, self-confident persona from the Charlie’s Angels franchise.
   Nothing out of the ordinary – top-drawer character players Peter Sarsgaard and Viola Davis are notably underused as CIA operatives of ambiguous virtue, Paul Dano ditto as McGuffin-devising techno-geek - and first-timer Patrick O’Neill’s screenplay is shamelessly derivative, starting off as a jokey Red Eye rip-off before quickly segue-ing into Mr & Mr Smith territory.
   But safe-hands director Mangold executes proceedings with a tad more snazz and wit than is strictly required – John Powell’s score generally favours sophistication over bombast; the choice of locations (Salzburg, Seville) is appealingly fresh - with results that fall neatly between his best recent effort, 3.10 To Yuma, and his strangely underwhelming Walk the Line.
     13/14.8.10
     [seen at Empire cinema, Sunderland, 12th August (£6.00) - with thanks to Heather Melling Martin.]

.Salt. : [3/10] : USA 2010 : Philip NOYCE : 100m : {8/28}.
   Tom Cruise pulled out of Salt to star in Knight and Day [see above]. And regardless of the two pictures’ ultimate box-office fates (Salt, for all its faults, at least has the makings of a franchise-starter) he surely made the correct decision. With Angelina Jolie in the leading role of a foxily lethal CIA operative who may or may not be a long-gestating Russian/Soviet agent, Salt is, in the wake of the whole Anna Chapman kerfuffle, nothing if not topical. But taken strictly on its own merits this must count a most disappointing return to big-budget Hollywood fare for respected Aussie director Noyce – some 11 years after another Jolie vehicle, The Bone Collector (and four after his previous feature, the drab South African venture Catch a Fire.) 
   In the intervening decade the Bourne trilogy has totally rewritten the play-book for this genre, and what Salt sorely needs is a Paul Greengrass to at least give the numerous corridor-and-stairway fight sequences the requisite hyper-kinetic pizzazz. Here the crucial action stuff is perfunctory at best - in many ways it’s as thuddingly and unimaginatively old-fashioned as the woefully whiskery Cold War shenanigans that make up the limp excuse for a plot. And the least said about the hopelessly wet romantic angle involving Jolie’s Salt and her insipid German arachnologist (!) hubby August Diehl the better. 
   At least Knight and Day played its extreme silliness for laughs. The big problem with Salt is that we’re offered its many, mounting ludicrousnesses with the straightest of faces – and accompanied by the most blusteringly bombasting of relentless, monotonous scores (‘courtesy’ of James Newton Howard). If nothing else, the picture is ironically well-named: from very early on, this Salt makes neither a lick, nor a grain, of sense.
     19.8.10
     [seen at Empire cinema, Sunderland, 19th August (£6.00)]

.The Cincinnati Kid. : [5/10] : USA 1965 : Norman JEWISON : 102m : {13/28}.
   By 1964, Edward G Robinson had been making movies for 48 years and a Hollywood fixture for 35, during which time he had worked with pretty much all the top male stars in town: from Richard Barthelmess to Lew Ayres, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Lionel Barrymore, Victor MacLaglen, John Garfield, James Cagney, Joel McCrea, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Alan Ladd, George Raft, Humphrey Bogart, Charles Laughton, Paul Robeson, Charles Boyer, Orson Welles, James Stewart, Richard Widmark, Glenn Ford, Frank Sinatra, Yul Brynner, Anthony Quinn, Jack Lemmon, Rod Steiger, Charlton Heston, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster and Paul Newman.  
   So he was, to say the least, very well placed to assess the merits and potential of his co-star in The Cincinatti Kid: a fresh-faced 34-year-old named Steve McQueen, who’d been propelled to superstardom only a few months before in The Great Escape (1963). This adds an extra touch of spice to a story which concerns a youthful upstart (McQueen) challenging the pre-eminent status of the America’s leading poker player (Robinson), at a high-stakes, high-tension game in the New Orleans of 1936. The parallel isn’t exact, of course: Robinson, even in his 1930s prime, was never anyone’s idea of a pin-up/heart-throb, and by the mid-sixties was more a beloved, skilled veteran rather than than box-0ffice champ.
   But still, one can sense a certain trepidation in McQueen’s underplaying as Eric “The Cincinatti Kid” Stoner, a laid-back but quietly ambitious sort whose preparations for the big game are somewhat undermined by issues in his private life: namely demure blonde farm-girl Christian (Tuesday Weld) and brunette bombshell Melba (Ann-Margret). The latter happens to be the wife of the Kid’s pal ‘The Shooter’ (Karl Malden), who happens to be selected as the game’s big dealer, who in turn is under pressure from shady businessman/gambler Slade (Rip Torn) to fix things to the Kid’s advantage. Further colour is provided by the back-up dealer, a flamboyant older lady nicknamed Lady Fingers (Joan Blondell), and by secondary players Pig (Jack Weston), Yeller (Cab Calloway) and Sokal (Milton Selzer).
   With an array of performers such as this, The Cincinatti Kid was never going to be entirely dull. But in the hands of director Jewison - working from a script by Terry Southern and Ring Lardner Jr, adapting Richard Jessup’s novel – it comes disappointingly close. A satisfactory balance is never quite found between the card-playing and off-table activities and, crucially, McQueen is strangely subdued – perhaps aware that he has no chance of making much impact against Robinson, who is on prime, gimlet-eyed form and knows how to dominate every scene with apparently minimal effort (only Blondell, who’s gifted a much more flamboyant role, is occasionally able to upstage the upstager.)
   The Kid (as he’s invariably referred to) is undeniably en epitome of insouciant cool, of course - it helps that McQueen is arrayed in 1960s duds and haircut, whereas everyone else is dressed in period-appropriate costume. But this, added to some pretty basic anachronisms of background detail, makes for a naggingly confusing then distracting element in a slightly underplotted movie (Torn isn’t much of a “villain”), one which too often bogs down in semi-impenetrable inside-baseball discussions of hands, bets and poker-faced gambling gambits.
     27.8.10
     [seen at Filmhouse cinema, Edinburgh, 20th August (£6.90) - with thanks to Justin Molotnikov]

Neil Young

*
dates of birth
G.Clooney : 6th May, 1961 = 49
T.Cruise : 3rd April, 1962 = 48
J.Depp : 9th June, 1963 = 47
B.Pitt : 18th December, 1963 = 46
W.Smith : 25th September, 1968 = 41
M.Damon : 8th October, 1970 = 39