4 for Texas

Here's a little lesson about tone.

The tone of a picture should, ideally, suit the story you're telling. For example, if you're telling a story centered around several misunderstandings causing problems, ideally it should be comedic. On the other hand, if you're telling a story with a high body count revolving around the theft of a large amount of money and the devious schemes to get it back, it probably shouldn't be at least moderately serious. Not saying that an action movie should be all frowns and angry eyes - I love the James Bond series, so if I said that I would be marked out as a hypocrite - but when people are shooting each other, if they're clearly enjoying themselves, they will seem somewhat deranged. Even Roger Moore at his most campy had the good sense to frown when shooting a man in the face.

So when Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra are grinning like idiots and not really reacting when everyone around them is gunned down, they don't seem like lovable outlaws, but instead psychopaths. The most glaring example is Dean Martin joking merrily with a recently deadified stagecoach passenger. Wouldn't a normal person be at least a bit bothered? A man just died here, I'm not expecting a heavy emotional sequence, but could we have a moment of minor distress maybe? Something?

This movie is ostensibly about two men - Sinatra and Martin - fighting over the fortune they found in the stagecoach. They're scheming to get money out of each other, with the help of a bunch of wacky characters who orbit around them. Hell, the Three Stooges make a cameo, so this is clearly a wacky comedy, right? It's certainly played like a wacky comedy, with lots of quips, wacky setpieces, and a score designed to underscore amusing moments.

It's really about a pair of men who fit the clinical definition of psychopathy scheming and devising ways to screw each other out of money that never belonged to them in the first place. They're murderers, thieves, and con men, indifferent to the lives ruined and ended in the wake of their schemes. They show no indication of emotion or empathy, just greed and ambition. It's a significantly more disturbing movie than it would be if they would have toned down the lightheartedness.

I wonder if it's intentional, maybe a touch subversive. In spite of the claims in the first lines, there aren't any good guys. The only thing about the bad guy that makes him different is that he's not especially charming, and weirdly probably less psycho than the two heroes. Don't think too hard, and it's a silly comedy, but I'm one to think too hard, so I'm a bit disturbed by it. If you're like me, you might be too.



(In a strange side note, I am writing this while listening to Dean Martin. Funny how things turn out.)

The Dirty Dozen

This film begins with a hanging. Not exactly the most subtle way to begin a movie, but it does get your attention, no question about that. Unfortunately, it needs to grab your attention, because said hanging is immediately followed by what can only be described as a crapload of exposition. Turns out that Lee Marvin is a Major who plays by his own rules, and is given an impossible mission. Turns out, he needs to assemble a team of convicts sentenced to death or really long imprisonment, and blow some crap up.

Which, oddly, can wait. I'm not sure if this is the first military film that does this - there have been a lot of them - but we dive headfirst into training, which is slightly more wacky than you might expect. The whole rag tag team of soldiers starts out as not really connecting, and then they slowly gel as a team, a wacky, poorly disciplined team. For the majority of the film, it's all about the troubles in training, and having the 12 characters define themselves.

Not everyone does. Charles Bronson and Jim Brown generally appear as tough and important, Clint Walker is big and dumb, John Cassavetes is the most insubordinate but is also fairly likable, Donald Sutherland is frequently amusing and Telly Savalas is transparently evil and conniving. Oh, and there's a guy with a mustache. He has a mustache. I can see why it's the dirty dozen as opposed to the dirty six plus a mustache - alliteration rules - and really you need expendable characters anyway. As a plus, they're all generally likable, and eventually you hope for their success.

A particular highlight is a scene where Donald Sutherland pretends to be a general inspecting the troops. Initially nervous, he eventually playfully mocks various soldiers, showing off a kind of cocky charisma. Supposedly, this scene lead to him being cast in M*A*S*H, making him a star. Hell, I'd cast him after seeing that, he's a genius.

The final battle, is a sudden jolt back to being a serious movie. And it's actually fairly good, fraught with tension and quite well staged. While it seems like a dramatic shift in tone, it seems strangely appropriate. And if it wasn't for the scene at the gallows in the beginning, it might have seemed wildly out of place. However, by setting the tone with imminent death, the movie become something of a piece about gallows humor. The sense of imminent doom allows the humor and the violence to co-exist, since there's a feeling that not everyone's going to make it, and that they have to make the best of the moments they have left. The hanging is a reminder of what everyone in the crew has to lose, and it, oddly, lets everyone be loose and enjoy themselves. They kind of earn the right.

I won't say this is the best war movie ever made, but it is often entertaining, and has an obvious influence over the films to come. It's often amusing and often violent, though never at the same time, and for a film to do that and work is something of an achievement. Even for just playing a role in Donald Sutherland becoming a star, it's worthwhile.

Full disclosure time: I didn't have my usual lead time on this one, so I might be highly dissatisfied with this review later. I already don't like the last paragraph. The beauty of scheduling these things is I usually have a lead time, so I can often change lots of stuff before I put it out. This one is being hastily written the night before. Oh, and the transfer on the DVD I got was crap.