The Seven-Ups is a fascist daydream beyond almost any cinematic compare, certainly American cinema (except maybe a Charles Bronson movie from the 1980s or something). And it’s not a cheap, 1970s exploitation picture either. Yes, to some degree it’s cheap (Roy Scheider and Tony Lo Bianco are the only two recognizable principals), but producer and director Philip D’Antoni also produced Bullitt and The French Connection, and The Seven-Ups is something like a cheap version of French Connection. Scheider’s okay, but he doesn’t real create a character in Seven-Ups because there’s nothing in the script. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen, but the film’s absent of any subtext.

Oh, before I forget–this film is so fascist, when I was looking up director D’Antoni, I really expected his biography to mention he went into exile after Mussolini went out of power. The film’s incredible–I imagine it’s a neo-con’s wet dream.

Actually, D’Antoni’s a really good director, so good it’s unfortunate Seven-Ups is his only directorial effort. He’s not particularly good with actors, but his composition and his sense of timing are fantastic. Seven-Ups has a great ten minute car chase in it, notable mostly because it gives a lovely tour of early 1970s New York, but it’s still good stuff. I kept finding really good shots throughout the film, which made its failures more and more glaring.

The Seven-Ups is a good looking film, but it’s incredibly dumb. Watching it, I kept having remind myself films can be dumb no matter when they’re from–you don’t need CG to be dumb, all it takes is bad writing, which has been around since people started doing it. In many ways, it’s like a TV show–a really well produced one–but the set pieces in the film really reminded me of things I’ve seen on TV. Not the car chase, fine, but there are these sequences (with scary music) of being in a car wash… and scary car washes really scream TV show for some reason.

As an easily accessible filmic travelogue of 1970s New York, if one cares about that sort of thing, it’s essential. As a film… eh. There are these great villains and the film doesn’t even get the pay-off right, which makes the whole thing sort of… eh.

★

CREDITS

Produced and directed by Philip D’Antoni; screenplay by Albert Ruben and Alexander Jacobs, based on a story by Sonny Grosso; director of photography, Urs Furrer; edited by John C. Horger and Stephen A. Rotter; music by Don Ellis; released by 20th Century Fox.

Starring Roy Scheider (Buddy Manucci), Tony Lo Blanco (Vito), Larry Haines (Max Kalish), Victor Arnold (Barilli), Jerry Leon (Mingo), Ken Kercheval (Ansel), Richard Lynch (Moon) and Bill Hickman (Bo).