Tag: Christopher Plummer

Stage Struck (1958, Sidney Lumet)

Conservatively, Stage Struck has six endings. They start about fifty-eight minutes into the film, which runs ninety-five minutes. Actually, wait, there are probably—conservatively—seven. I forgot how many there are mid-third act before the actual (ending-laden) finale.

For a while, the false endings add to the film’s charm. Maybe if the third act hadn’t reduced lead Susan Strasberg to a glorified cameo… but by the end, Struck’s already had all its problems. It’s got a doozy—Strasberg’s in a love triangle with Broadway producer Henry Fonda and playwright Christopher Plummer. Strasberg was twenty at the time, Plummer twenty-nine, and Fonda was fifty-three. For context, Strasberg’s real-life dad was only three years older than Fonda. Strasberg’s character is eighteen-ish. They establish she left her hometown in Vermont, where she was in all her (now dead) uncle’s plays. Fonda presumably reminds her of her uncle (ick). She fawns over him, wanting him to Svengali her, and he can’t help but fall for her. It doesn’t hurt his regular girlfriend, younger but not “I’m only a few years shy of being old enough to be your grandpa” territory Joan Greenwood, likes to punish him for slights by withholding physical affections.

So, yeah. For a while, it seems like Struck’s going to be all about Fonda and Strasberg getting together. It’s not, thank goodness, and any threats to revisit the topic end up just being threats, which also get contextualized for Fonda’s character–rich white guys never have to grow up and think about things if they stay rich and white enough—it doesn’t ever stop being creepy (especially since Strasberg looks like a kid kid), but… I don’t know; it makes “sense.” And Fonda’s really good at playing this old creeper who does try to act responsibly. Somewhat.

Stage Struck is a remake of Morning Glory, which is based on an unproduced stage play. And Struck filmed entirely on location in New York City, as the opening title promises. Director Lumet and cinematographers Morris Hartzband and Franz Planer have some trouble with the location shooting, but Lumey’s instincts are all good, and when the shots look good, they look great. There’s an exterior location scene between Strasberg and Plummer—if it weren’t a late fifties studio remake of an early thirties studio picture—it’d be exceptional. Lumet and his photographers foreshadow seventies Hollywood New York movies by over a decade.

And there are some exceptional moments in the film. It’s all about Strasberg wanting to make it on Broadway but not wanting to go the regular route. She was in a play club in her hometown; she knows all the Shakespeare by heart, why should she go to the Actor’s Studio (did they consider having her real dad—Actors Studio coach Lee Strasberg—cameo); she wants to be a star now. It doesn’t work out for her in act one, but when she’s back in act two, she has this line about having to prove herself. Strasberg’s got to prove to the Broadway people in the movie she can be a major stage actor, which means she’s also got to prove it to Struck’s audience.

She does. It’s incredible. At first, it seems like Lumet doesn’t have the scene, then he does, while Strasberg keeps delivering great moment after the great moment, Lumet holding the shots. It echoes in the third act. It’s so good.

Sadly, it’s also when Fonda sees something he likes.

But it’s more Plummer’s movie than anyone else. He’s the new playwright who throws in with commercial success Fonda. The film starts with them going into production on one play and ends with their production on the next. Lumet and screenwriters Ruth and Augustus Gortz do a fine job opening the film up enough it never feels too stagy—Lumet loves the theater so much he bakes in acknowledging the stage—but none of these people exist outside their professions. Even when we see Fonda at home, it’s in the context of Broadway producer.

Lots of great acting. Strasberg has an unsteady first act, a knockout second then is missing from most of the third. Intentionally, which is a bad choice. Plummer’s great, and Fonda’s outstanding. Herbert Marshall is an older actor who thinks Strasberg’s swell, but since he’s in his sixties, he doesn’t have to be a pervert about it. Greenwood’s good, even though she’s reduced to foil. Nice small work from Daniel Ocko and John Fiedler. Struck’s got a lot of fine performances; given the subject, it’s got to have them.

The film’s a little too experimental for its own good (with the location shooting), and the third act’s a mess, but Stage Struck’s pretty darn good. A tad too pervy, even if muted, but it’s not a factually inaccurate representation of how Broadway producers behave… and the acting’s superb. Strasberg’s a marvel, and Plummer’s a great lead (in his first theatrical film).

Oh, the Alex North music.

It’s a tad much; chalk it in the experimental column, especially when it plays over the actors.

This post is part of the Charismatic Christopher Plummer Blogathon hosted by Gabriela of Pale Writer and Gill of Realweegiemidget Reviews.

Knives Out (2019, Rian Johnson)

Knives Out is very successful, very neat riff on the Agatha Christie-esque genre of mystery stories, specifically the limited cast, the intricate death, the “gentleman detective.” Out’s gentleman detective is Daniel Craig, who plays his French-named character as a Southern Gentleman with aplomb. He’s always delightful, even though he’s—intentionally—not particularly good at the investigating, rather trying to figure out where the truth will reveal itself and meet it there. Nice Gravity’s Rainbow reference, though writer and director Johnson’s joke about people not actually reading it… well, there’s an insight ceiling. Out does a pretty good job not bumping it while covering a range of precarious topics throughout, with the Pynchon cop out probably being the closest call.

The lead in the film is instead Ana de Armas, nurse and confidant to recently deceased (apparently by suicide) Christopher Plummer. Plummer’s a millionaire mystery novel writer who supports his greedy family members, reigning from an intentionally gothic house with the occasional physical gimmicks related to his mystery novels. The house set is a lot of fun. When the film finally leaves for a sustained period (instead of just quick asides to remind de Armas has a real life away), it loses a bit of its personality. Especially when it will just turn around and head back, reining in its expanse at the end of the second act just to use the house again in the third. Only once it returns, it’s already shown what’s behind the curtain–Johnson does a fine job establishing the actual suspects from the potential ones and gives the audience enough information to at least guess the perpetrator if not the motive.

It’s a good script. Even during the finale, which goes on a little too long, all of Johnson’s instincts and twists are good, there’s just too much material in between them. Some of it’s Craig mugging but Johnson’s also really careful never to let him go too far. The film’s got a very specific tone, very specific narrative distance—it’s got to encompass a lot around de Armas—Johnson and his crew do an excellent job with it. Steve Yedlin’s photography, Bob Ducsay’s editing, Nathan Johnson’s music. All works out.

No small thanks to de Armas, obviously, who’s able to do a lot in this spotlight, including entirely, exquisitely humanize Plummer. It isn’t until their big scene together Plummer really gets to act; until then, opposite the family, it’s all for motive setup. With de Armas, Plummer gets real personality, which resonates throughout the film.

The first act’s a series of flashbacks and flash arounds, establishing the last night of Plummer’s life, with the various family members and suspects—Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Toni Collette—incriminating themselves and others and getting annoyed with cop LaKeith Stanfield’s repeated interrogations. Stanfield’s the straight man, Noah Segan’s his numbskull sidekick, Craig’s the gentleman detective. Johnson has a great handle on the genre norms and nimbly adapts some of them.

Good performances all around, though Out is really de Armas, Plummer, and Craig’s movie. Of the supporting cast–well, the family (Stanfield’s great but he’s de facto third tier)—Collette and Shannon are the best. Curtis and Johnson are both fine, they just don’t have the same opportunities. As the black sheep and prime suspect (of sorts), Chris Evans is good (his amazing sweater, hiding Avengers guns, is amazing) and maybe even better than I was expecting given the part, but he doesn’t have the spark the big three exhibit.

Though he also doesn’t have Johnson showcasing him the way de Armas, Plummer, and Craig get the spotlight. They all transfix, the film riding on them—which just makes de Armas more and more impressive as the film moves along.

Knives Out is good. Just about ten minutes too long.

The Lake House (2006, Alejandro Agresti)

There may be a pseudo-sly Speed reference in The Lake House, which reunites stars Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves, but it’s a spoiler. Unfortunately it is not Bullock’s Speed 2 co-star Jason Patric as her wet towel boyfriend (Patric infamously replaced Reeves in the sequel). Instead, Dylan Walsh is the wet towel boyfriend. His performance is just as boring as the exceptionally thin role is written.

And it also may not be a Speed nod because it would show some personality from the filmmakers and they truly have none.

Lake House is not an action movie about a bus. Instead, it’s a romantic drama involving a magic mailbox and seemingly magic dog. Bullock is a newly-out-of-residency Chicago doctor who lives in the “present” or 2006. We soon find out Reeves is in 2004. They have lived in the same house at different times; a stilt house on a lake somewhere near Madison, Wisconsin. The house is ostensibly a dump—no one lives on the lake, someone exclaims because Lake House also has magic realistic values—even though it’s gorgeous and designed by world renowned architect Christopher Plummer, who is also Reeves’s father. Only we don’t find out about the history of the house until almost the third act. And, as with many things in David Auburn’s shockingly pedestrian script, stops being important immediately following it getting introduced in exposition. Everything in Lake House is disposable. Including a bunch of logic in the third act.

First act is nearly romantic comedy with Bullock crying at work (because she cares so much about her patients but, thanks to Auburn’s lousy sense of pacing, probably is just mopey because she dumped Walsh at some point in the recent past) and Reeves trying to get his life back together after moving back to the area after four years away. He makes housing developments instead of being a fancy architect like dad Plummer and younger brother Ebon Moss-Bachrach (who is somehow even less present than Walsh). He wants to fix the stilt house, which makes sense because it’s where he grew up and Plummer—who’s a jerk, but not a monster—verbally and emotionally abused Reeves, Moss-Bachrach, and their mother. Then Bullock and Reeves find out the mailbox at the house is magic and they can write to each other through time.

Cue up the endless terrible letters Reeves and Bullock write to one another as voiceovers. At least when they’re reading each other’s letters, there’s some acting to it. When they’re just thinking their letters and having back and forth conversations—Bullock has to drive two hours and twenty minutes—in the best traffic—to get from new home Chicago back to the house in Madison. Or maybe they’re standing at the mailbox and writing back to each other, which kind of gets explored—the film has zero interest in the time travel aspect of the story; Auburn’s script doesn’t have a single neat time travel-related moment. The only reason it gets away with the romantic comedy thing is because the film introduces split screen to show Bullock and Reeves being separately charming. By the end the split screen is still occasionally in use, but never well-utilized because Agresti’s direction is so boring.

Second act is then Reeves and Bullock exploring the time travel mailbox and falling into a chemistry-free long distance love affair. Because eventually Reeves starts stalking Bullock in the past, when she’s got super-long hair and is entirely dependent on lawyer boyfriend Walsh who doesn’t have any reason to want a girlfriend in his yuppie lifestyle. Should’ve gotten Jason Patric.

Anyway.

Second act is also all the revelations about Reeves’s past with Plummer. The worse the revelation gets, more the Reeves tries to bond with Plummer. It’s inexplicable behavior. The only thing Auburn seems to care about in the screenplay is the architecture monologues from Reeves, Plummer, and Moss-Bachrach. The monologues are bad, but at least they’re distinct. And Plummer can make it seem legit instead of terrible. Moss-Bachrach’s the worst, Reeves is nearly middling. Agresti’s inability to direct conversations hurts with the monologues. Alejandro Brodersohn and Lynzee Klingman’s editing is choppy, but it seems like it’s Agresti’s composition more than anything else. He’s got no rhythm to the scenes. Occasionally, when Bullock or Reeves is charming enough you wish the movie were better, you wonder how a better script might have entirely changed things.

But then Agresti does something weird and bad—like his extreme long shots for conversations—and you realize it’s just the production. It’s broken in too many ways.

Bullock’s character is bad. She doesn’t get the “maybe reunite with Walsh” storyline until into the second act and it entirely flushes her doctor storyline potential. Her mom (Willeke van Ammelrooy) is around for occasional scenes, but—like Moss-Bachrach with Reeves—there’s never any surprise at the magic mail box. It’s totally normal stuff. Pedestrian like everything else about Lake House.

Bullock’s performance is probably the best anyone could do. Maybe ditto Reeves? The movie skips the motivation and development scenes where he nice guy stalks Bullock in the past and possibly jeopardizes destroying the entire timeline. Not really because Auburn never addresses any of the time travel elements and explains away Bullock seeing Reeves multiple times and having no idea she’s seen him before because she forgot what the guy she ran off to San Francisco with when she was sixteen to become a singer. You’d trust someone with that terrible a memory to be your doctor.

Okay.

Terrible part. And Shohreh Aghdashloo somehow gets an even worse part as Bullock’s new boss.

Reeves is… mostly harmless. It’s totally his movie, which is bad since his reconciliation arc with Plummer is even worse than Bullock and Walsh rekindling. But the part isn’t as bad as Bullock’s.

Technically, I suppose Alar Kivilo’s photography is fine. The editing’s bad, the directing’s bad, the script’s bad, Nathan Crowley’s production design (and Agresti’s shot compositions of it) is bad. Rachel Portman’s score could be a lot worse. The soundtrack’s really bland stuff, including a Paul McCartney song from 2005 playing in 2004 because it seems like there should be a Beatles song at that moment—the dialogue makes the song sound like a Golden Oldie too. Lake House is full of really dumb gaffs. Like, an obvious staircase where there shouldn’t be one. Or Reeves not being able to figure out his dog is a girl until Bullock tells him she’s a girl. The dog. Reeves knows Bullock is a girl because he stalks her.

Bad costume design too. Like silly.

Still, until the third act, there’s at least the potential for a good ending. Then there’s not and it’s almost a relief because it’s so lacking in ambition (as well as being dumb as far as the narrative’s internal logic goes). But it’s still a bad ending. The Lake House takes place over four years and ninety-nine minutes. It’s not abjectly terrible or anything, but it’s an entire waste of time.

Another dumb thing—well, two so real quick—The Lake House title doesn’t mean jack for Bullock and Agresti’s deathly afraid of directing in the lake house. He avoids it at all costs. It’s constantly aggravating.

Dreamscape (1984, Joseph Ruben)

Dreamscape has a lot of subplots. The main plot barely gets any more time during the second act than the subplots. But I’m getting ahead of myself because I wanted to talk about the first act, which has Dennis Quaid getting reacquainted with mentor Max von Sydow. The film opens with this fast, fun action sequence with psychic Quaid winning big at the track and having to outsmart some goons. It perfectly utilizes Quaid’s charm and director Ruben has a fantastic pace. Richard Halsey’s editing on Dreamscape is strong, he just doesn’t get a lot of opportunities to excel after the open.

Then von Sydow gets Quaid to do the dream experiments–going into other people’s dreams, which he needs to train to do and it does give the film a natural structure for a while but there’s all those subplots. Time to talk about the subplots. There’s Christopher Plummer’s government guy who wants them to dream fix the President (an exhausted Eddie Albert). There’s Quaid’s rivalry with David Patrick Kelly’s fellow dream psychic. There’s Quaid’s romance of Kate Capshaw. There’s Quaid’s friendship with young nightmare sufferer, Cory ‘Bumper’ Yothers (yes, he’s Tina’s big brother). Finally, there’s Quaid and George Wendt, who’s investigating the whole project. von Sydow and Quaid actually do have something approaching character development in their scenes, which I’ll lump into the main plot.

The script–from original story writer David Loughery, Chuck Russell, and director Ruben–lacks any connective tissue between the subplots. It’s like they each took a few, wrote them, then lined up the scenes. Even though it’s an exceptionally limited setting–a college campus where shadowy government stuff goes on and there are barely any students–these characters have no relationships with anyone outside the person they’re opposite. Capshaw and von Sydow, for example, have absolutely no relationship outside of exposition and direction, even though they’ve been working together for years. Same goes for Kelly and Capshaw. And Kelly and von Sydow. And Capshaw and Plummer. And everyone and Wendt. It’s very strange and very poorly done. The writing is often fine–Plummer’s got a lot of scenery to chew, Kelly’s part is awesome, von Sydow’s fantastic–but it doesn’t have a narrative flow. It’s almost like Dreamscape was made to be watched with commercial breaks.

Quaid’s solid in the lead. He doesn’t get much to do–his romance with Capshaw, while ostensibly steamy, isn’t enough–and he’s just a passenger in the rest of his subplots. He and von Sydow are great together, however. As well as Quaid and Kelly. They’re great nemeses. Capshaw’s not terrible. She’s not good, but she’s not terrible. She gets a weak part and can’t do anything with it; Dreamscape is a movie where the actors need to be able to do something with their weak parts. As scripted, Plummer’s barely two dimensional, yet Plummer is able to at least make the part into something. Capshaw can’t. Partially her fault, mostly the script’s fault, partially Ruben’s fault.

And Maurice Jarre doesn’t help anyone with his music. He makes Dreamscape weirder in a way completely contrary to what Ruben’s doing.

There are some great special effects and some solid sequences, but the third act’s a mess and the denouement is somewhat worse.

The Sound of Music (1965, Robert Wise)

So much of The Sound of Music is exquisite, the film’s got enough momentum to get over the rough spots. The film has three and a half distinct sections. There’s the first, introducing Julie Andrews to the audience, then introducing Christopher Plummer and family to the Andrews and the audience, which then becomes about Andrews and the kids. The second part has Plummer returning after an absence, with Eleanor Parker and Richard Haydn along with him to give him something to do. Then there’s the strange part following the intermission, which probably played better theatrically when one really did get up and leave the film for a period. When it returns–and Plummer and Andrews’s romance takes off (at the expense of almost everything else)–the film is different.

Then the final part, with the Nazis out to capture Plummer, is entirely different. Unfortunately, director Wise is most ambitious in the setup of the film. He knows if he gets all the establishing stuff right–with Andrews, with Plummer and the kids–everything else will work out. The final part of the film with the family on the run is strong, but it’s action. Wise is doing this action thriller. It works because his direction is good, Ted D. McCord’s photography is glorious throughout, ditto William Reynolds’s editing, and there are some amazing sets. And some good humor in Ernest Lehman’s screenplay to lighten things appropriately.

This dramatic conclusion overshadows how briskly the film has changed itself. Andrews and Plummer are wonderful arguing and flirting, but their romance itself is tepid. Both of them get better scenes regarding it with Parker than they do with one another. And Wise doesn’t take the time to progress that part of the narrative organically when it comes to the kids, who are actual characters in the first hour of the film only to become likable accessories in the last hour.

The Sound of Music has a lot of things Wise has to get right in the first hour and he gets them, lots of things he has to establish so he can lean upon them later. It’s fine, but it’s never as good later on, whether with returning characters or song encores. The handling of the songs in the first hour and a half are glorious. Once intermission hits, Wise is in a rush and the film suffers. There’s so many great stagings in the first part–down to using an adorable puppet show to get in another song–the remainder, with far fewer group songs and instead questionable duets, can’t measure up.

Still, Wise has got all the right pieces. Plummer and Andrews, even when they don’t have much to do, are great doing it. There’s also Ben Wright’s odious villain, who Wise and Lehman had been foreshadowing (but not enough). The Sound of Music gets through the choppy waters to succeed. It just could’ve been better.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991, Nicholas Meyer)

From the second scene of the Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, it's clear director Meyer is going to be somewhat merciless in how he presents the film. It's not just a story about a sea change in the franchise's mythology or about the familiar cast members retiring, it's also about it being the final Star Trek movie.

Meyer gets phenomenal performances out of his cast; there's the light stuff, usually with DeForest Kelley or Walter Koenig, but he also goes dark with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. Somehow, Meyer manages to balance the film between serious–it's about violent bigotry, after all–and a dark gray genial. The film opens with space disaster followed with a jolting dose of that bigotry.

Playing a new crew member, Kim Cattrall gets the most comedic relief moments. Not as the target of them, but as the perpetrator. Meyer relies on her to be the audience's entry into some of the picture; she's the regular person among the titans. It's a nice narrative trick and one of the more successful ones. There are some less successful ones, which mostly get by due to the abilities of the actors. The big example is Shatner's character arc. It doesn't work because Shatner can't play it bigoted enough; Meyer tries to edit around it but still. Also less successful is Christopher Plummer's character. Plummer's great, but the part's too thin.

At the same time, lots of subtle narrative moves work out great.

The film's problematic, but incredibly successful.

Wolf (1994, Mike Nichols)

Mike Nichols has a very peculiar technique in Wolf. He does these intense close-ups, sometimes zooming into them, sometimes zooming out of them. He fixates on his actors–usually Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer, but all of the actors get at least one intense close-up (except maybe Eileen Atkins). It’s like he’s drawing attention to the unreality of the film medium, which makes sense since there’s a lengthy conversation between Nicholson and Om Puri about mysticism and modern life.

Wolf is a strange monster movie because, even though it’s about Jack Nicholson turning into a werewolf–he gets bitten in the opening titles no less–it’s not a monster movie. For a while it’s a workplace drama, then it’s a marriage drama, finally it’s a romantic drama between Nicholson and Pfeiffer. The film’s present action is extremely limited. It takes place over a week or so (one could probably easily chart out the days), but the filmmakers sell the roller coaster romance between Nicholson and Pfeiffer.

On the topic of those close-ups of Nichols’s, they wouldn’t be possible without Giuseppe Rotunno’s photography. Wolf is a beautiful looking picture; Nichols and Rotunno have these wonderful reflections in the car windows. They’re stunning. And having Ennio Morricone’s score over them–just great.

All the acting’s good. Pfeiffer gets the third act to herself and is fabulous. Nice supporting work from Kate Nelligan, James Spader, Christopher Plummer.

I’m not even sure Wolf’s a horror movie; it’s more a supernatural drama.

Dolores Claiborne (1995, Taylor Hackford)

Dolores Claiborne isn’t just a mother and daughter picture… it’s not just a mother and daughter picture made by a bunch of men (directed by a man, produced by men, screenplay by a man based on a novel by a man), it’s Panavision visual experience mother and daughter picture. Director Hackford–ably assisted by Gabriel Beristain’s photography–creates a vivid, lush visual experience. It’s stunning; every time Hackford intensifies the color scheme, it heightens the film’s impact. He does a fantastic job.

Watching Claiborne–for the first time since I was a teenager, probably–I noticed how Kathy Bates’s titular protagonist has, through a trauma, become unstuck in time. It all makes sense, by the end of the film, as a traditional narrative arc for the character, but Hackford’s then got to account for the Technicolor flashbacks (versus the drab modern day). And he does.

Hackford includes a Vonnegut reference, a very quiet one, and it’s hard not to see it as intentional, given those time slips. Hackford’s whole composition scheme is based on those slips and how they jar both the viewer and the character.

There shouldn’t be enough story for a film here, certainly not one running over two hours. With Hackford, Tony Gilroy’s script and Bates’s spellbinding (not one of my regular adjectives) performance, there’s more than enough. Actually, it ends too soon.

Outstanding supporting performances from Jennifer Jason Leigh, Christopher Plummer, David Strathairn and Judy Parfitt further deepen the film.

Excellent Danny Elfman score.

Claiborne‘s superb.

The New World (2005, Terrence Malick), the extended cut

Historical fact, or even the attempt at paying lip service to it, is so inconvenient. If there’s a better example than The New World, I’m not familiar with it.

Malick struggles to make it all fit together and he can’t quite make it sync. He has to move from Colin Farrell being the protagonist to Christine Bale. Q’orianka Kilcher gets some focus too, but barely any once Bale arrives.

After Farrell and Kilcher’s romance, it’d be difficult for anyone to properly follow it up. While Malick does get Bale’s best performance from him, the casting is a misstep. Much like James Horner’s score, there’s something off with the casting. Lots of the “name” casting works—obviously, Farrell is excellent, but so are David Thewlis and Wes Studi. Third billed Christopher Plummer is barely in it enough to make an impression.

Much of The New World does not “wow.” It feels like a disjointed period piece from early on—and Horner’s music is an immediate liability—and it actually becomes more interesting in the last act, as Kilcher and Bale head back to 17th century England. Here, Malick starts using Caspar David Friedrich’s Woman before the Rising Sun as a direct influence for how he portrays Kilcher.

A lot of what he does is interesting—none of the Native Americans (including Kilcher’s Pocahontas) are ever referred to by name in dialogue—and the pacing is exquisite.

Malick nearly recovers at the end, but again, tragically, kowtows to the “non-fiction” imperative.

2/4★★

CREDITS

Written and directed by Terrence Malick; director of photography, Emmanuel Lubezki; edited by Richard Chew, Hank Corwin, Saar Klein and Mark Yoshikawa; music by James Horner; production designer, Jack Fisk; produced by Sarah Green; released by New Line Cinema.

Starring Colin Farrell (Captain John Smith), Q’orianka Kilcher (Pocahontas), Christian Bale (John Rolfe), Christopher Plummer (Captain Christopher Newport), August Schellenberg (Chief Powhatan), Wes Studi (Opechancanough), David Thewlis (Edward Wingfield), Yorick van Wageningen (Captain Samuel Argall), Raoul Trujillo (Tomocomo), Janine Duvitski (Mary), Michael Greyeyes (Rupwew), Irene Bedard (Pocahontas’s Mother), Kalani Queypo (Parahunt), Ben Mendelsohn (Ben), Noah Taylor (Selway), Ben Chaplin (Robinson), Eddie Marsan (Eddie), John Savage (Savage), Billy Merasty (Kiskiak) and Jonathan Pryce (King James I).

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Silver Blaze (1977, John Davies)

Christopher Plummer makes a strange Sherlock Holmes—he’s almost too much of a movie star to play him. Plummer has a great time, creating a mildly mischievous Holmes who willfully appears eccentric. It’s too bad he’s the only interesting thing about Silver Blaze.

I suppose some of Davies’s establishing shots are good, but it’s not him, it’s the scenery. Otherwise, his direction is awkward. The Paul Lewis music is sometimes good, more times bad.

But the big problem is the script. Julian Bond’s adaptation is boring and confusing. He gives the story a prologue and it’s so nonsensical, Davies can’t fit it with the rest of the film.

Some weak performances don’t help. Gary Watson is particularly bad, but Thorley Walters’s Watson is no great shakes either. He mostly just blusters; it’s impossible to believe he and Plummer are friends.

It’s a misfire, but Plummer makes it worth a look.

1/3Not Recommended

CREDITS

Directed by John Davies; screenplay by Julian Bond, based on the story by Arthur Conan Doyle; lighting cameraman, Bob Edwards; edited by Alex Kirby; music by Paul Lewis; production designer, Disley Jones; produced by William Deneen; released by Harlech Television.

Starring Christopher Plummer (Sherlock Holmes), Thorley Walters (Dr. Watson), Basil Henson (Colonel Ross), Gary Watson (Inspector Gregory), Richard Beale (Straker), Donald Burton (Fitzroy-Simpson) and Barry Linehan (Silas Brown).

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