North Dallas Forty

North Dallas Forty (1979)
Director: Ted Kotcheff
Cast: Nick Nolte, Mac Davis, Charles Durning, Bo Svenson, G.D. Spradlin
Memorable Line: "People who confuse brains and luck can get in a whole lot of trouble."

Marketed as a sport comedy, North Dallas Forty is really a realistic and gritty look behind the scenes of professional football.

Phil Elliott (Nolte) is an aging wide receiver who is on his last legs and trying to tap into last bit of competitive spirit despite being both beat-up and disillusioned with the sports. He is surrounded by a heartless management team that only see wins and dollars. Players are simply disposable commodities to bring about bring about a successful on the field product.

More drama than sports film, North Dallas Forty still has some inspiring grid iron moments. Nolte is memorable as the athlete who thinks too much. Country music singer gives a natural performance as the go-along with the flow quarterback. G.D Spradlin plays his typical overbearing authority figure. Real life football players have supporting roles. Director Kotcheff isn't showy in his treatment of the film, but tells the story with a straightforward honesty.

What's most notable about North Dallas Forty is that is spends more time on the people in the sport than the sport itself. It's also been rumored that the National Football League didn't cooperate with the making of the movie because of the less than flattering light it placed on the business of the sport.

Still, if you want a realistic sports picture, you can't do much better than North Dallas Forty.

Serpico

Serpico (1973)
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: Al Pacino, Tony Roberts, Tom Kehoe, John Randolph
Memorable: "Let's face it, who can trust a cop that won't take money?"

What would you do if you wanted to just be an honest cop but discovered that just about every cop around you is on the take?

Serpico follows the life of cop, Frank Serpico (Pacino), as he starts as an idealistic rookie and carries that idealism throughout his career. This idealism gets him into a great deal of trouble as he comes to odds with a corrupt contingent of cops and ultimately, almost gets him killed. From precinct to precinct, Serpico finds cops on the take and when he says he will not "play," he is treated both as an outsider and an enemy. His only allies are a politically adept cop friend (Roberts) and one honest cop he encounters later in his career. After many attempts to report the corruption, he decides to go public. That's when he faces the an ultimate reprisal from the men in blue.

More character study than action film, there still enough here for those who want some action. For the most part, this is Pacino's movie because he is in nearly every scene and he acquits himself quite well. Pacino gives us Serpico's passion, his anxieties, and his short comings. The most prevalent emotion you feel from Pacino's portrayal is frustration. Utter frustration that he can't be what he wants to be -- an honest cop. The supporting cast comes across as authentic and competent. You actually believe some of these guys are real cops.

Directed by Sidney Lumet, Serpico has a even and deliberate pace. The film starts with a literal bang and then Lumet slows it down to backtrack to Serpico's entry into the force and tracks his career as he encounters bad cops and butts heads with authority along the way. Lumet is never showy, letting technique get in front of the story. Most of the time, it's the character's that tell the story in Serpico.

As with almost all of Lumet's movies, this is a thoughtful and provocative film. At points, you'll catch yourself sharing Serpico's frustration and wonder how the corruption became so rampant and how it could ever be stopped. It seems as if the cops in the movie have a greater incentive to get money through corruption, than through their jobs. If you're ready for a contemplative and engaging cop/character study, Serpico is the film for you.

Jaws

Jaws (1975)
Director: Steven Speilberg
Cast: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss
Memorable Line: "You're going to need a bigger boat."

Jaws that started the summer blockbuster was initially, for me, a film I avoided because I thought it was a “sheep” film. Sheep films are ones that everyone has to see. So, I didn’t see it until four years after its release when it was re-released.

It has become one of favorite movies. This is Speilberg before he learned his bag of tricks and was a more raw and authentic storyteller than the rut he evolved into for nearly a decade. Now, it was a comfortable rut and not an entirely unenjoyable rut, but still a rut in which his considerable skills languished.

Jaws takes landlubber, Chief Brody, (Roy Scheider) and has him face-off with a man-eating sharking preying on the islanders the chief is sworn to protect. At his side is a shark obsessed oceanographer (Richard Dreyfuss) and a professional shark hunter (Robert Shaw). The trio make an unlikely team, fighting among themselves and eventually bonding, as they stalk the shark only to have the almost supernatural creature turn the tables on them.

The performances by the three lead men stand out and the film almost seems like the most collaborative effort of Speilberg’s early films. Unlike many of Speilberg's subsequent movies, the actors seem to break through the Speilberg's style and bring their character's to life, making them real and that's what set's Jaws apart.

Apocalypse Now

Apocalypse Now (1979)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper
Memorable Line: "The horror, the horror."

At 18 years old, nothing in my inchoate life prepared me to watch "Apocalypse Now." I simply wasn't prepared to deal with its visceral imagery and it's profound story. The film apologetically jumps off the screen at you and takes you into a nightmarish journey into the Viet Nam war.

Few films have had the impact on me that film had on me in my life. It awed me. It moved me. It scared me somewhat with it's stark and brutal view of war. Yet, it fascinated me and I was completely engrossed in it's setting and situation.

Loosely based on Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," the film follows Captain Willard (Sheen) who is sent on a clandestine mission to seek out and assassinate a rogue office, Colonel Kurtz, (Brando) who has literally went "off the reservation" of army protocol and humane standards. In fact, when we finally encounter Kurtz, we see almost no standards, but nearly madness.

Willard is accompanied by a rag-tag team of soldiers who are along for the ride, but have no idea what they're in for. The journey is truly one that reveals the madness and chaos of war as the team encounters all the insanity of war -- seemingly purposeless engagements, savage hubris (Duvall as Colonel Kilgore), and the lost (Dennis Hopper as the drugged out photojournalist who is enraptured with Kurtz).

Much has been written about the madness that went into the making of this movie. Months and months past deadline and grossly over budget. Sheen having a heart attack. Brando not being prepared. Plus it the whole process seemed to be about story in search of an ending. (See the wonderful documentary about the making of this movie -- "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse." Watch the movie one night and the documentary the next.)

Still in spite of all of this, Coppola brings us a compelling and entirely engaging movie that holds itself together all the way up until the end. The films seems to start to teeter under the ponderous weight of all it's elements when reaching its climax.

I would qualify "Apocalypse Now" as a near masterpiece and that it overcomes any of its flaws by its far-reaching ambition in scope and vision. It truly is one of the last studio movies I would qualify as an artist in search of a commercially viable picture.

See it if for nothing else for the luscious and brilliant images that cinematographer Vittorio Storaro brings to the film. Images from the movie still come to mind years later.

[NOTE: "Apocalypse Now" is one of the movies that doesn't translate to the small screen well. If you have an exceptional home theater system, you may be able to do the film justice. If you can catch it on the big screen, I implore you to go.]

Three Days of the Condor

Three Days of the Condor (1975)
Director: Syndey Pollack
Cast: Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Cliff Robertson, Max Von Sydow
Memorable Line: "I don't think you'll live much longer."

* Underrated and Overlooked *
This is a genre movie in the "everyman gets caught in plot that's bigger than himself" vein (Think of "North by Northwest."). If you're a part of Generation Y and maybe the tail-end of Generation X you may never have heard of it, but this is one of most gripping and realistic espionage films you'll ever see. If you like movies with heroes that are really superheroes with fantastic martial arts fighting skills and the ability make miraculous shots with dueling handguns ablaze, then this isn't the film for you. But if you like a thinking man's hero, I recommend you check out this movie.

Redford stars a bookish researcher who arrives at work one day to find his whole division brutally wiped out in a nearly silent attack. Quickly realizing that he is the last man standing and knowing that his moments may be numbered, he goes undercover to find who killed his colleagues and how he can stay alive in the process. Faye Dunaway plays an isolated photographer who Redford's character ensnares and inspires to assist him in finding the truth. Max Von Sydow is chilling as a career assassin who coldly provides his skills to the highest bidder and Roberson is a higher up in the C.I.A. whose job it is to protect the agency at nearly all costs.

Probably the only dated element of the movie is the Dave Gruisin's score which is a bit too jazzy compared to traditional scores. While not edited with the frenetic pace of today's thrillers, the tempo of the plot is sufficient to keep the viewer engaged and interested.

And there's a fight scene between Redford's character and would-be assassin that I feel is one of most realistic fight scenes in cinema history. There's no fantastic martial arts stunts here. There's just two guys facing off with whatever brawn and brain they can muster with Redford outmatched in the strength, but with the cunning. It's worth the price of admission.