OFF THE SHELF – Issue # 5: THE ‘CONSPIRACY’ COLLECTION
The dictionary definition of a ‘Conspiracy Theory’ refers to the belief that unpleasant things which happen – usually in relation to government actions, but not always refined to this – are planned by people who want to cause difficulties and that such things do not, and will not, happen by chance or without the control of such parties. You make a movie based around that (and add complex plots, gritty dialogue, base it in the believability of the everyday, occasionally throw in a devastating, brutal and very dark twist) and I am most definitely there to view.
Make it well, in fact… make it brilliantly, and you’re pretty much guaranteed that your film is going to end up in my DVD collection (which goes for the films discussed below), so enamoured am I towards films of this type. Make it below par, mediocre or – shudder – badly (and I’m talking to you Richard Donner’s Conspiracy Theory or any late 90s Charlie Sheen/Wesley Snipes straight-to-video shite) and I’m going to mock you at every available opportunity, ignore you or steal you from the shelves of my friends with poor taste then use you as objects to throw in the direction of people I hold in poor regard… you know, my parents, the girlfriend, Kristina (oh how her very name tortures my loins)… Anyway, I digress. This “collection” is not all-encompassing. There’s still titles I am very much desperate to own but UK availability or ridiculously high cost of importing prevents this (John Frankenheimer’s Seven Days in May, Costa Gravas’ Z to name but two) and then there’s titles that have been discussed or will be discussed in separate issues due to belonging in a different category (David Fincher’s The Game or Oliver Stone’s JFK are very good examples).
I should warn you though, that this particular collection is made up of 35 titles and I throw down a few words on each – some turn into a bit of a ramble (as you can expect with me!) – so this issue is quite lengthy to say the least. I’m using this week’s issue as a barometer as to how to treat future issues (whether I should split each “issue” into “parts” and each “part” be posted daily or whatever), depending on whether the length is off-putting or, you know, whatever. Some DVD sections host like 50-60 titles so I’m away that those issues are, unarguably, going to have to be split down but… how much is too much? Well, I guess we’re about to find out.
I always look forward to your feedback so if you agree/disagree/want more information/want to flame me then I cherish every form of it all and that’s what the ATBs below are for. But, without further ado… These are the conspiracy movies that I own, adore (in most cases) and urge you to check out if you’ve never seen them before.
Arlington Road First time I saw this movie I was on a date with this girl that I’d really liked from a far for a long, long time. I wasn’t the “strapping Adonis” that you see before you now (or don’t see – which is what is so wonderful about the internet and you not being able to see the seeping irony [or downright lie] that is me referring to myself as a “strapping Adonis”) and I used to be quite the nervy, spotty type so to be on a date with this girl was just like the most unbelievable thing to ever have happened to me in my, then, young adult life. Then there was the fact that within minutes of the film starting she reached over, pulled me towards her and we started kissing. And kissing. And kissing. And kissing some more. To the point that when the lights came up, she had a nice line in stubble rash around her mouth and I had half-a-ton of her make-up around mine. The film itself was getting rave reviews and people started asking me what it was like when they’d found out I’d seen it. “Oh, Jeff Bridges plays this terrorist who blows up this building at the end and Tim Robbins is this undercover FBI type with a family who is trying to stop him!” THAT is how much attention I paid on first viewing. I caught up with it again on home rental and it friggin’ blew me away when I saw it “properly”. One of the best conceived, most audacious twists to happen to cinema in years and, in its screenwriter Ethan Kruger, a writing talent that shot his load on this flick and has never come even remotely close to equalling or surpassing it since.Blow-Out
This is the film from back when John Travolta was cool the first time round, long, long, long before Tarantino resurrected his career. This is the film back when Nancy Allen was a total fox before age was cruel to her. Best of all though, this is the film when Brian De Palma’s supposed “obsession” with stealing mercilessly from Alfred Hitchcock was in it’s infancy, resulting in one of the strongest films he has ever made. And as we’re all aware, there is a well-known, much respected equation that reads ‘Brian De Palma Movie + Made And Released Prior To The Mid-To-Late Eighties – The Untouchables ‘cause that was ace! = A Very Good, Even Maybe A Classic, Movie. Blow-Out is no exception and is a genuinely brilliant ‘conspiracy’ classic with some of the best sound editing ever used in cinema. Travolta plays a sound technician called Jack Terri, working in dodgy horror movies (which gives us the excuse for that still ace opening sequence from De Palma where we have the Halloween-esque opening ‘stalk’ and eventual kill, only to pull back and reveal the oft-copied ‘movie within a movie’ moment). He accidentally audio tapes the sound of an automobile crash involving a presidential candidate that results in the loss of his life. As he plays and replays the tape, unearthing hidden sounds within the loop, Jack uncovers a political conspiracy that could topple the highest level of government and threatens the life of not only him but also the presidential candidate’s secret mistress (Nancy Allen) who was in the car with him when he died. As a side note, if you only ever know the wonderful John Lithgow from the likes of Harry and the Hendersons or Third Rock From The Sun then you really should check this film out. Lithgow is a government assassin going about strangling women and killing people indiscriminately. Ace!Capricorn One
With this flick, Peter Hyams has written and directed one of the greatest and highly regarded conspiracy movies ever made and it’s a reflection on how great his script is, how brilliant his direction is and how flawlessly entertaining and engrossing the first two acts of the movie are that the rather naff, embarrassing and poorly aged climax does not detract from the film over-all. Hyams wrote the flick as a direct response to all those “loony” conspiracy theories about there never being a moon landing and it all being an elaborate hoax, latched around that “alleged” theory you can see a camera crew filming in the reflection of Neil Armstrong’s head visor! Here, we’re dealing with NASA’s first manned space flight to Mars where the three astronauts (James Brolin – Brilliant! Sam Waterston – Hilarious! OJ Simpson – Murderer… I mean, Wooden!) involved are seconds away from blast-off when mysterious NASA aides enter the craft and force them to leave. It is explained that the spacecraft has a dangerous technical flaw that would have ended their lives so they cannot take off but, because of the programme’s desperate need for funding, they need to make it look like they have to the viewing public and government figures. So, in a television studio out in the desert, the three astronauts are forced to make the broadcasts as if they were actually on the red planet. Then a technical fault on the “orbiting ship” rears its head whilst broadcasting live across America that, in reality, would have taken the astronauts lives so… now they must die! As the three men escape the studio and make their way across the desert, chased and hunted by black ops helicopters looming in the distance, Robert Caulfield (Elliott Gould) a local journalist back in mainline America, becomes suspicious when a friend of his – who is a NASA technician within the Mars programme – starts raising doubts and disappears soon after. He starts an investigation that… Well, I got carried away with just an outright plot description there didn’t I? But it does lead us very comfortably into that climax that is just so ridiculously at odds with the rest of the film that it almost, very nearly, derails the entire film: Telly friggin’ Savalas turns up as ‘Albain the Cropduster’ and takes on the black ops helicopters with Gould’s Caulfield as his co-pilot and James Brolin’s exhausted astronaut strapped to the wing – yes you read that right! Then there’s that horrible, horrible, horrible slow motion run through the cemetery as Brolin goes to stop his own funeral and Hal Holbrook’s evil NASA figurehead gurns in furious slo-mo too. Oh, it’s so bad! So very, very bad! Which is a crying shame because the rest of the film is out-and-out brilliant!Clear and Present Danger
I’m not a huge, huge Jack Ryan/Tom Clancy fan. I know there are those types out there though. Hell, my brother-in-law is one of them. I think my ‘questionable’ regard for them is reflected in the fact that I rate Affleck’s much maligned one-off (for now?) appearance as “young” Ryan in Sum of All Fears as one of the franchises best entries and don’t hold out much affection for Patriot Games. I got all four flicks in one of those local supermarket ‘price pack’ things where you can get four films for like five quid odd. I wouldn’t have ever rushed to own Patriot Games normally as I watched it growing up and never really dug it that much. But I wanted to own Sum, wanted to see Hunt For The Red October having never seen it, and rumour had it that Clear and Present Danger was a “superb conspiracy movie” and I’d never made time to see that either. Now, you know me likes my conspiracy movies (you’re reading this week’s column ALL about THEM after all!) so who would turn down the opportunity to catch up on some ‘wants’ from their own personal ‘wants list’ for such a cheap price as 4 DVDs for £5.99? Not me! I’m really glad I got round to seeing this flick and I’m really glad that I own it as part of my collection. Phillip Noyce, a very much forgotten but still exceptionally talented director in the field of thrillers, delivers a first-rate political thriller dressed up as a typical Harrison Ford ‘action yarn’. This is the flick where we all know from the trailers that Ford’s Jack Ryan gets to scream “No! How dare you, Mr President?” at the president of the United States. It’s also the one where Ryan becomes acting CIA Deputy Director of Intelligence and, as his first assignment, investigates the murder of one of the president’s friends who had secret ties to Columbian drug cartels. Before you can whisper “Ooh, it’s not all what it seems!” the CIA are dispatching their best field operative (Willem Dafoe) behind Ryan’s back, to lead a paramilitary strike against the Columbians, leaving Ryan himself caught in the middle and… cue ‘Mr-Gravel-Voiced-Trailer-Man’… forced to “take matters into his own hands, risking his career and life for the only cause he still believes in – the truth!” The script hurtles along with some well-placed zingers and twists thanks to the double strike of having Steve Zaillian rewrite Donald Stewart’s original adaptation and then have the legend that is John Milius doctor Zaillian’s work. However, with the film’s centrepiece (a Columbian strike on the cluster of US vehicles containing CIA and government figures, including Ryan) Noyce gets to take all the kudos for a sequence expertly performed, scored, edited and choreographed.The Constant Gardener
Despite the rave reviews it was receiving, I didn’t see this film on the big screen when it was released. Hell, when it first came out on DVD I didn’t even rush to rent it either. This is reflected in the fact that when I did my annual ‘Top Twenty’ countdown of what I consider the year’s best flicks, The Constant Gardener was not included and only ‘just’ secured a mention in the ‘Not Yet Seen So Can’t Be Included’ paragraph near the article’s end. Had I seen it within enough of a time frame to be included in the article then I would not have had any problem at all in throwing it straight into first position. This very clearly was the best film of that year and I, very clearly, am a total fuck-tard for not making the effort to go and see it and allowing my distaste for both Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz to affect my desire to view Fernando Meirelles follow-up to (the very much loved by me and pretty much everybody else) City of God. Had it not been for somebody literally buying me a copy of the DVD and literally thrusting it into my collection whether I wanted them to or not, then I’d probably never have seen this flick and, now that I have, I don’t honestly know how I’d get by without having this as part of my collection – my love for the flick and what it has to say is THAT strong! If, like me, you think Fiennes is a pretentious, over-rated arsehole who cannot pronounce his first name correctly and that Weisz is an obnoxious, over-bearing ‘talent’ stretching mediocrity to its very limits then… this is definitely the flick for you! Both actors absolutely blew me away with this film and gave two of that year’s most accomplished performances. Whilst they’ve not exactly impassioned me to the point of opening up Fan Clubs for the both of them, Fiennes and Weisz’ performances within this film were so good that they’ve made me not want to judge them so harshly and prematurely next time. Which, for a judgemental cock-splash like me, is a pretty big deal! PS This film really is as ace as you’ve heard it to be and if you haven’t checked it already then really do hunt it out. It’s timely, it’s thought-provoking and, in the ever-excellent Bill Nighy, you have one of the big screen’s best-ever representations of what real-life evil looks like!The Conversation
For me, this is Francis Ford Coppola’s best film. Yeah, I love The Godfather and it’s sequel a great deal but what with it being an adaptation and the claims of cast improvisation and Robert Evans asserting that a lot of the films’ success was down to him, you can never be TRULY certain as to how much of those films were really, really down to JUST Coppola. Whereas with The Conversation this really is his baby – he wrote it, he produced it, he directed and he financed it. It is a truly superb piece of work and one of the best movies of the 70s equalling and nearly bettering his own ‘hack for hire’ jobs on The Godfather and The Godfather Part II. Gene Hackman delivers one of his best ever performances that, alongside the double-slap of Popeye Doyle in The French Connection movies, pretty much hands the decade of 70s cinema over to him. For those not in the know, Hackman plays Harry Caul, a respected but far-from-perfect surveillance expert who cannot shift the all-consuming guilt he feels about two deaths as a result of his previous assignment. When his latest job – eavesdropping and subsequently recording a pair of young lovers – looks very much like ‘murder’ is in store for his “subjects”, Harry decides to stop avoiding the moral consequences of his occupation and try to stop the force that not only hired him for the job but is now working against him in his desire to protect his subjects. An absolute five star unarguable classic, driven by Coppola firing on all cylinders, editor Walter Murch delivering yet another faultless job, David Shire scoring the movie with a mix of Harry Caul’s favourite music, jazz, and tension soaked piano pieces. As previously mentioned though, the real heart of the film is Hackman who’s climactic ‘snap’, mentally, will just about break your heart and knock you back into the seat Coppola has put you on the edge of for the previous 109 minutes!Defence of the Realm
Two seemingly unrelated incidents in the mid-80s send down-at-heel, disreputable reporter Nick Mullen (the ever excellent Gabriel Byrne) into a tailspin of political corruption, deceit and endangered lives. First, two teenagers attempt an escape from a young offenders institute and second, a sex-and-politics scandal erupts involving distinguished member of parliament, Sir Dennis Markham (the late Ian Bannen) who has been caught out by the press leaving the home of a well-known escort – who also just happened to be offering her services to an East German official as well. While Markham’s loyalty to his country is called into question and his career subsequently ruined, Mullen is assigned the write-up of the fall-out. When one of his colleagues goes after the same story and ends up dead after chasing a specific lead, Mullen decides to dig deeper and ends up – with the help of his colleague’s secretary (Greta Scacchi) – uncovering evidence of a sinister government-sponsored covert operation that puts both their lives in danger. I’ll be the first to admit that David Drury’s political thriller has not aged particularly well in terms of its production and overall look but it’s still a cracking little conspiracy yarn that, in today’s climate, is remarkably pertinent and has some great performances from Byrne, Bannen, Scacchi and the late, great and always brilliant Denholm Elliott. It’s seemingly only available on the Carlton Silver range here in the UK which, seeing as they’re no longer pushed off the production line anymore, means it’d be a rare find but a very cheap one. It’s definitely worth getting a hold of if you get the chance and, like me, love yourself a good conspiracy flick!Enemy of the State
Who ever thought that this was going to be as good as it was? Come on, be honest! Jerry Bruckheimer (and the late Don Simpson post-humorously) producing? Tony Scott directing and Will Smith playing his first real straight role in a film about the ‘big bad’ of modern day governmental surveillance and inter-agency corruption? Yeah right! Empty-headed ‘popcorn’ action flick, maybe, but no critically acclaimed genre piece that still stands up nearly ten years down the line! Could we be totally wrong? There’s a few things you’ve got to take into account before allowing your assumptions to blind you against how highly this film should be regarded: Will Smith is insanely talented so there should be nothing stopping him playing a dramatic role if he wants to (although I say this AFTER doubting his ability to portray Muhammad Ali for Michael Mann, only for him to blow me away!), Jerry Bruckheimer is unarguably one of the greatest, if not the greatest, movie producer in the business (you might not like his shit, but that shit you don’t like is well-conceived, well-made and well-sold “shit” at that and, most importantly of all, it always makes a boat-load of dollars!) and Tony Scott is all too easily referred to as the “lesser-talented of the Scott brothers” but is in fact a worthy talent in his own right, just a more outright and blatantly commercial one at that. Not to forget that he’d delivered [at that point] three out of four times on cinematic-outings for Bruckheimer (Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop II and Crimson Tide – with Days of Thunder being poorly regarded but urgently due for reassessment, being as under-rated as it is!). Then there’s that cast that the two of them managed to put together – even to this day it is still one of the best ensembles ever listed: Will Smith and Gene Hackman (his identity photo from Coppola’s The Conversation is used in this film, making this a semi-sequel in subject matter, tone and appearance to that earlier 70s classic!) work alongside (deep breath) Jon Voight, Regina King, Loren Dean, Jake Busey, Barry Pepper, Ian Hart, Gabriel Byrne, Lisa Bonet, Seth Green, Jack Black, Tom Sizemore, Jason Robards, Jason Lee, Scott Caan and… and… I’m probably missing a few people too! Pull this off your shelf and watch it tonight if you own it or make a dash to your local rental outlet and pick it up. It deserves your immediate reassessment as one of the best modern conspiracy classics!Fahrenheit 9/11
Is this ‘really’ all one big conspiracy? As questionable as Michael Moore’s documentary tactics are, allegedly (and this is a word going to be used quite considerably throughout this mini-review), what can’t be argued is that – regardless of how the footage of the President of the United States is edited and placed in different contexts throughout this flick – the actual words used by Bush in some instances are offensive, insensitive, ill-thought-out and just generally thick-headed REGARDLESS (“I remember when I heard about the first plane hitting the towers and I thought to myself ‘Boy, that’s one poor pilot!’”)! Moore’s documentary about the governmental foreign policy post-9/11 suggests a conspiracy “yarn” that no Hollywood thriller could get an audience to embrace realistically: Here, allegedly, is a President with Saudi connections to the attacks of September 11th 2001 that he refuses to address to his people, who, allegedly, did indeed help spirit members of family relating to the terrorist responsible out off American soil for protection and whose inner circle (and dark ‘big business forces’ behind the scenes pulling his strings?!?) allegedly and sycophantically ushered him headlong into a war on Iraq with questionable intelligence to justify such actions! You know, I don’t always agree with Michael Moore and his statements, or his methods of publicity or even some of the dishonest tactics he uses in his “films” but my hatred of Bush (the president, not the hairy coating outside the fleshy-female-gates-of-utopia!) overrides all of that on this occasion. And Condoleezza? Just one quick thing… Making statements in congress, questioning how anyone could ever have second guessed someone being so vile as to use commercial airplanes as “missiles” against stationary objects of importance? That’s just silly isn’t it? Haven’t you heard of googling shit to make yourself sound more educational before speaking on matters of any importance? Does the name Samuel J. Bicke mean nothing to you? 1974 – This unhinged man tries to hijack a commercial airplane to fly it into the White House of all places (you know – where YOU worked?) because he’s unhappy with what he considers to be Richard Nixon’s repeated failings of the US people. There’s evidence of the very thing you deny ever being thought possible within your own American history! Sean friggin’ Penn made a movie about it for fucks sake. You can’t get better ‘revision’ then watching the movie instead of doing the reading! Come on now! Okay… deep breath… rant over! Promise!The General’s Daughter
Now this is a proper ‘potboiler’ of a movie that I’ve got a great deal of affection for. It’s no classic and it doesn’t have any pretensions about being considered as such. It’s just a good, old fashioned, star-led thriller that we last got to taste in the early to mid-nineties back when John Grisham adaptations were still done well and with enthusiasm. This could have been the franchise character Travolta needs but keeps thinking himself above the call of (although I would’ve said the same about his Chilli Palmer in Get Shorty till I saw the sequel, Be Cool). His interpretation of Nelson DeMille’s Paul Brenner (although written by DeMille with Bruce Willis in mind!) is a delight of dry, sarcastic humour, reluctant bravery and quick, analytical thinking. I would love to see a return from Travolta to the character in bringing DeMille’s sequel-novel, Up Country (about Brenner returning to ‘Nam to investigate a decades old murder), to the screen. In the meantime though, whilst Travolta opts for the likes of Basic, Wild Hogs and Hairspray, we’ve only got the original screen adaptation to enjoy and what enjoyment it is, as Travolta’s Paul Brenner, a Warrant Officer and respected military investigator, is called to Fort MacCallum to investigate the murder of a renowned female officer who also just happens to be the daughter of the base’s General, and future presidential candidate, (James Cromwell). His investigation, with the help of Madeline Stowe as his co-investigator and former fling, leads him into the underbelly of military practises, seedy private lives and hidden secret obsessions behind the scenes of one General’s esteemed military façade. Along the way, Travolta and Stowe go up against the likes of Timothy Hutton, Clarence Williams III and James Woods but whose secret is the biggest and, in this rather interesting and never less than entertaining game of cat and mouse, who will unlock the mystery of the General’s daughter?The Interpreter
What a crushing disappointment this flick was. I really wanted to see this when it first came out but, personal matters aside, it was gone from the cinemas before I had a chance to see it. I was sad enough to stick the date of its DVD release in my diary and rushed out to buy it when it did come out. I mean, look at the roster of ‘cool’ attached to the film – Sean Penn playing the lead in the sort of mainstream genre picture that he usually avoids, Catherine Keener getting [then] proper exposure playing his Secret Service partner and getting all of the movie’s best lines at the same time, Sydney Pollack returning to the ‘conspiracy movie’ genre after the masterpiece that was Three Days of the Condor, Nicole Kidman (as reliable a modern day ‘great’ actress as I suppose you can get these days) playing the title character, the film itself being the first to actually shoot inside the fabled grounds of the United Nations and, of course, a script by Charles Randolph that was rewritten by two of the industry’s best penmen, Scott Frank and Steve Zaillian. You have got to admit, that is a lot of ‘cool’ right? But, asides from a superbly executed sequence involving a bomber on a bus that ranks as one of that year’s best movie moments, this is a film that really fell flat for me. Maybe it’s because the hype I had allowed to build up for wanting to see it couldn’t compete with the reality of what it actually was. All I know that, brilliant bus sequence aside, it’s a thriller that is ponderous, self indulgent and has two leads that, despite being insanely talented, end up “phoning in” their performances. Now it sits on my DVD shelf as a constant reminder of the fact that there are ‘no certainties’ anymore and never to buy a DVD for full retail price ever again without having seen it before (rookie mistake!!), renting first or abusing the burning software on my PC is the expected protocol these days.Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Yeah, there are people who are going to flame me for rating Philip Kaufman’s 70s remake version above Don Siegel’s original classic – then there’s people that will probably argue that the Abel Ferrara version is superior or that I should keep my mouth shut until I’ve seen the impending Joel Silver produced ‘update/reimagining’ with Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman. No thanks, I’m going all out on this one and stating that this is the best version of Jack Finney’s classic novel and if Pauline Kael says the film is “undiluted pleasure and excitement. It may be the best film of its kind ever made” then I’m sticking with Pauline. Updating the film to the 1970s and changing the locale to beautiful San Francisco, Donald Sutherland, a young Jeff Goldblum, Brooke Adams, Veronica Cartwright and Leonard ‘Spock from Star Trek’ Nimoy star in the story of spores that fall from space and take root in the San Franciscan city, beautifully transforming it with spectacular and exotic flowers. Yet the ‘blossoms from space’ reveal gruesome intents for the human inhabitants of the planet and start to clone their bodies inside their flowery pods, before disposing of the originals! Sutherland is the local Health Inspector who tries, valiantly, to make a stand and stop the ‘invasion’ but finds himself going up against local cults and scientific figures who are embracing the process. Written by W.D Richter (he was the fella that wrote Buckaroo Banzai and whose original script was rewritten to become Big Trouble in Little China) this is a cracking slice of 70s paranoia with that awesome, now much discussed and derided, final moment involving Sutherland that will literally chill every bit of blood in your body!The Manchurian Candidate
Point blank, probably one of the strongest conspiracy movies today that – asides from Sinatra’s ‘kung fu’ moment with Henry Silva’s assassin – hasn’t aged at all. It’s still as relevant and suggestive now as it was when it was first released (or ‘eventually released’ as it were, seeing as it was momentarily shelved and attempted to be abandoned by the studios in the wake of JFK’s assassination) and thrillingly directed by John Frankenheimer (who also did the fucking brilliant conspiracy flick Seven Days In May with Kirk Douglas that I’m struggling to get my hands on). Who’d have thought that Ol’ Blue Eyes himself, Mr Sinatra, and bloody Angela Lansbury would have kicked the ball out of the park and into the stratosphere with their roles in this film? The film, for those very, very few uninitiated, deals with Army Major Bennett Marco (Sinatra) who, on returning from battle, recommends Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) for the Medal of Honour, saying he was heroic and brave in the line of duty. But, despite what he actually says to people, Marco begins to suspect whether he really believes it as a bizarre, reoccurring nightmare suggests Shaw is something far more insidious and threatening to his country. Struggling to convince the Army of his suspicions, Shaw teams up with a stranger on a train (Janet Leigh) who embraces his troubling thoughts to tackle Shaw and his power-mad mother (Angela Lansbury) in a race against time. The film’s finale is a cinematic master class in how to produce perfect on-screen tension and edge-of-the-seat thrills. What really gives the flick its extra edge though, is the ongoing suggestions relating to the relationship between Sinatra and Leigh’s characters. The dialogue is stilted and bizarre and could be considered as a form of code, which in itself suggests that Marco’s mind is being controlled and that Leigh’s character is his handler in much the same way that Lansbury’s character is Shaw’s! Could it be, and here is where the ATBs come in handy for those STILL reading and committed to these sorts of movies, that the Manchurian Candidate of the title is in fact the Sinatra character and NOT the Harvey one. That the aim of the entire film was for Shaw and his obsessed mother, maybe classed as a Manchurian experiment gone wrong, to be removed and Marco was the ‘operative’ to be used? Discuss…The Manchurian Candidate (2004)
Now if ever a film really, really, really did not require a remake then Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate was definitely it. Thankfully by sticking very closely indeed to the original’s plot path and intentions, a respectful and sometimes rather brilliant conspiracy thriller emerges at the hands of Jonathan Demme (whose last remake, The Truth About Charlie starring Mark Walberg, was one of the worst films ever made). The unavoidable updates and changes are slight but undamaging – bringing Shaw’s mother (a terrifying and superb turn by Meryl Streep) closer to the front of things and making her motives (both political and incestuous) more obvious (clearly modern audiences don’t do subtlety right?), giving more of a face to the Manchurian Corporation and the mechanics of ‘big bad businesses’ turning the cogs and wheels of American politics – and Denzel Washington’s reinterpretation of Sinatra’s original character is interesting and suitably updated. I avoided this flick at the cinema and, as long time readers may be aware, flamed its very existence in the talkbacks around this site because of my unwavering love for the original movie, which was a bit silly considering I should have waited until I’d actually seen it (although it doesn’t stop Harry Knowles!). I eventually caught up with the film on ex-rental DVD for like £1.99 or something and just gave in to my curiosity as to how bad it would actually be. The answer? Not bad at all. Actually, surprisingly decent. Well worth a watch and one of the better remakes that are out there. Yet if you’ve only got space on your shelf for one version of this film then it’s going to be the original every time right?The Man Who Knew Too Much
This is the 1955 version of Charles Bennett and D.B Wyndam-Lewis’ original story. The one with James Stewart and Doris Day (yes, Doris Day!!). The one where Alfred Hitchcock remakes his original 1934 interpretation of the same story simply because he “knew [he] could do it better”. The one that should have won the 1956 Academy Award for Best Film and Best Director but took away Best Song instead, for Day’s ‘Que Sera Sera’. It’s the story of Ben (Stewart) and Jo (Day) McKenna, everyday innocent Americans holidaying in Morocco with their son, Hank. When a French spy dies in Ben’s arms in the Marrakech market (which, in between bag thefts, dysentery and people trying to sell you yellow-sprayed jewellery passed off as gold, happens ALL the time!) the couple discovers Hank has been kidnapped and taken to England. Not knowing who they can trust, the McKenna’s are caught up in a nightmare of international espionage, assassinations and terror, leading them to face the truth and the rescue of their son within the grounds of London’s famous Royal Albert Hall. This is one of the conspiracy movie genre’s best ‘vintage’ flicks. What you would call an “iconic classic”, being much-loved and much-copied even to this day. Hell, the ‘innocent trapped in a web of conspiracy’ is something that Hitchcock had used before (with not only the original version of this film but also his interpretation of The 39 Steps) and would use again to far superior effect in the masterpiece that is North by Northwest.Marathon Man
“Is it safe?” “Is it safe?” “Is it safe?” “Is it safe?” Sorry, we had to get that out of the way didn’t we? I like to think of this as William Goldman’s best screenplay. But then there’s Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid. And The Princess Bride. Okay, so it’s one of his best screenplays and an ace little conspiracy thriller to boot – although I didn’t always have this opinion! Dustin Hoffman plays the graduate student and part-time marathon runner of the movie’s title who, because of his brother’s (Roy Scheider) sinister government spook antics, finds himself unwillingly trapped in a game of intrigue and deadly cat and mouse against Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier), a Nazi fugitive desperately in search of stashed diamonds which hold the security of his future and leverage against his enemies. With a cast that also includes William Devane (Audrey’s dad in 24) and Marthe Keller, Goldman’s script and John Schlesinger’s direction is a fast-paced, nail-biting run (pardon the pun!) through corrupt government agents and operatives, secrets, lies, hidden agendas and the innocent people caught up in the middle of it. Yeah, the torture-by-dentistry-scene is still as effective and effecting as it was on its first release. “Is it safe?” “Is it safe?” “Is it safe?” “Is it safe?” This is a film that I feel I grew into. I hated it when I first saw it and never got past the first twenty minutes. Then again, I was like 14 years of age or something and this is not a film for boys wanking to Pamela Anderson in Baywatch who still believe that meeting and fucking her is a “possibility”. As I ventured into my adult years I read the novel by Goldman that the film is based on and I enjoyed that. I decided to give the film another go. Even then I liked it. I didn’t go head over heels for it. I have to admit that, despite the writings about the film regarding it as some sort of modern classic, I never “got” what all the fuss was about. It’s only been recently – i.e. in the last two or three years – when I’ve started to really get into conspiracy movies in a REALLY big way and start to write stuff about them, that I decided to take another look at the flick from a different angle… the love affair began soon after!Minority Report
Blighted completely by a third-act twist stolen wholesale (edit-for-edit) from Curtis Hanson’s LA Confidential, and also by Spielberg’s continuing inability to not fudge the ending of his more recent works, Minority Report is still a speedy paced sci-fi adventure yarn that sees a future Washington D.C blessed with being murder-free, thanks to the advanced technology that allows killers to be identified before they commit their crimes. When the Chief of this very Pre-Crime Unit (Tom Cruise) is himself accused of a “future murder”, he finds himself on the wrong side of his own team and colleagues, and just thirty-six hours to discover who set him up and why – or he’ll become a victim to the very system he helped create! This flick takes a lot of bashing and charges of unevenness and self-indulgence are justified but it is still a thrill ride, riddled with some superbly executed set pieces (the hijacked rocket-pack escape, the fight inside the car factory, the avoiding of the surveillance spiders) and a plot that twists and turns on itself very well until it does so for too long and ends up tying itself into a big pile of pretentious knots. Very much a forgotten Spielberg gem these days, when you watch it alongside the likes of The Man Who Knew Too Much, this has the feel and experience of what it’d be like if Hitchcock made a science fiction version of one of his “wrong man on the run” movies!Murder By Decree
This is one of my secret ‘favourite’ flicks. The one that I tend not to shout from the roof-tops about because I’m scared of people calling it nasty names and me having to fight its defence like it’s one of my own children. The one that I like to pretend was made just for me and that nobody else knows about. It’s also the late Bob Clark’s (too easily disregarded as the “man behind Porky’s”) best work and the masterpiece within his filmography. Christopher Plummer and James Mason offer up my all-time favourite incarnations of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, respectively, (I love their little comedic moments together – one such moment being their discussion as to the best method of picking peas up off the plate) as they investigate the murders of Jack the Ripper (you there, stop laughing at the back!!) and uncover, in the process, a conspiracy that reaches the highest society members in the country and involves the sinister movements of the Freemasons and members of the Royal Family. Said ‘conspiracy’ is, for the purposes of full disclosure, one taken and ran with by Alan Moore for his ‘From Hell’ comic books and the subsequent cripplingly mediocre film version. It’s a suggested explanation for the killing spree of Jack the Ripper that is surprisingly plausible in its absolute lunacy, if you know what I mean? I dig the hell out of this flick and I always get goose bumps in the film’s final twenty minutes when Plummer’s Holmes goes to a closed meeting with the Prime Minister (played rather woodenly by stage great John Gielgud), the Home Secretary and the Head of the Police and launches into his brilliantly-written, sublimely performed monologue of exposition that ties to together everything we have previously viewed. “I accuse…” Own this film NOW!No Way Out
Can we talk about this flick as if you’ve all seen it, yeah? If you haven’t and you don’t know the huge twist that shakes the foundations of this film then just skip this one and carry on with the next review. I want to talk about why I dig the hell out of this conspiracy film but why I dig it is intricately tied to the sheer bizarre lunacy of its very plot that should never in a million years work as wonderfully at engrossing you as what it does. Naval Commander Tom Farrell (Kevin Costner) begins a secret affair with society girl Susan Atwell (Sean Young), unaware that she is also the mistress of Secretary of Defence David Brice (Gene Hackman). When Brice suspects that she is playing away behind his back, he accidentally kills her in a fit of rage and enlists his loyal aide, Scott Pritchard (Will Patton) to cover up the crime. Pritchard comes up with the perfect decoy – he “invents” the notion of a Russian Spy, hiding within the governmental structure and who was responsible for the murder of Miss Atwell. He also hires Farrell to investigate the murder and hunt down the “Spy”. Farrell becomes stuck when his personal connection to the deceased reveals that all the clues and forensics that he uncovers point straight back at him. In a desperate, race against time Farrell realises that he must circumvent the actual evidence and find a way of bringing the case back to the door of Senator Brice, all the while protecting the biggest secret of all – that the fiction of the “Russian Spy” is actually fact and that his identity is none other than Commander Farrell himself! This is a taut, stylish, fast-paced nailbiter that has absolutely no right to be as good as what it actually is. It should be nothing more than a ‘guilty pleasure’ but thanks to Costner and Hackman, Robert Garland’s tense screenplay and the assured direction of Roger Donaldson, this is a film that will transcend being forgotten or brushed aside in a packed genre!The Package
This is the real under-rated gem of the conspiracy movie sub-genre. It’s a forgotten political thriller explosively directed by Andrew Davis (the guy who gave us The Fugitive) and written as a screenplay by John Bishop as if it were the inner workings of a clock with all the cogs and mechanisms that go with it. Starring Gene Hackman (always a sign of a superior conspiracy movie flick if you ask me, just look at The Conversation, Enemy of the State and No Way Out for further evidence) as Army Sergeant Johnny Gallagher, he thinks he’s been given a routine assignment to escort a rebellious rule-breaking American solider called Thomas Boyette (Tommy Lee Jones) from Europe to the United States for a court martial. But when Gallagher is attacked in a station bathroom and Boyette is freed from his custody, he decides to avoid military disciplining for his failure by hunting down and bringing the escapee back into custody. In the process, Gallagher discovers a terrifying military conspiracy involving an assassination bid at an upcoming, historic, political summit. This is a really good action thriller, a genuine diamond in the rough. It’s a multiple character, heavy on the plot, no clues given sort of ride that’s not for people seeking escapism but for those in search of a flick that rewards your attention and your commitment. Give it a go, you’ll have a great time with this film and if you’ve never really watched conspiracy movies before then this is a really good ‘introduction’ to the twisty, turny, attention-requiring plots that usually drive them but with a lot more action beats then is usually found within.The Parallax View
This is the Daddy of all conspiracy movies. Never has a movie been released more pertinently to the time period and mood that it is reflecting. While America wallowed in the aftermath of Nixon fucking with them and the subsequent Watergate scandal where he fucked with them a little bit more and the country tried to recover from the Vietnam war, Alan J. Pakula (a master director of this sub-genre with All the President’s Men and, to a lesser extent The Pelican Brief also to his name!) delivered one of the best cinematic studies in paranoid fears becoming very real, deadly facts in the greatest political conspiracy flick of the 70s. When a popular US senator is shot dead by a waiter at the Seattle Space Needle three years previously, Lee Carter (Paula Prentiss), a television reporter, goes to dishevelled and poorly regarded hack journalist Joe Frady (Warren Beatty), frightened for her life. According to her, any and all witnesses to the death of the senator three years ago have been systematically killed in murders dressed up as supposed accidents and she believes she is next in line. Frady discounts her fears as irrational paranoia, but after her alleged suicide, doubt starts to creep into his mind. Against the better judgement of his weary editor, Edgar Rintels (Hume Cronyn), he starts investigating the story that she originally brought to him and uncovers, in the process, a huge conspiracy involving the mysterious ‘Parallax Corporation’, a secret company that recruits assassins to eliminate troublemakers on their “list” by way of mind-control and subversive indoctrination (represented in the film’s key moment by an expertly edited ‘induction’ video that all recruits are shown by Parallax.) Like the previous great conspiracy flick, The Manchurian Candidate, the film was delayed in its release and eventually snuck out in June of 1974. Critics and audiences embraced the film as a deliberate attempt to offer some sort of explanation for the JFK assassination through historical parallels (the photographs that imply a second gunman at Dallas that day; the fact that many of the assassination witnesses died mysteriously in the immediate years after 1963). Everyone should own this film!The Pelican Brief
I bought this for 99p from the bargain basket of my local Woolworths simply because of Alan J. Pakula directing a return to the sub-genre he masterfully owned back in the 70s. Unfortunately, it’s one of those dated DVDs whereby Warner Bros. decided to put half the film on one side of the disc and the other on the reverse side. Which was nice and helpful but totally unnecessary! Based on the potboiler of a novel by John Grisham, the adaptation was done by Pakula himself which was another reason I thought I’d give it a try. Two Supreme Court Justices have been murdered and a law school student (Julia Roberts – at the height of her post-Pretty Woman boom where she could do no wrong!) turns her suspicions about their deaths into a highly speculative essay that sends shock waves through the highest levels of government and shakes the foundations of the corrupt figures behind the deaths, when it turns out that her ‘theory’ is absolutely hit-the-nail-on-the-head accurate. When assassins come after her, she teams with a determined investigative reporter (Denzel Washington) to make sure that the truth gets out before they both end up with a bullet in their head. It’s an entertaining enough film that’s in the collection more out of a sense of completion and respect towards Pakula’s other works within this genre then out of it being an out-and-out brilliant film. Pakula has taken a massively excessive ‘airport read’ and adapted it a little too faithfully which has resulted in an overlong and overly complex film, full of leads that peter out rather than take us in a satisfying direction. The sort of thing that any book of this type is always riddled with but a film adaptation does not require. Saying that, it’s as safe a mainstream conspiracy flick as you can get that does rattle along at a fair old pace once it finds its feet every now and again. And, what a cast eh? Alongside Roberts and Washington, you’ve got Sam Shepard, John Heard (another ‘conspiracy flick mainstay’), Tony Goldwyn, William Atherton (‘dickless’ from Ghostbusters and the first two Die Hard movies! Yeah!), Robert Culp, Stanley Tucci, Hume Cronyn (from Pakula’s Parallax View masterpiece!) and John Lithgow!Three Days of the Condor
In the film’s superbly staged opening gambit, Robert Redford’s bookish CIA ‘reader’ (codenamed ‘Condor’) takes a break from his job at a disguised New York brownstone – really a CIA operation for reading all published books to gain facts and intelligence that may be slipping through the international radar or being used as codes – to go on the lunch run for the rest of his colleagues. Whilst he is away, the building is compromised and all the inhabitants are brutally assassinated. On his return, Condor discovers the murders and calls it in to his CIA superior (Cliff Robertson), only to find himself targeted by the unknown killers of his associates as the ‘client they missed’. On the run and slowly realising that his employers are, in fact, behind the whole thing, Condor kidnaps a lonely photographer (Faye Dunaway) and forces her to assist him in staying alive long enough to uncover what the hell is going on. Unfortunately, Condor’s much required death is now a matter of urgency and the CIA have no choice but to put the world’s greatest assassin (Max Von Sydow) out after him. The film is still as ace now as it was back in the 70s. It’s the seed from which the likes of the superb Bourne movies have grown and Sydney Pollack keeps the pace fast and tight. There’s very little flab on the bones of this movie. It’s criminally STILL unavailable here in the UK but imports from the US are dirt cheap so if you’re into this sort of movie, then you can’t get by without having seen this and it’s well worth bringing over from Yank-Land.Silver City
An all-star cast (Maria Bello, Thora Birch, Chris Cooper, Richard Dreyfuss, Miguel Ferrer, Darryl Hannah, Danny Huston, Kris Kristofferson, Michael Murphy, Mary Kay Place, Tim Roth, Ralph Waite and Billy Zane) converge together in writer/director John Sayles’ excellent political satire aimed directly in the face of George W. Bush and the workings of his inner circle. Bush-clone Senator Dicky Pilager (Chris Cooper, channelling Bush rather well) is nervous, inarticulate and grammatically challenged – perfectly qualified to become Colorado State Governor according to his own rich and influential father. So Dicky hits the campaign trail, backed by his domineering dad’s money/influence and controlled like a puppet by the evil big business corporations that feel they own him. Everything goes according to plan until a fishing trip arranged specifically for the media, captures Dicky reeling in a mangled and decaying corpse. The dark forces behind Dicky’s campaign need to know whether this is an unfortunate coincidence or a plot to destroy the Pilager’s political ambitions. Campaign Manager, Chuck Raven (Richard Dreyfuss) hires a down-at-heel private investigator (Danny Huston) to find out which it is only for the truth to unravel and reveal much, much more! You can always rely on Sayles to have a strong opinion and not be afraid of voicing it through his films. Silver City is no different. It appeared to be completely kicked around in the US despite strong critical acclaim and it never really found a cinema screen to land on here in the UK. If you like your films to have something current and biting then this is a pretty strong recommendation!The Spanish Prisoner
This is David Mamet’s masterpiece in a career littered with them. It’s a mesmerising, compelling experience where trying to appear clever and second guess it is an absolute impossibility. As Empire magazine said in their four-star review of the flick, you have to “just sit back and let the movie take you for a ride”. You know those movies where Trailer-Voice-Man tells us that “nothing is what it seems” and “nobody can be trusted” but then you go to see the movie and within minutes you’re shouting out who the bad guy is and why. Yes, The Recruit and Mr Al Pacino, I’m talking to you. Well this is the movie that those bad versions go to bed at night and dream of being. Joe Ross (the always excellent Campbell Scott) is a man on the brink of something big. He has designed a process – a process to what and involving what we are never told and the movie is all the more infuriatingly brilliant for it – that will make his company millions and him a very wealthy man. Unnerved by a lack of enthusiasm and commitment from his boss (Ben Gazzara), a chance meeting with Dell (Steve Martin, in an unbelievably assured and impressive ‘straight’ role), a wealthy jetsetter, causes him to further suspect the true intentions of his colleagues and come to realise that, with a process this good, everybody wants to obtain it but does anyone actually want it by legal and wealth-inducing methods? And, if nothing else, this film teaches us that we should never, never, never disregard those Japanese tourists we always see floating around our favourite landmarks!
Spartan
Another David Mamet firecracker! I have very vivid memories of seeing this for the first time. It didn’t, for some reason, get a cinema release over here in the UK – which is absolutely criminal considering the shit they throw up on the big screen these days – and I was really desperate to see it. I’d started to become a bit of a Mamet fan, not just of his script jobs but also his directorial output, and this was something I was really up for experiencing. One day I work up and realised that I was stuck experiencing the day from hell, every single cliché imaginable occurred to me; tentative relationship that I had high hopes for faltered and broke up, I got told I was being made redundant and my landlord told me that he would either have to add another £100 to my monthly rent or sell my flat out from underneath me. I’m serious. All of that shit… in the space of one eight hour period! Then, whilst in the supermarket that night, there in the new release section was David Mamet’s Spartan. There was no pomp or advertisement prior to its release. One minute it was a film I was considering importing on Region 1 as it had no release window here in the UK. The next minute, here it was thrown out for under a tenner. I decided I needed cheering up and bought it up there and then and, unlike my experience taking a chance on Sydney Pollack’s The Interpreter, this was an absolute delight to watch. I loved every minute of it. I still do. I think it’s a smart, adult thriller that refuses to pull any punches or appeal to the lowest common denominator like most studio-produced mainstream “thrillers” do (the closest comparison to be made is to look at Mark Walberg’s latest, Shooter, and compare it to this film. This is how it’s done effectively and properly). Val Kilmer (in his much-derided ‘plump phase’ but owning every minute he is on screen and proving to be a total badass in the process) plays Robert Scott, a US government secret agent hardened by years of brutal service and feared by both his peers and enemies as a result. Pulled from assessing and training the newest recruits to follow him into his specific line of work, Scott is tasked with finding Laura Newton (Veronica Mars’ Kristen Bell), the teenage daughter of the President of the United States, who has disappeared, despite being under close secret service surveillance, and is feared to have been kidnapped. Dragging a novice solider (Derek Luke) from out of his training to assist in his operation, Scott has to work fast to find the girl before the story leaks to the media. But whilst working with a special task force, they stumble upon a sinister plot involving a white slavery ring running out of America and into the Middle East, and Stoddard (William H. Macy – a close Mamet friend and regular cast member) a corrupt political operative who will do everything in his power to hinder Scott in his mission. I really dig this film a lot. I like the long lay-up the film presents us with as we follow Scott through the actual foot work of the investigation, trailing the missing girl’s university and favourite club’s for clues or breaking out a prisoner from police custody in a faux sting in order to illicit important information from him. The things that make this film a unique and thrilling experience is that all those exposition-soaked lines of dialogue that are thrown in to normal run of the mill Hollywood thrillers in between action sequences and plot twists, are the very things that Mamet makes time for and allows to breathe, giving the film a sense of realism and originality that the thriller genre has been lacking lately!State of Play – Complete Series One
Probably my own personal favourite ‘conspiracy’ piece out of the entire ‘Conspiracy Collection’. From a screenplay by the immensely talented Paul Abbott and directed by David Yates (his work here secured him the directors job on the latest Harry Potter film!) this is 340 minutes, split over six episodes, of gritty, tense British drama. It’s currently getting American-ised into a two and a half hour theatrical movie with Brad Pitt as one of the co-leads. You know it won’t be as good so for all you multi-region DVD fanatics out there get on the ol’ interweb and get this imported to wherever you are in the world. David Morrissey (from Basic Instinct 2 but don’t hold that against him) plays Stephen Collins, an ambitious politician hotly tipped for the Cabinet. When his assistant, and secret mistress, falls to her death on the London Underground, it’s not long before revelations of their affair is front page news. However, Cal McAffrey (John Simm), Stephen’s ex-campaign manager turned disgruntled journalist, smells a bigger story within the alleged suicide and, backed by his loyal editor (Bill Nighy) and fellow journalists (Kelly MacDonald, James McAvoy), decides to go after the truth even in the face of the friendships and careers that become endangered as a result. State of Play is, without a shadow of a doubt, there best thing the BBC have ever done and it’s disappointing to know that all involved (David Morrissey, John Simm, the superb Bill Nighy, Kelly MacDonald and James McAvoy) managed to secure bigger and better projects off the back of this show, making it nigh on impossible to reconvene for the originally planned and much desired Second Series. As Abbott himself said “I don’t think I can better what we did originally so why try? I’m not going to cheapen how well-embraced the original series was just to make a second series for the sake of it. Anyway, Morrissey, McAvoy and Mr Nighy are all Hollywood darlings now. Why would they come back to work on my shitty show?” This is TV drama at its most accomplished, rewarding and entertaining. It’s nigh on 6 hours that moves at the rate of a bullet train in Beijing. Nighy is, unarguably, the greatest thing in the entire show and steals every scene he is in. Whatever you do though, don’t start watching this unless you’re prepared to indulge 6 hours because this really is addictive viewing and once you’re twenty minutes into this, you’ll not want to give up on it until the devastatingly tense conclusion. To summarise, Best! TV! Show! Ever!The State Within: The Complete Miniseries
This BBC/BBC American co-production was something, obviously because of the subject matter, that I really wanted to catch up with when it was on TV but shift work dictates that that is rarely possible. Instead I decided to take a chance, based on my adoration of the BBC’s last dalliance in the realms of ‘conspiracy thrillers’ (see above!), and invest in the DVD when it was released. I’m glad that I went into this on DVD because if I’d been watching this as a weekly drama then I would have given up very early on in proceedings. This is a show that, within the first three episodes specifically, is all over the place – throwing information, exposition, plot and character at you from all angles. It’s almost as if the directors (Michael Offer and Daniel Percival) and the writers (Lizzie Mickery and Daniel Percival) don’t expect you to understand anything and everything that is going on but just to mentally log it all for when THEY decide to pay it off in later episodes. This is not a show you just throw on in the background whilst you talk to your friend or flick through a magazine. Every single minute of an episode carries information and clues towards the inevitable payoff. Plot-wise, when a flight explodes in mid-air near Washington D.C (in the show’s stand-out sequence in the opening episode), the capital struggles to come to terms with the disaster. For Mark Brydon (Jason Isaacs, as good as he always is), British Ambassador to Washington, the incident has immediate consequences when it is revealed that the attack was allegedly conducted by a British Muslim fundamentalist. Driven into a web of tangled relationships and conflicting interests, his abilities are tested to their very limits. As truth and lies are sacrificed in favour of expediency, where nothing is what it first appears, Brydon slowly realises that he is being manipulated by an invisible, powerful puppeteer. Torn between his duty and his conscience, unable to trust anyone, Brydon realises he is going to have to throw away the Foreign Office manual and try to get to the heart of the conspiracy if justice is to win out and he is to stay alive. Whilst not a patch on David Yates’ fantastic State of Play, which this desperately wants to be, it’s still a cracking 351 minute thriller. Unfortunately, what blights the entire run is the open, cliff-hanger ending that genuinely feels like a slap to the face after enduring and embracing all that has come before it. Originally intended to have a second series commissioned forthwith (and therefore address the cliffhanger climax), poor ratings on the US side of the pond meant BBC America pulled their funding leaving the BBC here in the UK unable to cover the cost alone. A second series seems unlikely and therefore does any chance of finding out which direction the ‘bluff-calling’ cliffhanger heads off in.Thirteen Days
Roger Donaldson’s second (after the more-brilliant-then-it-deserves-to-be No Way Out) entry into my personal ‘Conspiracy Collection’ is the true story of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Penned by screenwriter David Self as if every single page has been dipped in a vat marked ‘Edge of the Seat Tension’ and with a hugely impressive lead turn by the much-maligned Kevin Costner as presidential aide and confidante, Kenneth P. O’Donnell, this is the story of those extraordinary thirteen days in October 1962 when the world stood on the brink of an unthinkable catastrophe. Across the world, people anxiously awaited the outcome of a political, diplomatic and military confrontation that threatened to end in a heavy nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. Amidst the paralysing chaos, President John F. Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood), his brother Bobby (Steven Culp) and O’Donnell [through who’s eyes events unfold] step up to the forefront of an interaction with a known enemy that, one misstep or one single blink of the eye in the face of such a potential tragedy, could see nuclear devastation occur. This is 143 minutes of magnificently arranged screen tension, hiding within the confines of a hugely over-looked film. The writing and directing is of award winning standards and, faltering Bostonian accent aside, Costner delivers a jaw-droppingly impressive performance. See this movie if you like your true-life, historical flicks whose revealing of lies, double-bluffs, spys and off-the-record government tactics, send it firmly into the realms of real-life conspiracy.The 39 Steps
“An innocent man on the run. A beautiful icy blonde. A fast-moving cross-country pursuit. A chaotic world where no one is ever what they seem.” With a movie tag-line like that you just know that this has got to be Hitchcock, right? Right! This is Hitch’s 1935 interpretation of John Buchan’s famous story – and it’s a very loose interpretation. Anyone whose ever read Buchan’s original story will see that Hitchcock’s classic suspense thriller, the first of his many variations on the ‘wronged man on the run to prove his innocence’ theme, is not the version you want to pick up for a faithful screen reconstruction. For that, look towards that glossy, colour-version with Robert Powell (you know, Jesus of Nazareth? Jasper Carrott’s bumbling partner in the not-as-funny-as-you-remember-it-to-be TV show, The Detectives) in the lead. If you want an exceptional, fast and sometimes very funny ride through the low-level paranoid conspiracy movie sub-genre, then this is the movie that set the template for them and one of the best there is. Robert Donat famously portrays Richard Hannay. Whilst holidaying in London he meets a mysterious woman (Lucie Manheim) who tells him of a spy ring she is trying to expose. She doesn’t know the identity of the “masterspy” but does know that he is missing a portion of the little finger on his right hand. She also cryptically mentions something called “The 39 Steps”. Despite any normal person thinking that this woman is a big-old-bag-of-crazy, Hannay takes her to bed only to wake up the next morning to find her dead. Framed for her murder, he escapes and flees to a town in Scotland which she had circled on a map he found amongst her belongings. Along the way, Hannay comes to realise he is being pursued by, not only the police, but also mysterious members of a secret organisation. In search of the man with the disfigured finger, he meets Pamela (Madeleine Carroll), a fellow innocent who decides to help Hannay after the ‘spys’ handcuff the two together. Imagine the Jason Bourne movies but in black and white… with manners… and Hays Code induced diluted violence… and very terribly “English”… for old people!
The Truman Show
So those of you dedicated, hard-edged bastards still reading this monstrosity (and I’m talking to you Wyv’ and maybe even you too, Nionix and Chris) are going to be looking at the above title and thinking “Truman Show? In his ‘Conspiracy Collection’? Come on now!” I mean, it’s hardly in keeping with much of the type of movies I’ve included in the collection so far is it? But think about it; think about what the film is about. Think about the verb to “conspire” – to plan secretly with other people to do something bad, illegal or against someone’s wishes. You still with me? Yeah? So you wouldn’t find it to OTT of me to therefore to declare Peter Weir’s modern masterpiece one of the best conspiracy flicks of the last ten years. In fact, let me go a little bit stronger seeing as the truly great, timeless conspiracy movies are usually and invariably from within the decade of the 70s, let me state that The Truman Show is, since it’s release in 1998, not only one of the best films ever made but also THE BEST conspiracy film of the last ten years! You all know the plot (a man’s life, unknowingly to him, is a non-stop TV show and that his quaint, island hometown is a giant studio set run by a visionary [and God-like] producer/director/creator, that his neighbours and fellow townies are all paid Hollywood actors and even his overbearingly bubbly wife and fiercely protective mother are ‘contract players’) so all that’s really left of me is to say that if you haven’t seen this flick then you must be insane! This is a film that every self-respecting film fan should own.And in my crappy, snap-shut, Warner Bros. cardboard cover range, we have the following:
All The Presidents Men
Taking Oliver Stone’s JFK out of the equation (and obviously that masterpiece will be covered in a different issue, specifically dedicated to the director’s work), this is probably the most famous of all conspiracy movies being, how it is, soaked in the unfortunate reality of real-life scandal, journalistic integrity and political/moral degradation. This is a film that I often find a lot of people like to hold up on a pedestal, to highlight as being the greatest example of this, that or the other but that very few have actually seen all the way through or even at all. I know that this is definitely the case with a lot of my friends who if I talk about ‘truly great conspiracy flicks’ and I mention something they point blank don’t agree with (usually Enemy of the State I have to admit) whilst forgetting immediately to bow at the altar of this Alan J. Pakula masterpiece, they always throw the title back in my face and I often think to myself “Dude, if you’re going to highlight the greatness of a flick it helps if you’ve seen it!” I mean, don’t get me wrong, I have a great deal of love for this flick and I think it’s a fantastic piece of work. It’s just that this is a film that is reflective of a scandal back in the 70s and, thanks to the work of George W. Bush, we’ve got ourselves a new target and there’s new ‘conspiracy movies’ that are fuelled as a result. Which means, sometimes I don’t always remember to allegedly ‘respect’ the “best conspiracy movie ever made” (which, I honestly don’t feel it is). I think William Goldman’s script is far too poe-faced in certain places and, as admitted in his memoirs, I think he falls victim to pandering to his star/producer (Redford) in certain places, and then having to sacrifice things to appease his other ‘title’ star (Hoffman) as a result. I don’t want to slander this flick too harshly because it is a brilliant, brilliant film FOR IT’S TIME. It’s a great reflective piece on that troublesome period but it is not aging particularly well with each passing year, and with each new Presidential cock-up and scandal, there’s more material for a big, journalist-slanted Bush-attacking movie that I think will more than put this film in the shade. After all, as poorly versed as I am, surely Bush’s indiscretions in comparison to Nixon’s more than put ol’ Dicky in the shade?
City Hall
This is a film that, thanks to the trailer and Al Pacino’s now-patented ‘shouting monologue’, didn’t get as much attention as it deserved for what it really is. Instead it was ignored by audiences – bored by Pacino’s phoned-in, shouting schtick – for what they wrongly thought it was. As a result this hugely under-rated conspiracy drama is owed a lot more love and attention than it has received. For me personally, the marketing campaign completely lost me – being a conspiracy movie fan I’m kind of the target audience for this flick – which just goes to show how poorly the trailers were put together and instead ‘they’ decided to concentrate on highlighting the “reunion” between Sea of Love star Pacino and its director Harold Becker. Which is all well and good, unless you’re someone who used to rate Pacino highly but hated that particular flick and hasn’t liked a great deal of his work since. Like me. Or they decide to under-sell the one thing that would have had me rushing to the cinema… the fact that John Cusack was in the lead. Instead, Warner Bros. dropped the ball on this flick and made it out to be an Al Pacino flick about an honest mayor trying to find out the truth about a gangland killing that saw a child stuck in the crossfire. What it actually turns out to be is a rather excellent (thanks to Scorsese regular scribes Paul Schrader [Taxi Driver] and Nicholas Pileggi [Goodfellas] teaming up with Bo Goldman and Ken Lipper) story of an idealistic mayoral aide (John Cusack) who, after an undercover cop, a local criminal and a small child are murdered on the streets of New York, assists in getting to the bottom of why it happened and in the process uncovers a trail of subversion and cover-ups that lead back to the very place he works and the man he serves and reveres like a father, Major John Pappas (Pacino). I ended up catching this on TV late one night, having to switch off towards the end as I had work the next day and feeling really bad about not knowing how it ended and being intrigued enough by the film overall to nip out after work that night and buy the DVD, cheap, from the local supermarket. It’s become a secret love out of all the ‘disposable’ conspiracy yarns within my collection. Yeah, it’s no classic and compared to a lot of other movies I’ve discussed so far this is one that you’d probably feel no great compunction towards seeing. But I like it a lot… and I just wanted to tell you guys about it!
LA Confidential
I could go on and on about this film all day but I’m going to resist on the grounds that, if you’re still reading, you’ve been punished enough already. All I will say is that, taking it’s inclusion in the Conspiracy Collection aside, I consider this to be one of the ten best films ever made. Full stop. I watch it every couple of months – at the very least – and have seen it well into the hundreds. This is the sort of conspiracy movie that ensnares people who don’t even like seeing “those sorts of films” into watching it, just from the cast alone, and they adore the crap out of it without them realising that they’ve just watched and fell in love with the very sort of film that they hate. I speak from experience on this one; I hate Russell Crowe most of the time, don’t normally have much of a rush on for “period” movies and anything with huge critical hype behind is normally something I avoid because there’s normally a pattern of every single person on the planet loving it asides from me… then I start getting paranoid about what’s so wrong with me and why everyone seems to all like the same things asides from me… before you know it I’m rocking back and forward with the name of the film in question scrawled in marker pen all over the bottom half of my body and a “list” of “people who’ve wronged me” written in excrement all over my top half. So you can imagine that right the way through its cinema and VHS release I avoided this like it was the plague. A male teacher at my college was the one who berated me for not seeing it and called into question my position as “the college’s biggest movie buff” for not having seen it. One night after college, I hung back and he put his tape of Curtis Hanson’s crime labyrinth on and I fell head over heels in love with it. I’ll never forget those 132 minutes I experienced seeing LA Confidential for the first time in a tiny classroom, at the end of the day, in Monkseaton Sixth Form College… which is probably due to 112 of those minutes being spent trying to stop said teacher putting his cock in my mouth but… Nah, I’m just joking with you all. Or so the Filmrot lawyers are requesting that I say I am!
North By Northwest
Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant, taking a role rather regrettably turned down by James Stewart) would like it to be known that he is not, repeat not, a spy. Furthermore, he would like to address that he is not and has never been a murderer. It’s because of these rumours and a rather clever initial moment of mistaken identity that Thornhill is now a wanted man with enemy agents, police and a mysterious blonde (Eva Marie Saint) chasing him across the country on a death-defying race for his life. Relentlessly and viciously pursued by automobile, train and (most memorably of all, in the film’s iconic cropdusting sequence) plane, Thornhill is eventually chased to the top of Mount Rushmore where he has to fight to the death to get his real life back. This is my favourite Hitchcock movie of all time and, despite two other movies of his in this collection and multiple homages to his style, this is without a doubt his strongest piece of work within the conspiracy movie sub-genre. From it’s incredible Saul Bass opening credits and brilliantly mundane catalyst for the film’s events, right past the mysteriously bad James Mason and his [suggestively homosexual] henchman played by Martin Landau, up through the cropdusting attack sequence and finishing at it’s thrilling Mount Rushmore based finale, this film is a masterful blend of suspense and romance, action and comedy and, unarguably, one of the most thrilling adventure films Hitchcock (or anyone else for that matter) has ever brought to the screen!
You can wake up now. That’s it. We’re done. We’ve pulled my ‘Conspiracy Collection’ off the shelf and gone from Arlington Road to The Truman Show, and All The President’s Men to North by Northwest. I’m sorry it took so long and if you did stick with it, through what is essentially 16 pages of A4 text, then I just want to thank you very, very much and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this particular column (Issue 5 of many!). The Talkbalks are yours to do as you wish:
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