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Reviews
Quadrophenia (1979)
Rounded & concise
A film by, but not starring, The Who. If you expect this to be something like its stablemate (Tommy) then you'd be very much mistaken.
The main character, Jimmy Cooper, is excellently portrayed as the classic mixed up youth, by Phil Daniels; whilst the film itself is a brutally realistic portrayal of a London mod caught in the midst of the antagonism between the mods & rockers in 1964. The film perfectly captures the period as well as the teenage need to belong to a group, & with your own kind.
There is an excellent supporting cast, including Leslie Ash, Toyah Wilcox, Michael Elphick, Mark Wingett, & Sting. All of the characters are convincing & essential to the plot, which shows a disillusioned Jimmy, chasing his personal pipe dreams, whilst on a drug-fuelled downward spiral, slowly losing all that is important to him.
Jimmy wants to be an 'Ace-Face' - a leader of his kind. He wants to have fun his way & he also wants Steph (Ash) as his girlfriend - not many would argue with that - but his gradual disillusionment with his life is there for all
to see.
But what this film is notorious for (apart from Ash's Antics in an alleyway) is the well directed Brighton beach battle / riot scenes, filmed on location, in which the Mods & Rockers, & then the Police, clash head on, first in a cafe & then, bloodily, on the beach. The crowd scenes are very convincing, whilst Sting seems to almost relish this part of his role.
There is also humour in this film, it's not all doom & gloom, & it has one of the funniest chemist shop burglaries I've ever seen.
Now widely available on video, or in part of a 2-video box set (with Tommy) this is worth watching - & with a soundtrack comprising of songs by the Who you couldn't really ask for much more.
Che! (1969)
Trying to make a bad film sound good
With more than it's fair share of wooden acting 'Che!' seems doomed from the word go.
Omar Shariff attempts to breathe life into his overtly asthmatic portrayal of the revolutionary icon, Ernesto Che Guevaro, but is held back by the sheer lack of factual references. Jack Palance portrays Fidel Castro, in a manner that could almost have been written by the US government, as a man not able to fully think things through for himself. The film portrays the July 26th movement as an inept band of unwashed desperados who want to take over Cuba, but with only sheer luck, & government ineptitude, helping them to ultimately win through.
Covering the period of time from Che's first arrival on Cuban soil in 1956 until his Bolivian death in 1967, 'Che!' struggles with both poor screenplay and locations, but still trys to maintain a sense of purpose throughout. It could have been so much better. The political oppression that led to the overthrow of the Batista regime is totally glossed over & the rebels life, in the Sierra Madre, is portrayed as almost luxurious with Batista's troops wandering around waiting to be shot. Constant monologues, as a means to link scenes, prove to be more irritating than useful, and you find yourself wishing for the what little action there is to resume.
The film truly dies when Guevara leaves Cuba for Bolivia, with Shariff becoming more asthmatic and psychotic by the minute, until his ultimate capture in the mountains and his eventual murder in the backroom of La Higuera's village schoolhouse.
Any half decent film director would probably relish the chance to make a bio-pic of the legend that is Che Guevara. Che is an icon who deserves to have a film biography worthy of his legend, in the same manner of the bio-pics of Chaplin, Gandhi, Biko, Morrison etc.