Reviews

Cattle Drive movies are a special kind of western. While drives figure into a lot of them, few are really ABOUT them. They tend to be a lot more about the characters, relationships, and struggle against the elements. Cattle Empire isn't the best by far. Red River, Lonesome Dove, and even episode of the miniseries Centennial, "The Longhorns" are better. However, there's plenty to see here.

Joel McCrae gives a good performance as John Cord, a man whose reputation has been tarnished and starts conflicted between a desire to get back at those who unjustly punished him and his true nature as an honest, dedicated trail boss. Don Haggerty as Ralph Hamilton is probably the only really other performance of note. A man blinded by Cord years previously, but is more than willing to give him a second chance. Ostensibly, it's because he's desperate to get his cattle to market first and he knows Cord is his best chance. However, it's clear all along he's harboring a secret.

The rest of the cast is mainly by the numbers. Most of the people working under Cord are so openly hostile, it's actually hard to sympathize with the damage Cord's men did to them and their town five years earlier. This includes Hamilton's younger brother Douglas. More fleshing out would have served them well and made the final revelation more satisfying as we don't care that they feel guilty.

The villain of the piece is fairly straightforwardly evil, but is clearly outmatched by Cord in all respects, so he never feels that threatening. Of course a cattle drive film doesn't really nee a villain and he would have served just as well as a competitor than an outright villain. It seems the cliched showdown is the only reason.

Watch for McCrae, an entertaining and underrated actor.

It's always entertaining and I'll usually watch it if it's on. Redford and Newman have great chemistry. The supporting cast is full of TV and Movie veterans like Ray Walston and Harold Gould who round out a solid cast. The best is most certainly Robert Shaw as Lonnegan. He's a truly brutal main who only barely manages to maintain the cover of a legitimate businessman. You always feel he's about ten seconds away from killing someone.

For fans of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, note this is not a Redford/Newman buddy picture. The character dynamic is that of mentor and student. Hooker is clearly the main character and in the bulk of the scenes, whereas outside the poker game, Newman doesn't have much in the way of character development and rarely appears without Redford. As I said, the chemistry is still great, there's just not as much of it and Redford interacts with more of the rest of the cast.

I'd say the biggest problem is the ending. How the sting is actually played out. It really feels that they didn't have good idea and use a twist of language the NO ONE would ever use in the real world. The followup is arguably even worse and it presumes Shaw and Charles Durning's cop character won't read a newspaper the next day. That would be fine if they hadn't made a point that Lonnegan could never know he'd been conned. However, it does recover a bit with a final interaction between Redford and Newman. They really are a likeable pair with a natural chemistry.

I'm someone who actually enjoys musicals and am pretty good a learning the lyrics to the tunes of them. I found none of these songs particularly memorable or catchy. They probably should have used some actual 1940's era musicals as a guide for writing the songs as they don't really fit.

I used to love Matthew Broderick in my youth and he and John Cusak were the two best at in film narration/running commentary. Between this and his rendition of The Music Man, it seems Broderick has lost all emotion and inflection in his voice. He didn't sound at all like someone truly nostalgic, nor did he really portray the inner thoughts of 9 year old Ralphie with any emotion. The film's narrator really hit that, while this was flat.

Mostly, the plot of the film was followed, but it seemed filtered. It didn't seem like they were really trying to take the audience back in time. It felt staged. I didn't like the actual Hannukah song, but acknowledging that Schwartz was Jewish at least made sense. However, Ralphie's confession and apology completely undercut the humor in the original lie. The whole point is that there are times for every child when we feel we were unjustly punished with no reason. Likewise, Ralphie's mother admitting she knew the icicle story was a lie seems more like a nod to modern sensibilities, and removed that nostalgia of "the one you got away with". Also, if she knew, there's no way she would have let him keep the gun.

I'd rather they'd just had them eat cold cuts at home than butcher the Chinese restaurant scene. There is a reason the movie is popular enough to play around the clock every year. Clearly, most people aren't actually offended.

As a made for TV movie from that time, it's OK. John Saxon is pretty good and it fits that he's the most recognizable of the main three characters.

Calling it a remake is stretching things a bit. They changed a lot, including that the titular rifle doesn't get passed around nearly as much and isn't apparently as central to the story as in the original.

The biggest change is to the relationship between hero and villain. In the original, it's a twist revealed only at the end and gives the whole thing a much more personal angle. Here, the relationship (cousins) makes the whole thing less personal. Also, they did a weird merge and split with the hero's character. Lin, played by Stewart in the original, has been combined with Wyatt Earp from that film. Some of his character was then split off into the newly created younger brother, who feel superfluous most of the time.

There's one scene which just makes the hero look incredibly stupid by walking straight into what can only be an obvious trap.

With the original easily available, there's no real reason to watch this one.

I would like to point something to the "no reason to remake it crowd". Keep in mind that this remake was made well before cable and home video, at a time when TV stations was looking to increase color content. An older, black & white movie, even a good one, would have been relegated to late night or weekend morning airings. It would have be severely cut up, as well. It doesn't make this remake more watchable, but chances are there was little to no opportunity to see the original at the time.

There are many ways to view this film which had pilot movie written all over it. Other reviews have hit them, so I won't delve too deeply. However, if you are a fan of Irwin Allen's TV shows or his movies, this is for you.

It's really combination of 60's sci-fi with 70's Disaster Films, which is appropriate given Allen's career path at this point. It very much has a "throw in everything but the kitchen sink" feel. Any of the subplots probably could have served as a serviceable main plot, but cramming them all in makes it laughable, but in an enjoyable way.

You have: The return of a controversial commander and the tensions that brings. A gold heist (by the commander's brother, no less) A dangerously unstable radioactive element. A meteor about to hit them.

When you consider two of those plots were major hit films for Bruce Willis, you can see how the plots kind of piled up. I really wanted Stuart Whitman to have an "Oh what a week I'm having" moment.

Mostly the movie is fun and can't be judged to harshly because it never really attempts to be more than it is.

Let's get the flaws out of the way. It relies really heavily on the "Space is an Ocean" trope. It takes the submarine movie in space bit way to far to where apparently sound can travel through space. Translating other genres to sci-fi is an age old concept, but you need to stray from the source where appropriate.

Second is the internal conflict on the Enterprise. Styles is a guy we've never seen before and will never see again. He's supposed to be a bigot, but he's actually got a point, at first. If no one's seen a Romulan, how do you know they haven infiltrated the Federation? His focusing on Spock is a bit less forgivable, given his long Starfleet career and the fact that there's a planet full of Vulcans. However, while an earlier stardate, this episode actually originally aired a few weeks after "The Menagerie", so audiences at the time may have been more accepting of the idea of a Spock betrayal. Styles' attitude shift was a bit far-fetched, but not wholly unbelievable.

Now let's get to what makes this episode ooze with awesome. The chess match between Kirk and The Romulan commander was awesome. It was a match between equals, each with advantages and disadvantages to deal with. I somewhat disagree with another reviewer who called this a clear good guy vs. bad guy scenario. While the Romulans are certainly the aggressors, The Commander and The Centurian are portrayed quite sympathetically. They're not wholly comfortable with their mission, but are experienced soldiers doing as ordered. Mark Lenard did a great job bringing out a brilliant, but somewhat tired old soldier. He got to make a classic line at the end that is really sums up how you feel about his conflict with Kirk,

"CAPTAIN, I REGRET THAT WE MEET IN THIS WAY. YOU AND I ARE TWO OF A KIND. IN A DIFFERENT REALITY, I COULD HAVE CALLED YOU FRIEND."

It's entirely believable from what we've seen. For both Kirk and the Commander none of this was personal. There was no malice. Each was doing his duty and that forced them into a conflict where only one could survive.

The writing and casting are excellent. Falk and Arkin play their characters perfectly. The key here is they didn't follow what has become somewhat cliché in comedies.

Arkin's character, today, would be an over the top neurotic. While I haven't seen the remake, Albert Brooks' casting indicated to me that they went that way. He's successful upper middle class dentist with a loving wife and daughter. He had no problems with the upcoming wedding until he meets Falk. Also, none of the things that go wrong in his life are attributable to him. He's truly a normal guy wrapped up in a crazy situation that's far from his "safe zone". He even manages to adapt somewhat well until the firing squad scene.

With Falk's Vince Ricardo, they didn't go with a guy cracking jokes, an over the top tough/professional guy, or the crazy guy. He was a normal guy who has an extraordinary job. He's been at it so long, none of it phases him, because it's normal for him. His funny lines come from treating these situations as everyday occurrences. He can babble about pea soup after being shot at because it's like a train being late to him. He's not funny because he's trying to be funny. He's funny because he's completely calm in an outrageous situation. The only time he breaks this is during the dinner scene where he yells at his son. It's there that you realize he's paid a price for his secret life.