List Price: $14.99 Our Price: $11.99YOU SAVE $3!
Buy it
DVD Prime Cut
Prime Cut is a strangely likeable if decidedly oddball thriller from 1972. A happy collision of gangster genre grit (validated by Lee Marvin's granite-faced lead performance) with a strain of shameless (though shrewd) exploitation not unfamiliar to screenwriter Robert Dillon (X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes), plus the kinetic, semi-documentary wit of director Michael Ritchie (The Candidate) makes Prime Cut both a straightforward noir and a satire of itself. Marvin plays Nick, an aging enforcer for the Chicago mob, sent to Kansas City to deal with a ruthless cattle baron (Gene Hackman) who owes a half-million to Windy City racketeers. Hackman's character (inexplicably named Mary Ann), dismissive of old-guard crime chieftains, has set up his own heartland empire guarded by a weird contingent of blond, lookalike young men with rifles. Not only does he render the bodies of his enemies into sausage meat, Mary Ann is making a fortune trafficking in naked, enslaved young women. One of the latter, played by Sissy Spacek (in her film debut), falls under the protection of Nick, who sets about taking Mary Ann down. Ritchie's highly energized, absurdist scenes (e.g., a gunfight in an endless field of sunflowers) are nicely counterpointed by Marvin's smooth anti-heroics and the self-conscious cheesiness of the sex slave angle. --Tom Keogh
I often ask myself how two really excellent actors in their prime would get committed to a project like "Prime Cut". You would be hard pressed to find a dumber story, plot line or set of characters. This is almost a purposeful testament to all that was worse with the 70's "Lew Wasserman" type production deals.
3 1/2 stars - Unusual actions scenes make this film memorable
Nick Devlin (Lee Marvin), an enforcer for the Chicago Mob, is sent to Kansas City to collect a debt from a rancher and meat packer named Mary Ann (Gene Hackman). Mary Ann was sent by the mob to run things down there and now claims the fiefdom as his own. Previous enforcers were dealt with in a way appropriate to Mary Ann's chosen industry. Nick takes his trusted driver and three mob goons with him to collect the money. Upon their arrival, they find Mary Ann presiding over a livestock auction, but the livestock in this auction is the meat packer's second source of income, prostitution. Nick rescues Poppy (Sissy Spacek), a drugged out young woman, and they leave. Neither Nick or Mary Ann will give in to the other, leaving only one conclusion.
"Prime Cut" directed by Michael Ritchie, and made in 1972, is a new film for me. Recently, Ebert and Roeper featured a number of Lee Marvin films new to DVD. I have never been a fan of Marvin, but the films looked intriguing so I gave a few a try and also revisited "The Professionals", one of my favorite films starring Burt Lancaster and Lee Marvin.
It is important to remember that the film was made in 1972 because it strikes the viewer as dated. Shortly after Nick rescues Poppy, he buys her a dress (she was naked at the livestock auction) and they go to dinner at the fancy restaurant in his hotel. Poppy's new dress does little to hide her breasts, but she seems blissfully unaware as the older men and women in the restaurant stare at her. All the time, Nick and Poppy ignore them, trying to have a conversation. Everything about this scene screams early 70s to me, from their conversation to the `subtle' look at class. Later in the film, Nick and his goons arrange to meet Mary Ann at the local county fair and collect the money. This sequence is introduced with a series of close ups of a man walking on stilts, children laughing, etc., all meant to disorient the viewer before letting them become familiar with the new setting. Again, very 70s.
There are many sequences in the film which are strange, unusual and interesting, ultimately making the film worth watching. From the opening sequence; Mary Ann's demented brother, Weenie (Gregory Walcott) gets rid of one of the mob's enforcers (perhaps the most memorable scene), to a harvesting machine chasing Nick and Poppy through a corn field, Ritchie seems to be paying homage to Hitchcock and it works. The action scenes are interesting and hold your attention. Even the scene set in the corn field, which is close enough to be called a rip off of the famous chase from Hitchcock's "North By Northwest"; Ritchie adds a little touch at the end to make it memorable and interesting. You won't be able to stop watching it.
When the story turns to more sedate matters and everything relies on the actors, the film is less successful. Marvin seems to have been most comfortable portraying mobsters, generals and cowboys throughout his career. His demeanor is well-suited for these types of roles. He merely has to stare at most men and they will surrender. This persona works well with this character. But when Nick is supposed to be human, it doesn't work. When Nick takes Poppy to dinner, it isn't clear if Nick is trying to romance Poppy or become her supportive "Uncle". She clearly seems to be flirting with him but Nick doesn't seem to return the favor. Thankfully. At this point Marvin was 47 (Wow, he looks older. But I guess he always did.) and Spacek was 22. Not very age appropriate. This scene works if Poppy is flirting with Nick; he has just saved her from a life of prostitution and her life has been pretty screwed up to that point. But it would be creepy to watch Marvin's Nick putting the moves on the younger actress.
Gene Hackman is always interesting to watch. A villain with the name Mary Ann is going to have to be fairly menacing. Hackman follows occasional outbursts with a quick smile or joke, trying to hide his true menace. This performance reminded me exactly of Lex Luthor and makes this character seem all the more like a dry run for the villain he would play in the "Superman" films beginning in 1978.
Sissy Spacek is good, in her first starring role, but the part is a very traditional take on the female sidekick so prevalent in action films. For a great performance, check out her later work in "In The Bedroom".
"Prime Cut" is a memorable exercise in action filmmaking. Two sequences from the film will stay with me for a long time. Can you figure out which ones?
Prime Cut
This is a great Lee Marvin classic with lots of pace. Script is excellent and Lee plays his part as the done wrong gangster to the hilt. As good as some of the Dirty Harry movies. Rent it before buying to be on the safe side?
Walker (Lee Marvin) strides through Los Angeles with the steel-eyed stare of a stone-cold killer, or perhaps a ghost. Betrayed by his wife and best friend, who gun him down point-blank and leave him for dead after a successful heist, Walker blasts his way up the criminal food chain in a quest for revenge. Did he survive the shooting or return from the grave, or is it all a dying dream? The question is left in the air in John Boorman's modern film noir, a brutal revenge thriller based on Richard Stark's novel The Hunter (remade by Brian Helgeland as Payback), set in the impersonal concrete and steel canyons of Los Angeles and eerily empty cells of Alcatraz. Walker kills without remorse, guided by shadowy "informant" Keenan Wynn, whose own agenda is carefully concealed, and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Lee Marvin - Angie Dickinson Director(s): John Boorman DVD Release Date: Released the 05 July 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.97 Your Price: $14.98YOU SAVE $4.99!
Buy it
This vastly underrated Arthur Penn film from the mid-1970s ranks as one of the era's nastiest and most fascinating pieces of business, a detective story that shuttles back and forth between Hollywood and the Florida Keys, with a plot nearly as complex as Chinatown. Gene Hackman stars as a tired, aging private eye who, as a favor to a friend, agrees to track down a runaway teen. But the case turns out to be something much larger: a smuggling ring of Mayan antiquities. The human impulses get darker and darker and Hackman's character gets pulled in deeper and deeper, even as his own life is falling apart. Ultimately, in one of his best and most unsung performances, Hackman winds up hurting the people he is trying to help. A great cast includes Susan Clark, Jennifer Warren, a young... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Hackman - Jennifer Warren Director(s): Arthur Penn DVD Release Date: Released the 12 July 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $19.97 Your Price: $15.98YOU SAVE $3.99!
Buy it
Sam Peckinpah knew he couldn't call a movie Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and get away with it. That's why he did it. When he undertook this nakedly personal project, in self-exile in Mexico, the director was a deeply bitter man out of favor with critics, the media, and the Hollywood establishment, which had just released his Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid in a mutilated version. "Bring Me the Head..." sounded like the parody title of an ultraviolent Sam Peckinpah movie, and he flung it in our faces just as his onscreen surrogate tosses the titular object at the camera.
Thing is, the movie is a masterpiece--raw, shocking, beautiful, and brave--in which Peckinpah confronts his enemies and his own demons. Warren Oates plays a gringo piano-player stuck in Mexico who... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Warren Oates - Isela Vega Director(s): Sam Peckinpah DVD Release Date: Released the 22 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $14.95 Your Price: $11.21YOU SAVE $3.74!
Buy it
Samuel Fuller came up with one of his gutsiest "headline shots" for House of Bamboo: Mount Fuji, in CinemaScope, framed between the boots of a U.S. soldier lying murdered on a snowy Japanese embankment. Happily, the movie that follows is no letdown. This brutal gangster film was the first American production to shoot in Japan, and Fuller exploits his locations to the max, up to and including a climactic gun battle around a Tokyo rooftop facsimile of the turning Earth. Officially the screenplay is credited to Harry Kleiner, with Fuller cited for "additional dialogue"; in actuality, the 20th Century-Fox movie transplants the basic premise of the Kleiner-scripted Street with No Name (1948) from an American Midwest town to Tokyo, but otherwise the picture is unmistakably... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Robert Ryan - Robert Stack Director(s): Samuel Fuller DVD Release Date: Released the 07 June 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $14.98 Your Price: $13.48YOU SAVE $1.5!
Buy it
This silky smooth film noir pits gruff police detective Dana Andrews, stiff and blunt in his street-bred manners, against a cultured columnist and acidic wit (Clifton Webb at his prissiest) in a battle of wits during a murder investigation. The cop is a romantic hiding under a hard-boiled exterior who falls in love with the beautiful victim through the portrait that hangs in her apartment. Gene Tierney, whose heart-shaped face mixes the exotic with the girl next door, brings the poise and calm of a model to her role as the object of every man's gaze and the target of a killer. Laura, handsomely shot in dreamy black and white, is the first and best of Otto Preminger's cool, controlled murder mysteries. In the gritty world of film noir it remains the most refined and elegant example... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Dana Andrews Director(s): Rouben Mamoulian - Otto Preminger DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
List Price: $14.98 Your Price: $8.98YOU SAVE $6!
Buy it
