And so the end of the another week approaches, the second of November, and I marvel at my age and the continuing ability to experience although there is little new discovery of life at the present time. It has proved difficult adjusting to the change in times as I wake as regular but lay in the bed then over sleep waking as late as eight one morning.
Last weekend was great as the Hotel provided the full Weekend Telegraph editions including the free DVD’s on the century at war. I managed to collect two more during the week when the weather turned nasty.
I commenced to write this review after thee eleventh day of the eleventh month when the greater number briefly remember the fallen sons and their fathers and grandfathers. There was a manufactured debate this year about the need for a national cemetery similar to Arlington in the USA. In the UK we have adopted a different approach. There is burial on the battlefields across the world for both world wars, such have been the numbers, permanent reminders for families and the respectful of all subsequent generations to visit. More recent service deaths have been laid close to where their families are now or within the communities of their birth. There are national places of remembrance, usually with walls on which all the names are written and then in every townships there are memorials, cenotaphs in prominent places, in churches and town halls where once a year and on individual anniversaries wreaths of Flanders poppies are laid. Thus there are opportunities for individual and collective remembrance everywhere and everyday. It is the British way.
By coincidence I have watched several films about warfare and its consequence recently.
On Thursday evening I watched again Richard Burton’s performance as Alexander of Macedonia, he who proclaimed himself great and a God in a successful attempt to outdo his father, slaughterer all who stood in his pathway, destroyer of cities, rapist of women, discarder of wives and mistresses. A dreadful human being worse than his father and where it is suggested he had a hand in the man‘s death. With his father he is recorded to have fought well at the battle of Chaeronea 338BC, 18 years after his birth. This was the battle which resulted in Philip gaining control of all Greek states except Sparta which remained independent. Following the assassination of Philip, Alexander commenced his decade of warfare, fighting several major battles with the Persians until gain control of its empire moving into Asia Minor, the Levant, Syria and Egypt, Assyria and Babylonia before taking the rest of Persia and starting the creation of the city of Alexandria in his name. He then moved into Afghanistan and India. He then had the problems which all dictator conquerors have after time in that few share their vision and most long for home. He attempted to resolve this problem by assimilation, allowing everyone to take wives and put down roots along the way as well as rape pillage and murder and capture the wealth of others. He fell out with some of his leading commanders, associates and friends and died at the age of 33 mysteriously, some believed poisoned. The 1956 film captures these main events well as includes the more famous recorded quotes. In addition to Burton key parts are played by Claire Bloome, Stanley Baker, Frederic March, Danielle Darrieux, Michael Horden, Harry Andrews, Peter Cushing and Peter Wyngarde.
Now for four adventure films. The first. The Moonraker. is set just at the end of the British Civil War and the Battle of Worcester 1651. He Moonraker (George Baker) is a Scarlet Pimpernel figure who has helped royalists escape, this time it is Charles II, and seeking refuge with a friendly Innkeeper and his wife they encounter the fiancée of a leading aid to Cromwell Colonel Beaumont(Marius Goring). Cromwell is played by John Le Messurier. Moonraker (later the James Bond story and film, is a term for smuggler with items hidden in the village pond and taken out at night. Moonraker escaped with the King and gets the girl with the help of Goring.
The main interest of the The Master of Ballantrae based on a Robert Louis Stevensen novel is the conflict between the English and the Scots 1745 the year of the Jacobite Rising. A father (Felix Alymer) witnesses competition between two sons, one opposed to English control and the other more accommodating, both wanting control of the estate and the love of the daughter of a neighbouring estate. One son (Errol Flynn) believes he has been betrayed by the other( Anthony Steel) flees to the West Indies where he has adventures with Pirates the French Captain Arnaud and the celebrated Captain Mendoza until running off with a ship and some “treasure” back to his homeland where he finds his girl about to wed the brother as peace appears achieved between the two nations. He discovers it was not his brother who betrayed him but a jealous local lass. His brother help him escape execution by the English with the girl and his adventuring friend played by Roger Liversey.
The Third film is Hornblower RN with Gregory Peck as the mature married officer and ship’s captain in the Title role, prone to adventuring which seems out of character with the actor’s style, and also based on a book using historical facts. The film is includes the main events of three books The Happy Return, A ship of the Line and Flying Colours. The film begins with Hornblower on a secret mission to central America his decision to capture and then give up a powerful Spanish fighting ship to a megalomaniac war lord in central America who has rebelled against Spain. Hornblower then encounters a small Spanish vessel and finds that Spain has switched sides has now joined Britain against France and he realises he must recapture or destroy the Spanish Warship which is greatly superior to his own. The complication is that also on board the craft, and escaping plague in Panama, is the fictitious sister of Lord Wellington who demands conduct to England and who shows her compassion treating the wounded after a fierce battle in which the Spanish warship under the control of the megalomaniac is destroyed. The voyage home is long around the Cape of Good Hope and a close relationship between the two is formed after Hornblower nurses her to health soon after arrival on board when she goes down with Swamp fever rather than the plague. Hornblower is married while the sister (Virginia Mayo) is engaged to a Vice Admiral of the Fleet. For his success and returning the sister Hornblower is rewarded with a ship of the line under the new husband of the sister. Hornblower finds that his wife has died in childbirth and that he has a one year old son.
Hornblower suggests that when four French ships who broke out from where they are being held are helping Napoleon’s campaign on the Iberian peninsular rather than making for the safety of the Mediterranean port of Marseilles. He is asked to follow up the hunch without engaging the vessel’s if they are encountered while the rest fo the British fleet attempts stop the French warships reaching Marseilles. Hornblower captures a French boat and learns that it is supplying the French warships and secondly the flag code for gaining access past the fort guarding entrance to the harbour where they are located. He uses this successfully and quickly renders all four ships unable to take to sea while the captured craft is sent to make contact with the rest of the fleet. His vessel is destroyed and he surrenders his crew who are to be returned to England while he and his deputy are ordered to Paris to face trial and execution.
On his way to Paris he manages to escape and then encounters some British sailors who are prisoners being used to load a ship in harbour. They free the men and take the ship home to England where all at home anticipated that he is now dead. He returns to his son to find Napoleon’s sister is visiting, and that she had lost her husband in the battle which destroyed the four warships. The two are to have a Hollywood happy ever after.
All three films have gratuitous killing of the foot soldiers and sailors while the principals fight each other with varying degrees of honour. The fourth film also based on a novel which some believe is the greatest English love story is set at the time of Judge Jefferies in the 1600’s, Lorna Doone by R D Blackmore. The 1990 film version, there have been about ten in total, stars Sean Bean as the murdering raping stealing Carver Doone and Clive Own as the heroic John Reid, bitter enemies of the influential and wealthy Doone’s but who falls in love with Lorna a member, he believes, as does she, of the family after meeting her in secret in Doone valley. In fact Lorna was captured by them as a baby and is the daughter of Lord and Lady Dugal. The plan of Caver is to marry her and claim her estates. The plan is put off after death of King Charles II when the Doone’s side with the Duke of Monmouth against Charles’s brother James. They hope Monmouth will restore their ancestral lands. After the defeat of Monmouth the associates are rounded up and Ridd is captured in the belief he is one to those anti the new King. He is cleared of these charges and recognised by the King for his action in defeating the Doone’s although Carver escaped. Ridd is made a knight and therefore able to marry Lorna who has returned to accept her role as the daughter of the Dugal’s. In one of the great tragic love stories of all time moments, she is killed by Carver on her wedding day, although Ridd slays Carver subsequently. Ridd’s mother is played by the excellent Billie Whitelaw. The reason why this film is different is that there are no gratuitous killings and with each death there are those who suffer.
There is also a sense of reality about war death as well as respect and duty between fighting men in Colditz based on the book by P R Reid one of the first to escape from the Castle which housed British, French, Dutch and Polish Officers who had previously escaped from other centres. Under the commander of the senior British officer Colonel Richmond, (Eric Portman), Reid played by John Mills is appointed the British escape officer to coordinate action with the other nations only find that the escapes fail because one of the prisoners is supplying information to protect his family. When someone works out a plan to dress up as German officers and walk out with them when they return to their homes at night in the nearby village and the plan is approved he successfully bids for Reid to escape with him but Portman persuades the author of the plan to stay behind because his height will result in its failure as everyone will recognise him. He copes with his disappointment by making an escape attempt over the fence and is shot. Reid is successful and the film ends with an over view of the 100 more allies who made it to their respective home countries. There is humour as well as courage and also respect between the fighting men at a time of war.
Bhowani Junction is a film set in India as the British are about to leave and the communists are plotting to create chaos with terrorist attacks as a means of seizing power and using genuine non violent and passive resistance demonstrations as a cover. Caught between the two sides are the Anglo Indians who were largely rejected by their native countryman in India and the UK. Similar to Alexander the Great the British had encouraged their administrators to find themselves local wives in order to settle away from their homeland and in the film the number is said to have been about 100000, the majority left in 1947 to the UK, Australia and New Zealand and some to Canada and the USA. It is thought that descendents of those who remained in India number around 60-8000 today and around 250000 in the UK.
On the film Stewart Granger plays the British Officer sent to handle the situation in a central Indian railway town and who encounters Ava Gardener , an Anglo Indian speaking officer with the Indian Army and whose father is a British Engine driver. She develops a relationship with another Anglo India, head of the railway coordination, who unknown to her has a mother who has sided with the Terrorists and harbours one of its leaders. When Ava kills a British army soldier in self defence who is trying to rape her, it is the mother, her son and the terrorist leader who cover up the body and the circumstances of the death. This pushes her into their camp and she agrees to marry the son in attempt to become Indian although she is horrified by the Terrorism around her. When she cannot go through with the a marriage she uses her father to get away on a train and this brings her close to Granger to whom she tells what happened. She is court marshalled but exonerated with the help of Granger and because of the record of the soldier who has attacked others before. She is then captured by the terrorist leader because her ability to identify him but is rescued after he has made his way to blow up a train in which Ghandi is travelling the plot is foiled. In the film Granger returns to England as ordered but plans to retire from the army and to marry and bring the young woman to England. The fellow Anglo Indian and rail administrator having died saving her. In the book she marries the Anglo Indian administrator, something which the character portrayed by Granger recognises and accepts before it happens.
The next film jumps to post Vietnam and the scandal that the USA administration knew that many GI’s were held for over decade, visiting them and supplying them with food but accepting the position because the Vietnamese claimed they were convicted war criminals. Unaware of this a team has been sent to investigate, finds one prison camp and frees the men only to get them killed on the way out. Called fortunes of War the team only manage to get one prisoner to the border where they are surrounded by a Vietnamese army and then a USA helicopter flies in to take the team out minus the remaining prisoner. Under 20 when captured only a couple of months after being drafted and trained he spent ten years when others would have dated, married, started a family and moved along their chosen careers. He is left behind, yet another victim of the politics of war and its aftermath. The team in getting to this position had slaughtered several hundred Vietnamese soldiers and caused a village to incinerated but they are flown out and home. The morality of the film dreadful with no redeeming features, intended to show the reality of war?
A very different kind of film about the role of government was seen in theatre on Thursday afternoon called Red. Some thirty years ago in Paris I saw the film Reds, and important documentary style drama about an American communist who became part of the Russian revolution. This Red is an amoral film about the black ops CIA which is highly enjoyable. Bruce Willis was once the best of the best and now retired and lonely he makes conversation with a pension clerk who is bored with her life, lives through novels and dreams of being swept off her feet by someone exciting. Willis wakes up one night to discover a black ops team sent to eliminate him and we shared in one of those glorious shoots up which demolish a property apparently while the rest of the residential neighbourhood sleep on. He escapes and having arranged to meet up with the girl on a visit to Kansas City kidnaps her knowing that she will be eliminated by whoever is out to get him, because of their association and conversations,
He takes her with him to visit fellow team member Morgan Freeman now in a retirement home and when he appears to have been killed they track down a disturbed paranoiac played by John Malkovitch who subsequently proves the point that I may be paranoid but this does not mean they are not out to get me.. Under attack from CIA chief Cynthia Wilkes and a young highly trained black ops Assassin Agent Cooper the team turn to the Russian embassy for a favour and their black ops chief played by Brian Cox, provides the layout and security means to break into the CIA HQ where Willis(and the girl who has wised up that her survival depends on Willis) where they make their way to secret records centre guarded by former friend and colleague Ernest Borgnine (gosh he is still alive) who provides the file on the Willis and the Guatamala project. Willis gets shot after a confrontation with Cooper and is saved by former USA CIA assassin played by Helen Mirren who years before had a affair with the Russian played by Cox who she says she had to put three bullets in his chest. He later says if he had not loved me she would have shot me in the head. They are also joined by Freeman who was not killed as we are led to believe and they uncover why their former bosses are trying to kill them and this appears to tie in with a reporter of China town origin who it emerges was also killed by Cooper. She has left a message with her mother which leads to a book in the Chinese university Library and to a list of names including those of the reassembled team who were all involved in an operation in a Central America country Guatemala.
There is only one other alive individual on the list who they track down to an airfreight company but he is executed while they are talking to him but they escape in a super shoot out with a great scene from the Matrix which this time instead of two bullets cancelling the other, one bullet blows up a missile being hand launched. Fortunately this last contact reveals that someone was extracted from the scene secretly and it becomes evident that the individual had now become the Vice President with ambitions to run for the Presidency. He appears to be the man behind the killings with the help of arms dealer Alexander Dunning played by Richard Dreyfus. The only way they mange to escape from the situation where they confront Dunning at his lair is for Morgan Freeman who die in place of Willis while he makes his escape. From Dunning they learn about the role of the Vice President and set out to kill him at a fund raiser. There is more splendid shoot up adventuring before it is revealed that the Vice President is a pawn of Dunning who killed by Malkovitch. They survive but there is the prospect fo a sequel as Willis is committed by the Russian to return his favour which involves an adventure in the Balkans.
During the week I commenced the step of switching broadband provides and upgrading my Sky box as well moving to Sky films, the full complete package.
I also watched a disappointing Michael Caine spy thriller, The Jigsaw Man.
This 1983 film also featured Laurence Olivier, Robert Powell and Susan George, but all four must have curses a little when they read the final script. The film has nothing of the James Bond entertainment extravaganza or the serious suspense of Le Carre or the Harry Palmer films which also feature Michael Caine in the lead role.
Caine plays the former head of British intelligence who fled to Russia after being the fourth man in Philby Burgess McClean quartet, and whose uselessness comes to an end because of his drunken behaviour. Against his wishes he is given a face transplant and told to wipe the slate clean by recovering his hidden record of intelligence information on Russian agents and work in the UK.
Why they waited for over a decade is not explained. Laurence Olivier plays the present head of service who continues in his admiration for Caine who according to the Russians died and is buried with appropriate honours. Susan George play his daughter now living under a different name to protect her from the media and who works as a translator with a London flat and Caine’s country cottage, an impressive thatched two storey house with grounds! Her boyfriend (Robert Powell) claims to work of the UN but is a member of the British Secret service, originally assigned to keep an eye on the girl by his head of section.
Soon after his funeral, Caine arrives in the UK as a defector saying has knowledge of the missing information on micro film. He evades the British Secret service at a meeting with Powell’s boss, whose he steals as well as injury a policeman in making his getaway. However his motive is to escape the Russians who he knows will execute him once they had retrieved the file Caine then makes contact with his former friend and now head of service and offers to sell the information. There is hen a series of events in which Caine manages to kill a friend of is daughter as well as another traitor within the service, Susan George and Robert Powell appear to have a happy ending while Caine and Oliver plan to sell the contents of the file to the highest bidder and enjoy retirement together.
Last weekend was great as the Hotel provided the full Weekend Telegraph editions including the free DVD’s on the century at war. I managed to collect two more during the week when the weather turned nasty.
I commenced to write this review after thee eleventh day of the eleventh month when the greater number briefly remember the fallen sons and their fathers and grandfathers. There was a manufactured debate this year about the need for a national cemetery similar to Arlington in the USA. In the UK we have adopted a different approach. There is burial on the battlefields across the world for both world wars, such have been the numbers, permanent reminders for families and the respectful of all subsequent generations to visit. More recent service deaths have been laid close to where their families are now or within the communities of their birth. There are national places of remembrance, usually with walls on which all the names are written and then in every townships there are memorials, cenotaphs in prominent places, in churches and town halls where once a year and on individual anniversaries wreaths of Flanders poppies are laid. Thus there are opportunities for individual and collective remembrance everywhere and everyday. It is the British way.
By coincidence I have watched several films about warfare and its consequence recently.
On Thursday evening I watched again Richard Burton’s performance as Alexander of Macedonia, he who proclaimed himself great and a God in a successful attempt to outdo his father, slaughterer all who stood in his pathway, destroyer of cities, rapist of women, discarder of wives and mistresses. A dreadful human being worse than his father and where it is suggested he had a hand in the man‘s death. With his father he is recorded to have fought well at the battle of Chaeronea 338BC, 18 years after his birth. This was the battle which resulted in Philip gaining control of all Greek states except Sparta which remained independent. Following the assassination of Philip, Alexander commenced his decade of warfare, fighting several major battles with the Persians until gain control of its empire moving into Asia Minor, the Levant, Syria and Egypt, Assyria and Babylonia before taking the rest of Persia and starting the creation of the city of Alexandria in his name. He then moved into Afghanistan and India. He then had the problems which all dictator conquerors have after time in that few share their vision and most long for home. He attempted to resolve this problem by assimilation, allowing everyone to take wives and put down roots along the way as well as rape pillage and murder and capture the wealth of others. He fell out with some of his leading commanders, associates and friends and died at the age of 33 mysteriously, some believed poisoned. The 1956 film captures these main events well as includes the more famous recorded quotes. In addition to Burton key parts are played by Claire Bloome, Stanley Baker, Frederic March, Danielle Darrieux, Michael Horden, Harry Andrews, Peter Cushing and Peter Wyngarde.
Now for four adventure films. The first. The Moonraker. is set just at the end of the British Civil War and the Battle of Worcester 1651. He Moonraker (George Baker) is a Scarlet Pimpernel figure who has helped royalists escape, this time it is Charles II, and seeking refuge with a friendly Innkeeper and his wife they encounter the fiancée of a leading aid to Cromwell Colonel Beaumont(Marius Goring). Cromwell is played by John Le Messurier. Moonraker (later the James Bond story and film, is a term for smuggler with items hidden in the village pond and taken out at night. Moonraker escaped with the King and gets the girl with the help of Goring.
The main interest of the The Master of Ballantrae based on a Robert Louis Stevensen novel is the conflict between the English and the Scots 1745 the year of the Jacobite Rising. A father (Felix Alymer) witnesses competition between two sons, one opposed to English control and the other more accommodating, both wanting control of the estate and the love of the daughter of a neighbouring estate. One son (Errol Flynn) believes he has been betrayed by the other( Anthony Steel) flees to the West Indies where he has adventures with Pirates the French Captain Arnaud and the celebrated Captain Mendoza until running off with a ship and some “treasure” back to his homeland where he finds his girl about to wed the brother as peace appears achieved between the two nations. He discovers it was not his brother who betrayed him but a jealous local lass. His brother help him escape execution by the English with the girl and his adventuring friend played by Roger Liversey.
The Third film is Hornblower RN with Gregory Peck as the mature married officer and ship’s captain in the Title role, prone to adventuring which seems out of character with the actor’s style, and also based on a book using historical facts. The film is includes the main events of three books The Happy Return, A ship of the Line and Flying Colours. The film begins with Hornblower on a secret mission to central America his decision to capture and then give up a powerful Spanish fighting ship to a megalomaniac war lord in central America who has rebelled against Spain. Hornblower then encounters a small Spanish vessel and finds that Spain has switched sides has now joined Britain against France and he realises he must recapture or destroy the Spanish Warship which is greatly superior to his own. The complication is that also on board the craft, and escaping plague in Panama, is the fictitious sister of Lord Wellington who demands conduct to England and who shows her compassion treating the wounded after a fierce battle in which the Spanish warship under the control of the megalomaniac is destroyed. The voyage home is long around the Cape of Good Hope and a close relationship between the two is formed after Hornblower nurses her to health soon after arrival on board when she goes down with Swamp fever rather than the plague. Hornblower is married while the sister (Virginia Mayo) is engaged to a Vice Admiral of the Fleet. For his success and returning the sister Hornblower is rewarded with a ship of the line under the new husband of the sister. Hornblower finds that his wife has died in childbirth and that he has a one year old son.
Hornblower suggests that when four French ships who broke out from where they are being held are helping Napoleon’s campaign on the Iberian peninsular rather than making for the safety of the Mediterranean port of Marseilles. He is asked to follow up the hunch without engaging the vessel’s if they are encountered while the rest fo the British fleet attempts stop the French warships reaching Marseilles. Hornblower captures a French boat and learns that it is supplying the French warships and secondly the flag code for gaining access past the fort guarding entrance to the harbour where they are located. He uses this successfully and quickly renders all four ships unable to take to sea while the captured craft is sent to make contact with the rest of the fleet. His vessel is destroyed and he surrenders his crew who are to be returned to England while he and his deputy are ordered to Paris to face trial and execution.
On his way to Paris he manages to escape and then encounters some British sailors who are prisoners being used to load a ship in harbour. They free the men and take the ship home to England where all at home anticipated that he is now dead. He returns to his son to find Napoleon’s sister is visiting, and that she had lost her husband in the battle which destroyed the four warships. The two are to have a Hollywood happy ever after.
All three films have gratuitous killing of the foot soldiers and sailors while the principals fight each other with varying degrees of honour. The fourth film also based on a novel which some believe is the greatest English love story is set at the time of Judge Jefferies in the 1600’s, Lorna Doone by R D Blackmore. The 1990 film version, there have been about ten in total, stars Sean Bean as the murdering raping stealing Carver Doone and Clive Own as the heroic John Reid, bitter enemies of the influential and wealthy Doone’s but who falls in love with Lorna a member, he believes, as does she, of the family after meeting her in secret in Doone valley. In fact Lorna was captured by them as a baby and is the daughter of Lord and Lady Dugal. The plan of Caver is to marry her and claim her estates. The plan is put off after death of King Charles II when the Doone’s side with the Duke of Monmouth against Charles’s brother James. They hope Monmouth will restore their ancestral lands. After the defeat of Monmouth the associates are rounded up and Ridd is captured in the belief he is one to those anti the new King. He is cleared of these charges and recognised by the King for his action in defeating the Doone’s although Carver escaped. Ridd is made a knight and therefore able to marry Lorna who has returned to accept her role as the daughter of the Dugal’s. In one of the great tragic love stories of all time moments, she is killed by Carver on her wedding day, although Ridd slays Carver subsequently. Ridd’s mother is played by the excellent Billie Whitelaw. The reason why this film is different is that there are no gratuitous killings and with each death there are those who suffer.
There is also a sense of reality about war death as well as respect and duty between fighting men in Colditz based on the book by P R Reid one of the first to escape from the Castle which housed British, French, Dutch and Polish Officers who had previously escaped from other centres. Under the commander of the senior British officer Colonel Richmond, (Eric Portman), Reid played by John Mills is appointed the British escape officer to coordinate action with the other nations only find that the escapes fail because one of the prisoners is supplying information to protect his family. When someone works out a plan to dress up as German officers and walk out with them when they return to their homes at night in the nearby village and the plan is approved he successfully bids for Reid to escape with him but Portman persuades the author of the plan to stay behind because his height will result in its failure as everyone will recognise him. He copes with his disappointment by making an escape attempt over the fence and is shot. Reid is successful and the film ends with an over view of the 100 more allies who made it to their respective home countries. There is humour as well as courage and also respect between the fighting men at a time of war.
Bhowani Junction is a film set in India as the British are about to leave and the communists are plotting to create chaos with terrorist attacks as a means of seizing power and using genuine non violent and passive resistance demonstrations as a cover. Caught between the two sides are the Anglo Indians who were largely rejected by their native countryman in India and the UK. Similar to Alexander the Great the British had encouraged their administrators to find themselves local wives in order to settle away from their homeland and in the film the number is said to have been about 100000, the majority left in 1947 to the UK, Australia and New Zealand and some to Canada and the USA. It is thought that descendents of those who remained in India number around 60-8000 today and around 250000 in the UK.
On the film Stewart Granger plays the British Officer sent to handle the situation in a central Indian railway town and who encounters Ava Gardener , an Anglo Indian speaking officer with the Indian Army and whose father is a British Engine driver. She develops a relationship with another Anglo India, head of the railway coordination, who unknown to her has a mother who has sided with the Terrorists and harbours one of its leaders. When Ava kills a British army soldier in self defence who is trying to rape her, it is the mother, her son and the terrorist leader who cover up the body and the circumstances of the death. This pushes her into their camp and she agrees to marry the son in attempt to become Indian although she is horrified by the Terrorism around her. When she cannot go through with the a marriage she uses her father to get away on a train and this brings her close to Granger to whom she tells what happened. She is court marshalled but exonerated with the help of Granger and because of the record of the soldier who has attacked others before. She is then captured by the terrorist leader because her ability to identify him but is rescued after he has made his way to blow up a train in which Ghandi is travelling the plot is foiled. In the film Granger returns to England as ordered but plans to retire from the army and to marry and bring the young woman to England. The fellow Anglo Indian and rail administrator having died saving her. In the book she marries the Anglo Indian administrator, something which the character portrayed by Granger recognises and accepts before it happens.
The next film jumps to post Vietnam and the scandal that the USA administration knew that many GI’s were held for over decade, visiting them and supplying them with food but accepting the position because the Vietnamese claimed they were convicted war criminals. Unaware of this a team has been sent to investigate, finds one prison camp and frees the men only to get them killed on the way out. Called fortunes of War the team only manage to get one prisoner to the border where they are surrounded by a Vietnamese army and then a USA helicopter flies in to take the team out minus the remaining prisoner. Under 20 when captured only a couple of months after being drafted and trained he spent ten years when others would have dated, married, started a family and moved along their chosen careers. He is left behind, yet another victim of the politics of war and its aftermath. The team in getting to this position had slaughtered several hundred Vietnamese soldiers and caused a village to incinerated but they are flown out and home. The morality of the film dreadful with no redeeming features, intended to show the reality of war?
A very different kind of film about the role of government was seen in theatre on Thursday afternoon called Red. Some thirty years ago in Paris I saw the film Reds, and important documentary style drama about an American communist who became part of the Russian revolution. This Red is an amoral film about the black ops CIA which is highly enjoyable. Bruce Willis was once the best of the best and now retired and lonely he makes conversation with a pension clerk who is bored with her life, lives through novels and dreams of being swept off her feet by someone exciting. Willis wakes up one night to discover a black ops team sent to eliminate him and we shared in one of those glorious shoots up which demolish a property apparently while the rest of the residential neighbourhood sleep on. He escapes and having arranged to meet up with the girl on a visit to Kansas City kidnaps her knowing that she will be eliminated by whoever is out to get him, because of their association and conversations,
He takes her with him to visit fellow team member Morgan Freeman now in a retirement home and when he appears to have been killed they track down a disturbed paranoiac played by John Malkovitch who subsequently proves the point that I may be paranoid but this does not mean they are not out to get me.. Under attack from CIA chief Cynthia Wilkes and a young highly trained black ops Assassin Agent Cooper the team turn to the Russian embassy for a favour and their black ops chief played by Brian Cox, provides the layout and security means to break into the CIA HQ where Willis(and the girl who has wised up that her survival depends on Willis) where they make their way to secret records centre guarded by former friend and colleague Ernest Borgnine (gosh he is still alive) who provides the file on the Willis and the Guatamala project. Willis gets shot after a confrontation with Cooper and is saved by former USA CIA assassin played by Helen Mirren who years before had a affair with the Russian played by Cox who she says she had to put three bullets in his chest. He later says if he had not loved me she would have shot me in the head. They are also joined by Freeman who was not killed as we are led to believe and they uncover why their former bosses are trying to kill them and this appears to tie in with a reporter of China town origin who it emerges was also killed by Cooper. She has left a message with her mother which leads to a book in the Chinese university Library and to a list of names including those of the reassembled team who were all involved in an operation in a Central America country Guatemala.
There is only one other alive individual on the list who they track down to an airfreight company but he is executed while they are talking to him but they escape in a super shoot out with a great scene from the Matrix which this time instead of two bullets cancelling the other, one bullet blows up a missile being hand launched. Fortunately this last contact reveals that someone was extracted from the scene secretly and it becomes evident that the individual had now become the Vice President with ambitions to run for the Presidency. He appears to be the man behind the killings with the help of arms dealer Alexander Dunning played by Richard Dreyfus. The only way they mange to escape from the situation where they confront Dunning at his lair is for Morgan Freeman who die in place of Willis while he makes his escape. From Dunning they learn about the role of the Vice President and set out to kill him at a fund raiser. There is more splendid shoot up adventuring before it is revealed that the Vice President is a pawn of Dunning who killed by Malkovitch. They survive but there is the prospect fo a sequel as Willis is committed by the Russian to return his favour which involves an adventure in the Balkans.
During the week I commenced the step of switching broadband provides and upgrading my Sky box as well moving to Sky films, the full complete package.
I also watched a disappointing Michael Caine spy thriller, The Jigsaw Man.
This 1983 film also featured Laurence Olivier, Robert Powell and Susan George, but all four must have curses a little when they read the final script. The film has nothing of the James Bond entertainment extravaganza or the serious suspense of Le Carre or the Harry Palmer films which also feature Michael Caine in the lead role.
Caine plays the former head of British intelligence who fled to Russia after being the fourth man in Philby Burgess McClean quartet, and whose uselessness comes to an end because of his drunken behaviour. Against his wishes he is given a face transplant and told to wipe the slate clean by recovering his hidden record of intelligence information on Russian agents and work in the UK.
Why they waited for over a decade is not explained. Laurence Olivier plays the present head of service who continues in his admiration for Caine who according to the Russians died and is buried with appropriate honours. Susan George play his daughter now living under a different name to protect her from the media and who works as a translator with a London flat and Caine’s country cottage, an impressive thatched two storey house with grounds! Her boyfriend (Robert Powell) claims to work of the UN but is a member of the British Secret service, originally assigned to keep an eye on the girl by his head of section.
Soon after his funeral, Caine arrives in the UK as a defector saying has knowledge of the missing information on micro film. He evades the British Secret service at a meeting with Powell’s boss, whose he steals as well as injury a policeman in making his getaway. However his motive is to escape the Russians who he knows will execute him once they had retrieved the file Caine then makes contact with his former friend and now head of service and offers to sell the information. There is hen a series of events in which Caine manages to kill a friend of is daughter as well as another traitor within the service, Susan George and Robert Powell appear to have a happy ending while Caine and Oliver plan to sell the contents of the file to the highest bidder and enjoy retirement together.
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