'Cinema
Aft and fore
Duncan Fallowell
The Last Detail Director 7 Stuart Rosenburg. Stars: Jack Nicholson, Otis Young, Randy Quaid. 'X' Columbia (103 minutes) Dillinger Director: John Milius. Stars: Warren Oates, Ben Johnson. 'X' ABC 2, Shaftesbury Avenue (107 minutes) After shifting the queues away from The Exorcist and Enter The Dragon, The Last Detail should be down your way anon. Be sceptical if you are told that you could not see a good film (as in 'a good read') until this arrived. That is just critical crotte, not to mention
philistine. But it is not surprising that the film should become a spopular success. Certainly it is replete with subtleties and beautifully acted: Jack Nicholson the Loud, soft at centre, dominates the film as he does its advertising, but perhaps Randy Quaid, 'as the unloved sailor boy semi-moron thief on his way to do eight years, is not far behind as he stumbles, victim of kleptomania. And short steps behind him is Otis Young as the other petty officer. Yet there are quite a. few beautifully acted films, some not only replete with subtleties. They are frequentlY foreign and occasionally peculiar. No, The Last Detail is not as Genet-esque as it sounds. It iS notable for being the first classY film in days to put humans in a light which is not only appealing but also credible and in a simple form that would obstruct no one (whether for reasons of proprietY, of intelligence, or of trans-cultural block). It castigates the callousness of collective discipline, atir institutions, by observing the sensitivity whereby individuals compensate for this. It is nice to be reminded now and again that human beings do make loving, unselfish gestures to one another. It is also nice to be reminded that the American film industry under the category of solid entertainment can still come up with Pic" tures that are affecting as well as time-consuming. With Dillinger we are back in the mainstream of watchable crash-bang-wallop. First the crash. Lovers of old American cars will have a field day and doubtless be aghast every ten minutes at the sacrifice of so many in the berserk convolutions of car clase followed by multiple prang. Then the bang, by permission of Michelle Phillips as the Indian girl he loved and often took by force. On the other hand, annihilation freaks, in addi; tion to the constant conversion of
cars into fire and scrap metal, maY also approve the lavishly messy shoot-ups. The gangsters have hyper-charmed lives and a huge number of goodies get killed. Then the wallop. Ben Johnson (alias
Melvin Purvis, the G-Man on the trail) kicks Machine Gun Kelly ill /the face, Dillinger collapses rib cages with the butt of a machine
gun, the cast staggers about variously mutilated, and behaviour is widely rough.
The image of John Dillinger decorates the FBI's pistol practice cards and you might have thought one -could not become more of a romantic hero than that. Warren Oates, as this Depression ball1( robber whose objectionable per sonality was redeemed by charm is not so much romantic as suf.'
fering from delusions of grandeur. If you can keep pace with the appearances and disappearances of his moustache you will catch at,
the end the striking apparition 0' Cloris Leachman as the Lady Ui Red. The most interesting character in all this is Melvin Purvis who shot himself in 1961 [ with the same gun he had used t° kill John Dillinger. The
should have been about him. " almost inadvertently was.
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