Post by ronnierocketago on Feb 9, 2010 8:34:42 GMT
BLACK SUNDAY (1977) - ***
Since yesterday was Super Sunday, let's celebrate by reviewing a movie involving the Super Bowl, which has become this overhyped, exausting spectacle about everything of the game except the game itself. In fact a good Super Bowl game is rare like a good Super Bowl haltime show. Well we at least got a half of that last night. Man Pete Townsend can't sing worth a shit anymore can he?This is an unofficial national holiday which gives drunks, degenerate gamblers, and sports fanatics another excuse for to partake and continue their unhealthy lifestyles.
Hollywood has produced many movies featuring the Super Bowl, but never about the Super Bowl for it's usually just incidental. The whimsy HEAVEN CAN WAIT had slain Los Angeles Rams quarterback Warren Beatty be reincarnated as a fat rich geezer who buys his old team and leads them to victory. Then he moved them to St. Louis. Jim Carrey in ACE VENTURA must return kidnapped Hall of Famer Dan Marino from penis-armed Sean Young for the big game. That was the closest Dan the Man ever came to winning the Lombardi. Then the game was an explosive set-piece (literally) in THE SUM OF ALL FEARS, except when the fuck did Baltimore build a dome stadium?
Which leaves us BLACK SUNDAY, which wasn't exactly a box-office champion and not particularly a remarkable movie, yet everybody remembers it. Even in the FEARS book, Tom Clancy has a character make a reference to BLACK SUNDAY. This was perhaps memorable mostly for a very basic premise with tantalizing thriller consequences: Terrorists target the Super Bowl. It's so simple, you wonder why nobody thought it before the movie or the source novel written by Thomas Harris, who later penned SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Apparently he got the idea from watching the 1972 Munich Olympics and transplanted such zeigeist terrorism back home.
Which probably explains why the protagonist Robert Shaw is an Israeli Mossad operative, trying to track down a Black September splinter cell led by Marthe Keller and psychopathic Vietnam veteran Bruce Dern, and stop their next lethal public protest. That's right, BLACK SUNDAY is a Jews With Guns movie. You know come to think of it, we don't really have that many Israeli characters at the movies, which amounts to EXODUS, MUNICH, that stupid Adam Sandler comedy, and if I counted television too, that chick on N.C.I.S. Kinda surprising considering all those timeless jokes about Jews in Hollywood. I suppose it's because they don't want to bother with the inevitable political baggage unless they're dealing directly with that topic.
As spy thrillers go, BLACK SUNDAY is formulaic routine as you would probably expect from this genre in the 1970s. Exotic foreign locations, cold bastard badass hero knowing the score, sunglasses, villains with depth, beautifully deadly women, disguises, secret societies, assassinations, espionage, not-so-polite interrogations, digging through and solving enigmatic clues, gunfights, chases, shady people in dark alleys, ambushes, explosion or two, all that. But since this was shot by John Frankenheimer (THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, RONIN), one of the greatest thriller directors to ever live, BLACK SUNDAY is for the most part very entertaining and suspenseful if cliche run of the mill. One potent sequence with Shaw in pursuit of a terrorist on the streets and beaches of Miami is a good fun reminder of why we love these sort of movies.
Plus he's tremendously helped by a kickass (maybe even underrated) soundtrack by John Williams. Hey remember action movies having good scores? Has Williams ever composed a boring score? He could make reading a phone book nerveracking. For years this was Williams' sole soundtrack since 1977 not to be released, but now it's available through mail order in the Film Score Monthly magazine.
Unfortunately this was Frankenheimer's turning point for the worse. Paramount and everyone had real high blockbuster expectations for BLACK SUNDAY. Based off a popular novel, you got Frankenheimer, producer Robet Evans (THE GODFATHER, CHINATOWN), Williams, and Shaw just off JAWS the biggest hit ever. Big budget, high production values, strong test screening scores, hell they even put up the money for Frankenheimer to go hide cameras with the spectators and film Super Bowl X, the stand-in game for the fictional picture where the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Dallas Cowboys. In one shot you can even glimpse Super Bowl MVP and future Governor candidate Lynn Swann's iconic touchdown catch. Knowing the pussy Roger Goodell NFL today, they wouldn't do this now.
But alas, BLACK SUNDAY got blacked out in theatres which apparently drove Frankenheimer into a booze-filled depression lasting for several years and quite a few shoddy pictures like THE HOLCROFT COVENANT and the Don Johnson actioneer DEAD BANG. The most sad being that mutant bear horror flick PROPHECY. He wouldn't get over his funk until the 1990s where before his death, he made a (mostly) strong comeback run and help restore his critical standing. And made me a fan.
A very creative touch I love is the terrorists' method of attack. In almost every other movie of this sort with heavy collateral damage aplenty on live TV and the U.S. President in attendence, we would have a typical smuggled explosive or chemical weapon or nuclear warhead attached with one of those dumb digital countdown clocks. In BLACK SUNDAY they plan to hijack the Goodwill blimp, hover it down into Orange Stadium, and detonate a flechette (steel projectiles) bomb which would shred everybody like Swiss Cheese. Give those badguys credit for creativity.
Which leads to BLACK SUNDAY's biggest problem. Once the attack attempt which may or may not have succeeded has come and gone, this movie's narrative energy is zapped dry during the prolonged never-ending climax. Once invested, more and more you quickly want this movie to just stop. Does Shaw die? Did he save the day? So what? This is what keeps BLACK SUNDAY from being more than just fun and watchable if disposable.
Ultimately, I'm surprised with how BLACK SUNDAY for the most part has aged well. In fact asides from the politics and filmatics, BLACK SUNDAY is a very ripe candidate for a remake. Of course now it would be Al Qaeda (hell we support the P.L.O. against Hamas) and probably more contemporary popular shakey camera, A.D.D.-inducing editing, and expensive C.G.I.. Who knows, maybe even a contrived romance subplot for the hero. And the Super Bowl just keeps getting bigger and bigger, now about $3 million for a 30 second commercial spot.
Oh and fascinating irony: the Super Bowl in the BLACK SUNDAY book took place at Tulane Stadium in New Orleans, between the Miami Dolphins and the Washington Redskins. Remember the book was written back when the Superdome wasn't constructed yet, and when the horrible Saints (or the "Aints" for decades) weren't worthy of that city's attention, much less terrorists. Congratulations Drew Brees and the Saints, you're now America's Team, you're going to Disney World, and Osama Bin Laden now knows of you.