March or Die (1977)

Major William Sherman Foster (Gene Hackman) returned to Paris at the conclusion of the Great War.  Though an American, he was a member of the French Foreign Legion.  Clearly, he suffered PSTD from the experience.  Not long after the return, he was dispatched to Morocco.  Francois Marneau (Max von Sydow) wanted to resume digging at a ruin.  Foster warned against it, saying that El Krim (Ian Holm) would not take kindly to such activities.  Nonetheless, Foster and his legionnaires were sent.  Among the legionnaires were some new recruits: Marco Segrain (Terence Hill) the cat burglar, Top Hat the musician (he got his name on account of his headgear), Ivan the Russian (Jack O'Halloran), and Hastings the runaway Englishman who had never traveled less than first class before.  This clique provided a view of life in the legion.  There was also Simone Picard (Catherine Deneuve), whose father was a colleague of Marneau and last seen at the ruins.  The ship voyage to Morrocco saw the beginning of romance between Marco and Simone.  Marco is not the only one interested in Simone; she has several suitors.  Eventually, the legionnaire's travel to the ruins, Marneau begins excavating, and soldiers go missing.  El Krim is not pleased.  Conflict is imminent and Foster doesn't have enough men to hold the position.

The setting is interesting and has a Beau Geste or Alamo feel to it.  Terence Hill is much too lighthearted and comical for his role.  Yes, he is charming, but he lacks the dangerous edge that Marco needed.  Perhaps I have seen too many of his comedies to take him seriously here.  The arc of Foster is hard to discern.  On the one hand, he has this fatalistic air where he expects to die in the desert.  He waited almost too long to resist an attack.  When not being gloomy, he's an insufferable jerk.  Even as a bad guy, Hackman is usually likable, but here he isn't.

Mediocre.  Skip.

The French Connection (1971)

Marseilles, France

A detective surveilles a meeting and trails one of them.  Afterward, he buys himself some bread and heads back to his apartment.  He has hardly opened the door when an assassin guns him down.

New York City

Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman) takes down a drug dealer while dressed as Santa Claus.  His partner, Buddy "Cloudy" Russo (Roy Scheider) suffered a knife-wounded during the arrest.  Rather than go home, Popeye convinced Cloudy to get a drink.  This soon turns into a stakeout of Sal Boca, a convenience store owner with a criminal record.  Popeye has a hunch that something big is coming and Sal is part of it.  However, the mastermind of the drug dealers, Alain Charnier (Fernado Rey) is quite clever himself.  He quickly spots Popeye following him and takes measures to lose him.

It is a gritty movie that spends the majority of its time in the dark underbelly of New York's drug culture.  It's cops, drug dealers, and innocent bystanders.  As the Charnier and his sidekick are French, they only speak French to each other; the Amazon version of the film has no subtitles, making their conversations a mystery.  

Gene Hackman won the Academy Award for his role as Doyle.  Doyle is a loose cannon cop with anger management issues and poor taste in hats.  To the positive, he is a workaholic with a nose for finding the bad guys.  Overall, he is not a particularly likeable person.  He's abrasive and abusive.  On the other hand, he has an endless supply of persistence.  Hackman's range as an actor was truly impressive.  He could be hard-as-nails dangerous (this movie or Unforgiven), funny and devious (Lex Luthor from the Superman series), or goofy and harmless (Young Frankenstein).  RIP

Unforgiven (1992)

In Big Whiskey, Wyoming, a cowboy had badly scarred a prostitute.  Where the prostitutes wanted the sheriff, Little Bill Dagget (Gene Hackman), to hang the two cowboys, he opted to have them pay restitution.  To the brothel owner, not the mutilated woman.  Infuriated, the women pooled their money to hire gunmen to kill the cowboys.

William Munny (Clint Eastwood) is a poor Kansas farmer with two kids.  His wife died nearly three years ago.  It is a hard life.  While trying to separate diseased pigs from healthy ones, a rider appears.  The Schofield Kid is off to collect a bounty in Wyoming.  He doesn't want to go alone.  Will was a terror in his younger days, a violent drunkard who killed without compunction.  "I'm not that man anymore," he explains, declining the offer.  However, he soon reconsiders and rides off to enlist his old buddy, Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman).  The pair find the Schofield Kid on the way to Wyoming.

English Bob (Richard Harris) is known as the Duke of Death, at least that is the title of the dime novel on his adventures in the West.  He arrives in Big Whiskey to collect the bounty but soon discovers an old acquaintance: Little Bill.  It is far from a happy reunion.

There are no heroes.  The Old West is a brutal place where self-interest outweighs all.  The tales told by Little Bill, Ned Logan, and William Munny paint a picture of violence and murder.  These are not good men, though they may be men of their time and place.

Recommended.

The Package (1989)

In Berlin, US and Russian diplomats meet to discuss a disarmament treaty.  Prospects look excellent but military leaders on both sides are secretly opposed to such a treaty.  In fact, they have plans to derail the treaty.  However, one of their number, a brigadier general, is having second thoughts.  Meanwhile, Sgt. John Gallagher (Gene Hackman) is patrolling the grounds as part of security.  He and his detachment encounter a pair of hikers who attack a vehicle leaving the meeting.  They engage the hikers but both of them escape in another vehicle.  The brigadier general lies dead on the side of the road.  In the aftermath of the incident, Gallagher finds himself at odds with Colonel Glen Whitacre (John Heard).

Though he expects to stay in Germany, Gallagher is assigned to take a package back to the US; it is a soldier who struck an officer (Tommy Lee Jones).  They have hardly arrived when Gallagher is beaten in the airport restroom and his prisoner escapes.  When he starts looking for the prisoner, he quickly realized that the man he transported is not the man listed on his paperwork.  Something nefarious is happening.  And now he's wanted for murder!  Using only trusted contacts and avoiding arrest by either MPs or the police, can Gallagher recover his package before he completes whatever mission he's on?

Among Gallagher's allies are his ex-wife, Lt. Col. Eileen Gallagher (Joanna Cassidy) and a former army buddy & now Chicago cop, Lt. Milam Delich (Dennis Franz).  However, the opposition is vast.  This is truly a trust no one situation where any encounter - no matter how benign - might suddenly become a life-or-death struggle.

Here is a very good thriller that plays out the military industrial complex as the puppet masters of the world order.  Gene Hackman came across as a mellower version of his Popeye Doyle character from The French Connection.  Yes, there are car chases, gunfights, and fisticuffs.  For Dennis Franz, this falls between his stint on Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue.  Yeah, Chicago cop was a real challenge for him.  In any case, he is quite good here; this is his bread & butter role.  Joanna Cassidy is all worry in this role and doesn't get to do much.  Tommy Lee Jones is terrific but his role is relatively small.  The bad guys have so many pawns that he doesn't get much action.  He is the most likable of the villains, a gun for hire with no scruples as long as the pay is good.

Good popcorn fun.

Bite the Bullet (1975)

In 1908, newspaperman J. B. Parker is hosting an endurance race through the Southwest United States.  Of course, he expects his horse to win the race.  There are fewer than 10 competitors.  There is the mostly anonymous rider of Parker's thoroughbred, a Civil War veteran (Ben Johnson), Miss Jones (Candace Bergen), an Englishmen (Ian Bannen), a young firebrand (Jan-Michael Vincent), a Mexican (Mario Arteaga), and a pair of Rough Riders: Luke Matthews (James Coburn) and Sam Clayton (Gene Hackman).  The race will take place over a week and see the riders cross 700 miles of grueling territory.  Along the way, the riders must face a variety of hazards, both minor (toothache) and major (bandits).  Speaking of the toothache, in order to treat it, an old remedy was to take a bullet casing and use it as a makeshift crown, thus biting the bullet.  Interesting, but did that event deserve to be titular?

Despite being the central theme of the movie, the workings of the race were inexplicable.  Since they stop each day, one expects that each is trying to get the best time for the day.  Nope.  Whenever two riders are close to each other, both kick to a gallop so as to get into the lead.  Huh?  They don't leave all at the same time and rarely arrive at the same time.  By the end, it looks like it was just a matter of surviving.  The only leg that really mattered was the last one, and the first one through the gate won.  Really?

These people don't know horses.  Horses do not gallop or even trot for extended periods.  Horses mostly walk.  Thanks to their size, a horse at a walk is a lot faster than a human at a walk.  Also, it is less tiring for the human.  This movie gave the impression these horses galloped 700 miles.  No.  Not how this works.  This misconception was so distracting as to ruin the film.

During the side quest to recapture their horses from escaped prisoners, the prisoners actions made no sense.  You are all armed and you outnumber your pursuers.  Why are you riding away.  Stop and shoot them.  Heck, the very people pursuing you could have just killed when you stole their horses.  It was just ludicrous.  Though this entire disaster was engineered by Miss Jones to rescue her imprisoned husband, she had a sudden change of heart and let the Rough Riders shoot him.  Of course, she just rides away without consequences.  Sigh.

For a movie that is jampacked with great actors, the results are subpar.  Why did Sam rant about how wrong it was to push a horse near to death in an endurance race only to then join the race and push his horse near to death?  Really?

Skip.