Black Moon Rising (1986)

In the salt flats of Utah, Earl Windom (Richard Jaeckel) tests his revolutionary hydrogen-powered car.  Not only does it run on hydrogen, but the sleek car - the Black Moon - has a rocket engine (like the Batmobile!) that gives it an extra boost of speed.  With the test successful, he sets out for Los Angeles to get additional funding.

In Las Vegas, Quint (Tommy Lee Jones) is a professional thief on a mission.  He has been contracted by the Department of Justice to recover incriminating tapes from a corporation.  No sooner has he acquired the tape than the alarm sounds, and he is on the run.  Worse, an old foe, Marvin Ringer (Lee Ving), is the chief of security who has no compuction about killing Quint to recover the tape.  Quint's vehicle is poked full of bullet holes during his flight.  As luck would have it, he encounters Earl and his crew at a gas station on the road to LA.  Seeing as they are both headed to the same spot, Quint hid the tape in the Black Moon.  Moments later, Ringer arrives and Quint is on the run again.

In Los Angeles, Nina (Linda Hamilton) sits at the bar of a high-end restaurant.  Of course, she shuts down a guy who hits on her.  However, she has a brief exchange with Quint, who is also at the bar.  Nina leaves and locks the restaurant door behind her.  A van full of men arrives in the parking lot and she instructs them which cars to steal.  She allocates the Black Moon to herself.  Despite Nina's impressive driving skills and the speed of the Black Moon, Quint follows her to Ryland Towers.  He quickly determines that it is a high-security facility.

Ed Ryland (Robert Vaughn) sells high-end stolen cars internationally.  To demonstrate just how dangerous he is, he orders the death of a foreign buyer for breach of payment while watching the killing on a closed-circuit TV.  He is unimpressed that Nina has stolen the Black Moon, which is unique and basically unsellable.  Clearly, the relationship between Ryland and Nina is on the rocks.

The pieces are now in place.  Can Quint recover the tape from the Black Moon and get it to the DOJ before it is needed in court?  Will he be able to convince Earl and his crew to help by promising to recover the Black Moon?  Can he dodge Marvin long enough to complete his plan?  Will Nina become a love interest?  Well, that one's a given.  But will she help him steal the Black Moon or remain loyal to Ryland?

For a movie that required a bunch of coincidences to tell its story, it takes that to the extreme.  At one point, Quint arrives at a location that no one could have predicted he would be and yet Marvin is waiting for him there.  Impossible!  Not only Marvin, but the DOJ is also there!  What?!  Oh, and Bubba Smith - 6'7" former NFL defensive lineman - plays the most-intimidating DOJ agent you ever saw.

There are lasers, building infiltrations, car chases, gun fights, fisticuffs, sex scenes, explosions, and even a crazy flying car stunt.  It covers all the bases.  Though evil and almost omniscient, the villain isn't all that bright.  The movie is a little uneven in pacing.  Even so, this is a fun, action-packed, heist film.

Good popcorn fun.

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.

The Homesman (2014)

It is 1854 in Nebraska Territory and a trio of women are suffering prairie madness, a fairly common ailment at that time.  Obviously, the sparsely populated region cannot care for them and it is determined to send them east.  Mary Bee Cuddy (Hillary Swank), who is an unmarried woman, is selected to transport them.  On her way to her farm with the wagon, she comes across a man (Tommy Lee Jones) with a noose around his neck and sitting on a horse.  She agrees to release him if he will agree to accompany her to Iowa.  Of course, he agrees.  The pair retrieve the three women - one is catatonic, one is bound and shrieking, and the last is listless.  The journey across the desolate prairie begins.

Hillary Swank is excellent as the lonely but self-sufficient frontier woman.  Her precise backstory is not detailed but she has a fine plot of land that is well-maintained.  She grew up in New York, can sing and play piano, knows how to handle a rifle, and is viewed as the equal of most men in her community.  Though she has tried to marry, she has thus far failed to attract a husband.  It is soon clear that she has a prepared script for proposing to single men.  However, she has been rejected for being plain and too bossy.  Mary is a caring and compassionate woman, but intensely lonely.  Swank embodies this beautifully.  Outstanding performance.

Tommy Lee Jones plays a disreputable prairie tramp who, through his association with Mary and the trio of mad women, is somewhat reformed.  Though he didn't want this task and has opportunities to abandon it, he sees it through.  His character is less well-developed than Mary's.  His motives run the gamut from duty to mercenary to compassion to vengeance.  In his final scene, he's a singing drunkard who is not paying attention to his property or the propriety of his actions.  Has he resumed his status as a prairie tramp?  Probably.

As I had no idea what a homesman was when I watched the movie, I looked it up.  A homesman is one who escorts settlers from the frontier to civilization.  "Go east, young man!"  One supposes that a person who led the wagon train on the westward journey was called a scout or guide, but he became a homesman when he traveled the other way.

Based on a story by Glendon Swarthout (who also wrote John Wayne's last movie, The Shootist), it deals with the real affliction of prairie madness.  People who were used to close neighbors in the East or, more especially, in Europe, were subject to deep depression in the sparsely-populated isolating prairies of North America.  One cure was often to just return east to counter the isolation.

The movie is mostly a tragedy - how could it be otherwise - but still engaging.  Certainly not a feelgood movie.  Nonetheless, recommended.

Ad Astra (2019)

Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) is working on a communication tower that reaches to space when a power surge hits.  He falls from the tower and plummets earthward.  For a long time.  He's unconscious for part of the fall.  He wakes up in time to pull his chute.  Soon after the incident, he is called to a meeting where he learns that his father, Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones) - who has been missing for over 20 years when the Lima Project was assumed to have failed - may still be alive in orbit around Neptune.  As the power surges that are causing trouble on Earth originate from Neptune, Roy is the perfect person to establish contact with his father.  Roy soon catches a rocket to the moon and thence to Mars.  After several laser transmissions to the Lima Project station, there is a response.  Roy is not privy to the response.  Determined to reconnect with his father, Roy stows away on the ship that is dispatched.  Will he be able to stop his father or is he too emotionally involved?

The movie is slow paced.  Though there are several action scenes, the silence of space gives them an antiseptic feel.  A page was taken from The Expanse.  Roy is the coolest of customers, always calm and in control.  He saves the day repeatedly in high stress situations.  However, his emotionlessness gives him a detached quality.  His wife left him because he was never around, even when he was around.  Clearly, his absent father - who set out for Neptune when Roy was a teenager - has dramatically impacted him and also led him to follow his father's career path.  If not for Roy's narration, his character would have seemed distant indeed.

More of an interesting movie than an entertaining one.  Yes, the stakes are high and the journey is epic, but it plays like a meditation session that has the occasional break for exercise.

Just okay.

Nate and Hayes (1983)

Captain Bully Hayes (Tommy Lee Jones) arrives on a beach with his crew.  They hack through the jungle and find their way to a native village to sell rifles.  The natives prove unwilling to pay and suddenly Bully and his crew must flee for their lives.  Only Bully escapes but he is immediately captured by his old nemesis, Ben Pease (Max Phipps), and a contingent of Spanish soldiers.  Awaiting his execution, he details the events that led him to his doom.

Sailing on the Rona 18 months earlier, Bully had transported Nathaniel Williams (Michael O'Keefe) and his fiancé, Sophie (Jenny Seagrove), to a South Pacific island where they will be missionaries.  Nate's aunt and uncle are already on the island.  They explain that Bully Hayes is a notorious pirate and blackbirder (slave trader) and that Nate is lucky to be alive.  During Nate and Sophie's wedding, blackbirders attack the island.  Left for dead, Nate awakens to find that his aunt and uncle are dead while Sophie and most of the islanders are missing.  He suspects Bully Hayes.  In fact, it was Ben Pease, Captain of the Leonora.  Pease is working for a German Count who is trying to secure a harbor for the German Empire in the South Pacific.  Before long, Nate and Hayes are allies determined to rescue Sophie and kill Ben Pease.

The movie takes place around 1870 and has an opening reminiscent of Raiders of the Lost Ark.  The scene where he cut the rope bridge looked like it was stolen from Temple of Doom but this movie came out first!  And Sophie being lowered into fire as a sacrifice also looked like a scene from Temple of Doom.  Hey, what's up with that?  Tommy Lee Jones is excellent as Hayes but Michael O'Keefe is poorly cast.  His transition from naïve missionary to battle-hardened buccaneer is unconvincing.  In one scene he is a bumbling oaf and in the next he is an action hero.  Weak.

This is an entertaining but entirely fictional account of an actual person.  William Henry "Bully" Hayes (1827-1877) was an American who sailed the Pacific.  Though not technically a pirate, he was a conman, a thief, a swindler, a blackbirder, and a bigamist.  He did sail a ship named the Rona from 1866 to 1869.  Of note, he sailed with fellow blackbirder Ben Pease (1834-1870) on a voyage to China.  When he returned, he offered a story about Ben retiring in China and thus he was now the owner of the brig Pioneer.  Hmm.  He renamed this ship Leonora.

The movie reminded me of Tales of the Gold Monkey, which takes place in the same region only 70 years later.  Also, it aired in 1982-83, just when this movie came out.  Not great but fun.