La jauría humana

I had never heard about The Chase. Rented it from the local library, since it starred Marlon Brando and Robert Redford. Just watched it this morning. It blew me away. Without a doubt it is the best movie I have seen in 2009, and one of the movies to remember.

It does have some problems with editing and music at the outset and feels oddly paced in the first half hour, but when it finds its tone and picks up the pace, it's a true roller coaster ride of emotions.

The characters are archetypes, and the story aims more for dramatic effect than realism.

Brando is fine as the honest Sheriff, and Dickinson puts in excellent performance as his supportive wife. Redford is the outlaw on the run as an escape convict, even though he seems to be one of the most decent people around. Jane Fonda is his wife, who has fallen in love with the town's prince, played by James Fox who is on his own parallel escape from his father's (E.G. Marshall) money and materialism. Robert Duvall also gives a nice little supporting performance.

The villain is mob behavior, corruption, and a society that looks for pure pleasure instead of some sense and meaning. Honest and decent people are on the run from society's destructive tendencies, and the only one to protect the innocence of society is a single Sheriff, who does everything in his power to protect the law that nobody respects but himself.

Perhaps I am giving The Chase such a high rating partly because I had never heard about it before, and was completely blown away. It contains a lot of complex characters, and feels in the opening more like a play than a movie, but if you give it a chance, you may be pleasantly surprised.

I think it should belong to the Western genre, even though it takes place in the 60's. It got guys in cowboy hats, an outlaw, a sheriff, a rich man that is taking over everything, some romance, bystanders that aren't very innocent, and a wild bunch that happens to hide within a very disturbed society.

Highly recommended.

The Chase did get pretty awful reviews when it was released but this is a movie to seek out, if for nothing else the performances. A young Richard Bradford is extremely believable as the town bully and womanizer. Robert Duvall as a henpecked husband. Jane Fonda and Robert Redford in early roles. The real reason to catch this one, however, is Brando's performance, which (as noted by another reviewer) is one of his better ones. I saw this movie when it was released and left the theater feeling exhaustion as well as an inner turmoil because the movie made me so mad! The fight scene at the sheriff's office was pretty violent for it's time and was quite upsetting. Great acting all around. Check it out.

"The Chase" is a powerful and underrated drama. It has most of the ingredients that are required for a solid dramatic picture: exceptional acting (particularly by Brando), careful directing, well-drawn characters and good production values. The first half meanders a little, but in the second half the tension mounts and the film becomes constantly more and more involving and moving. So why does it have such a low reputation? Maybe because of all those reported production problems. But who cares? They're certainly not evident in the film! Recommended for mature viewers.

At the time of its initial release, few of us knew of the behind-the-scenes problems that beset director, Arthur Penn as he directed "The Chase". I, and many others attended the show and, in 1966, its impact was really astounding. What some critics and viewers take as a rather slow, meandering opening section of the film, I found to be an engrossing study of life in a small Southern town, somewhat low-key and slow-paced, but with a slowly emerging sense of its underlying tensions and conflicts. The news that a local boy has escaped from prison and is headed back to town, serves as the catalyst that eventually brings everything to a boil. Issues such as racism, class conflict, and the effects of evil gossip, come into play as a host of characters find themselves drawn into an ugly crescendo of hatred and fear. The manner in which it all ultimately explodes into a succession of violent scenes left me, and many others I knew, utterly blown away. The shock value and the way it caused us to ponder the meaning of it all long afterward can not be understated. See it now and various elements that reflect common shortcomings in the way big Hollywood productions of the era dealt with such material are far more obvious than they were then. Some dialog doesn't ring true, some of the larger-scale scenes seem overproduced. All the same, it remains a remarkable film, amazingly well acted.

The lukewarm reviews and comments led me to expect less than what I found in this decent movie of small-town corruption. Most of it is probably due to a pretty good cast - Brando is excellent, and Duvall, Dickinson, and E.G.Marshall put in good work. Redford's part is too small to do much with. I too was astounded at James Fox's pretty darn good Southern accent; it was so good that at first I couldn't place him, and then all those British roles came back to me in surprise. The script is ok too, and one would like to know more about the backstage fighting that went on over it between Hellman & company. The Panavision color is excellent; far better than what we have today. The portrayal of small-town bigotry, duplicity, jealousy, betrayal, and infidelity is well-done, and the spectacular junkyard Gotterdamerung is a chilling finale. The flick is definitely worth seeing.