drnossal

A deep dive? Hardly, more like a disjointed mess with quick cuts of old documents and photos with little or no explanation.

There is no narrative here, no explanation of the theories on which the film is allegedly based, namely the book by Tom O'Neill. I've read the book, which is quite fascinating, but if you haven't, there is just no way to follow the random bits and pieces thrown out by this documentary.

Case in point, O'Neill is briefly interviewed, but without any explanation of who he is. O'Neill briefly discusses some of the shadowy players associated with the Manson saga like Jolly West and Roger Smith, but little information is given about why they were relevant and what they did or might have done. Music industry people like Brian Wilson, Terry Melcher and Gregg Jakobsen are briefly mentioned, but with little background on their relationship to each other or Manson.

The film is a complete waste of your time. If you are truly interested, read O'Neill's book and skip this incoherent trainwreck.

An excellent example of the Idiot Plot, a term popularized by Roger Ebert although not coined by him. In other words, the story is driven by characters that somehow all manage to avoid simple and obvious actions that would clear up the whole farce in about ten seconds.

The story makes no sense. We got told very early in the story that the neighbor is still married by California law and, her lawyers assure her, there should be no problem in qualifying for her inheritance. The characters then engage in a two-hour screwball exercise designed to avoid a legal jeopardy we all know doesn't exist and continue to do so even when the estranged husband shows up, keenly interested in rekindling the relationship.

What should have been a breezy and chaste wife-swapping farce drags on for two hours plus, with laughs few and far between. It perks up slightly when Michael Connors enters the picture as the erstwhile husband, but the movie is a simply a painful and tedious slog.

Lemmon is his typical brilliant everyman and Romy Schneider is a delight whenever she is on screen. There's also the pleasure of the early 60s fashions, San Francisco setting and West Coast architecture.

But far from the mildly fond memory I'd carried since seeing Good Neighbor Sam on TV in the 70s, this one is unfunny and dumb. Lemmon reportedly didn't like the film either when it was released, face it, the man had taste.

I don't get the reviews that mention "gun culture" as the film has little to say about that and it probably shouldn't be considered an accurate portrayal of "militia culture" either.

You can't really call it a character study, not with a tight running time and seven principal characters, there just isn't opportunity to delve much into backgrounds or motivations. What you get though is a taut thriller with characters gone to ground in a dimly lit warehouse, desperately trying to solve the mystery of a cop massacre before the police can find them and mete out their own justice, taking the innocent with the guilty. So, who did it?

The script does a great job conveying the pressure, claustrophobia and near-panic the characters feel. Guns, believe it or not, are mostly absent from the story. Not a shot is fired until the final scene. The story is carried very effectively with little more than fast, tense dialogue. There aren't a lot of wasted words in this one.

Unfortunately, the third act veers off into a bizarre conspiracy. The final reveal is more than a little implausible. Nagging questions suddenly become gaping plot holes. And the writers missed a great opportunity to highlight a really delicious irony, namely that while militia-types might carry more than a healthy dose of paranoia, it turns out sometimes they really are out to get you.

Good premise, solid acting and dialogue, but a conclusion that falls apart.