R.P.M.

As Shirley MacLaine says in Rumor Has It, "Everyone needs someone in their life to let them know when youth has come to an end." For Anthony Quinn, that someone was Stanley Kramer, a director whom I normally love. Fresh off their success of The Secret of Santa Vittoria, Kramer cast Quinn as a middle-aged professor in R. P. M., standing for "Revolutions Per Minute". Quinn plays the "cool" professor who beds his students, rides a motorcycle, and talks with modern slang. When a group of protesting hippies take over the administration building and give "demands" as they hold the college's computer system hostage, an emergency board meeting is called and Quinn is sent as a mediator since the kids like him.

But here's the insulting part of the film, why dear vibrant, sexy Tony should never have taken the part: he's shown as over-the-hill and unable to relate to the wild generation. He wears reading glasses, he takes terrible insults from the students, and his girlfriend tells him "Pull in your gut" when he walks around naked. (Sorry ladies, he's given a flesh-colored thong to protect his modesty.) One could argue that he's still young and hip enough to go to bed with Ann-Margret, but as the movie progresses, the students are so disrespectful, they show the real generation gap: manners and decency. Even though Tony doesn't agree with the kids, he still tries to treat them with respect, but the angry, protesting teenagers don't give him the same courtesy.

There will be a large chunk of audience members who side with the teenagers, and that makes me both sad and disgusted. Manners never go out of style, and using them doesn't show weakness or inflexibility. It shows class, the ability to see the bigger picture, and maturity. Tony may belong to the older generation with graying hair and a growing tummy, but I'll happily join him any day of the week.

A year after Gary Lockwood was slightly too old to play a hapless hippie about to go to Vietnam, cruising around L. A. with nothing to do but get stoned in MODEL SHOP, he played an even younger hippie and is completely miscast... especially since he's also balding... but this rebel at least has a cause...

Leader of a student group taking over a university's computer center, Lockwood... along with another thirty-something student Paul Winfield... have demands they give to a liberal professor they once really liked...

That's where star Anthony Quinn, hired as a kind of emergency dean/president, comes in: spending most of the picture either having long discussions with comparably stuffy and conservative university profs or hanging out with young girlfriend Ann-Margret, who, like Lockwood, has little to do here but spout smug counter-culture platitudes in what feels more like a progressive TV-movie than a watered-down big-screen expose of college revolutionaries (very timely here in 2024), hence the R. P. M. Title standing for Revolutions Per Minute...

But there's only one revolution here, and it drags, despite Lockwood having a few good monologues opening up to Quinn... yet the audience can never fully get into his shared plight/agenda since otherwise sympathetic left-wing director and scriptwriter Stanley Kramer and Erich Segal never properly flesh-out the characters to grow past clichés - on either side of the aisle.

Campus radicals threaten to take over their university; newly-appointed campus president Anthony Quinn attempts to act as a mediator between the angry kids and the stuffy deans. Dated, talky rabble-rouser from esteemed director Stanley Kramer, working from a weak script by "Love Story" author Erich Segal. Segal doesn't lend much insight into the students or their demands, but Kramer gets a pretty good performance from Quinn, trying hard in a hopeless role. Ann-Margret has a small but colorful part playing Quinn's girlfriend. Otherwise, what might have been a fairly timely melodrama is instead tired, drab, and ultimately pointless. *1/2 from ****

In "R.P.M." students take over and occupy the administration building of a California college as school President Tyler resigns. After midnight, the College Board of Trustees decides to replace Tyler with Professor "Paco" Perez (Anthony Quinn), a 53 year-old sociology teacher. He has three main assets: (1) He is popular with the student body, (2) he has a Spanish surname, and his hiring would exemplify progressivism, and (3) he lives with a 25 year-old graduate student Rhoda (Ann-Margret) who has difficulty in staying clothed. An obvious liberal, Perez attempts to negotiate with the students. A problematic situation arises as he became part of the "establishment" when he was appointed by conservative deans. He agrees with 75 percent of the student demands, but those concessions are not enough. One of the three demands not accepted is that the students want to hire the professors! But the students, led by 33 year-old grad student Gary Lockwood (Rossiter) and 31 year-old Paul Winfield (Dempsey), are reticent. When they do not obtain acceptance on ALL of their demands, they foolishly decide to destroy school property (computer equipment). As Perez is backed up against a wall, his option is to call in the police. So where is the resolution?

Erich Segal's script is trite and hardly rises above comic-book level. Concerning the film's direction, where is the genuine emotion and character development? Anthony Quinn is always good, but in this movie he is miscast. Worse, 30 year-old Ann-Margret's performance as a collegian is ludicrous; she is way too old to be a typical grad student. As she does not exactly radiate intelligentsia, one wonders how she ever became an undergraduate. The impression does arise that she may have earned her bachelor's degree by lying on her back. Chemistry is lacking between her and lover Quinn, whom she even calls a hypocrite. Both Lockwood and Winfield are also too old for their respective characters.

The late 1960s and early 1970s was a time of college campus radicalization, although the students on the far left comprised only a small percentage of the school population. But they were both vocal and active. They were quite volatile, hence R.P.M. = Revolutions per Minute. All in all, this pointless movie certainly shows its age.

R.P.M. is completely out-dated in today's Me, Myself, and I society. However, in the revolutionary times of the 1960s and early 1970s, R.P.M. was an excellent portrayal of the college "scene" of those times.

Anthony Quinn gives one of his finest "latter" years roles as F.W.J. "Paco" Perez. Quinn's character is a liberal fighting, social changing sociology professor who has earned the respect of the rebellious student population at his university. The students want changes now, but are unwilling to compromise. Stanley Kramer shows that there were "no easy" solutions to the various generational problems for the times. Ann-Margret is in her "sexiest" prime, but also shines as a Perez "grupie". Also, Gary Lockwood as the militant student leader gives a creditable performance.

Revolutions Per Minute is a great trip down memory lane and helps capture the atmosphere of 1970.