j_lesta

"Invitation to a Gunfighter" is a film searching for a consistent tone. By turns it's stilted, silly and melodramatic, and the result is mostly just confusing. The kernels of a very good movie are present, but often left "unpopped." For example, the town is initially portrayed as morally upright, and Brynner's character as amoral, and the film tries to flip this on its head. The trouble is, we rarely see anything to prove this; instead, we're forced to fill in the blanks ourselves from sparse pieces of (vague) dialogue. The story is so buried in subtext and so much is not shown that scenes like Yul Brynner's drunken rampage is robbed of its dramatic potential because we haven't seen anything that would seem to justify it. On it's own, that could have been a powerful idea, since Brynner's character is given a back-story like nothing these townsfolk have ever known, but in that case, the movie devotes far too much time to the troubles of the townsfolk instead of focusing on Brynner's inner turmoil.

The acting is all over the board in this one, as well. Brynner's performance can't be faulted; he's his usual simmering, silent presence, but seems miscast in a role which could have been quite interesting if it weren't so poorly-written. Janice Rule seems confused in her role as Ruth Adams (and well she should be, forced to serve as the love interest between--count them--three men, all trying to kill each other at some point or another), and spends most of it looking vaguely sad and disinterested, and Pat Hingle is neither evil enough nor serious enough to make a compelling villain. Clifford David fares better as the perpetually angry Crane, and George Segal, as the unfortunate Matt Weaver, is just about the only member of the cast that seems to have any idea what he's doing. The rest of the townsfolk are a mixture of clichés and stereotypes that make it seem as though Yul Brynner mistakenly wandered onto the set of "Blazing Saddles." Brynner's presence, and the multi-layered, operatic scale of the plot might warrant repeat viewings, and the film should be credited for trying to tackle weighty issues of morality and racism, but ultimately "Gunfighter" misses its mark. The classic mantra in storytelling is "show, don't tell," and this film doesn't do that, rendering what should have been a very good movie into a very mediocre one.

"As usual, Davies gets the case at the bottom of the investigative pile. But it leads him to something much bigger: the unsolved murder of a 17-year-old girl. Davies works on the case unofficially with the help of his friend Mod, who is frequently available as he goes from odd job to odder job." (DVD summary)

Peter Davison (All Creatures Great and Small; Doctor Who; At Home With the Braithwaites) stars as downtrodden nice guy detective "Dangerous" Davies in probably the gentlest crime drama television has ever seen. Like its protagonist, "The Last Detective" is a rather ordinary, decent thing that might even teeter on the edge of bland. With liberal doses of light humour and as well as a touching storyline, "The Last Detective" is not for the hard-core CSI fan, slowly unraveling its unfortunate tale of murder over 90+ minutes, but leaving you feeling slightly better about the world at its conclusion.

The tightly plotted (but parochially paced) murder is just a backdrop to introduce us to the hapless but resolutely cheerful Davies, brought to subtle, quiet life by Peter Davison. As usual for many of Davison's characters, his charming portrayal is nearly overshadowed by the interesting personalities around him, including Davies' best bud, Mod (Sean Hughes in a happily eccentric performance), and boss DI Aspinall (a cantankerous Rob Spendlove).

Helped by a light, quirky musical score and good direction, this is a surprisingly good, entertaining pilot that is very consistent with the episodes to follow, as long as one is patient and not looking for a lot of dazzle. It contains a number of amusing little scenes--as when Davies and Mod are drunk and encounter a horse in the middle of a street--that add to the depth and charm of the series, plus a dramatic and satisfying denouement.

If you liked "Gladiator," then "The Last Days of Pompeii" is a good choice for an empty afternoon of slash-em-up moralizing. The sets are expansive and ornate, there's loads of action and the story, though pretty one-note, is well-written and well-acted. Normally I can't stand classical actors, but the performances in "Pompeii" are so energetic that I got sucked in, anyway. The moral underpinning of the movie does include a couple of appearances by Jesus Christ, complete with awed crowds of followers and the obligatory boys choir, but compared with some of the later Jesus epics that Hollywood produced ("King of Kings" and "The Greatest Story Ever Told"), "Pompeii" handles the material with considerable flair. The only major nitpick I have for this movie is its freewheeling use of history. At most, the story only covers 20 years, but Jesus died around 35 AD and Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. But then, when has Hollywood let the truth get in the way of a good story?