Tag Archives: Hardcore (1979)

Klute

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Andrew Nette| 3 Comments

Klute posterSome great films were made in the late sixties and seventies about the sleazy, exploitative underbelly of America’s sex industry. John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy (1969), Scorsese’s Tax Driver (1976) and Paul Schrader’s Hardcore (1979), all spring to mind. But, surely one of the most gripping and atmospheric offerings in this tawdry canon is Alan J Pakula’s 1971 movie, Klute.

Klute is often referred to as the first of Pakula’s so-called ‘paranoia trilogy’, along with the trippy political thriller, Parallax View (1974), and his film about the Washington Post’s disclosure of the Watergate scandal, All The President’s Men (1976). Klute certainly has a number of themes in common with these two films, including the prominent use of (what was for its time) high tech surveillance equipment to create a sense of fear and unease, and how this alters human interactions. But the film is also a fascinating slice of New York in the early seventies.

A senior executive for a Pennsylvanian company, Tom Gruneman, has gone missing. When several months of police investigation turn up nothing, the head of the company, Peter Cable (Charles Cioffi) hires a local policeman and a friend of the family, John Klute (Donald Sutherland) to try and get to the bottom of the mystery. Klute follows up on one of the few leads in the case, a series of letters Gruneman sent to a New York prostitute called Bree Daniel (Jane Fonda).… Read more

→ 3 Comments

Posted in 1970s American crime films, Neo Noir, Roy Scheider

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

MIFF report back #2: Sunrise

Posted on August 4, 2015 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

Sunrise

A key question for me from Partho Sen-Gupta’s second feature film, Sunrise, which played as part of the 2015 Melbourne International Film Festival, is how does one make a gripping crime film out of a pervasive social problem like child trafficking? If this was indeed Sen-Gupta’s intention, I’m not sure he has entirely succeeded. That said, there is a lot to recommend it.

The narrative spine of Sunrise is fairly straightforward. Joshi is middle aged Inspector working in a poorly resourced unit of the Mumbai police. His life has been in tatters ever since a person or persons unknown kidnapped his young daughter, Aruna, in front of her school years ago. The crime has destroyed his wife’s sanity and threatens to do the same to him. Compounding his trauma is the fact that the unit he works in deals with other parents who have had similar experiences. Joshi and his colleagues are largely unable to help these people, usually because their resources and methods are no match for those of the criminals responsible for the disappearances.

Joshi spends his nights obsessively searching for Aruna. He thinks he sees her everywhere. One night he stumbles out of the torrential monsoon rain into a nightclub called Paradise. Through the crowd Joshi spies Aruna amongst a group of young girls dancing on stage.… Read more

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Crime fiction and film from India, Crime film, Melbourne International Film Festival, Neo Noir

Tagged , , , ,

Hardcore Horseman

Posted on December 12, 2010 by Andrew Nette| 4 Comments

The Horseman is about the transformation of a balding 44-year old small businessman into a killing machine as he tracks down the men he holds responsible for the death of his daughter. She died after participating in a hard core porn film, a video cassette of which mysteriously appears in his post one day.

This 2008 film, which only got local release in Australia in 2010, taps into a rich vein of movies about tightly wound white men who’ve played by the rules all their lives but finally snap over one injustice against them (perceived or real) too many.

It immediately reminded me of Paul Schrader’s Hardcore, which featured a conservative mid-west businessman (played by George C Scott) who ventures into the sordid LA underworld to look for his run-away daughter now making porn movies. But although both films are about men taking justice into their own hands when the police prove ineffectual, The Horseman is a very different beast to its 1979 counterpart.

The Horseman opens with the central character, Christian, a pest exterminator, beating up a man with a crowbar. After extracting a few answers, Christian douses the man’s house in petrol and sets it on fire, presumably with his victim still inside, changing from his work clothes as it burns in the background.… Read more

→ 4 Comments

Posted in 1970s American crime films, Australian crime film, Peter Boyle

Tagged , , , ,