THE BETSY

Lesley-Anne Down and Tommy Lee Jones

THE BETSY (1978). Director: Daniel Petrie. 

"It's not the stock, it's not the money -- it's the car!" 

Loren Hardeman (Laurence Olivier of Richard III) wants a racer named Angelo (Tommy Lee Jones) to work with him on a new fuel-efficient engine and a brand new car he will name after his granddaughter (Kathleen Beller): the Betsy. However, Loren's grandson, Loren Hardeman III (Robert Duvall), who hates him and now runs the company, is completely against the idea, and pulls a few dirty tricks of his own. Loren III has a wife (Jane Alexander) and a mistress (Lesly-Anne Down of Countess Dracula), who also dallies with Angelo, but Betsy develops feelings for him as well. Meanwhile long intermittent flashbacks take us back to the thirties and to the story of Hardeman's gay son (Paul Rudd), his conspiring boyfriend (Clifford David), his wife (Katharine Ross of Games), who has an affair with her father-in-law, and an act of suicide which will have consequences in the present day. 

Father and son: Paul Rudd and Olivier

Based on a novel by schlockmeister Harold Robbins, The Betsy is actually an entertaining and well-acted potboiler. In addition to the very capable actors already named, there's good work from Joseph Wiseman as a mobster, Edward Herrmann as an assistant, and others. Olivier is simply too old for the flashback sequences -- no amount of hair dye or make up can make him look fifty years younger -- and while Duvall is generally excellent, he underplays way too much in his climactic confrontation with his grandfather. There is a nice score by John Barry. A very strange sequence has Angelo being beaten up not by tough guys but what appear to be businessmen on the verge of senior citizenship! The gay aspects are rather dated, but as this section of the story takes place long before Stonewall this is almost inevitable. Daniel Petrie also directed The Idol and many, many others. 

Verdict: Not too many likable characters in this, but it's absorbing. ***. 

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1978)

Leonard Nimoy and Donald Sutherland

INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1978). Director: Phil Kaufman.

San Francisco health inspector Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) is carrying a torch for his colleague Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams). Elizabeth is convinced that her live-in boyfriend, Geoff (Art Hindle), is not himself, that he's actually become a different person. Matthew's friend, David Kidner (Leonard Nimoy), a pop psychologist and author, says that other people are also claiming their loved ones are not their loved ones. Things take an even darker turn when a weird body turns up in the mud baths operated by Jack (Jeff Goldblum) and Nancy (Veronica Cartwright), a half-finished body that greatly resembles Jack. It seems that virtually everyone in the city has succumbed to this ghastly invasion of space seeds, which destroys humans and replaces them with unemotional duplicates ...  

Veronica Cartwright

On its own terms this remake of the classic fifties film of the same name is entertaining, and if this is one's first introduction to the story -- based on "The Body Snatchers" by Jack Finney -- it will probably give you a bit of the chills. But be forewarned that if you watch it back to back with the original it greatly suffers in comparison. Switching the locale from a small town to a big city does not do too much damage, but a bigger problem is that the film too often resembles a clumsy parody of the first film. Sutherland, Nimoy and Adams are okay, but Goldblum is irritating and Cartwright overacts almost from the first (compare her to a splendid Carolyn Jones in the first film). Some of the chase scenes just seem so stilted. 

Brooke Adams

Aside from the electronic noises during sequences with the pods -- the FX here are quite good -- the musical score only detracts from the film's effectiveness. Some of the other changes in this version are welcome: Elizabeth's "transformation" is handled much better and much more logically than Becky's "conversion" in the first film, and the weird way the aliens point and screech at ordinary humans is acceptably unnerving. A clever bit -- although it doesn't quite work -- has Elizabeth screaming when she sees a dog with a man's head (as opposed to Becky screaming when a dog is nearly run over), but the inclusion of Kevin McCarthy, acting much the way he does at the climax of the original film, while cute, also ruins the mood, coming off more comical than anything else. Director Philip Kaufman tries to create an air of disquiet by putting odd people in the backgrounds -- the aliens beginning to assert themselves, one supposes -- the oddest of whom is Robert Duvall, herein cast as a non-speaking priest on a child's swing. The director of the original, Don Siegel, plays a cab driver.

Verdict: Nice try, but the original is much, much better. **3/4. 

THE OUTFIT

Tom Reese and Duvall with Karen Black in the background

THE OUTFIT (1973). Director: John Flynn.

Earl Macklin (Robert Duvall) gets out of prison to discover that his brother was murdered. It seems the two of them knocked off a bank that was owned by the crime cartel, the "Outfit." Macklin decides to pay back and wage war on the Outfit by carrying out heists -- with his pal, Jack (Joe Don Baker) -- that will hit the Outfit where they live. His main antagonist is Outfit bigwig Mailer (Robert Ryan), who lives in a big mansion with bodyguards and has a fairly disinterested wife (Joanna Cassidy). The Outfit is loosely based on the third "Parker" novel by Richard Stark (Donald Westlake), a series of books in which a career criminal is the protagonist. [Another Parker adaptation was The Split.] Frankly, the book is much more entertaining than this indifferently directed "thriller" in which only Robert Ryan gives an especially memorable performance. Baker isn't bad, Karen Black [Trilogy of Terror] has her moments as Macklin's girl, and Duvall is Duvall. Sheree North [Mardi Gras] also has some flavorful moments as the wife of an associate, but Jane Greer isn't very good as Macklin's sister-in-law. Richard Jaeckal, Marie Windsor, and Henry Jones aren't on screen long enough to register much but are all effective. John Flynn also directed The Sergeant.

Verdict: Indifferent adaptation of a gritty Parker novel. **.

JACK REACHER

Tom Cruise and Rosamund Pike

JACK REACHER (2012). Writer/director: Christopher McQuarrie.

When a military man is arrested for shooting five civilians, he insists that his lawyer, Helen (Rosamund Pike of Wrath of the Titans) -- the daughter of the district attorney -- get in touch with an investigator named Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise). Reacher is at first convinced of the man's guilt but the more he digs -- and once he is warned off the case and even attacked -- the more he realizes that there's more to the story than meets the eye. Five people were murdered but was just one of them the true target? And will Reacher survive to find out the truth? Jack Reacher is a credible suspense film, although the motivations of some of the characters and the reasons for their conspiracy are never fully explained. Werner Herzog, Robert Duvall, Alexia Fast, among others, offer good supporting performances, and Cruise [Mission: Impossible] gives his customary satisfactory "action star" turn. Although he has hardly any dialogue, the very intense Jai Courtney as a sinister bad guy almost manages to steal the movie away from Cruise with little effort. McQuarrie keeps things moving at a brisk pace and the film is very well photographed by Caleb Deschamel.

Verdict: Absorbing if imperfect thriller. ***.