Morocco (1930)

Director: Josef von Sternberg                       Writer: Jules Furthman
Film Score: Karl Hajos                                 Cinematography: Lee Games
Starring: Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, Adolphe Menjou and Francis McDonald

This is an interesting attempt at a film, part Algiers, part The Blue Angel but without the personality or interest of either. Morocco is one of Marlene Dietrich’s early American films, and while she’s not nearly as exotic looking as Garbo of the same period that’s to her advantage as she’s far more inviting. Where Garbo is the aloof sphinx you admire from afar, Dietrich is a gal you want to pal around with. The story, if you can call it that, is very slow in getting going, and the delivery by Dietrich is so stilted it seems at times as if she can’t remember what to say or how to pronounce it until it all comes out in a couple of staccato syllables. But it seems as if the rest of the actors have the same problem. It’s the oddest delivery of a screenplay I’ve ever witnessed and one that is decidedly unpleasant.

The film begins with Adolphe Menjou and Dietrich on the way across the Mediterranean to Morocco. She is apparently some kind of performer, as the officer tells Menjou that she only has a one-way ticket. When the scene shifts to Morocco, Gary Cooper is a French Foreign Legion soldier who seems bored with it all. He has women everywhere pulling down their face coverings and trying to get his attention. At the cabaret that night Dietrich comes on stage in a full man’s tuxedo, complete with top hat, and entertains the crowd with a couple of songs. What evolves is sort of a love triangle, if not a quintet. Cooper has been sleeping with the Adjutant’s wife. But when he sees Dietrich he tosses her aside. When she tries to have Cooper assassinated in revenge, he kills the Moroccans and is put in jail. Dietrich is beside herself because she has fallen for him too, but the only way to get him out is for Menjou to pull strings, which he does, but the price is Cooper must be transferred to another town and she must transfer her own affections to Menjou.

Ultimately, it’s a let down. With all of the star power involved, not only the actors but director Josef von Sternberg, one would expect a more artistic production. But even considering the limitations of the time, the film has little energy and even less drama. The dialog is sparse, and when it comes--from all of the actors--it is in short bursts and incredibly banal. The exotic local is clearly on the studio set, but later films like Algiers and Casablanca had the same limitations and yet had a lot more atmosphere. It’s almost maddening to watch because the pacing makes no sense, all fits and starts and completely unable to find any real dramatic momentum. Morocco is one of those early thirties films that, despite all of the positive things it had going for it, is simply an artistic failure.

Tequila Sunrise (1988)

Director: Robert Towne                                 Writer: Robert Towne
Film Score: Lucas Vidal                                Cinematography: Danny Ruhlmann
Starring: Kurt Russell, Mel Gibson, Michelle Pfeiffer and Raul Julia

Tequila Sunrise tries . . . so . . . very . . . hard, but just can’t pull off what it promises. From the outside it looks like it has a lot going for it, superstar actors, an interesting premise, and cool location. But it doesn’t go anywhere, and Robert Towne’s script is the major problem. Towne is the Oscar winning writer of Chinatown, but had plenty of other credentials going into the picture, doing uncredited work on the screenplays for Bonnie and Clyde and The Parallax View as well as credited script for The Last Detail. This story has Mel Gibson and Kurt Russell as best friends. The only problem is Gibson is a drug dealer and Russell is the head of the L.A. narcotics squad. Right. I’m gonna believe that Gibson is going to be working in the back yard of his friend who knows what he’s doing.

But that aside, it gets even worse. Gibson is apparently trying to go straight, owning and operating a landscaping business and apparently working nine to five. The real impetus that drives the plot is DEA agent J.T. Walsh. Now the late Walsh is one of my favorite character actors of all time, in any era. He can make a ten-minute scene--which is all he had in Outbreak--and nearly steal the film. But Towne makes a joke out of him here and it’s painful to watch. Walsh becomes obsessed with catching Gibson and so he taps every phone he uses. Listening back to the conversations he believes that everything Gibson says is code for drugs or the drug trade. Since Gibson knows they’re looking at him Russell is equally sure that Gibson is never going to allow himself to get caught.

When Gibson starts frequenting an Italian restaurant owned by Michelle Pfeiffer, Walsh becomes convinced that the business is just a front for Gibson’s drug trade. Sigh. Since the phone taps aren’t getting anywhere, Russell decides to go in and attempt to woo Pfeiffer in order to find out, but he winds up falling for her instead. When she becomes curious herself about whether or not Gibson is a drug dealing she begins spending time with him, finds out the reason he wants to go straight is so he can woo her himself. It’s not an interesting love triangle because everything is just as it seems. There are no secrets and so that part of the script just bogs down the rest of the proceedings.

The scenes, and the plot line, involving Raul Julia are probably the best part of the film. Another actor who is no longer with us, he was a riveting personality onscreen, but even he can’t bring the necessary suspense to the film because his role is as a revelation, not suspense. The film tries desperately for neo-noir but can’t quite make it. The one bright spot is the film score featuring the brilliant David Sanborn. But at the end of the day that’s just not enough. The wild finish isn’t enough. The love triangle isn’t enough. Tequila Sunrise is a valiant attempt by a filmmaker who would go on to make some great films. But this isn’t one of them.

Avatar (2009)

Director: James Cameron                              Writer: James Cameron
Film Score: James Horner                             Cinematography: Mauro Fiore
Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver & Stephen Lang

Ah, yes, James Cameron, the poet who brought us immortal line: “So, what are you, some kind of artist or something?” And who can forget the gripping drama of hocking loogies off the starboard deck? And now, from the beat-you-over-the-head-with-a-baseball-bat school of figurative writing he gives us the rare element . . . unobtanium. I guess it’s appropriate that, since Cameron’s writing seems to be geared toward fifth graders, that is the same audience that Avatar seems to be aimed at as well. If you like to play video games and watch Saturday morning cartoons, I suppose it might be interesting, but as an adult I just don’t see anything in the film that is even remotely original or entertaining.

First of all, the film is highly derivative of numerous others, most notably Dances with Wolves. But the story has nowhere near the sophistication or the character development. In fact, it is a far more juvenile approach along the lines of Atlantis or FernGully. The story begins on one of the moons of Jupiter. How there happens to be enough heat and water that far beyond the Sun is cheerfully ignored. A company attempting to obtain . . . you know, soon realizes that there is a huge deposit under a giant tree where a clan of the indigenous people live. In order to smooth the way for takeover clones are made, part human part aboriginal, that the humans can operate remotely. The hope is that the avatars will be able to convince the natives to leave without the need for military action.

Sam Worthington is an injured marine, a paraplegic, who is sent in and is able to make an actual connection with the natives. Sigourney Weaver is the scientist aboard responsible for the liaison with the natives. While he’s there, Worthington falls in love with Zoe Saldana and begins to question his mission objectives. She teaches him the people’s ways and he excels. And when the head of the mission, Giovanni Ribisi, and his military leader, Stephen Lang, begin to get impatient and decide to take the tree by force, he rebels. It’s a highly simplistic tale that is so clichéd that there is almost no suspense whatsoever. Everything you’ve seen before in similar tales happens exactly the same way.

One of the things I really hate about supposed science-fiction is when it treats alien civilizations exactly like Native-Americans. There’s nothing “fictional” about that at all. You can say the film is an allegory, but it’s so thinly veiled I don’t think it qualifies. The one good part of the film, doesn’t even happen until the very end. There’s a point in Dances with Wolves when Kevin Costner simply becomes a native himself, unable to go back to the life he lived before. How much more powerful then, if that transition were visible? There was a brilliant opportunity for Worthington to transition permanently to his aboriginal body well before the final battle. With no going back, it would have been tremendously satisfying. But Cameron goes for the cheap suspense, by keeping him human, though it’s about as suspenseful as whether or not Batman or Superman will die. Yawn.

There’s no denying the visual beauty of the film, but ultimately that’s all the viewer is left with and, for me, it simply wasn’t enough. Cameron had a string of hits early in his career, Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, and those stories were more satisfying--with the exception of the ending of The Abyss--because of their originality. But ever since Titanic, Cameron has seeming thrown away any pretense of originality and fallen back on the banal. And yet, still managed to rake in unprecedented amounts of cash in the process. It used to be that great films were the ones that made huge money at the box office. With Avatar, that trend has obviously changed. Evidently audiences only want to pay money for the familiar. Well, as long as James Cameron is alive, they’ll have plenty of that.