The
Violent Truce Raid
The Rat Patrol
The intricate
little situation is all built around a prodigious shot arranged by Davis to
show a parley between Sgt. Troy and Hauptmann Dietrich. A bandaged soldier lies
on a cot at a slight angle along the lower frame, above is the canopy of a
hospital tent, between these foreground elements is a long shot of a hill in
the background, where the parley takes place.
Confusion arises
over Sgt. Moffitt’s attempt to stop a shipment of contaminated plasma. He
is captured and exchanged for it, destroys a caseful and is then
court-martialed by a British major unaware of the harm.
At the parley,
Dietrich agrees to testify for him, having lost three men to the poison seized
at gunpoint.
The Kill at Koorlea Raid
The Rat Patrol
The patrol is
assigned a Cpl. Freebairn, hunter by trade and uninterested in the war, to eliminate
the notorious Gen. Koenig on vacation. Allied prisoners die in his keeping.
Troy
doesn’t want Koenig’s children to see him killed, “he’s
brought his family,” they’re having breakfast on the patio.
Freebairn is a solitary professional, Moffitt is told to kill him if he
doesn’t obey.
Troy and
Hitchcock climb down from this vantage point and take the General alive past
Dietrich and his men on guard all around the sizeable estate.
Freebairn covers
the capture with his expert rifle, and lingers just a moment to put a bullet in
the back of the patio chair at an unheard-of range.
Panic in the
City is among a number of other
things quite a remarkable film record of Los Angeles in a state of highest
genius comparable to Altman’s in Countdown.
Davis brings this
to a head in a culminating chase scene that is remarkably similar to one
studiously composed by Hitchcock in Family Plot.
The complicated
and beautiful story is mainly played in a condition of exalted nervousness by Nehemiah
Persoff as the Soviet agent. It was restored as The Fourth Protocol
after being recomposed as Telefon in a vast homage.
Color Me Dead
Color Me Dead is a painter’s copy, like Degas’ copy
of Poussin’s Rape of the Sabine Women in the Norton Simon Museum, D.O.A. set in New South Wales and
filmed in color. Iridium is now uranium, Bigelow’s hotel room is
poolside, the downtown drugstore is an indoor shopping mall, and the Bradbury
building is a passenger ship. The screenplay eschews the original’s opening
flashback for a valuable shot of a safe stealthily opened to switch a uranium
ingot in its cubbyhole or niche. Clouds reflected in the roof of
Bigelow’s sky-blue car, a spunky theme suited to Sydney, another from
Samuel Barber, girls in bikinis at the Chevron Hotel, strippers at The Pink
Panther... the main point is color. Davis is alive to the OK Corral gag, and
casts his shootout in a roundhouse.
The
Australo-American cast and the color film stock being the whole expenditure of
the budget, the film’s principal glory is the wealth of good design it
utilizes as set dressing in 1969 Australia, and the fine performances,
especially of Tryon and Jason.
The switcheroo
opening and the bride-and-bachelors close are the copyist’s signature.