The downfall of a
Gospel minister from the big Church of the Living God in Texas to a little
church in Louisiana called One-Way Road to Heaven, finally praising Jesus on a
chain gang.
The imbricated
structure hinges mainly on something like Lubin’s Impact, also there is Forbes’ Whistle
down the Wind and Rosenberg’s Cool
Hand Luke, even a connoisseurship stemming from Brooks’ Elmer Gantry.
This structure
makes the filming very easy in its original perceptions, it speaks the lingo
and is conversant with the spiritual dimension (Psalm 91:1, Ezekiel 16:6, John
3:34 and so forth).
Variety
saw it at 148 minutes, wished it reduced by twenty, and got a quarter-hour off
the release for such behavior.
Assassination
Tango
It opens in
Brooklyn, famous for its libraries, and travels to Buenos Aires for its tale of
Borges. Gen. Rojas is the target, La Recoleta is seen, time is spent waiting,
the assassin learns the tango in the neighborhood club where people go to dance
it. After a lesson on the dance floor, he dreams of a black leopard.
The southern
aspect is conveyed by the form, the city is seen only very gradually, the tango
is introduced from a competitive angle as in Bertolucci’s film, the more
intimate style is taught to the camera.
The Mafia hit man
from New York is for hire, “no character references.” One supports the
military, Rojas “went too far” in the Seventies and Eighties. The hit man
doesn’t care.
There is a
traitor in the ranks of his Argentinean clientele. He strikes in the morning
instead of at sundown, face-to-face not from a rooftop. On the plane back home,
he dreams of dancing the tango at his favorite club in Brooklyn.
Charles Walters’ The
Barkleys of Broadway presents the notion of a New York style of dancing
understood here in the opening scene. There is a very obscure reference to The
Apostle in the modus operandi of a swift killing in a Brooklyn crowd.
Not one critic
has read Borges, who wrote film criticism himself. Clive Donner’s Rogue Male
has a certain similarity, among other films. The curious ironies and
reflections of Assassination Tango are not seen to ripple, Duvall films
the splash.