Any Which Way You Can
Every Which
Way But Loose ends with Philo
taking a dive because the local yokel he’s up against has a following. Any
Which Way You Can has him corralled into a brawl in Jackson Hole, with
assorted interests and mob money involved. The motorcycle gang out of Beach
Blanket Bingo is back, eventually with shaved heads and wigs, and after the
climax (from Ford’s The Quiet Man)
they ride off in a limousine.
The film opens
with a long daylight helicopter shot of the approach to a city, which gradually
centers on a freeway, and lowers further until the helicopter is flying
alongside Philo’s truck. This is the announcement of a work of art, and anyone
who thinks this isn’t a masterpiece is probably on the staff of one of our
major daily newspapers, which is to say not much in a journalistic way.
Van Horn resumes
in a general sense the technique of Terence Young, for example (the fluid
medium close shot, variegated with the medium long shot for a dry comic
effect). His style has roots in the soil of Keaton, say, along a stem
delineated by Cannonball Run,
It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World,
Pat and Mike, etc.
The Dead Pool
Hemingway’s
version goes like this:
|
Sing a song of
critics |
Realism is the key
to the whole production, from the posters for Hotel Satan (“You check
in. You die.”) to the Chinatown robbery, where a remarkable amount of damage is
inflicted on a cubbyhole restaurant.
The Dead Pool borrows a note from Irvin Kershner’s Never Say
Never Again to emphasize the brawn of Harry Callahan, and this works the
same way, setting up his carefully toned-down remarks (“Opinions are like
assholes... You’re shit out of luck,” etc.) that indicate an off-duty, civilian
response. Contrary to this is the flamboyant self-destructiveness of Johnny
Squares mirrored by the man in the park who won’t make the eleven o’clock news.
Even the two autograph hounds metamorphose into machine-gunning killers.
The function of
the artist is to bear witness, be it said, which is why Callahan dispatches the
maniac with a movie prop. Ebert is alive to the car-chase parody citing Bullitt
(with a sort of Sergio Leone finish) and the imagery of a tiny
remote-controlled car full of plastique. The theme appears in Play Misty for
Me and Blood Work.
This is
critically accorded a place among Van Horn’s by-blows, but The Dead Pool
is steadily aware how seriously film critics are to be taken, in the end.
Pink Cadillac
Pink Cadillac is a very fast-moving and rapidly articulated
comedy on a serious theme, which accounts for the critical stares in New York, Chicago
and Washington, D.C. (Ebert notably had a hissy fit, which only shows how
overwhelming the film is), but the structure is simple and clear, and London no
doubt repents of its abstention.
After prefatory
material which establishes among other things a close relation to Coogan’s
Bluff, a skip tracer is put on the trail of a woman married to a no-good
fallen in worse company, a gang of ex-cons passing phony money to finance a war
camp in the piney woods. She has the real cash in her husband’s car, so the
chase is twofold.
The camp suggests
Blazing Saddles (and Magnum Force) in its false fronts and droll
dummies. A romp through The Survivors for something like the sheer
satisfaction of it, with a notable settling of scores all around.
Time will tell in
these matters, it always does. Van Horn’s style is down-to-earth with a lot of
English on the ball that leaves critics out, as a rule. Peters has been noticed
by at least one astute member of the press, but none has remarked Eastwood’s rendition
of William Hickey (who himself appears earlier in the film).