THE AMBASSADOR (US - 1985) Directed by J. Lee Thompson. Written by Max Jack. Cast: Robert Mitchum, Ellen Burstyn, Rock Hudson, Fabio Testi, Donald Pleasence, Heli Goldenberg, Michal Bat-Adam, Ori Levy, Shmulik Kraus, Avi Kleinberger, Sasson Gabai. (R, 95 mins) It was a box office flop at the time, but 1986's 52 PICK-UP has come to be regarded as a top crime thriller of its era and one of the best films to come off the Cannon assembly line in their heyday. Adapted from Elmore Leonard's 1974 novel and directed by the great John Frankenheimer, 52 PICK-UP stars Roy Scheider as Harry Mitchell, a successful L.A. businessman caught up in a web of blackmail and murder when a trio of porno industry dirtbags (the leader constantly condescendingly calling him "Sport") videotape him having sex with his young mistress, shaking him down for an exorbitant sum of money in exchange for not embarrassing his wife (Ann-Margret), the top aide to a popular mayoral candidate. When he refuses to pay, they kill the mistress and try to frame Mitchell, not understanding that he's a self-made man used to doing things his own way, bullheadedly determined to take on the blackmailers himself, manipulating them and beating them at their own game, of course inevitably leading to Scheider delivering one of his signature "Smile, you son of a bitch!" lines just as he takes out the chief shitbag ("So long, Sport!"). It's lean, mean, gritty piece of vintage '80s L.A. sleaze, not entirely faithful to Leonard--he wasn't happy that the setting was moved to L.A. from his native Detroit--but it stands today as one of the better adaptations of the author's work, which would enjoy a significant renaissance a decade later with films like GET SHORTY, OUT OF SIGHT, and JACKIE BROWN, the latter based on his novel Rum Punch.
52 PICK-UP was actually Cannon's second adaptation of Leonard's novel. Prior to the Frankenheimer film, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus produced THE AMBASSADOR, ostensibly based on 52 Pick-Up but veering so far from the source that any mention of Leonard and the "Based on the novel by" credit weren't even included in the finished version. It was obviously a subject important to Israeli-born cousins Golan and Globus, but we may never know what it was about a decade-old, neo-noir novel set in Detroit that inspired them to turn it into a preachy polemic about Israeli-PLO relations, but that's exactly what happened with THE AMBASSADOR. The only plot point from Leonard's book that it retains is the blackmail element, but it even changes that by making it the wife's infidelity that's captured on film. One of Cannon's periodic mid '80s attempts at highbrow respectability, THE AMBASSADOR was shot in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and wants to make serious political statements, but it also wants to be a Cannon genre picture. It wants a classy, Oscar-winning actress like Ellen Burstyn to give it awards season credibility, but it needs her topless and doing Skinemax back-arching in a couple of surprisingly revealing, sweaty sex scenes with Fabio Testi, who had just been fired from Cannon's BOLERO after clashing with Bo and John Derek and sent to Israel to have simulated sex with Ellen Burstyn instead. Burstyn is Alex Hacker, the bored, frustrated wife of Peter Hacker (Robert Mitchum, in a role that was probably pitched to Cannon regular Charles Bronson at some point), the US Ambassador to Israel. Hacker is so distracted trying to broker a peace deal between Israel and Palestine that he's completely oblivious to his wife's torrid affair with antiques dealer Mustapha Hashimi (Testi), a shady figure with lifelong ties to terrorism. After a bombing in Jerusalem, Hacker is summoned to an abandoned movie theater where he's shown a stag film of Alex and Hashimi having sex, and is promptly blackmailed in exchange for not airing the footage on TV and creating an international incident over the wife of the US Ambassador getting between the sheets with a terrorist. The blackmailers are presumed to be from the PLO, but it's actually a rogue faction of far-right Mossad agents determined to maintain the status quo. There's duplicity and double crosses, and numerous attempts on the Hackers' lives by a renegade KGB agent (Shmulik Kraus), which sends Hacker's security chief and bodyguard Stevenson (Rock Hudson in his final big-screen role) into ass-kicking Cannon action hero mode.
Dull, overly convoluted, and bearing no resemblance to the "He's through negotiating!" thriller the poster art indicated, the barely-released and justifiably obscure THE AMBASSADOR just hit Blu-ray thanks to Kino Lorber, though it's one of Cannon's worst films. It never finds the balance between serious drama and hard-hitting action, and the finale goes from laughably out-of-touch to appallingly tacky, with Hacker organizing Israeli and Palestinian youth for a candle-lit kumbaya "dialogue for young people" where he delivers a series of rambling talking points while the attendees chant "peace" before being interrupted by a machine-gunning terrorist attack with a Sam Peckinpah level of gore and splatter. It's another example of Cannon trying to have it both ways by taking what they think is a high-minded, serious film and turning it into a grindhouse action shoot-'em-up (outside of the same year's existential action classic RUNAWAY TRAIN, that kind of Cannon crossover move almost never worked). An aging Mitchum looks bleary-eyed and confused throughout, never once looking like he understands the Political Science 101 dialogue he's reciting. You could make a drinking game out of how many times he mumbles "I just want to start a dialogue for young people" and it's one he'd almost certainly be up for playing. Burstyn brings her A-game but the material is simply beneath her (surprisingly, she worked for Cannon again a few years later on the expensive Golan-directed prestige flop HANNA'S WAR), while Donald Pleasence gets to ham it up a bit as the irate Israeli defense minister.
Hudson is solid as the tough-as-nails Stevenson, working well with Mitchum even though they reportedly didn't get along well at all. Hudson was under the weather throughout the shoot and he looked slimmer than he had in the years prior to his 1981 heart attack and subsequent quintuple bypass surgery, but not in an ill way that would indicate the HIV diagnosis he would receive a few months after THE AMBASSADOR wrapped production in early 1984 (the film wasn't released until January 1985; Hudson starred with an unknown Sharon Stone in the 1984 TV-movie THE VEGAS STRIP WAR and appeared on the fifth season of DYNASTY before succumbing to AIDS in October 1985). Leadenly directed by the veteran J. Lee Thompson, who would become of the top in-house Cannon guys throughout the decade (10 TO MIDNIGHT, KING SOLOMON'S MINES, FIREWALKER, DEATH WISH 4: THE CRACKDOWN) and simplistically written by Max Jack and an uncredited Ronald M. Cohen (both vets of the short-lived 1981 ABC series AMERICAN DREAM), THE AMBASSADOR does offer one clever bit of caustic repartee between the Hackers (when she uses horseback riding as a cover story for some afternoon delight with Hashimi, Peter asks "English or western?" and she snidely replies "Bareback") but little else, jettisoning any connection to Elmore Leonard and wasting an overqualified cast in the process. At least with 52 PICK-UP, Cannon got it right the second time.
LIFE OF CRIME (US/United Arab Emirates - 2014) Written and directed by Daniel Schechter. Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Tim Robbins, John Hawkes, yasiin bey, Isla Fisher, Will Forte, Mark Boone Junior, Kevin Corrigan, Clea Lewis, Charlie Tahan, Kofi Boakye, Nathan Purdee. (R, 100 mins)
For nearly 60 years, Hollywood's been adapting the novels and stories of the great crime and western writer Elmore Leonard (1925-2013) with varying degrees of success and, more often than not, the dismissive derision of the author himself. Leonard understood that film was a different medium--he also wrote screenplays for films like JOE KIDD (1972) and MR. MAJESTYK (1974)--and that changes were sometimes necessary. While he had a hard time abiding those changes--even an exemplary adaptation like John Frankenheimer's 52 PICK-UP (1986) was criticized by Leonard simply because the filmmakers moved the setting from Detroit to Los Angeles--he would state numerous times in interviews over the years that "getting paid is the most important thing." The mid '90s saw a major cinematic resurgence of interest in Leonard's work, with Barry Sonnenfeld's GET SHORTY (1995), Quentin Tarantino's Rum Punch adaptation JACKIE BROWN (1997), and Steven Soderbergh's OUT OF SIGHT (1998) setting the standard of Leonard-done-right for the big screen (there was also Paul Schrader's little-seen and much less successful 1997 adaptation of TOUCH, based on an atypical Leonard novel and primarily remembered, if at all, for Dave Grohl composing the score). More recently, Leonard's work has been the basis of the acclaimed FX series JUSTIFIED, with Timothy Olyphant as recurring Leonard character Deputy US Marshal Raylan Givens. But for every film version that satisfied Leonard, there were numerous others--THE AMBASSADOR (1985), an adaptation of 52 Pick-Up that had nothing whatsoever to do with 52 Pick-Up, the Showtime movie PRONTO (1997), featuring James Le Gros in an early incarnation of Raylan Givens, and the short-lived 1998 ABC series MAXIMUM BOB, or troubled productions like Burt Reynolds' STICK (1985), Abel Ferrara's CAT CHASER (1989), or John Madden's KILLSHOT, released in 2009 after four years on the shelf--that left him sour on Hollywood. Leonard died shortly after production wrapped on LIFE OF CRIME, based on his 1978 novel The Switch. While he never got to see the completed film, he was shown snippets of scenes and, by all accounts, was pleased with what he saw, both as the writer of the source novel and as a co-producer on the film.
Leonard was always a master storyteller who cut to the chase, direct and unpretentious and uninterested in making grand artistic statements. That's what writer/director Daniel Schechter goes for here, but the results are frequently as flat as the generic retitling. As demonstrated by guys like Frankenheimer, Sonnenfeld, Tarantino, and Soderbergh, Leonard adaptations work best when a gifted filmmaker is able to put their unique stamp on the material. Of course, being a different medium, that's where deviations may occur. Schechter's approach involves being slavishly devoted to Leonard by pretty much putting the book in script form. While that may explain why Leonard was so happy with what he saw, it doesn't make for a particularly thrilling thriller. Schechter brings no style or personality to the proceedings other than a couple of minor nods to JACKIE BROWN, as both films feature the lowlife trio of Ordell Robbie, Louis Gara, and Melanie Ralston, recurring characters in several Leonard novels. Played in JACKIE BROWN by, respectively, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert De Niro, and Bridget Fonda, the characters are seen here at an earlier time in their lives, with yasiin bey, formerly known as Mos Def, as Ordell, John Hawkes as Louis, and Isla Fisher as Melanie. While LIFE OF CRIME isn't meant to be a direct prequel to JACKIE BROWN, the Tarantino film was obviously studied by the actors, especially bey, who clearly bases his interpretation of Ordell on Jackson's performance. As LIFE opens, Ordell and Louis are planning the half-baked kidnapping of wealthy Detroit housewife Mickey Dawson (Jennifer Aniston), with the intent of blackmailing her wealthy and corrupt businessman husband Frank (Tim Robbins, who stepped in when Dennis Quaid dropped out of the project) into paying a $1 million ransom. Holding Mickey captive at the home of their idiotic white supremacist cohort Richard (Mark Boone Junior), Ordell and Louis are shocked to learn that Frank has taken off to the Bahamas with his mistress Melanie (at this point in the timeline of Leonard's novels, they don't know her) and has just filed for divorce. He has no intention of paying the ransom and really doesn't care if he ever sees Mickey again. Of course, double crosses ensue as unplanned alliances form and Mickey finds herself unexpectedly bonding with Louis.
It's interesting to note that The Switch was originally set to be made way back in 1986 with Diane Keaton as Mickey, but it was cancelled during pre-production when 20th Century Fox execs deemed it too similar to the then-current box office hit RUTHLESS PEOPLE. LIFE OF CRIME has solid performances and it's interesting to see Hawkes as a younger, smarter, and much more assertive Louis than the beaten-down-by-life schlub De Niro played in JACKIE BROWN, but there's very little excitement or fun here. Schechter does a serviceable, workmanlike job at the helm and the whole film is efficiently assembled, but it's very low-energy and has little spark. It lacks the snap of GET SHORTY, JACKIE BROWN, and OUT OF SIGHT, and often feels like a costumed table read. There's nothing wrong with anything, and Hawkes and bey stand out while Will Forte has some amusing bits as a Dawson family friend who carries a torch for Mickey, but comparisons to JACKIE BROWN are unfortunately inevitable and Daniel Schechter is no Quentin Tarantino. Its biggest issue is its blandness, and that's not a word you typically use to describe anything connected to Elmore Leonard. Even the twists and turns are executed in the most perfunctory of fashions, and the film has the aura of a TV-movie with F-bombs. Budgeted at just $12 million--pocket change by today's standards--it's obviously a labor of love for some (Aniston is among the film's 27 credited producers), it's dedicated to Leonard, and it's nice to know that he enjoyed what little he saw, but other than a funny opening sequence and some well-done 1978 period detail throughout, this is really a pretty forgettable entry in the Leonard big-screen pantheon, about on the level of George Armitage's 2004 shrugger THE BIG BOUNCE. It's easy to see why Lionsgate is dumping it in limited release and on VOD. In the days of old, this would be the very definition of "Eh, just wait for it to come out on video." It's by no means a bad movie, but...eh, just wait for it to turn up on Netflix Instant, or in Wal-Mart's $5 DVD bin, where you'll likely find it by Christmas.
Directed by John Frankenheimer. Written by Elmore Leonard and John Steppling. Cast: Roy Scheider, Ann-Margret, Vanity, John Glover, Clarence Williams III, Robert Trebor, Doug McClure, Kelly Preston, Lonny Chapman. (R, 110 mins)
"Something about your face makes me wanna slap the shit out of it" - Roy Scheider as Harry Mitchell in 52 PICK-UP
Cannon honchos Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus were at the pinnacle of their success in 1985-86. Hits like MISSING IN ACTION, AMERICAN NINJA, DEATH WISH 3, and THE DELTA FORCE, to name just a few, made Cannon titles an almost weekly presence in movie theaters. On top of that, Golan & Globus started to get more ambitious, fancying themselves modern-day movie moguls and using the profits from their commercial hits to finance more highbrow material, and they seemed to rely on Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky to make that happen. Sure, they occasionally tried more serious films like Jason Miller's THAT CHAMPIONSHIP SEASON (1982), but it wasn't until the mid-1980s that Golan and Globus got serious about Cannon being a prestigious name. In quick succession, Konchalovsky directed MARIA'S LOVERS (1984), RUNAWAY TRAIN (1985), DUET FOR ONE (1986), and SHY PEOPLE (1987) for Cannon, with RUNAWAY TRAIN earning Oscar nominations for stars Jon Voight and Eric Roberts, and SHY PEOPLE winning a Best Actress award for Barbara Hershey at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival. With the exception of RUNAWAY TRAIN, audiences pretty much ignored these films, and Konchalovsky moved on, unsuccessfully trying to adapt to the Hollywood game with 1989's TANGO & CASH in one of the most egregiously bizarre mismatchings of director and material in all of cinema. It didn't work, and though Konchalovsky received sole credit as director, he was fired midway through production and replaced by PURPLE RAIN director Albert Magnoli.
Cannon continued their quest for respect from highbrow critics, with Golan & Globus producing or distributing films by the likes of Roman Polanski (1986's PIRATES), Jean-Luc Godard (1987's KING LEAR), Franco Zeffirelli (1986's OTELLO), Dusan Makavejev (1988's MANIFESTO), Emir Kusturica (1985's WHEN FATHER WAS AWAY ON BUSINESS), Liliana Cavani (1985's THE BERLIN AFFAIR), Lina Wertmuller (1986's CAMORRA), and Fons Rademakers, whose THE ASSAULT won the 1986 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. But these expensive films lost a ton of money, and soon enough, audiences grew tired of the same old Charles Bronson, Chuck Norris, and Michael Dudikoff movies that kept Cannon afloat and despite a couple of latter-day hits with a young Jean-Claude Van Damme (BLOODSPORT and CYBORG), the company was on life support by 1989. 52 PICK-UP, released in the fall of 1986, represents somewhat of a middle ground between Cannon's commercial fare and their aspirations to be Taken Seriously. Based on a novel by the great Elmore Leonard that Cannon liked so much that they made two versions of it in two years (1985's barely-released THE AMBASSADOR retained almost no elements of Leonard's 52 Pick-Up novel, moving the setting to the Middle East for the Israel-Palestine conflict--hardly Leonard's specialty--and is only remembered today as a trivia note for being Rock Hudson's final film), 52 PICK-UP is a crackling, nail-biting thriller that Leonard himself co-scripted, so it's fairly faithful to the book, with the biggest difference being a change in location from Detroit to Los Angeles, which was enough to make Leonard unhappy with the finished film.
John Frankenheimer (1930-2002)
52 PICK-UP also represents a typical Cannon practice of getting veteran personnel who can still do the job but maybe aren't as in-demand as they once were: in addition to providing regular employment for career journeymen like Michael Winner and THE GUNS OF NAVARONE director J. Lee Thompson, another good example of this is 1985's FOOL FOR LOVE, directed by Robert Altman years before his 1992 comeback with THE PLAYER. For 52 PICK-UP, they hired the legendary John Frankenheimer, director of such classics as THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962) and THE TRAIN (1964). Frankenheimer was in a serious slump by 1986, with his career stalled by a string of mediocre films and years of alcoholism. Frankenheimer went into rehab after shooting 1982's THE CHALLENGE and wouldn't fully rebuild his reputation until several acclaimed made-for-cable films in the mid-1990s (AGAINST THE WALL, ANDERSONVILLE, GEORGE WALLACE), followed by a major career resurgence with 1998's RONIN. Frankenheimer died in 2002 a respected filmmaker at the top of his game (even with 1996's THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU on his resume), something he most definitely wasn't when Golan & Globus hired him for 52 PICK-UP, but they took chances on people who had fallen out of favor and deserved another shot, like Altman and Norman Mailer, who directed 1987's TOUGH GUYS DON'T DANCE for Cannon. 52 PICK-UP was easily Frankenheimer's best film in nearly a decade.
The film centers on Harry Mitchell (Roy Scheider), a successful, self-made man with blue collar roots, who got rich when the U.S. government bought his steel patent to use in manufacturing airplanes. Mitchell's got a nice house in the suburbs, a restored Jag, and a loving wife in Barbara (Ann-Margret), who's about to launch a city council campaign at the urging of her D.A. candidate boss (Doug McClure). Mitchell's also a sugar daddy to 22-year-old Cini (Kelly Preston), who works part-time in a Skid Row "live nude models" dump. He's got Cini set up in a nice apartment and he's also got a problem: he's being blackmailed with a sex tape showing him on a vacation with Cini ("You told your wife you were at a convention!") and the two of them in a motel room. The blackmailers are a trio of drug dealers and scuzzy sycophants in the L.A. porn underworld: ringleader Raimy (John Glover), a financial whiz and amateur pornographer who manages a XXX theater; nervous, weaselly Leo (Robert Trebor), and coke-addled psycho Bobby Shy (a terrifying Clarence Williams III). They've got Cini and demand $105,000 from Mitchell in exchange for the tape. Mitchell doesn't want to jeopardize Barbara's political aspirations, so he confesses the affair to her and decides he isn't paying the blackmailers, instead sending them an envelope stuffed with paper and a note reading "Bag Your Ass!" Raimy breaks into Mitchell's house, steals a sportjacket and Mitchell's gun and uses it to kill Cini and frame Mitchell (all on videotape for Mitchell's benefit), and now demands $105,000 per year for the rest of Mitchell's life in exchange for their silence. Mitchell, who prides himself on never relying on others, knows he'll never be rid of these shitbags but refuses to go to the cops, opting to set up an elaborate plan to deal with them himself, using his wits and street smarts and turning the three of them against one another.
It's not only a more high-minded Cannon product with a rejuvenated Frankenheimer onboard, but also with talent like Scheider and Ann-Margret heading the cast (and reunited from the 1973 French thriller THE OUTSIDE MAN). At 54, Scheider was nearing the end of a hugely-successful decade-plus run as an A-lister, and while 46-year-old Ann-Margret wasn't exactly at the peak of her career, she brought not just name recognition but a certain degree of class to the proceedings that wasn't normally inherent in a Cannon film. But in aiming toward comparitively older moviegoers, Cannon made the same mistakes they made in many of their Bronson films: an overabundance of violence and sex that much of that demographic found off-putting. Frankenheimer spends a lot of screen time with the sleazy dealings of Raimy and his cohorts, including a wild party that features cameos by several famous porn stars (Jamie Gillis, Herschel Savage, Amber Lynn, Barbara Dare, Sharon Mitchell, and, of course, Ron Jeremy), and a few nude photo shoots, etc. 52 PICK-UP is one of the sleazier Cannon outings, but the nudity, the seedy L.A. locations, the drug abuse and the general unpleasantness (an enraged Raimy abducts Barbara late in the film, shooting her full of heroin and--offscreen--raping her) are vital to the film's atmosphere and the sense that Mitchell is leading himself and his wife into a dangerous and destructive world. Indeed, Glover, Trebor, and Williams vividly create three of the most loathsome, repulsive villains you'll ever see.
But the center of the film is the relationship between Harry and Barbara, and Scheider and Ann-Margret both do excellent work here, especially in the scene where Harry confesses the affair. With very little dialogue, Ann-Margret conveys the pain and the hurt, saying she's sensed it for a while and quietly says "22...that's young. We've been married 23 years. That's longer than she's been alive." And when Harry keeps fumblingly saying "It's not that simple," Barbara practically spits "Oh...did you play Daddy?" Some of Leonard's trademark snappy wit shines in the script as well, with Harry explaining the situation to his trusted attorney (Lonny Chapman) and saying "I must've thought I was falling in love. What an asshole," and when he goes to ambush Raimy at his porno theater, Harry asks the cashier "The movie...is it any good?" to which she deadpans "Beautiful...five bucks." Scheider was an unheralded master at disposing a villain with a smartass quip or, better yet, taking a bad guy's snide catchphrase and throwing it back at him at the best possible moment. One could argue that this started with "Smile, you son of a bitch!" from JAWS, but it was also reflected in his turning the obnoxious "Catch ya later!" back at Malcolm McDowell in 1983's BLUE THUNDER, and around the 28th time Glover's Raimy snottily calls Scheider's Mitchell "Sport" in 52 PICK-UP, you know that'll be coming back to bite him in the ass.
Ultimately, despite good reviews, many citing it as Frankenheimer's best film in years, and extensive publicity, 52 PICK-UP was a box-office dud, landing in 8th place its opening weekend and going on to gross just $5 million. Scheider and Frankenheimer teamed up again for 1990's little-seen THE FOURTH WAR, an interesting and underrated post-Cold War thriller. While Frankenheimer's career picked up, Scheider's wound down. He stayed busy for the next two decades in supporting roles, straight-to-video movies, and spent a couple of years on the NBC series SEAQUEST DSV (and reportedly hated it, essentially quitting the show after two seasons but making three brief appearances in the third season after being replaced by Michael Ironside), but by the end of the decade, like Cannon, Scheider's big-screen movie-star days were essentially over. He died in 2008. Leonard had already seen several of his stories and novels turned into films, going back to 1957's 3:10 TO YUMA, 1967's HOMBRE, 1969's THE BIG BOUNCE (remade in 2004), 1974's MR. MAJESTYK, and 1985's STICK, among others. The most famous big-screen Leonard adaptation is probably Quentin Tarantino's JACKIE BROWN (1997), based on the novel Rum Punch, but GET SHORTY (1995) and OUT OF SIGHT (1998) are also held in high regard, along with the FX series JUSTIFIED, with Timothy Olyphant as Raylan Givens, a character in several Leonard works. Now 87, Leonard is still writing and still living in the suburban Detroit area, which he's called home since he was nine years old.
