Review: Sitting Target


Hearing that his wife (Jill St. John, miscast with a wavering accent) is pregnant to another man and leaving him, hardened crim Oliver Reed breaks out of prison with his more outwardly charming cohort Ian McShane with the purpose of tracking down his wife and her lover, and killing them. He’s a real feminist, this one. Freddie Jones plays a creepy explosives expert who also escapes prison with Reed and McShane, Edward Woodward plays a cop hoping to nab Reed and protect St. John, and Frank Finlay is the rich crime boss whom Reed comes to call a favour from. Robert Beatty turns up as a gun dealer.

 

Directed by Douglas Hickox (who also gave us such cult gems as “Entertaining Mr. Sloane” and the all-star “Theatre of Blood”), this tough, incredibly grim-faced crime/caper from 1972 has a bad reputation from the few who seem to have seen it, and for the life of my I cannot understand why. For me, the harshness, ugliness, and grimness were actually positives, so perhaps that’s where others differ. But I think if you liked “Get Carter”, “Point Blank”, or “The Long Good Friday”, this is somewhat similar in tone at the very least.

 

Oliver Reed has an intense and intensely unpleasant screen persona, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing here. In fact, it means he’s perfectly cast (he even kicks a dog for chrissakes), and he and ratbag cohort Ian McShane (who nowadays tends to play Oliver Reed-type roles, ironically) make for a fine unscrupulous pairing. Freddie Jones, meanwhile, is his usual unrestrained self, and you wouldn’t want him any other way. If there’s any actor more capable of being creepy and unpleasant than Oliver Reed, it’s bug-eyed Jones, one of the best British character actors.

 

Edward Woodward is as solid- and rigid- as ever, playing a cop, which sure is some major casting against type right there. Some of the other actors end up a bit wasted (Frank Finlay especially), and I’m not a big Jill St. John fan, but honestly the only drawback here is some poor projection work ruining a potentially fun, nasty car chase/wreck towards the end. The bad 70s cop show music score by Stanley Myers (“No Way to Treat a Lady”, “The Deer Hunter”) has dated badly, too.

 

Scripted by Alexander Jacobs (“Point Blank”, “French Connection II”, and “An Enemy of the People”, with Steve McQueen), it’s a tough bastard of a film that deserves praise and more awareness. Pretty well-directed too, with an especially tense highwire prison break a standout. A good and underrated film awaiting rediscovery, with a prison that looks as harsh, brutal and ugly as its protagonist.

 

Rating: B-

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Hellraiser (2022)

Recovering junkie Odessa A’zion accompanies scuzzy boyfriend Drew Starkey on a break-in where all they find is a weird puzzle box. A’zion later opens the box and after some weird shit happens, A’zion and Starkey figure it might be a good idea to learn more about this messed up trinket. Goran Visnjic plays a millionaire who possessed the box before our protagonist nicked it.   Is there any point in remaking/rebooting “Hellraiser” when the 1987 adaptation of Clive Barker’s original text was written and directed by Barker himself? And is considered a horror classic? On evidence here, absolutely not. Directed by David Bruckner ( “The Signal” ) and scripted by Ben Collins ( “The Night House” ) and Luke Piotrowski (ditto) this is an entirely tedious affair. I took a long time to get on board with the 1987 “Hellraiser” , I have to admit. It was wildly imaginative and original, like a nightmare transplanted on to film. However, the characters were stone cold and left me similarly chilly t
Read more

Review: Boyka: Undisputed

Yuri Boyka (Scott Adkins) is out of prison and fighting for a living, with ambitions for the ‘Most Complete Fighter’ to make a real name for himself. However, after an opponent dies during a fight, the deeply religious Boyka starts to have a crisis of conscience. He tries to make amends with the man’s widow, which eventually pits him against a local gangster (Alon Moni Aboutboul, quite good). Anything with Scott Adkins will generally get me interested, and although this series peaked with the superlative “Undisputed II: Last Man Standing” , this 2017 film from director Todor Chapkanov (director of the SyFy movies “Copperhead” and “Ghost Town” ) is no slouch in a series yet to deliver anything less than solid entertainment. Producer Isaac Florentine is missed in the director’s chair, but Chapkanov gives us at the very least the series’ most dramatically ambitious entry, as Adkins’ ‘most complete fighter’ Yuri Boyka continues on his journey to redemption here. In this one, the
Read more

Review: Ninja 2: Shadow of a Tear

Scott Adkins is once again Casey, an American proponent of the martial art of Ninjutsu. When Casey’s pregnant Japanese wife (Mika Hijii) is rubbed out, he’s on a vengeance mission to find her killers. A friendly face, Nakabara (Kane Kosugi) turns up at the funeral, and suggests Casey come to Thailand to deal with his grief in another country. Casey initially declines, but eventually takes Nakabara up on his offer. However, his wife’s murder still haunts Casey, and with intel supplied by Nakabara, the trail eventually leads Casey to a brutal drug baron named Goro (Shun Sugata).   I was extremely disappointed with the first “Ninja” , but had heard that this 2013 sequel from director Isaac Florentine ( “Undisputed II: Last Man Standing” , “Undisputed III: Redemption” , “Ninja” ) was a damn near masterpiece of the martial-arts action movie genre. Having now finally gotten my hot little hands on it, I’d say the hype is a bit much, but this is unquestionably a much better film than the f
Read more