$ (a.k.a. 'Dollars') (1971) What makes this one especially strange.......it's a barely verbal 2 hour heist thriller from writer-director Richard Brooks, a filmmaker who normally thrives on litera verbiage...("Cat On A Hot Tin Roof", "The Brothers Karamozov", "Elmer Gantry")
Brooks also attempts light breezy comedy here and the result is exactly what you'd expect from a director who's always as serious as a heart attack......
In suddenly deciding to forgo linear storytelling and verbose dialogue, Brooks goes way overboard in the other direction of pure visual cinema. It's not his forte and he's so clumsy at it that the film unfolds as a chopped up mess.......as if it were a 4 hour movie that film editors had to eviscerate to make it even remotely coherent.
With its endless opening barrage of random cross-cutting, the film ditches any attempts at exposition. In its first hour, as it grinds on and on, you're on your own in figuring out who the characters are, what they want, what they're up to and what the hell is going on with them.
Lucky for us, what's going on in the first hour finally makes itself clear. Warren Beatty's an ace bank security wiz who's just heavily fortified a Hamburg bank to the max........much to the delight of the bank's officious manager, played by none other than 'Goldfinger' himself, Gert Frobe.
This makes Beatty doubly clever, since he plans to thwart his own overwhelming alarm systems so he can loot the ill-gotten, illegal cash stashed in the safe deposit boxes of three scuzzy, crooked douchebags........
This trio of creeps include a Vegas lawyer flush with skimmed casino money (Robert Webber), a blustery U.S. army sergeant who's a black marketeer (Scott Brady) and worst of all, the 'Candyman' (Arthur Brauss) a reptilian, murdering drug dealer peddling concentrated LSD.
And all three of them have been set up ahead of time for their fleecing by Beatty's hooker partner-in-crime, played with her standard repertoire of giggles and eye-pops by Goldie Hawn......no doubt Richard Brooks depended on her to carry this film's comedic load......
Despite all of Brooks' nervous cross cutting, the film drags and drags for about 90 minutes until it arrives at its whole reason for being.........a nearly 25 minute sequence where Brauss and Brady pursue Beatty, mostly on foot.
And yes, it's as exhausting, tedious and endless as it sounds. If nothing else, it probably got Brooks in the cinema record books for filming the longest sustained foot chase ever. Whoopidie-doo.
To make matters worse, the film throws in a hasty, sloppily filmed final shot that appears to negate the the twist ending that popped up in the previous scene.........pretty pathetic if you consider all the time and energy expended on telling this story to begin with......
Even if you're a fan of anybody who stars in this movie, we'd recommend finding on of their other movies to watch. For this one, 1 star (*).........and the lone star is for jolly Gert Frobe, still looking like he's planning to rob Fort Knox
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