The Wilby Conspiracy (1975) Now here's a screwball concept that could only find fruition in 70's cinema, when directors would throw stuff on the wall to see what would stick.......
A rollicking buddy-buddy, clash-of-opposites comedy set in the dark heart of the brutal, racist, apartheid-ridden regime of South Africa? Huh?
Yeah, cause there's no end of laughs in the white government's ruthless security police oppressing and torturing the 18 million blacks that surrounded them.
Neither we nor audiences could ever get a handle on Ralph Nelson's directorial style.....(see our posts on his Vietnam-ized western "Soldier Blue" on 6/26/19 and his strange Army 'dramedy' "Soldier In The Rain" on 8/20/20)
Nelson would try anything from low comedy gags to extra brutal violence, hurling all of it into one single movie, no matter how bizarre and ill fitting.
In that regard, "The Wilby Conspiracy" stands as an all too typical Nelson movie, as it careens from comedy to cruelty and back again, with little thought as to how it makes the film look in total.
It does have this going for it, two powerhouse actors, Sidney Poitier and Michael Caine, each at the top of their game doing their specialties - Poitier's carefully measured, suppressed rage combined with Caine's unerring skill at deadpan comedic timing and sudden bursts of apoplectic temper.
Together, they're an undeniably charismatic team, with Poitier as a hunted activist and Caine as a friend of Poitier's lawyer (Prunella Gee). After an ugly, violent encounter with race-baiting Afrikanner cops, Caine ends up handcuffed to Poitier and on the run with him. (And in the hated global pariah that was South Africa before apartheid fell, you can believe all that can happen in the space of a few minutes.)
Mercilessly tracking them down is a sadistic, Gestapo-like South African security agent (NIcol Williamson) and his equally detestable partner (Ryk De Gooyer).
We won't bother with the intricacies of the plot, which tosses in a bag of hidden diamonds, a beloved black leader in exile, a duplicitous Hindu couple and Prunella Gee's pilot ex-husband, played by a young dashing Rutger Hauer. Expect a few chases, a few narrow escapes, a few deaths and a twist or two at the end.
The only reason we'd recommend this movie to anybody is the surprisingly comedic byplay between the two stars, who bicker throughout through their long dangerous trek. (We did not laugh, however, at the film's sick attempt to wring comedy out of Nicol Williamson's secret police salivating at the thought of repeatedly strip searching Prunella Gee).
We assume the bulk of the jokes came from co-screenwriter Rod Amateau, who spent decades producing and directing mediocre TV sitcoms as well as some pretty lousy film comedies.("The Garbage Pail Kids Movie", "Pussycat Pussycat I Love You"......enough said.)
It's a mixed bag, like many of Ralph Nelson's films and the constant shifting from chase thriller to Abbott-and-Costello one liners makes for an off-the-beaten-track but still entertaining watch. 2 & 1/2 stars. (** 1/2)
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