{"id":3116,"date":"2011-06-24T15:13:50","date_gmt":"2011-06-24T19:13:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=3116"},"modified":"2011-06-24T15:13:50","modified_gmt":"2011-06-24T19:13:50","slug":"dvd-mackintosh-man-the-1973","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=3116","title":{"rendered":"DVD: MacKintosh Man, The (1973)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to: <\/strong>Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>M<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Film: Excellent\/ DVD Transfer: Very Good\/ DVD Extras: Good<\/p>\n

Label: Warner Home Video\/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: November 14, 2006<\/p>\n

Genre: Espionage \/ Cold War \/ Suspense<\/p>\n

Synopsis: A jewel thief is sent to prison and break out in tandem with a convicted Communist spy.<\/p>\n

Special Features: Vintage making-of Featurette (9:56) \/ Theatrical Trailer<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

Technically, The MacKintosh Man<\/strong> is a Cold War thriller, but politics are so severely subjugated in Walter Hill\u2019s adaptation of Desmond Bagley\u2019s novel The Freedom Trap<\/strong> that the film is part heist, prison breakout, and espionage thriller.<\/p>\n

Maybe the novel was always a matter of character and action, or perhaps director John Huston felt the overt politics in The Kremlin Letter<\/strong> (1970) were so alienating to audiences that he chose to stick with Hill\u2019s recognizable no-nonsense screenwriting style, keeping his tight scene structure and action set-pieces, but penning some of the choice dialogue himself, ensuring the film has some of the black humour and irony typical of Huston\u2019s own work.<\/p>\n

Filmed in gorgeous England and Malta, MacKintosh<\/strong> is a slick and tightly directed thriller about a jewel thief named Reardon (Paul Newman) whose incarceration is a ploy to deal with a convicted Communist double-agent named Slade (Ian Bannen) after the pair breakout from prison. As Reardon is arrested, locked up in prison, breaks out, held captive by his liberators, escapes their isolated country estate, and later hooks up with a pretty associate named Mrs. Smith (Dominique Sanda, sporting one severe French accent) to prevent Slade\u2019s escape through Malta, Huston makes use of authentic locations, and directs some pretty superb action sequences.<\/p>\n

A manhunt through the bleak Irish fields is tensely choreographed, and a subsequent car chase through narrow country roads seems to have been filmed with the vehicles barreling down at top speed, making simple POV shots incredibly exciting. The car chase may have been mandated due to the success of Bullitt<\/strong> (1968) and The French Connection <\/strong>(1971), but it\u2019s purposeful in getting rid of unwanted characters, and allows Reardon to engage in some payback after being knocked around pretty heavily by the prison break\u2019s architect, Brown (slimy Michael Horden) and his assistant Gerda (Jenny Runacre), who grins whether she\u2019s serving Reardon tea, or kicking the crap out of his pretty face with her scissor legs.<\/p>\n

Huston\u2019s cast is loaded with superb talent, including James Mason as a smooth-talking senator, and fierce-chinned Harry Andrews as Reardon\u2019s chief handler. Niall MacGinnis (Curse of the Demon<\/strong>) also appears in a tiny role as Reardon\u2019s prison warden, and Shane Briant (Captain Kronos \u2013 Vampire Hunter<\/strong>) pops up at the end as a henchman.<\/p>\n

The only flaw in the production is Maurice Jarre\u2019s terribly monotonous score, which replays the same theme on a hurdy-gurdy as if to evoke the vintage ambiance of Anton Karras\u2019 Third Man<\/strong> (1949) music. There\u2019s little variation in the first two acts, but the music does propel the film\u2019s montages, and Jarre later reworked the theme for his eighties espionage classic, No Way Out <\/strong>(1987). (It\u2019s in the end credits. Just listen carefully.)<\/p>\n

Warner Home Video\u2019s DVD includes a good transfer of the film (sadly, minus the original & beautiful Warner Communications<\/a> logo), and adds a trailer and vintage promotional featurette showing Huston in action on location. The featurette is fairly standard – all behind-the-scenes footage and no interviews or sound-bites – but the trailer is amusing for the bizarre title logo: a chrome Luger pistol with a silhouette of Newman’s profile under the barrel, designed by the studio’s publicity arm to set up a potential super-spy franchise.<\/p>\n

Screenwriter Walter Hill had already shown his knack for writing snappy scenes and action sequences in his debut script, the buddy \/ action \/ crime film Hickey & Boggs<\/strong> (1972), and after writing The Drowning Pool<\/strong> (1975), the sequel to Harper<\/strong> (1966) for Paul Newman, Hill moved into writing \/ directing the same year with the Charles Bronson drama Hard Times<\/strong>. Interestingly, Huston later co-starred with Bronson in Tom Gries\u2019 action drama Breakout<\/strong> (1975), about a wife who hires a helicopter pilot to help free her husband from a Mexican prison.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2011 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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Related links:<\/em><\/p>\n

DVD \/ Film: \u00a0Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter<\/a> <\/strong>(1974) —\u00a0Kremlin Letter, The<\/a> <\/strong>(1970)<\/p>\n

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Related external links (MAIN SITE):<\/em><\/p>\n

DVD \/ Film: \u00a0Curse of the Demon<\/a> <\/strong>(1957)<\/p>\n

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External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— Soundtrack Album<\/a> — Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n

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Buy from:<\/em><\/p>\n

Amazon.com<\/strong> \u2013 The Mackintosh Man<\/a><\/p>\n

Amazon.ca<\/strong> –\u00a0The Paul Newman Collection (Harper \/ The Drowning Pool \/ The Left-Handed Gun \/ The Mackintosh Man \/ Pocket Money \/ Somebody Up There Likes Me \/ The Young Philadelphians)<\/a><\/p>\n

Amazon.co.uk <\/strong> – The Mackintosh Man [1973]<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> <\/em><\/em><\/em>\/\u00a0M<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to: Home \/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews \/ M . Film: Excellent\/ DVD Transfer: Very Good\/ DVD Extras: Good Label: Warner Home Video\/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: November 14, 2006 Genre: Espionage \/ Cold War \/ Suspense Synopsis: A jewel thief is sent to prison and break out in tandem with a convicted Communist spy. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[558,560,557,559,512,556],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-Og","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3116"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3127,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3116\/revisions\/3127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}