Sporting the old ’70s Warner Bros. logo at the top (much like “Magic Mike” did earlier in the year), Ben Affleck‘s “Argo” spells out its throwback intentions right from minute one — this is going to be a picture in the mold of the ’70s thriller, which often came with a strong political bent. Affleck’s movie is also part Hollywood satire which trades in some loose and from-the-hip Hal Ashby tenors, but at the end of the day, the movie is a CIA thriller with a political nature that has upset both modern-day Iranian and Canadian governments.
You already know the big ‘70s thrillers such as “All The President’s Men,” The French Connection,” Three Days Of The Condor,” The Parallax View,” The Conversation” and many many, but the genre goes far and deep. With Affleck’s “Argo” hitting DVD/Blu-ray this week (and very possibly winning the Best Picture prize at the Oscars on Sunday) and clearly indebted to the movies of this bygone era, we picked out 15 lesser-known ’70s thrillers you may not have seen yet. Some are great, others surprisingly far from perfect, some are just kind of flat and uninspired. Consider this the second and third advanced course of genre, assuming most of you have already passed the introductory class.
“Z” (1969)
We begin with a movie that technically doesn’t belong, but we’re putting it in here anyway. This 1969 film directed by Costa-Gavras sets the benchmark for the modern fast-paced political thriller, and remains as fresh, exciting, and thematically charged today. There would be no “Argo” if there were no “Z,” and its influence is readily apparent especially on the style of Ben Affleck‘s film. Based on novel by Vassilis Vassilikos, it is the thinly fictionalized account of the 1963 assassination of Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis, and from the beginning, the film goes so far as to say that any resemblance to real events is not accidental, and is purely intentional. From that, we know this film won’t be pulling any punches in its indictment of dictatorial government corruption. “Z” is French language, though the city or country where it takes place is never specified, and much of the filming took place in Algiers. The plot revolves around a politician (Yves Montand) who is killed during a riot after a campaign rally stop, and the surrounding investigation that indicates the military’s role and premeditation in what appeared to be a random act of violence. As the outside Examining Magistrate brought in to investigate the events, Jean-Louis Trintignant earned himself a Best Actor award at Cannes in 1969, and he is absolutely riveting, even behind his character’s trademark sunglasses. He is steely, methodical, and unrelenting, swayed only by the facts. During the film’s explosive climax, while he starts to pull all the threads together during his questioning of witnesses, the restless camera moves in and around their faces within a confined space, heightening the tension as he puts every little seemingly random event together to paint a picture of widespread corruption and guilt. He hits the phrase “nom, prenom, occupation” harder and harder with each witness as he goes higher and higher up the food chain, stopping only with the general, played by Pierre Dux. Aside from sharing the same star as “Amour” in Trintignant, like that film, “Z” is also one of the few films to be nominated for both the Best Picture and Best Foreign Film Oscars. The fast-paced and visceral thriller drops the audience directly into the events right away and without much introduction, the constantly moving camera keeping up with its ensemble cast as they careen through the spaces they inhabit, maintaining the electric energy of the events (helped in no small part by the percussive score). Zooms, handheld and tracking shots keep us in step with them on streets of Algiers, or zipping along on a tiny three-wheeled truck with murderous thugs or in a car full of campaign staffers. This taut and tightly wound film manages to be both epic in scale and intimate in scope, and is completely ballsy in its direct address of the inner workings of governmental and military corruption head on, and from a variety of different angles. A classic that has managed to feel as edgy and explosive today as it might have 44 years ago, this is the gold standard for political thrillers with bite. [A]
“The Kremlin Letter” (1970)
“If you miss the first five minutes, you miss one suicide, two executions, one seduction and the key to the plot,” boasted the 20th Century Fox poster for John Huston’s Cold War espionage thriller. And it’s true, the complex and ultimately convoluted plot of “The Kremlin Letter” has so much going on you need a scorecard to keep up, but by then it’s hard to care about what happens to this cast of characters during the bitter betrayals that follow. Set in the winter of 1969-1970 at the height of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, the film begins with a brilliant young naval officer with an eidetic memory mysteriously thrown out of the navy to be recruited by an ageing collection of freelance mercenary spies trying to recover a stolen letter that could implicate the U.S. government in a conspiracy with Russia against Red China. Neither side can afford to let this letter come to light and so infiltrating their way into Moscow, they quickly discover all kinds of treason, crosses upon double crosses, betrayals and twists. The team is colorful and includes a drug-dealing pimp, the daughter of a safecracker taught the tricks of the trade, a ruthless avuncular figure and a sophisticated gay man who knits in the middle of meetings. But much like “The Anderson Tapes” (which you’ll read about shortly) this spy thriller co-starring Ingmar Bergman actors Bibi Anderson and Max Von Sydow, plus Orson Welles and George Sanders sounds intriguing and appealing only on paper. The reality is this Moscow-set thriller stars a bunch of unexceptional lesser-known character actors (Patrick O’Neal, Richard Boone, Nigel Green, Dean Jagger, Barbara Parkins) none of whom are compelling enough as individuals or even as supporting members of this large ensemble. As Rone, the naval officer, O’Neal, perhaps the de facto lead, is particularly emotionally aloof (or bored) in an already dispassionate movie which doesn’t help its case. There’s sexual blackmail, sexual violence, perversion and bits of juicy-sounding intrigue here and there, but “The Kremlin Letter” lacks suspense and momentum — its narrative engine is constantly stalled by some overly complicated tangent, subplot or double cross. While Jean-Pierre Melville himself endorsed the film as one of the best of its genre, it’s far from it. “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” or “All The President’s Men” this is not. [C-]