AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Micitype Pretty Good

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Juana what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

HEFILM This is very slickly made film which sadly doesn't have a good reputation or a decent widescreen release. The camera-work on the film is excellent with much moving camera a great score and good locations.The odd thing is the bursts of full frontal nudity and one really graphic death scene. These seem to be included for fans of Bronson's gritty films but seem totally out of place here.Sondra is dull as usual. Bronson solid. Robards doesn't seem to want to be bothered by doing a German accent. It has real visual sweep. Odd rather forced voice over which seems to be trying to set this up for a sequel perhaps at the end.Despite these forced elements--of violence, nudity,and nostalgia--the bulk of the film works as a mystery and intrigue--rather than say action. One of the few of director Thompson's later films that really hearken back to his early Hollywood career of sweeping location quasi epics.Ending builds suspense only to pay it off in an offbeat--and perhaps off putting way for some.Deserves more respect and proper restoration than it gets especially among the later career of Bronson.

jaibo The third collaboration between star Charles Bronson and veteran British director J Lee Thompson is, like its predecessor The White Buffalo, a strange beast but this time the collaboration doesn't quite manage produce something interesting. An all-star caper set in South America after the close of World War Two, Capo Blanco shows a disparate group of International adventurers going after what turns out to be a hoard of treasure looted by the Nazis during the war. The image of Capo Blanco as a melting pot of various International chancers gives the place in image as well as name a nod to Casablanca. The ex-patriot American protagonist, Giff (Bronson), runs a bar in town just like Rick in the classic and the supporting characters echo figures who once listened to the "You must remember this" refrain – an ultimately good but morally compromised police chief (Fernando Rey doing Claude Rains), a wicked Nazi (Jason Robards for Conrad Veidt) and a mysterious, beautiful woman with Paris in her past (Dominique Sanda standing for Ingrid Bergman). There is an awkwardness to the film, as if Thompson is unsure as to whether this is an homage or a pastiche.Thompson, in his later years especially, was a filmmaker whose world-view was riddled with misanthropy. Here he tries to take what Wilde might have termed a bank holiday from cynicism, as he confesses in a short "Making of" documentary filmed during the shoot, where he identifies the post-war setting as "…an era of romanticism, an age when things seemed to have a drive and excitement of their own, when values were considered to be important and the feeling that the hero in the end should triumph and that you could root for good against bad. We've lost a lot of that, as indeed we should do in the modern cinema. But that is occasionally something which should occasionally appear on the screens when we're making a film today." Cabo Blanco is an exercise in nostalgia but it is exercising muscles in Thompson which had long-since wasted away. For the most part Cabo Blanco a tired film. The story is told without any real effort at audience engagement. Most of the excellent cast are on auto-pilot. Yet this is the logical consequence of its nostalgic romanticism.The denouement, a long and not very well-paced scene in Giff's bar, sees the moral of the film being played out, yet it is as if the figures are animated waxworks re-enacting scenes from a no longer living past. The police chief, who has up until now assisted the Nazi in the search for the treasure, learns that it is loot from "Churches, synagogues, death camps" and so jumps ship, joining the good guys. He regains, in Giff's words, "his soul". The film dramatises a moment when the post-war allies had the moral high ground and where their rectitude could persuade others that they were indeed the good guys. This is a legend now, as the film self-consciously admits in a series of mythologising voice-overs, and Thompson can only repeat it, parrot it. The plot self-consciously involves a parrot's memory. It as if the myth were preserved in aspic, no longer a living thing. The epilogue, over which the voice over tells us that "the legend (…) grew and grew and Cabo Blanco prospered", shows Giff with a swanky house on a hill with the girl, living the good life. A good life built of the legend that he is a good guy.Yet Giff, as his back-story tells us, is a murderer. And as a murderer, he himself is on the run from gas chambers not in Nazi Germany but in the good old USA. Even when making a piece of supposedly romantic nostalgia, Thompson cannot help but let his cynicism seep out.

mwmerkelbach „Caboblanco" is not a bad movie, but you can easily divide its strengths and weaknesses. Fernando Rey and Jason Robards are the strongest actors. They both deliver great performances as they usually do. Charles Bronson does a solid job too. I think that he is often underrated as an actor, because of the decent quality of most of his movies. J. Lee Thompson directs this one in classy old-school-manner that could have produced a far better movie in case the script would have been above average, which it is not. The cinematography, the photography and the choice of locations are truly first rate. And J. Lee Thompson had the spirit and the feel of a director. He was born to do, what he did.Most of the supporting actors are pretty cool as well. But Dominique Sanda was a miscast. Her wooden and strangely impersonal acting did confuse me from the very beginning. She seems to be completely lost in nearly every scene and any suggestions of mystery to her character are not convincing at all. The chemistry between her and Cliff (Charles Bronson) doesn't work out at all and that's a pity, because everything else and everybody else seem so carefully chosen.But the main point to criticize is the script. It delivers some nice ideas, but too many loose ends and open questions. Why do scuba divers let the submarine explode that obvious, though they must have known, that the wreck was not the one everybody's looking for? Why did they kill the fisherman, who was diving for oysters for centuries? How come that Cliff was perfectly placed to rescue him, when the British agent Lewis was trying to escape through the jungle? These plot holes do not fit to an excellent script, which only could lead to an excellent movie. It's a pity, because Caboblanco already got many fine ingredients: competent actors, a perfect score by Jerry Goldsmith, marvelous locations and a stunning cinematography! In the end it's only a decent action flick worth watching once for fans of Charles Bronson and/or J. Lee Thompson.It's interesting to realize that the theatrical version of "Caboblanco" shown in Argentina is 15 minutes (!) longer than the one we watch nowadays in the US or Europe on DVD. My whole impression of the movie might have been influenced by the fact that it was heavily cut, which seems to be possible as soon I think of those "plot holes" I already mentioned. I think it's necessary to get that uncut 102 minute print to be published as soon as possible.Last but not least: Do not forget to check out the perfect Bronson/Thompson collaboration "Murphy's Law" (1986), which is the most underrated B-movie of the decade.

DrSatan Caboblanco is a really, really bad film, that loses many points for its feeble attempts to evoke the classic "Casablanca". I feel sorry for Jason Robards and Bronson, both of whom give decent performances on this film's lousy script. I'm sorry, but the story of various low lifes and politicos vieing over suken treasure (with a crappy romance sub-plot thrown in for good measure) cannot compete with Casablanca's story of sacrificing love for the greater good. Also, this film lacks Casablanca's wonderful supporting cast and great dialogue. Judged by itself, this film is paced far too slowly, and too little occurs. The ending, though, is what mainly draws my ire-"I put a bomb in the jukebox" indeed! Avoid.