SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

HeadlinesExotic Boring

BallWubba Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

eyesour Spoilers from the off. At least five people get shot dead in this film. Colour me stupid, but although I've seen it three or four times I still can't figure out the motivation. Their shootings seemed arbitrary and unnecessary: who gained? A misleading cocaine-dealing trail had apparently been laid down (by who?) for stolid, stone-faced cop George C Scott, but it had been deliberately framed for him not to fall for it. So what was the point? I can't figure it out. What had Mrs Kate Neeley got to do with it? Who was doing the shootings? Seems as though it was Marthe Keller, according to her body oil --- but hang on, who sent her to LA? Was Steiffel ordering the killings? Or was it the Baader-Meinhof Faction? I've read more than one summary of the plot, but none of them seem able to get it straight.Site plot summary: A detective uncovers a formula that was devised by the Nazis in WWII to make gasoline from synthetic products, thereby eliminating the necessity for oil, and oil companies. A major oil company finds out about it and tries to destroy the formula and anyone who knows about it. Site plot synopsis: There is no plot synopsis. Still, it seems like Steiffel must have been responsible.Perhaps, as one reviewer says, just talking to Lieutenant Scott gets you shot. Was Shagan enrolled in the Raymond Chandler school of thriller-writing? Chandler said that writing thrillers is easy: if you don't know what to make happen next, bring on a man with a gun. Even better: just have somebody shot. "Happy Days are Here Again" is not precisely rock 'n roll, so add a dash of sex and drugs.Listening to the Avildsen (born 1935) and Shagan (born 1927) special feature commentary is enlightening. Add some stimulating one-liners from the script. "We are the Arabs." (Steiffel). "Fiction ruins factual research". (Shagan). "Walls make good neighbours". (Robert Frost --- weird that A & S wouldn't remember that famous quote). "You're in the oil shortage business". "No enemies --- just customers".The puzzles multiply the closer you look. Obermann's next of kin was in his wallet. That's how they got to Keller. Then how come he never had a niece? Why did phony old Gielgud dismiss Fraulein Spangler? Vy vosn't Dr Abraham Esau shot? Vy vosn't he more hairy? Shagan said he had the book in his head. This shows, since the requisite smooth transition to film never happened. Some of the shots, and sets, were visually adequately attractive, but they were static, not cinematic.Finally, if I heard him right, and it sounded as if it was confirmed by either A or S, Marlon mumbled that "Jefferson said that 'Money, not morality, is the principal commerce of civilized nations'." This doesn't make any sense, if you think about it. Also, what Jefferson actually said, in his letter to John Langdon, 1810, was that "Money and not morality is the principle of commerce and commercial nations". Now that does make perfect sense. Perhaps the jumbled mumble was simply Brando's quirky take on his decidedly oddball character.Brando and Scott used to play chess, when Scott was sober. Both giants were a tad tired and over-weight. Neither looked at all comfortable in his ill-fitting clothes. The film is a chess problem without a solution, but it's fairly amusing trying to find one. Could be a Queen's Pawn opener, and a draw. I must check the moves again. That old-fashioned notation is definitely dated, however.Could somebody please produce a good, clear summary/synopsis, so I can get shot of the whole hangover. It's given me a headache. By the way, I've ordered the book, in hopes it may help me clear my head and sort it out.Book arrived. Stap me vitals; and split me windpipe. There's that Jefferson misquote again ! "Money not morality is the principal commerce of civilized nations". Why can't Yanks speak English?

sol ***SPOILERS*** Very complex and confusing film about the Nazi Genesis Project during WWII in the mass production of synthetic fuel to run its war machine. It was that fuel, made from liquefied coal, that had Germany hold off defeat while inflicting millions of allied casualties for some two years after it's supply of oil, mostly from the Romanian Ploesti Oil Field, was obliterated by allied daylight bombings in 1943.Seeing in the spring of 1945 that the war was lost, for Germany, German General Helmut, Richard Lynch, makes a desperate dash with a truck full of Nazi secret documents towards the Swiss border only to get intercepted by a US Army patrol. It's then that Gen. Helmut makes a secret deal with US Army Major Tom Neeley, Robin Clark,to trade the documents for his safety out of the country and possible being tried as a Nazi war criminal. It's now 35 years later and Neeley now a retired L.A police chief is found murdered in his home with it made to look like it was some kind of mob hit. In fact it was but the mob wasn't the Mafia but those running the world's oil cartels.With Neeley's good friend in the LAPD Let. Barney Caine, George C. Scott, put on the case it becomes evident to him that those who ordered Neeley murdered originated, by a check on Neeley's recent travels, from Germany. That becomes even more clear to Let. Caine when within days Neeley's estranged wife Kay, Beatrice Straight, is also fund murdered in her Jacuzzi with the same murder weapon that murdered her husband! The film follows the same formula in that as soon as we're, or Let. Caine, introduced to a major character in it he, or she, ends up being murdered! Let. Caine traveling to, at that time in 1980, West Germany on official business starts to put all the loose ends in Neeley's murder together and uncovers his involvement with the Nazi Genesis Project! If the secret of the Genesis Project were made public it would put the world's oil cartels out of business!Hard to follow and very boring at times, with the action in the film about as long as a one minute TV commercial, the best part in it is the confrontation between Let. Caine and Titan Oil CEO Adam Steiffel, Marlon Brando, at the conclusion of the movie. It's that scene that explains to the audience what exactly is going on in the film.***SPOILER ALERT*** Steiffel who's the man behind all the murders in the movie comes across so likable, due to Brando's comedic mannerisms of him, that you find it hard to dislike him. In fact you look at Scott, as Let. Caine, to be more of a villain that he does in is verbally abusing the what seems like the helpless balding fat-man that Steiffel is. In the end it's Steiffel who ends up getting the last laugh by checkmating Let. Caine, despite all his efforts, in his trying to get the Genisis formula out to the public. Which shows that big bucks not morality or the public interest is the way to get things done in this world. There's also in the movie the husky voiced and very athletic looking Marthe Keller as Lisa Spangler in a role that she seemed to play in every film she was in back then; The mystery woman. Lisa was so mysterious that even when the movie was finally over you didn't quite know on just who's-Let. Caine or Adam Steiffel-she was on?P.S The film "The Formula" has the distinction of not only having two Academy Award winners, Geroge C. Scott & Marlon Brando, for best actor in it but also the very two who turned the coveted Oscar down for, in Brando's case, political and, in George C, Scott's case, personal or professional reasons.

inginrbill I had not seen this film since its theater release some twenty-eight years ago. To my knowledge it has not been shown on TV in the L. A. area until the TCM presentation this month. I had forgotten every single detail of the film except for Marlon Brando's great line "Ah, Arthur, you are missing the point--We are the Arabs." The line says it all and is especially telling in light of current events and players. By some trick of the mind, I ascribed the line to a scene between Brando and Scott instead of Brando and Spradlin. Even in a walk-on I always relish seeing and hearing Wolfgang Preiss. Regardless of disagreements between writer and director, the film proceeded in a style I prefer, leaving me trying to hold on to the plot with my finger tips and trying to keep all the character involvement relevant. I will never understand the gaps in the story line--Scott surreptitiously slipping the secret formula to a total stranger? in some shop? , followed by some tenuously-connected dialog at some safety deposit boxes? Scott proved to be a better detective than I at discerning Keller's covert motives, given the facts presented on film. Perhaps all was made clear in the script. Berlin is a great place for intrigue on film, as we saw in "Company Business", and the plots, and cinematography nicely murky. Even with the story holes and without Travants and the Prater, I recommend viewing this film enough to begin to comprehend it.

Reginald D. Garrard What happened? The film had all the earmarks for success: two of the generation's greatest actors (Scott and Brando); a subject that is topical, even to this day; an international co-star that had made an impressive appearance years earlier in another political thriller, the film adaptation of Thomas Harris's "Black Sunday; and a director that had been responsible for two critically praised films ("Rocky" and "Save the Tiger").Unfortunately the screenplay, penned by novel author Steve Shagan, just fell as flat as filling one's gas tank with water: no get up and go. There were no thrills in what should have had many; there were no chills, in what should have had more action. Even the two stars seems as though they were just drawing a paycheck, and possibly a free trip to Europe, where most of the film was made.Even Bill Conti, who had written one of movie's most memorable melodies ("The Theme from 'Rocky'"), composed a score that was as exciting as listening to radio static.The film's sole saving grace is the appearance of perennial heavy Richard Lynch as a former Nazi general with information about the sought-after formula.Sadly, the movie just doesn't click with this viewer.