Ranks of the Over-Rated

I watched this with a friend back in the mid 70s. Both of us were employees of CIA and we laughed so hard people around us turned and stared. The reality of intelligence work and the fantasy, in the movies, of what we actually do are so different as to be on different planets, maybe different dimensions. Redford and Dunaway are, at this point, the top of their star power and that is the only element that carries the movie. 

As for the folks at Langley, it one of the funniest movies ever made, suitable as misinformation for the uneducated, uninformed and just outright stupid. I suspect even James Angelton might have cracked a smile. 

That’s heartening to know I wasn’t way off base in thinking that maybe this “CIA” meant “Clueless Investigative Acting.” But I will say, Redford and Dunaway bring a lot of stylishness to this CIA.

I have a retired firefighter brother. He doesn’t laugh at some of the stuff he sees in movies and TV shows, but he lets me now what the reality is. He thought “Backdraft” was fairly realistic except for the fact that in most of the scenes, you would have seen almost nothing because of the smoke. But the needs of the movie are that there’s no use spending all that money on name actors if you can’t see them.

I wonder what New York cops think when they see “Blue Bloods.” They must howl. But then again, I have no idea what is normal in The Big Apple. And for goodness sakes don’t watch “Rescue Me” on Amazon Prime. If this is the state of the FDNY, they’re in big trouble.

I think the TV show, “Emergency.” was much more realistic. But my brother did say that some of the shenanigans that went on in the firehouse as portrayed in “Rescue Me” are pretty realistic. Crude. Vulgar. Childish. But put a bunch of men together like that, and they’ll find a way to blow off steam in interesting ways.

They do finally raise the Titanic. The Russians threaten to interfere but are rebuffed by a show of Naval force. Why any kind of force is not already there and present is strange. They are, after all, recovering a mineral that will build an impenetrable wall against nuclear missiles. But the whole thing is treated like a Sunday outing. There is not a Marine in sight — even though they know they have a Russian spy on board. And we never find out who that spy is.

But later, after letting a Russian helicopter bring a Russian onboard the Titanic to make his demands (Why? Why?), Robards then says “Watch this.” Then a U.S. sub surfaces and there’s a fly-over of jets. Yawn. The Russian is subdued. We are left wondering where is McCloud to take over this operation. Or Cannon. Or even Jessica Fletcher. This is bad TV. Why are we sitting in a movie theatre watching this junk at movie prices?

They tow the Titanic back to San Francisco for a bad-CGI boat parade. There are moments in this that could have been grand in the hands of another filmmaker. Here, they’re just a bridge to the next bad scene.

And that bad scene is Richard Jordan and the wholly uncharismatic David Selby finding the Byzantium hidden away in a grave. (The boxes onboard the Titanic in the safe were full of gravel.) Jordan informs Selby that, well, in theory the Byzantium would go toward a missile defense system but it might well go toward making a bomb. (Geez….now you get a conscience, Mr. Jordan.) So Selby waffles. Jordan waffles. They decide to not dig up the grave and just leave the Byzantium hidden. After all, you can’t trust the U.S. military. Never mind that the grave diggers they have hired and who are standing right there during all this would likely be compelled to come back later to see what so interested these two guys about the grave.

There is all kinds of awful to this movie. Director Jerry Jameson has a decidedly kitschy TV aesthetic. He’s directed a lot of Mod Squad, Cannon, The Six Million Dollar Man, Ironside, The Streets of San Francisco, McCloud, Hawaii Five-O, Magnum, P.I., Jake and the Fatman, Dallas, Dynasty, and Murder, She Wrote and other TV episodes. Had this been a Quinn Martin production, it still would have been considered awful.

It’s difficult to decide the unintentionally funniest moment. My pick is when they are dropping (just dropping) lights and things onto the Titanic site at the bottom of the ocean. A large piece of equipment, about the size of a truck, gets caught in Titanic’s superstructure. Two submersibles are sent to try to shift it into position. Anyone who was ever watched a National Geographic underwater special knows that submersibles are particularly paranoid about getting any of their lines (or selves) caught up in anything.

But these two submersible just grab hold of this big metal structure. One pulls while the other pushes. Of course the whole things comes down on them and traps them. The only way then to free them is to get the Titanic up as quickly as possible. So they set off a whole bunch of explosives and do so. Yawn. I would have sent The Six Million Dollar Man after them.

I will say, it would have been very cool if, in reality, they could have raised the Titanic in one piece. Unfortunately is was thoroughly split in two. And who knows what interesting things they would have found in the safe?

Hahahaha. Yes. A good way to put it.

Thanks for the feedback on the book, Artler. I can’t say that I was ready to run out and read a Clive Cussler book. But neither would it be fair to hold him to what the director of some Mod Squad episodes did to one of his books for a movie.

I wonder if Richard Jordan hit his peak in “Logan’s Run”? It seems to me he should have had a larger career than Banacek or Kojak episodes, let alone this movie.

He was good, however, in The Yakuza with Robert Mitchum, Ke Takakura, and Brian Keith. He was “Hawk” in “Rooster Cogburn” as well.

And lest I forget, I thought he was fantastic as Duncan Idaho in David Lynch’s adaptation of Dune. Maybe that’s the thing. He seemed better suited for scifi.

And, of course, he does fine work in one of his most notable movies, “The Hunt for Red October.” He died way too young (56) in 1993. If I was making a scifi movie, I would cast him in it no matter what.

Jordan's last movie was Gettysburg. He was Brig. Gen. Lewis A. Armistead. If I recall correctly he passed away before the movie was released. A shame, he was an excellent character actor.

Simon was notorious at National Review decades ago for never seeming to like anything.