Reviews

This movie is seldom mentioned when people talk about neo noirs of the 70s, and it's not hard to understand why. Despite having a certain femme fatale icon from the 40-50s, nothing good that can be said about "Chandler".

The main problem i have with this movie is that it's just too bland. The dialog isn't even clichéd, it's worse, something out of a townhouse conversation with your wife on a saturday afternoon.

The actors bumble around, probably aware of the turkey they had the luck to sign up for, the action peaces are alright but nothing you haven't seen anywhere else, and the twist, well, there is none.

Also, it's hard to understand what exactly the movie was aiming at, it's not a parody, nor some sort of intellectual analysis of the noirs or a political statement of the 70s America, it's definitely not an action flick either.

Perhaps that's the movie's big problem. Most other noirs are either send-off, parodies or deconstructions of their predecessors, while this one is a "NOIR" just filmed in the 70s. It makes the viewer judge the movie on it's own merits, and lacking any, it sinks, just like the Packard in The Big Sleep.

2/10 for two things, Gloria Grahame and the fact that probably someone was watching this and thought, hey, I could do better, and did.

4 robbers and a woman get together to make a robbery of a lifetime. Will they succeed and will the money bring happiness they've been missing?

This is the question that this movie (actually a 3 part series showed on Soviet TV) is asking us.

The plot is very true to the the original novel by James Hadley Chase, a Brittish author, who was wildly popular in Soviet Union. Most of his books took place in USA, without him actually living there, instead he constucted the books and dialog from travelogues and slang dictionaries. This gave the books a somewhat artificial feel. The movie, made "foreign" by a couple of ad boards but mostly getting a lot of cars on the road, shares this feeling of being fake. Every russian could recognize the armoured truck to be a pimped up Lada Niva. But in general, it was pretty convincing, especially with all the americans they could put on the road at the same time, but also casting non-russian actors who looked more foreign. One amusing tidbit besides the Niva is seeing a Captain America T-shirt on the boy who makes friends with the robbers. That could've been a Marvel hero debut behind the Iron Curtain.

Besides the technical side, what drags you in is the always impressive work of Latvian master of detective: Aloizs Brencs. He introduces the players early, and by using simple means builds a compelling technical and psychological "seed" for the rest of the movie. Ginny, a fatherless tough girl and Morgan take the command, but every actor is given a clear place and time to shine. Also, he doesn't spend time just on technical and action parts, we could see frustrations of Morgan when they're trying to get the safe, Gippo's desire for peace and calm in the home land as well as Kittson's and Ginny's dreams and life goals changing over the course of the events.

For a kid watching this in the 90s, it was an amazing production. Still with me to this day is the last shot of the movie, as well as seing Blake's gray hair with the gun in the mountains.

When rewatching it 30 years later, it still feels fresh. I love the play between Kitson and Ginny, as well as Gippo's struggles. The only complains i have is the somewhat melodramatic overdubbing which perhaps robs the actors of their more true performances (most Baltic productions were over-dubbed in russian, and i'm not sure there's actually an original latvian version). Otherwise, it's a very well done soviet production about having that one last chance in life at happiness.