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Review
by
Brian Lindsey
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5
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4 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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Apart
from the eccentricities of its title character —
and yes, it's spelled with two lowercase Fs —
ffolkes is an unusual adventure
film in that all the action is confined to the realm of the
possible. The hero never dangles from an airplane, jumps a car
over a canal or kicks ass despite being shot. The story, about
hijackers holding an immensely expensive North Sea oil platform
for ransom and the improvised plan to thwart them, is surprisingly
realistic. Most of the film focuses on the bad guys' takeover
of a ship and the authorities' attempts to negotiate with them
to buy time. Violence is kept to a minimum. This is the way
it works in real life: when guns start blazing and buildings
go up in spectacular fireballs (as they invariably do in the
more exciting movie world), then it usually means a rescue mission
has failed.
In between 007 films Moonraker
and For Your Eyes Only,
a bearded Roger Moore really seems to be enjoying himself playing
against type. His Rufus Excalibur ffolkes is a rich, curmudgeonly
Scottish laird with his own castle by a loch, where he rigorously
trains his private team of expert frogmen. Arrogant and condescending,
a cat fancier who does needlepoint, loves Scotch whiskey and
hates the gentler sex, ffolkes is tolerated by his employers
because he's the U.K.'s foremost authority on underwater operations.
The usual line of work for "ffolkes' ffusiliers" consists of
salvage and repair jobs for either Lloyd's of London (the insurance
giant) or the British government. But one day ffolkes is called
in by the Admiralty to devise methods of protecting the nation's
investments in the North Sea —
billions of pounds' worth of oil drilling and refining equipment
—
from terrorists and blackmailers. This brainstorming assignment
comes at a fortuitous time, for at that very moment just such
a plot is underway. A gang of professional criminals, led by
an American named Kramer (Psycho's
Anthony Perkins), boards a Norwegian ship posing as journalists.
The ship, the Esther, is on a routine supply run to oil
installations out in the North Sea. Among its scheduled stops
are Ruth, a drilling rig, and Jennifer, the world's
largest at-sea oil refinery. Armed with pistols and Uzis, Kramer
and his men easily overpower Esther's crew and take command
of the vessel. With the captain held at gunpoint the crew is
forced to act normally during the ship's appointed rounds. Two
of the hijackers don scuba gear and plant booby-trapped limpet
mines on the massive steel supports on which Ruth and
Jennifer rest. With preparations complete, the confident
but highly-strung Kramer gets on the R/T and makes his demands
known. The British government must pay him £25 Million
within 12 hours or, with the press of a button, he'll send Ruth
and then Jennifer to the bottom —
along with Britain's economy. Lacking the time and resources
to mount their own commando operation, the Royal Navy turns
to the irascible ffolkes to come up with a plan.
The thoroughly competent, if uninspired,
direction of Andrew V. McLaglen (The Wild
Geese, a number of John Wayne westerns) keeps things
chugging along okay despite the film consisting mostly of static
dialog scenes. Ironically, the most suspenseful sequence doesn't
involve ffolkes and his frogmen but an attempt by the imprisoned
crew of Esther to poison their captors. It's the dry
wit of Moore's interplay with the other actors that keeps the
film afloat. The supporting cast is quite good. Perkins suitably
projects menace even though his villain character is a generic
cipher. James Mason is reliable as always in the role of a starchy
admiral forced to work with the unorthodox and uncouth civilian,
ffolkes. Some of the Norwegian accents are dodgy and the forgettable
score has "made for TV movie" written all over it,
but the model effects (the Jennifer platform, the ship)
are rather impressive for the pre-CGI era. (Mixing miniatures
and water is notoriously hard to pull off.)
On
the surface, ffolkes is an action
movie that contains very little in the way of action. For a
film ostensibly about frogmen only a handful of scenes actually
take place underwater. There isn't much gunplay and only a couple
of very brief fights. To viewers weaned on Chuck Norris and
Steven Seagal it'll likely prove duller than dirt. Yet I found
it interesting precisely because the events that unfold
stay firmly within the bounds of reality. Real-life commando
missions are 90% planning and 10% execution, with the goal to
get the rough stuff done as quickly and with as little damage
to people and things as possible. ffolkes
shows us this in a completely unglamorized way. The only larger-than-life
element to it is the main character. In this respect it's a
very British film. There's no way in hell an American
action hero would be portrayed as such an oddball... Not only
does the guy do petit-point and obsess over his cats,
he can't stand women! (The script makes a point of mentioning
that his misogyny stems in part from a failed marriage, lest
the audience think him gay.) Roger Moore, then at the height
of his international fame as 007, clearly delights in playing
such an 'anti-Bond'. The character affords him the opportunity
to shrug off almost everything associated with the licensed-to-kill
superspy: the movie star looks (disguised with a bushy beard),
the sense of style (he dresses like a professor), the charming
savoir-faire (instead, he's a cranky bastard), the easy way
with the ladies (he can't stand to have a woman even touch him).
Not a complete polar opposite, of course... ffolkes may
disdain the opposite sex but, just like Bond, is a crack shot
with a spear gun.
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| ffolkes
was recently released on Region 1 DVD by Universal as a strictly
no-frills disc. There are zero extras included, not even the theatrical
trailer. While it would've been great to have an audio commentary
by Moore, I certainly wasn't expecting much —
but not even the trailer? C'mon! It's not like the flick's 50
years old or anything. Fortunately the DVD utilizes an anamorphic
widescreen transfer, in the film's original 1.85:1 aspect ratio.
The print is in decent shape (after the opening few minutes),
with bold, natural colors, but exhibits quite a bit of grain at
times, especially during outdoor daylight scenes. The Dolby 2.0
mono audio track trends flat but is clear and free of hiss and
distortion. Priced as
a budget title, one can probably pick up ffolkes
in brick-and-mortar stores for around ten bucks. Had I done so
I might've given the disc a DVD rating of '5', but I purchased
my copy online so it cost a bit extra.
10/06/03 |
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