They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

"They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" is not a western or a film about equestrians, it is Sydney Pollack's bleak, sickening, and jarring take on a dance marathon that drives many insane and is downright cruel. It does show horses, and it compares human beings to horses, but is mostly about desperation and wether or not $1500 is really worth everything that all the dancers go through on their quest to take home the cash. Jane Fonda and Michael Sarrazin star as a couple competing in the physically and mentally demanding dance-off, where they compete against a pregnant woman named Ruby (Bonnie Bedelia) and her husband (Bruce Dern), an veteran named Harry "Sailor" Kline (Red Buttons) and Shirley Clayton (Allyn Ann McLerie) (who is gradually driven insane), a glamorous actress named Alice (Susannah York), and many more competitors in this sadistic and inhumane contest/show run by Rocky (Gig Young), who will do anything to entertain his audience: anything. Anyways, "Horses" is Pollack's most depressing and cinematic film, not better than "Tootsie," but still a cinema classic. The main problem that I found with the movie was how time lapsed unrealistically, and although this was done to create a massive surrealistic effect, it defied the laws of reality in that a body dies after not sleeping for a very long period of time. And the contest committee, although giving food and medical support, only gave small breaks, not enough to stay alive. The movie partially solves this when Buttons' character tragically is worked as far as he can go and he dies, but doesn't include enough realism in this aspect to really lock into us who are looking for flawless material. Not to say that the film does not work, as it most certainly works and works and works as hard as it's characters, and it works well. It was a wise decision to milk the film out to 120 minutes, instead of making it shorter, as it creates the same desperation as a viewer that the onscreen participants are feeling. Plus, to add to that, everyone is really splendid in their roles: Fonda as the always sassy, but ultimately depressed Gloria, Sarrazin as the late entrant who dissolves into the same as Gloria, Buttons as the old-timer, who finally can't go any further, York as the actress who also eventually is driven mad, and Young as the creator and runner of the competition. Superb work by Pollack in his directoral debut, trumping the competition. A-

Man On the Run: 3 Days of the Condor

A very solid, but flawed film by master director Sydney Pollack about the CIA. Robert Redford stars as Joseph Turner (aka The Condor), a CIA worker who reads books and feeds the plots into a computer, which compares the fiction to real CIA cases. Sounds interesting, but if you're expecting a brainy film about books and the Central Intelligence Agency, then this movie will leave you hanging. Anyways, Turner leaves the office to pick up lunch and returns to find that his co-workers have been murdered. The murders were committed by a mysterious man (Max Von Sydow) and two others. This causes the Condor to panic. When he calls his station chief, Higgins (Cliff Robertson), things start to get weird. This involves a scene in an alley in which he is nearly gunned down by some guy he doesn't know from the CIA. This whole set of scenes reminded me much the decent movie F/X, another law crisis/man on the run movie. Another similarity: this experience makes the lead go on a rampage. Unlike F/X, the main character kidnaps a photographer (Faye Dunaway) whose photos are great, but that doesn't really matter. All these scenes between Redford and Dunaway are not very good, and Dunaway's acting seems to have suffered since her amazing turn in Chinatown, which only came out a year before. Anyways, the Condor basically makes her life hell (at least for the first couple of hours he is with her), seduces her (in an all-too-artsy scene), and gets her to help him. Unfortunately, Dunaway also spurts the stupidest line in the movie, something about being an "old spyf*****". What the hell is that? That is almost as bad as "testicle tag team". This movie doesn't deserve that line. Anyways, this plot is really implausible, as it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I don't need to tell you what happens next. There is nothing to spoil, except for an idiotic final scene that seems like it needs a Redford one-liner, but he doesn't deliver it, and it makes the movie feel incomplete. Bottom line: this is a good Pollack movie, but it seems kind of odd that I had to complain about bad writing in one of his movies. At least he improved 7 years later in 1982's Tootsie. But that's a different picture. Tootsie is great, and this just doesn't compete. Not just with Tootsie, but with other spy movies. B