At the risk of making Gotham Calling look like a Letterboxd account, this week I’m turning back to movies, spotlighting half-a-dozen stripped down crime thrillers that, in the grand tradition of classics like The French Connection, make the most out of the old adage: less is more.
EL CAMINO (2019)
With Breaking Bad and its superb spin-off, Better Call Saul, Vince Gilligan pushed slow-burn storytelling to unprecedented the degrees on television, the deliberate pace contributing to those shows’ enjoyment as much as the rich characterization, the thematization of the frustrations and hopes of work, or the darkly comedic overlaps between Albuquerque’s middle-class life and its eccentric crime underworld. You can find all of those ingredients in El Camino, a direct sequel to the original series, set in the finale’s immediate aftermath and following Jesse Pinkman on the run, now on his own (i.e. without Walter White’s guidance and manipulation), desperately trying both to escape and to get some closure from all the shit that went down before… If you’re not familiar with the Breaking Bad extended universe, you’re bound to be a bit lost and, naturally, the flashbacks, guest stars, and easter eggs won’t be as resonant, but even then you may dig the movie’s apparent low-stakes minimalism, lingering on one laborious task after another while steadily throwing new obstacles in Jesse’s way, the whole thing once again shot in a Sergio Leone-influenced neo-western style.
DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE (2018)
Another leisurely paced ride, this one revolving around a couple of old-school, un-PC policemen crossing the line, only to get entangled in a major clusterfuck. Dragged Across Concrete keeps shifting perspectives and lingering on small character moments, so that the emotional stakes gradually escalate (as well as the violence!). If S. Craig Zahler’s previous films had already threaded the line between reproducing and exposing the racism of genre fiction, his approach here is even more provocative: along with the symmetries between cops and crooks, he has uncomfortable racial dynamics inform – both subtly and explicitly – various key motivations, disguises, and plot points… and ultimately trigger the ambiguous denouement. (This theme is further reinforced by the casting of Mel Gibson, but besides evoking sad real-life episodes, his presence also creates an intertextual dialogue with the Lethal Weapon movies and the original Mad Max).
FIRE AND ICE (1962)
Exposed after an assassination attempt, a far-right terrorist goes on the run and in search of the traitor, with the focus shifting between him and his much abused wife. A languid, mesmerizing, low-key affair with a noirish semi-documentary voice-over, Fire and Ice manages to knock out an intense thriller using the language of French New Wave drama, including beautifully shot natural locations, a young couple with political and romantic anguish, quasi-existentialist lyricism, and – fortunately unobtrusive – cinematic winks (like a cameo from the hotel room in Breathless). If you prefer something tighter and drier, Alain Cavalier followed this with a similarly themed noir, The Unvanquished, that is just as incredible in its own way.
THE ITALIAN CONNECTION (1972)
The French Connection wasn’t just influential in the US; its raw, direct style also inspired a barrage of European crime thrillers, especially in Italy. They don’t come much more direct than this one, which opens straight with frank exposition, as a New York mob boss assigns a couple of cold-eyed hitmen to go to Milan and execute a low-level pimp who sidetracked a heroin deal (‘I want you to kill him in the most brutal way possible, because I want it to be conspicuous, sensational. I want it to be the talk of Italy.’). And, no shit, that’s your film right there, as our perspective shifts between the hunters and the hunted, between men in suits calling the shots and men on the dirty streets fighting for their lives, each one enacting their own brand of toxic masculinity. There are no good guys here and no conventional sense of justice, just propulsive, merciless momentum until the inevitable showdown. Lots of people die.
SEVEN GOLDEN MEN (1965)
You know those heist movies that spend the first third or so of the running time putting together a team of scattered individuals, establishing their motivations and initial masterplan before moving on to the centrepiece robbery? Seven Golden Men is having none of that crap. It just blasts in medias res with a catchy tune and never lets go, leaving you to put the pieces together while watching an international gang trying to rob the Swiss National Bank, in the middle of the day, under everyone’s eyes. As per the usual formula, they hit a bunch of snags along the way, but I’ll leave you to find out which of them, if any, will cause their plans to unravel. After all, the film is all about figuring out the process and sharing the suspense at its most basic level. You want stakes? The dudes want gold, that’s the stakes! You need characterization? That guy is Italian, so he’s cocky; the other one is Portuguese, so he can easily pass as a migrant construction worker in Geneva; the German fella looks like he knows what he’s doing; etc. (There isn’t anything mean-spirited about any of this, just the ruthless efficiency of using national stereotypes as shorthand for storytelling.) Despite the title, there’s also a woman in the gang, although initially her role is just as functional as the rest, with her sexy looks proving to be useful or harmful at different stages. So, yeah, not the deepest or most sensitive of movies, but the filmmakers knew they had to trim all the fat to make room for the millions of twists that pile up in the final stretch!
THE SEVEN-UPS (1973)
A sort of follow-up to The French Connection (directed by the former’s producer, starring Roy Scheider in a similar role), The Seven-Ups likewise combines core 1970s’ motifs of breathtaking car chases, a gritty-as-hell New York City, and frustrated cops playing by their own rules. The title refers to a secret squad of plainclothes officers specialized in cases who may lead to prison sentences of seven years or more, but the premise is less significant than the tense, muscular execution. Here is a film that unapologetically requires your close attention in order to keep up, especially in the first half… Not only is the plot full of misdirection (it involves cops breaking the law and crooks pretending to be policemen), but the storytelling often prefers ellipses to exposition, with most scenes throwing you into a new situation, taking their time before you can join the dots and work out what exactly is going on.