Maverick *** (1994, Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, James Garner) – Classic Movie Review 1460

Mel Gibson stars as the reincarnation of TV’s famed 1957-62 card-playing gambler Bret Maverick in director Richard Donner’s breezy, likeable and entertaining 1994 comedy Western. Maverick needs an additional $3000 to enter a Winner Take All poker game that begins in a few days, so he’s going to have to beg, steal or borrow it.

Jodie Foster co-stars as Annabelle Bransford, the charming female gambler Maverick joins forces with, and ends up stealing Maverick’s heart after stealing his wallet. Happily, James Garner, TV’s original Bret Maverick for six seasons, is the film’s third star, playing marshal Zane Cooper, or so he says. What a pity they didn’t make this movie a few years earlier and top-bill Garner, but at 66 he was just a bit too old.

Screen-writer William Goldman devises a light-hearted screenplay, which, while often amusing and sometimes funny, isn’t always entirely exciting, coherent or well structured as an adventure story.

Gibson is thoroughly genial and oozes laddish good humour, though he lacks the special wry anti-hero charisma that made Garner’s TV portrayal one of real class as Maverick. Graham Greene is funny as Bret’s supercool Native American buddy Joseph, while James Coburn and Alfred Molina just about get enough of a look-in as the gambling steamboat Commodore Duvall and as Angel, the ironically named bad guy gunning for Bret.

There is not too much real chemistry between the three stars, leaving a slight lack of warmth at the film’s centre. Donner directs slickly, but without much imagination or feel for the West, and he allows some horrible-looking studio exteriors with filming at Warner Brothers Burbank Studios.

However, there is plenty of compensation visually. The great cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond films the actual exterior shots gorgeously and spectacularly, at Utah’s Glen Canyon National Park, as well as Columbia River Gorge Oregon, Grand Canyon National Park Arizona, El Mirage Dry Lake California, Leidig Meadow, Yosemite National Park California and Durango Mexico.

A slew of iconic Sixties TV Western heroes appear only to be wasted – Doug McClure (in a cameo role as one of the poker players), William Smith, Robert Fuller. Paul Brinegar, Clint Eastwood’s Rawhide co-star also appears, along with Dub Taylor, Geoffrey Lewis, Dan Hedaya, Corey Feldman, Max Perlich, Denver Pyle and Paul L Smith.

James Garner, best known for his charming, wry anti-heroes in TV’s The Rockford Files and Maverick died on 19 July 2014, aged 86. He recovered from a quintuple heart bypass in 1998 but suffered a stroke in 2008.

His cinema roles include The Thrill of It All (1963), Move Over, Darling (1963), The Great Escape (1963), The Americanization of Emily (1964), Grand Prix (1966), Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969), Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971), Sunset, Victor/Victoria (1982), Murphy’s Romance (1985) which earned him a Best Actor Oscar nomination, Tank, Twilight, Maverick (1994), My Fellow Americans (1996), Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and The Notebook.

He received an Emmy nomination for best actor in Maverick in 1959 and won an Emmy as private investigator Jim Rockford in The Rockford Files in 1977.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1460

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