The Killer Elite **** (1975, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Arthur Hill, Gig Young, Bo Hopkins, Burt Young) – Classic Movie Review 8405

James Caan said he made the 1975 American crime action thriller The Killer Elite only because his advisers told him to work with Sam Peckinpah, and he rated it a zero on a scale of zero to ten.

The 1975 American crime thriller The Killer Elite is a very good, if perhaps not great, Sam Peckinpah action movie with a touch of the then in-vogue Seventies kung fu, and is one the first American films to feature ninjas.

Lone agent Mike Locken (James Caan) finds himself batting for the CIA against his treacherous former buddy and agent partner George Hansen (Robert Duvall). now working for the enemy outfit out to kill a Taiwanese leader, politician Yuen Chung (Mako).

The cast and director put it over with flair for the fans, but it is a slight disappointment from the classy Peckinpah, from whom you expect more than just a solid commercial genre movie, with a fast-moving, twisting plot and lots of slap-up action exploding in some great set pieces.

The street and riverside San Francisco locations and Jerry Fielding’s score are items of admirable worth. It really is location, location, location! They include the San Francisco Yacht Club, Pier 70, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Marin Headlands, San Francisco International Airport, Chinatown, Portsmouth Square and the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet.

The editing is restless and relentless to stir up thrills (Monte Hellman is one of the editors), and cinematographer Philip Lathrop’s Panavision camerawork is unusual and inventive enough to surprise and impress continually. They turn up the heat on some regular genre situations, making them seem fresh, vibrant and alive. The film has an authentic mid-Seventies feel, quite a timewarp.

The betrayal/ revenge story has something in common with Point Blank, but James Caan’s journey is a quieter, less outwardly deranged, though no less deadly one than Lee Marvin’s. The story also links in to ideas of the paranoia thrillers of the era, like The Parallax View: it confidently supposes that the CIA secretly employed private intelligence agencies to do their dirty work, and the agencies had killer elite teams.

James Caan stars as Mike Locken, who works for a (fictional) private intelligence agency called ComTeg, affiliated with the CIA and handling covert assignments for them. But while on a job together, Locken is betrayed by his long-term buddy and agent partner George Hansen (Robert Duvall), who shoots him in the elbow and knee, and leaves apparently crippled for life, effectively, he thinks, retiring him.

Locken’s life is saved in hospital, and, with help, especially from nice nurse Amy (Kate Heflin), and with a dogged, courageous spirit, gradually fights back, bringing his body back to a workable level, and taking up martial arts training for revenge against Hansen for his betrayal.

At first his dodgy boss, ComTeg director Cap Collis (Arthur Hill), won’t take him back in action, but then changes his mind and hires him again on a job that includes taking down Hansen. CIA agent Dan O’Leary (Tom Clancy) has hired ComTeg to protect Taiwanese politician Yuen Chung (Mako), who is in the US with a delegation and his daughter Tommie (Tiana Alexandra). Hansen has been hired to kill Chung.

But, unknown to Locken, double-dealing Collis is working with Hansen, planning to take over as ComTeg director from Lawrence Weybourne (Gig Young). And Collis has hired two separate hit squads, one led by Hansen and the other led by ninja Negato Toku (Takayuki Kubota), to eliminate Chung.

Now a lone agent, Locken hires his old team of crazy marksman Jerome Miller (Bo Hopkins) and reflective driver Mac (Burt Young) to help him as his men. Locken kas to make sure Hansen and Collis have their comeuppance, save Yuen Chung and his daughter, and stay alive. It’s a tall order under the circumstances.

[Spoiler alert] Marc Norman and Stirling Silliphant’s complex but rather careless and choppy seeming screenplay, with a slight lack of brain power, is perhaps the film’s main problem. After all the excitement, the violence and the killings, the concocted and contrived story just fades away at the end in an anti-climax. Perhaps that is the point. Like The Getaway (1972), it does have a kind of happy ending, weirdly.

But the script’s pulp fiction feel is right for the story, and is attractive, and it also has on its side a lot of entertaining dialogue, splendidly offhand, wry and cynical, some of it fake sagacious and pretentiously worldly wise. This semi-satirical black comedy tone is clever and effective. Maybe it doesn’t lack brain power after all.

Also the film has tremendous performances by James Caan, Robert Duvall, Arthur Hill, Gig Young, Bo Hopkins, Burt Young, with Duvall a chilling, cold-hearted villain, whose one (misplaced) act of decency is not to kill Caan when he has the chance, and Arthur Hill a super slimy corporate villain with no sense of honour or decency. Caan’s character of Mike Locken may be a killer, but he has honour or decency. And he, of course, is the ‘hero’, with many heroic virtues.

The focus is all on Caan, who has most of the movie to himself, and he is memorable, pitching in right. It is a shame Duvall disappears for a long time in the movie after he shoots Caan, because he has a sizzling double act with Caan. That does leave space for Hill, Gig Young, Hopkins and Burt Young to shine, in their once familiar star character actor turns. They sure weren’t employed so much in Hollywood for no reason.

The screenplay is adapted from the novel Monkey in the Middle by Robert Syd Hopkins under the pseudonym Robert Rostand.

Also in the cast are Arthur Hill, Gig Young, Bo Hopkins, Burt Young, Tom Clancy, Katy Heflin, Matthew Peckinpah, Sondra Blake and Helmut Dantine (who also produces).

The film was partly made with British finance. United Artists head Mike Medavoy hired Sam Peckinpah to direct on the condition that he work under his strict supervision.

The film was shot in March and April 1974 in San Francisco, with additional filming in Los Angeles. The building that explodes in the film’s opening was an abandoned fire department station on the Embarcadero.

It is the film debut of brown belt Vietnamese-American actress Tiana Alexandra, who was married to writer Stirling Silliphant, who was a close friend and martial arts student of Bruce Lee.

James Caan said in 1977 that he made the film only because his advisers told him to work with Sam Peckinpah, and he rated it a zero on a scale of zero to ten.

The cast

The cast are James Caan as Mike Locken, Robert Duvall as George Hansen, Arthur Hill as Cap Collis, Mako as Yuen Chung, Bo Hopkins as Jerome Miller, Burt Young as Mac, Gig Young as Lawrence Weybourne, Tom Clancy as Dan O’Leary, Tiana Alexandra as Tommie, Kate Heflin as Amy, Takayuki Kubota as Negato Toku, Victor Sen Yung as Wei Chi, Helmut Dantine as Vorodny, Sondra Blake as Josephine, Walter Kelley as Walter, Hank Hamilton as Hamilton, Carole Mallory as Rita, James Wing Woo as Tao Yi, George Kee Cheung as Bruce, Tom Bush as Sam, Uschi Digard as Girl at Party, and Kuo Lien Ying as Tai Chi Master.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8,405

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