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Viggo Mortensen confronts his past in A History of Violence. Photo (c) New Line Productions.
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Laurie R. King, author of the popular Mary Russell and Kate Martinelli mysteries
The ideal post-Christmas movie, perfect for blowing away the cobwebs of gluttony, is Dead Again (1991). Look at the cast: Emma Thompson, Kenneth Branagh (both in front of the camera and behind it as director), Derek Jacobi, Andy Garcia, and Robin Williams. A glamorous murder and a haunted woman; suspicions that bud and flower; innocence that is transformed, as villains become their mirror image. And Hitchcock himself couldn't have done a better job of playing with and ultimately transforming the deliberate cheese factor: an amnesiac woman whose identity runs eerily parallel to the victim of a 1949 murder victim. Pardon me for leaving this review half finished, but I have to go and put this DVD on now.
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Rupert Holmes, author of the novels Swing and Where the Truth Lies and writer of the upcoming Broadway mystery-musical CURTAINS
Thankfully, 20th Century Fox has abandoned its twenty-first century political correctness and correctly released the earliest of the studio's Charlie Chan classics on DVD. Today we cringe that the humble Honolulu police detective created by Earl Derr Biggers in 1925 has never been portrayed on film by an Asian actor. But to confiscate these atmospheric period pieces because they (accurately) reflect the cultural standards of their time would be akin to banning any film in which Orson Welles or Laurence Olivier play Othello. This initial collection stars the original and finest Chan of talking pictures: Warner Oland, whose handsome, burry voice imbues each line of faltering English with compassion and nobility. The “whodunit” was plain as day even in its day, but Oland's Chan is a moral force who sees murder as a crime against humanity and each victim's death as a profound tragedy. (P.S.: Don't confuse this collection with another from MGM, featuring Monogram Pictures's mid-'40s series, when Chan #2 Sydney Toler was relocated to poverty row, and every other scene took place in an office with a filing cabinet.)
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Charlie Chan #2 (Sidney Toler) with #2 son Victor Sen Yung.
* * * *
George Pelecanos, author of The Night Gardener, Drama City, and the Derek Strange mystery series
I recently watched several hours of the 1957-1963 television series Have Gun, Will Travel on DVD and was struck by the quality and intelligence of this half-hour Western drama. Richard Boone plays Paladin, a Shakespeare-quoting San Francisco playboy who answers newspaper ads and roams the West as a black-clad gun, often switching allegiances to the side of the wronged, much to the frustration of those who have hired him. Boone is both sensitive and rugged and is ably supported by up-and-comers like Jack Lord, Charles Bronson, Stuart Whitman, the beautiful Janice Rule, and others. Among the scriptwriters: Harry Julian Fink (Dirty Harry) and Gene “Star Trek” Roddenberry. Bernard Herrmann scored the first episode. Well worth checking out.
* * * *
Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher thrillers
The best crime DVDs? That's a tough question. So I'm going to duck it by suggesting three ... all of them chosen the most elemental way: the movies or shows I've seen where afterward I've thought, “Damn, I wish I had written that!” First qualifier would be The Third Man. As a movie, it's a total classic. The Graham Greene novella it was based on wasn't as good, which is rare. That's my answer from the black-and-white era. In color, go for Seven. Fantastic hook, unflinching integrity all the way to the last frame. TV? Got to be the first season of NYPD Blue. It invented a whole new camera language—and the dialog was pure poetry. Outstanding.
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Laura Lippman, author of the Tess Monaghan mysteries as well as Every Secret Thing and other stand alone thrillers
"Noodles, I slipped.” Is there a better line in a crime movie? Not by my lights. That seminal moment in 1984's Once Upon a Time in America—the long version only, please, don't even try to watch the mutilation that is the short version—chills me every time I see it. After six or seven viewings, I'm still not sure I understand what happens when the film jumps to present-day, and almost all the adult actors (Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern) are upstaged by their young counterparts (Scott Tiler, Rusty Jacobs, Jennifer Connelly). But that's as it should be, for it's the film's early scenes, set in the Lower East Side of the early twentieth century, that give Once Upon a Time its resonance and power. Not director Sergio Leone's most perfect work, but my personal favorite.
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Barry Eisler, author of the John Rain thriller series
Mystic River, Clint Eastwood's film based on the Dennis Lehane book, is an outstanding crime story. The film (like the book) seamlessly blends people, place, and plot in what becomes almost a Greek tragedy of violence and its repercussions. The acting, particularly by Sean Penn, is stunning. Speaking of Sean Penn, another of his standout performances can be found in 21 Grams, written by Guillermo Arriaga and directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and notable, too, for electrifying performances by Naomi Watts and Benicio Del Toro. The movie is a wrenching examination of coincidence, tragedy, revenge, and redemption. I can't conclude a discussion of crime stories on DVD without mentioning The Sopranos. It may be the best thing I've ever seen on television.
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Eddie Muller, film noir historian and author of the novels The Distance and Shadow Boxer
Narc could be charged with assault and battery. This 2002 offering from writer/director Joe Carnahan has things I've wearied of in movies: jacked-up violence, ear-splitting macho blather, and camerawork cranked on speed. But under its frantic surface pulses a powerful Rashomon-style story of guilt and obsession that lifts it far above routine cop drama. Jason Patric plays Nick Tellis, an undercover narcotics cop cracking up after wounding an innocent (and pregnant) bystander. He's reassigned to solve the murder of another narc who'd gotten so deep in, he may have crossed over to the other side. Tellis's partner is Lieutenant Henry Oak, a volatile exponent of vigilante justice who may have secrets of his own. Oak is played by Ray Liotta, who deserves some kind of lifetime achievement award for the intensity he's brought to a long-running series of crime films, both good and bad. No matter the film, Liotta is never less than mesmerizing, and Henry Oak will go down in movie history as one of his signature performances. Narc is sophisticated visual storytelling, reeling out a stream-of-consciousness flood of sounds and images that challenge the intellect and get under the skin.
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Ray Liotta and Jason Patric blow their cover in Narc.
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Copyright (c) 2006 Steve Hockensmith
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TEN LITTLE GANGSTERS by M. J. JONES
Me and Big Al were by ourselves in his Wisconsin place that fall morning, the rest of the boys being asleep in their tents or up the guard towers. I was practicing bank shots on the green-cloth in the parlor. Al was upstairs with a little blonde from Hayward.
So everything stood still and peaceable when Charley the Finn came skidding up the lane in that whiney flivver of his. Out he flopped, yowling for Al to come rescue him.
"Snorky,” he yelled, calling Al by the nickname nobody ever said he could use. “Snorky, sumpin's gone wrong over at Short Nap's."
I ran outside and waved off the two boys charging up the lane, tommies at the ready. “S'okay,” I hollered at them. “He's a pal."
"Snorky,” Charley yelled again.
I grabbed him by his canvas galluses. “He's Mr. Capone to you and quit your yipping at him."
"It's terrible over there, Bill."
"That's Mr. Dekydd to you."
"Gimme a break, will ya?” Charley said, still all aflutter. “Everybody over there got it."
I had nary an idea what he meant ‘cause you can't hardly understand those Up North yokels—they talk like they got mashed turnip stuck on their tonsils. I was about to shut him up but good when Al stuck his head out an
upstairs window. “What's going on down there?"
"They're pfft, Snorky. All of ‘em,” Charley told him. “And I don't know how they got that way."
Me, I'd of thrown the dumb SOB back in the tamarack swamp he crawled out of. But Al's a Christian. He said, “Come on in the house, Charley. Then you can tell me about it."
On the way inside, Charley fell to blubbering even harder. “Short Nap's dead. They all are."
Short Nap was Napoleon Short, and I didn't care if the fat little bootlegger had knocked back his last finger of skee. Al sure wouldn't either. Looked like the only one did was Charley the Finn.
But what did he mean, everybody'd got huffed?
When Charley was in the living room, warming his cheeks by the fire, Al came downstairs. He looked snorky as ever, all dressed up in his new hunting duds—leather jerkin, buffalo-plaid shirt, tweed britches tucked in high-top gum boots. He had a khaki hunting coat slung over his arm and a Jones cap in his hand.
It was pretty much the same outfit I had on. Everybody else too. That's what I liked about Al, he wanted his boys turned out good as him even when he had to pay Marshall Fields a hundred and twenty-five dollars a man to get it done.
Not that me and Al looked alike. We were about the same age—I turned twenty-eight that year—but he was a lot bigger, only a couple inches under six foot and heavy along with it. I was still skinny then, with a thick thatch of ginger hair and blue peeps I didn't need specs to see out.
Charley? He just looked like hell.
"Get the man a drink,” Al said. “And not any of that backwoods hooch they make up here. Stuff'll kill you. Give him some of the real thing from Chicago."
What I wanted to give Charley was a kick in his britches. Boy had no business bothering Al on a Sunday morning. But I did like I was told and pulled a pony of needle beer out of the icebox. Chicago-made all right, but just near beer with a little alcohol shot in. I was blamed if I'd waste a bottle of South Side brew on the likes of squonking Charley in there.
Me, I'm Al's pick triggerman. Name's Bill Dekydd. Well, John Wilkes Dekydd, if you want to get legal about it. But I'm from down Arkansas way, and when I first came up here, folks just had to call me Arky. A couple busted snoots later and they agreed on Bill. Which is what my daddy wanted to name me in the first place, but Mama, who's not over the war yet, held out for John Wilkes.
Back in the parlor, Al had listened to Charley's story. When I came in with the beer, he was grinning at Charley. “Don't let the trouble over at Nap's keep you on the anxious seat,” he said. “I'll get it simplized for you."
Good as that might've sounded, Charley was still sweating bullets. Didn't blame him. You never knew with Al. He could be all glad-eye one second and killing crazy the next. I remember once in a blind pig in Cicero he was yucking it up with some Chicago bulls when one of ‘em went and called him Scarface. Fellow was probably just dumb and drunk, but it still wasn't a healthy thing for even a cop to say. Five minutes later, he came to with his beezer in the sawdust, a roscoe to his conk, and the Big Fellow on his back. Then he went for a little ride.
On t'other hand, Al liked to help folks: “Public service is my motto,"* he always said. It was Al that set the law on those two college punks killed that little boy back in ‘24, and he always got the Pinkertons off after they busted up a union man. He'd travel all over the country, too, go wherever a pal was in trouble—New York, Miami, Colorado, Los Angeles. Lordy, the man even went to Iowa.
[* Alphonse Capone, quoted in The Quotable Al Capone, edited by Mark Levell and Bill Helmer (The Chicago Typewriter Co. & Mad Dog Press, 1990).]
That's pretty much how I got on with the Big Fellow. When he came down to Hot Springs in ‘25 to help my boss close up a mitt joint, he took a liking to the way I could fire a shotgun out of either fist, separate or together. “If you're ever in Chi,” he said, “look me up. I'll find you a job."
A week later I was headed for Yankeeland.
Now, in the parlor of his hunting cabin, Al clapped Charley on the back. “At least Nap's out of the way. As for the rest of it..."
He turned to me. “We're going over to Nap's. You, me, and Charley here. Get somebody good to drive. What you packing, Charley?"
Charley tapped his jacket. “Belly gun,” he said.
Al jerked his thumb at the gun case over by the stairs. “Take the sawyers, Bill, and a couple choppers."
Jumping Jerusalem, I thought. Tommy guns and sawed-offs both. What's he expecting to find at Short Nap's cabin?
That's what the driver wondered, too, when he came up to the house. “Big trouble, huh?” he said. “I'll take da goil back to town."
"Nope,” I said. “Somebody else'll carry her back."
His name was Edward G. Caesar, and he thought he was the sheik of Araby, sporting those long, pointy sideburns and black hair he currycombed with Wildroot. Truth be known, Eddy was just a dem-dese-dose guy out of Brooklyn. And he was even harder to understand than Charley. Al should've made him go to night school, like he did me. “You want to be somebody,” Al always said, “you gotta sound like a gent."
Eddy said, leastways I think he said, “We better stick da heat under da floorboard. Don't want some backwoods deputy getting put to bed ‘cause he seen what he shouldn't."
"Laws is way too dainty, come out on a day like this,” I said.
A storm'd begun in the night, a ripsnorter with hard rain and big wind. By now, late morning, only the rain kept on. Sometimes it was just cold spit, then it'd up and turn to a real goose-drowner.
"Dem roads gonna be bad,” Eddy said. “Maybe Mr. Capone oughta go a different day."
You ask me, Eddy didn't want to go. The boy could drive better than Barney Olds himself, but that's all she wrote. He was a one-trick pony. When the lead started flying, Eddy headed for the can.
We took one of the closed cars, an A sedan, maybe not the flashiest car in the fleet, but the weather was too cold for a flivver, and the muddy roads couldn't handle Al's big, lead-lined Caddy.
Usually, Eddy drove, with me riding shotgun and Al tucked safe and sound behind us. Today, though, Al said he'd get up front with Eddy and I should sit with Charley in the back.
"Rats!” I said and hauled out my pocket pistol, took a swig, then offered it to Eddy.
"Stuff come with you from Chicago? ‘Cause I ain't drinking no rotgut from up here. No telling what dese dumb rubes put in it."
"This here's genuine Cutty Sark scotch,” I told him. “Straight off one of Mr. Joe Kennedy's own boats."
Eddy took the flask. When he handed it back, it was plumb empty.
Fact is, Eddy needed every drop of whiskey he could drink. We all did. The trip to Short Nap's place turned out to be thirty miles of pure woe. That country up there's either hill or swamp. And back then, the North Woods being pretty much lumbered out, it was covered with nothing but bramble bush, mossy old stumps, and straggly young pine. The roads? Even the ones with highway numbers weren't much more than jumped-up logging tracks.
And that was on the best of days. This day, the rain'd turned them into hog wallows. For three long hours we either rode in water lapping at the running boards or bumped up and down one rocky grade after another. I can't recollect how many times we had to get out and push. Al, too, huffing and puffing and cussing in two lingoes.
Worse yet, when we weren't stuck in the mud, I was stuck listening to Charley Dumdum from Duluth explain how he came to be so powerful interested in Napoleon Short from Chi-town.
The cause was about what you'd expect: Short Nap tried to horn in on Charley's rum fleet. The year before, somebody put a couple new sneakers on Superior to carry the groceries out of Canada. At first, Charley ignored it. He had plenty putt-putts of his own, never mind aeroplanes moving pig iron summer and winter both. Then the Mounties made a couple seizures, and you didn't have to be bit by a fox to figure out who paid them for their trouble.
"So,” Charley said, “I decided I better take Nap out. Do it during du
ck season. Make it look like he got tangled up in his 12-gauge."
Charley figured his plan would work because Al wasn't the only Chicago businessman that took vacations in northern Wis consin. Over to Barker Lake a Joliet boy was building himself a golf course, and Al's own brother had land near Mercer. But Short Nap had gone and done everybody one better. He bought a whole island.
It stood in a big lake called Sis-koom-bah or some such and lay so deep in the middle of nowhere even the Chippewa'd never heard of it. Besides that, Charley told us, after you finally found the old lumber track that served for Nap's lane and wound around for a bunch of miles, all you came to was the bank of the lake. And that was nothing but lily pads and fallen logs and big patches of wild rice.
"If Nap expects you,” Charley said, “you find a boat. And the dingdang lake's so big, even if you light down in a sea gull, you still need a boat."
'Course, Nap had guards posted at his boat launch. Charley said they stayed in an old Army tent with nothing much to do but play cards and gripe about their miseries. Couldn't blame ‘em. It's no fun sleeping on a spindly cot with the coon prowling round and the deer mice eating your smokes.
When we pulled up to the guard post, we didn't find any mice or coon or cards. Nap's guards, neither. What we found was two stiffs and Ross Kolnikov.
Ross was the boy Charley planned to turn loose on Short Nap once he had him trapped on his island. Instead, all poor Ross got to do was shiver in the damp while Charley ran for Al.
AHMM, March 2007 Page 7
