MOVIES

SHAMUS

(Columbia)

If Shamus isn’t a satire, it should be. But then again, if it were consciously satirical, it wouldn’t be half as funny or ridiculous. Burt Reynolds plays Mac McCoy, a poolplaying private “I,” clad in traditional trenchcoat, chasing around, being chased — every trite action-flic cliche packed into a predictable series of events. And it works.

Perhaps the seeming overdose of necessary interesting elements for this family show (PG for pretty good?) is an ironic accident. The Marlowesque messy, smart-ass detective, currently a big hero, in reaction to the super-slick, Mannixtype cool cops, is portrayed for once as a sloppy yet sophisticated shamus. While Reynolds skillfully knocks off a dozen pursuers, all miraculously escaping death, of course, he mugs, hams and jokes like one of his talk show performances. He just doesn’t take the role or himself seriously. And the sub-plot, darling bUt dumb Dyan Cannon, laughs heartily.

This is a cinema verite film despite the trashy trappings. Actual New York City streets and bums (some of McCoy’s best friends are low life) are presented as the backdrop. When McCoy crosses Park Avenue, the passers by stop and gawk at Burt Reynolds and the movie cameras. Even the hit men “realistically” trip over their own feet showing the audience that our hero is tops. As the ad proclaims -Shamus never misses.

The story’s opener is: a couple making love in bed are interrupted by a tap at the skylight only to look up at an incredible blast of fire swooping down at them. Is it God’s thunder and lightening? Hell. breaking loose? No, an asbestos clothed pyromaniac jumps in, pulleys the safe up and away leaving the burning apartment and screams carelessly behind.

McCoy is hired (he’s the 53rd choice) by a billion-millionaire to either find the infamous flame-throwing diamondthieving killers or recover his diamonds. No insurance? No cops? The $10,000job involves more than it’s worth — a life or two maybe. Silent contacts, the underworld and army munitions are a couple curious adventurous aspects that assure the investigator that the caper isn’t exactly suited to his slim capabilities. In fact, almost convinces him to give up his craft and stick to pool. That can’t really stop him though, can it?

I guess when a movie serves as entertainment only, I look for more, some statement, ulterior motive. However, I returned home after seeing Shamus to watch Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf? A drunken, frail Sandy Dennis sits in one scene clapping for “Violence, Violence!” It’s hilarious. So evidently this top-grosser is appealing for what it is. Nothing more. That’s why it’s probably not satire. To tell the truth, I enjoy climbing into a front row, getting lost in the immense screen, absorbed in the thrilling drama, gobbling popcorn. There’s nothing to identify with, become involved in or think about except Seating the plot to the punch and watching the handsome lead jack-rabbit jump. Shamus is a perfect example of the TV movie coming back to the big screen. So what if it’s all been done before?.

After all, it is Shamus not Sleuth — a bastardized Phillip Marlowe not Sherlock Holmes. This silly but clever character is on a frolic and so is the viewer. So dig it. Keep a lookout for Mad Magazine’s cartoon version called Sfiame-less.

Robbie Cruser

THE HARDER THEY COME A New World Release

The posters that appeared in the. New York subways a few weeks before the film premiered were natural killers. They showed Jimmy Cliff, dressed in reggaebandit superstar duds, looking like the hero of the Slickers song “Johnny Too Bad:” ^Walkin’ down the road, with a pistol in your waist, Johnny you’re too bad.” He was dressed in stripes, animal skins, shades, yellow tropical soul city hat,..and two guns blazing from each hand. But more than that, it was the hook line in the ad that kept coming back te, me. “Top of the. Hit Parade — and Number One on the Most Wanted List.”

The potential threat in such a movie was raw and uncompromising, and so was the graffiti that sprouted from those subway posters. Stuff like “Fuck You, Niggers,” and “More Dog Food for Nigger Lovers.” The graffitists should have saved their ink, though, for The Harder They Come is far from the black exploitation movie themes of sepia James Bonds and their DC comic heroics. Shot in Jamaica, it is the first feature film by Jamaicans, about Jamaicans, their music, dope., religion and fantasies. The Harder They' Come is the best movie I’ve seen combining concepts of pop culture and social realism since The Blackboard Jungle.

The picture can be described as a fictional documentary or semidocumentary. The characters portrayed ►by the actors virtually all exist the way they are shown, and the social situations described — dope dealing, reggae music, and the implicit class struggle between the wretchedly poor and the comfortable middle class in Jamaica — are all too graphically correct.

The story ‘ is that of Ivan (Jimmy Cliff), a country boy drawn to Kingston by the reggae beat on his transistor radio, hoping to make a hit record himself. From the very beginning, the reggae sounds are either right upfront, or mixed down as they come from radios or automobiles, a subliminal force that makes this, among other things, a fantastic music movie.

The trouble with the city is that there are no jobs. The camera shakily follows Ivan through the street crowds of Shantytown, West Kingston, through domino halls and pinball palaces easily as greasy as any backwoods Louisiana puke-andrazorblade jukejoint. If one wants to talk about black lifestyles, the whole feeling is much closer to Robert Johnson than it is to Shaft or Superfly.

Ivan begins begging for dimes from black bourgeoisie Jamaicans, who tell him to fuck off. Finally, he lucks out, and ends up under the wing of Preacher (Basil Keane), a man of God. There’s a sign on Preacher’s fence that reads:

Don’t piss or urine at this Gate People are living here thank you

Ivan’s possessions at this ppint consist of a pile of Playboy magazines, Two Gun Kid comic books, a stack of 45 rpm records and a toy Rocket Gun. He gets his break when Preacher asks him to bring a tape to the recording studio to be pressed for a religious rally.

The studio belongs to Hilton (Bobby Charlton), who drives a white Mercedes. Like most record producers in Jamaica, he controls not only his own studio, but his own record stores, discotheques (called “Sound Systems’, where most singles usually “break”,) and has almost total power over disc jockey playlists.

Hilton tells Ivan “Sure, sure, come back tomorrow,” when he asks for an audition. Within that 24 hour period, he has made it with Elsa, Preacher’s prize cherry, gets expelled from Preacher’s house for practicing his reggae songs in the church, and slashes the life out of an enormous dude he worked with when he refused to return Ivan’s only possession of value, a bicycle he’s built from scraps in Preacher’s yard.

The next day Ivan is in the studio, singing his song. The hook is relentless, joyous, while the lyrics speak of an oppression Ivan intends to transcend:

So as sure as the sun will shine

I’m gonna get my share

now what’s mine

And then the harder they come

The harder they fall,

one and all...

©Island Music Ltd.

Hilton likes the song, and offers Ivan the standard contract: $20 advance, no royalties, that’s it. Ivan turns it down, and tries to push the record on his own. Numero Uno, a popular disc jockey, puts ft as straight as I’ve ever heard it: “I deal with Hilton. This is show business. No business, no show.”

That’s the story everywhere, so Ivan returns to Hilton AThe record is released at one of the “Sound Systems,” where the poor go to dance, drink, deal dope, and hear the new sounds. An old acquaintance, Pedro (Ras Daniel Hartman) recruits Ivan into the marijuana trade, where the Shantytown street peddlers aren’t getting their fair share either.

“Somebody making plenty of money. Not' us. Who’s making all the money?” Ivan asks. Pedro’s answer: “Ask no questions, tell no lies.”

The ones making money are a dealer named Jose (Carl Bradshaw) an'd his partner in crime, the chief of detectives. Jose tips off the cops to teach Ivan a lesson. Instead, Ivan blows one cop off his bike, and kills three more that night.

A full-scale manhunt gets underway through Shantytown, which makes Watts look like Westchester. Meanwhile, Ivan’s song, “The Harder They Come,” is breaking big. Hilton calls the detective.

“You call md* when you catch him,” says Hilton, “so I can make another record before you string him up.”

Ivan by now is a folk hero, posing in wild clothes, guns drawn, for photos he sends to the newspapers. It is only near the end that the contrasts between the stark realism of much of the movie apd Ivan’s criminomania begin to chafe a bit, but it’s not unlike the ascending glamor of Dunaway and Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde.

What is most satisfying about The Harder They Come is that it is almost all real, and at the same time, tense and exciting. Reggae star Jimmy Cliff (who had an American pop hit with “Wonderful World, Beautiful People”) is simply breathtaking as Ivan, a character based loosely on Rhygin, the criminal hero of Kingston in the fifties, who also had a penchant for violent crimes and flamboy^ ant self-promotion.

Director, producer, and co-writer Perry Henzell recruited real dope dealers, criminals, low-lifes and Rastafarians, and had them play themselves. The idea proves its worth in the flow of the dialogue, which is so natural and conversational that subtitles are used to translate the Jamaican street dialect. Some of the “actors” played themselves too well, and were shot and killed after the filming was completed.

The soundtrack consists of songs that were already reggae hits, by Cliff, Desmond Dekker, the Maytals and others. Reggae, the music of the poor, the Rastas and the dopers, is of course the music for this story, for it is a movie not only about reggae, but is based on reggae lyric themes: suffering, crime, a comic book (but very real) macho. The authors of “Johnny Too Bad” should know. One of them is “underground,” while the other counts the beat on death row.

A prominent part in the story is played by the Rastafarians, described officially as a “semi-religious” sect. About three-quarters of Jamaica’s two million people consider themselves Rastas, which evolved out of Marcus Garvey’s “Back to Africa” movement about forty years ago. The Rastas believe that Ethiopa’s Emperor Haile Selassie is God, or the son of. They also believe that “God made Herb (marijuana) for the use of mankind,” to increase man’s wisdom and to better love his fellow man.

In other words, smoking dope is a religious rite for the majority of the population, yet until recently, minimal possession was punishable by a mandatory 18 months in jail. Now, possession is a $300 fine, mandatory, which in effect legalizes it for the middle class — Trenchtown folks still go to jail, since $300 might as well be a million bucks. The Rastas’ message-greeting of “love and peace,” their long matted hair, and use of ganja have hardly made them popular among the powers that be. So they live in Shantytown with the rest of the poor, desperate Jamaicans, whose only way out of West Kingston is crime or reggae.

As Bob Marley of The Wallers put it, without the Rastas, “herb,” and the “happy blues” * of reggae, this newly decolonized island would have exploded long ago. The Harder They Come has captured many of these complex relationships, and expresses them unerringly. It is an important piece of social analysis, as well as being viciously exciting, engrossing and entertaining. The reggae and music business infighting make it immediately accessible to anyone interested in the rock ‘n’ roll culture, and it’s just as good the second time around. On my chart, The Harder They Come is number one — with a bullet.

Wayne Robins

WATTSTAX

Columbia/Stax

Am I Black Enough For You? If this Film didn’t try .so hard it might not be half bad. As it is, it falls somewhere between a black Woodstock (with even more excessive doses of man-on-thestreet sociology) and a slick company promotion film (it features just about the entire stable of Stax Records, which is hardly , what it used to be, and was produced by company execs). Cliches from both genres abound: a gratuitous “black history on the head of a pin” montage is a rehash of stereotyped images, capped by Martin Luther King’s “I’ve been to the mountaintop’’ speech again (how awful to think that the black people who put this film together don’t have a richer, deeper view of their own history in America than a series of photos that could have been selected by the editors -of Readers Digest); and the attempts,at psychedelic techniques and editing are generally tired. The Wattstax concert serves as a framework for a collage of viewpoints from Watts and what interest the film has is here, but too often the raps are as cliched as the images (9 out of 10 people say the event is “beautiful” — far out) and we get about three parts jive performance and pose to one part revelation and realness. There are some fine moments and scenes: the Staple Singers eating bar-bque in the back seat of the limousine; the Emotions singing “Peace Be Still” in a small church -— the best performance in the film; a man who talks about the woman who had his “nose wide open”; Rufus Thomas in hot pink cape, pink bermuda shorts and white boots (“Ain’t I clean?” he asks) and some great dancing in the audience. But they tend to get lost. The film hits a low with the Isaac Hayes entrance and unveiling, but it’s at its best whenever Richard Pryor is on the screen. Pryor is sharply funny and insightful — so good he almost makes this whole hodgepodge worthwhile.

Vince Aletti