Robert Redford died in September at 89. We will sample a random selection of his output, including his debut directing triumph. We did a test run reviewing "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" last month. See also previous reviews of "All the President's Men," "All Is Lost" and "The Old Man and the Gun."
ELECTRIC HORSEMAN (1979) (B+) - Like in "Butch Cassidy," we are asked to accept '70s cinema stud Robert Redford, with his perfectly windswept blond mane, as a drawling cowboy. He mostly pulls it off as a five-time rodeo champ who now demeans himself by hawking breakfast cereal for an evil conglomerate.
Redford plays Sonny Steele, who stumbles drunk through his PR appearances (his outfit lined with light bulbs) until the day he can no longer stand to see his prize equine co-star, Rising Star, doped up and exploited. So Sonny rides off into the the Las Vegas night with Rising Star, determined to set him loose in the wild. (It is an opportunity for both man and horse to dry out.)
Hot on Sonny's trail is intrepid TV reporter Hallie Martin (Jane Fonda), who tracks him down and ends up falling for him. (Normally I'd be contemptuous of a depiction of a female journalist sleeping with a source, but this was Robert Redford in the '70s, after all.)
Redford and Fonda carry this movie through their sheer talent as old-school movie stars. (Roger Ebert compared them to Tracy and Hepburn.) Fonda always seemed under-rated, and here she brings nuance and depth to her character, flashing both smarts and vulnerability. The quips between the two are as dynamic as the romantic sizzle. (Their first kiss is swoon-worthy.) Director Sydney Pollack stitches together the script from a trio of writers who outline a rather trite idea peppered with snarky dialogue.
Pollack also assembles a crack crew of character actors to line out the corporate weasels and yes-men who melt down during the company's PR nightmare (on the eve of a mega-merger, no less). We get John Saxon, Alan Arbus, Basil Hoffman, and Nicolas Coster. Wilfred Brimley plays a farmer sympathetic to Sonny's adventure, and Valerie Perrine glows as Sonny's ex-wife. But the true revelation is Willie Nelson as part of Steele's entourage. It is Nelson's film debut, and he is a natural on screen. (A year later he would headline the semi-biographical "Honeysuckle Rose.") He has a way with a one liner -- bored at a hotel, he tells a colleague that his only short-term goal is to find "one of those keno girls who can suck the chrome off a trailer hitch."
Some might scoff at Redford's accent and Fonda's puppy love or shaky professional ethics, and maybe this doesn't age as well as everyone would have liked, but it is a compelling story, with just enough cynical humor to qualify as a hangover to That '70s Drift of the American New Wave. Let go of the present and return to the halcyon days of yesteryear and its formulaic but satisfying cinema.
THE CANDIDATE (1972) (A) - Michael Ritchie re-teams with Redford after "Downhill Racer" for this cynical, documentary-style take on politics. Ritchie and writer Jeremy Larner ("Drive, He Said") drop Redford in among real politicians and celebrities (including Alan Cranston and Natalie Wood), in a manner that suggests Robert Altman's work, in particular his semi-realist "Tanner" TV series for HBO.
A candidate being packaged and presented like a grocery-store product was a rather novel concept half a century ago. Peter Boyle is that ringer here as Marvin Lucas, the packager, a ruthless strategist who recruit's Redford's Bill McKay (son of a former governor) to take on a long-shot run for a California Senate seat against the grey-haired Republic incumbent. How much of a long shot? Lucas essentially guarantees McKay that he will lose, but at least Lucas will get a paycheck running the campaign.
McKay undermines the tomato-can strategy by speaking whatever is on his mind as an old-fashioned good-government liberal, reaching out to poor and minority constituents. McKay's good looks and fresh approach start to catch on, and he closes the gap against the arrogant Crocker Jarmon (Don Porter). Late in the campaign, McKay makes Jarmon sweat during a debate, and the possibility of pulling off an upset starts to feel real.
Ritchie seems to be taking his cue from "Primary," the classic documentary about the 1960 race between John Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey for the Democratic nomination. He places Redford in very real situations, whether out in the community pressing flesh or speaking off the cuff at banquets in front of donors. Actual politicians and reporters ground this in cinema verite from start to finish.
Ritchie also builds drama around McKay personally. His marriage relations seem stilted, and there is a question of whether is father will bridge the generation gap and embrace his son. There also is a subtle Clintonian flair, when we see McKay and a young female campaign worker sheepishly emerge from the same hotel room before McKay goes into a meeting with a labor leader (whom McKay insults but gains an endorsement regardless).
This seems like a role Redford was born to play -- the handsome bleeding-heart liberal with an independent streak. His bumbling as a neophyte on the political scene feels legit, as does his meteoric rise as a Mamdani-type phenomenon. Ritchie captures this lightning in a bottle and crafts a masterpiece of its time, right up to its iconic final line.
BONUS TRACKS
Willie Nelson with his heart-breaking version of "Hands on the Wheel," which runs over the closing credits of "Electric Horseman":
Threaded through "Horseman" is Nelson's cover of Gregg Allman's "Midnight Rider," powered by Mickey Raphael's dyspeptic harmonica:
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