The Professionals

There's been an ongoing discussion for the past few weeks down at the video store about the best way to write a movie. Should a writer start with a story they passionately want to tell, and then add elements that will please a movie audience? Or should a writer first design a familiar, marketable concept and then add in idiosyncratic details later to make it more personal?

I tend towards the former. I can't imagine trying to write 100 or more pages of material that didn't personally matter to me, that was just a story I thought I could sell. But when you watch a movie like The Professionals, a story so old and generic but breathlessly and beautifully rendered, you begin to see the other side of the argument. By the time writer/director Richard Brooks' 1966 action film hit theaters, almost all of the elements of his film were cliched, but his cast is so iconic, his eye for action set pieces so finely tuned, and his enthusiasm for the genre and material so evident, it hardly matters at all.



So here it is in short: The beautiful wife of a cattle baron (Claudia Cardinale, pictued above) has been kidnapped by Mexican revolutionary Jesus Raza (Jack Palance).

I'm going to stop right there. It's semi-delusional to believe Jack Palance as a Mexican revolutionary. I mean, granted, they give the guy a crazy-looking bushy Mexican moustache, but come on...And now that I think of it, I just watched Louis Malle's South American revolution-comedy Viva Maria!, which featured an unlikely George Hamilton as a rebel general. Maybe I'll make this a whole themed section, and review Touch of Evil next.

Anyway, Palance is actually pretty good in the role (even his accent!), but I just couldn't let that pass without comment.

So, Raza has stolen Maria away from her American husband, Joe (Ralph Bellamy), holding her for a ransom of $100,000 in gold. So Joe makes the obvious next move, and rounds up four unlikely experts to sneak into Raza's Mexican compound and spirit his wife back to America.

This material is told with crisp efficiency. We meet each of the characters in an opening credit sequence. There's Lee Marvin as Rico, firing a machine gun...he'll be your weapons and tactical expert, and the team leader. Burt Lancaster's Dolworth rolls out of bed with a glamorous stranger...he's the flippant, womanizing and joyful explosives expert. Robert Ryan and Woody Strode fill out the team as a horse trainer and archer, respectively, though they mainly keep to the background of the story.

So, the team being assembled, they set across the Mexican landscape on horseback, getting into a variety of adventures along the way. A late twist in the film actually turns the story a bit more inward, exploring Dolworth and Rico's experiences as volunteers in the Mexican revolution of Pancho Villa.

It's actually kind of surprising to see a mainstream action film deal with complex historical issues from the turn of the 19th Century. I doubt very much any modern Western would dare tackle the Mexican Civil War and its ramifications for the people of the American West. And, of course, because it was 1966, the film has an incredibly lefty slant, eventually siding with the Mexican revolutionaries over the selfish and perverse American capitalists.

There's a fascinating overlap here of the cowboy ideal and the, for lack of a better term, hippie ideal in The Professionals. Marvin and Lancaster are given many opportunities to discuss their views on the need for revolution and social uprising, about the changing nature of the world and how the old ways are dying out. These are men who have been left behind by the world, who cling to ideals from long ago that have died out in Mexico and beyond. They fight the warlords now because of their bitter defeat side-by-side many years ago.

Predictably, the film features exceptional work from both Marvin and Lancaster. Like everything else in The Professionals, their characters are familiar, and closely linked to their usual personas. Marvin is tough and no-nonsense, with a clever mind for mayhem and a sharp tongue. Lancaster is laconic, charming, unrushed and boyish. But they manage to bring a deep-seated melancholy to their roles as well, a weight that indicates this particular adventure isn't so new for these men, but rather the culmination of a lifetime spent fighting battles and running for their lives.

The lush color photography by the Late Great Conrad Hall brings the harsh landscapes of the Nevada desert to life. (Though the film is set largely in Mexico, it was filmed in Nevada, outside Las Vegas.) Brooks clearly had a fondness for trains, and some of the locomotive montages reminded me of the work of Stan Brakhage in their quiet observation of shadow and movement. This is one sensational-looking DVD, and not just because Mrs. Cardinale does a few topless scenes.

So the only thing surprising about The Professionals, in the end, is how entertaining it is despite containing absolutely no surprises. Its familiarity doesn't make it wan or predictable, but comfortable. You feel right away that you are in the hands of a gifted storyteller, and I for one gave myself over to the narrative without worrying about knowing where the plot was headed.

Brooks would direct In Cold Blood the very next year, again with Conrad Hall as his director of photography, and in that film, they would break new ground.