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At its core, Munich is a straightforward thriller. Based on the book Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team by George Jonas, it's built on a relatively stock movie premise, the revenge plot: innocent people are killed, the bad guys got away with it, and someone has to make them pay. But director Steven Spielberg uses that as a starting point to delve into complex ethical questions about the cyclic nature of revenge and the moral price of violence. The movie starts with a rush. The opening portrays the kidnapping and murder of Israeli athletes by PLO terrorists at the 1972 Olympics with scenes as heart-stopping and terrifying as the best of any horror movie. After the tragic incident is over and several of the terrorists have gone free, the Israeli government of Golda Meir recruits Avner (Eric Bana) to lead a team of paid-off-the-book agents to hunt down those responsible throughout Europe, and eliminate them one-by-one (in reality, there were several teams). It's physically and emotionally messy work, and conflicts between Avner and his team's handler, Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush), over information Avner doesn't want to provide only make things harder. Soon the work starts to take its toll on Avner, and the deeper moral questions of right and wrong come into play, especially as it becomes clear that Avner is being hunted in return, and that his family's safety may be in jeopardy.

By all rights, Munich should be an unqualified success--it has gripping subject matter relevant to current events; it was co-written by one of America's greatest living playwrights (Tony Kushner, Angels in America) and an accomplished screenwriter (Eric Roth); it stars an appealing and likeable actor in Eric Bana; and it was helmed by Steven Spielberg, of all people. While it certainly is a great movie, it falls just short of the immense heights such talent should propel it to. This is due more to some questionable plot devices than anything else (such as the contrived use of a family of French informants to locate the terrorists). But while certain aspects ring hollow, the movie as a whole is a profound accomplishment, despite being only "inspired by true events," and not factually based on them. From the ferocious beginning to the unforgettable closing shot, Munich works on a visceral level while making a poignant plea for peace, and issuing an unmistakable warning about the destructive cycle of terror and revenge. As one of the characters intones, "There is no peace at the end of this." --Daniel Vancini

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Movie critic Roger Ebert made this amusing observation about Malice: "This is the only movie I can recall in which an entire subplot about a serial killer is thrown in simply for atmosphere." He's referring to the fact that this hokey but highly charged thriller is so packed with plot twists and red herrings that you'll soon find yourself so confused that you just have to sit back and hope that it will all make sense by the time the credits roll. It never does make much sense, but the movie at least has the look, feel, and twisted momentum of a really good thriller, and the talent on both sides of the camera is pretty impressive. Alec Baldwin plays a hot-shot surgeon who meets up with an old med-school buddy (Bill Pullman), whose wife (Nicole Kidman) has no objections when Baldwin moves into the upstairs room of their New England Victorian home. The situation's ripe for intrigue, suspicion, temptation, emergency surgery, legal proceedings, and just about anything else you'd find in a movie that desperately struggles to out-Hitchcock Hitchcock. Talk about McGuffins--this movie's chock full of 'em! When the plot thickens to the consistency and clarity of quicksand, you can still enjoy the darkly stylish work of master cinematographer Gordon Willis--or you can check out director Harold Becker's more coherent thriller Sea of Love. With Kidman and Baldwin working up a steamy lather, this one's just fun enough to be an agreeable waste of time. --Jeff Shannon

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The first Robocop was thrilling, hilarious, and totally original--none of which has as much to do with the film's spawning two sequels (plus two separate television shows) as its $50 million-plus take at the box office. Though the Law of Diminishing Returns inevitably applies to the theatrical trilogy, the central premise is so strong that each of the lesser sequels has at least a few moments worth catching. That's because the original (wherein Detroit cop Peter Weller, killed in the line of duty, gets transformed into a crime-fighting cyborg) set up an entire world. Director Paul Verhoeven spends as much time lampooning television news, commercial products, and big business as he does on the story; however violent or gory things get (and they get quite icky), the tone throughout is comic, even giddy. Robocop 2, helmed by Irvin Kershner of The Empire Strikes Back fame, sobers up considerably. The film is rather underrated; sure, there are fewer ads and newsbreaks this time around, but there are several inventive touches--Robocop is briefly reprogrammed into a homily-spouting Dudley Do-Right; drug dealers step in to bail out the financially strapped city--and the villains (including the most foul-mouthed, amoral 12-year-old in movie history) are less outrageous than in the first installment. Robocop 3, however, is profit-driven hash. Having Robocop (now acted by Robert John Burke) join a citizens' uprising is a nice idea, and even the ninja android could have been fun, but the movie tries too often to be heartwarming, an emotion thoroughly out of place in this wickedly satirical series. --Bruce Reid

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Don't throw that Criterion DVD out just yet...

Since I've already reviewed the single-disc versions of RoboCop (Criterion Collection edition, dated July 18, 2002 at www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1559408898/qid%3D1090823802/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/002-5229942-8183256), RoboCop 2 (July 25, 2004 at www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0001VTPW2/ref=cm_aya_asin.title/002-5229942-8183256?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance) and RoboCop 3 (July 26, 2004 at www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0001VTPWC/ref=cm_aya_asin.title/002-5229942-8183256?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance), I'm gonna spend the vast majority of this review covering the RoboCop 1 extended edition disc and its extra features, and make comparisons and contrasts between it and the Criterion Collection version DVD.

And away we go...

While the picture in the MGM box set version of `Robo 1' is not quite as grainy as the Criterion edition, it's also a fair deal darker-- which doesn't help out the nighttime and low-lit scenes, `natch. The remastered 5.1 soundtrack mix adds a few new layers of sound to the movie that have never been heard before. I noticed the sound difference when I did a side-by-side comparison of the Murphy death scenes on both DVDs. The MGM box set version featured more screams of agony from our ill-fated hero than what could be heard in the Criterion rendition. And before you ask: yes, doing side-by-side comparisons of my fave DVD movies is something I consider "fun". Hey, you didn't think I attained my status as a Top 100 reviewer (as of this writing) by having any sort of social life, did'ja? Let's get real here, folks...


Anyway, let's get back on the track. The MGM version also contains a new secondary commentary track with most of the same guys who did the Criterion commentary track, including director Paul Verhoeven, executive producer John Davison, and co-writer Ed Neumeier. Most of the stuff covered in the new track was not discussed in the old one, which means you'll inundated with a whole new set of info and anecdotes that ya didn't hear on the old track. The weird thing is, the guys talk about the scenes that they had to shorten for the theatrical release-- which were restored to this DVD-- as if they hadn't been restored to the DVD at all. Kinda makes me wonder if MGM was originally going to include just the cut-down version of the movie to this box set, but then thought better of it without getting the guys to record a new commentary track. Eh, like it really matters all that much...

The MGM version also includes a wide array of special features that weren't on the Criterion release, such as deleted scenes like an extra vignette with Bix "I'd Buy THAT For A Dollar!" Snyder, a Q&A press conference with Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer) about RoboCop, and a couple other excised bits that look like they were recorded on that film they use to film actors testing for screen roles. I think it's called "B-roll" film or something.

Also included is a slo-mo look at the initial ED-209 stop-motion scene and corresponding storyboards featuring commentary with stop-motion man Phil Tippett. I found myself zoning out about halfway through this piece out of sheer boredom, and bailed on it as soon as I could. Topping things off is a trio of behind-the-scenes/"Making-Of" featurettes that give ya a peek at the effects, stunts, and other things that went into the production of the movie. I found these featurettes reasonably interesting, but I'd get a bit wacky when the director and actors would talk a little too seriously about the "depth" and "significance" of the production and the characters they play. If I wanted to hear about that stuff, I'd have hit the local sci-fi con where Peter Weller is the keynote speaker, thank you very much. Oh yes, we mustn't forget the obligatory theatrical trailers and a fairly cool TV spot.

Unfortunately, the Criterion version of the DVD contains extra features that aren't available in the MGM release. Such Criterion-exclusive extras include film-to-storyboard comparisons, storyboards of unfilmed scenes, and a text article on the making of `RoboCop'. So needless to say, if you're a completist Robo-fan DVD-phile who's just GOT to have every single `RoboCop'-related bit of bonus material available on digital video, you're gonna hafta grab both this set AND the Criterion Collection DVD (available at www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1559408898/qid%3D1090823802/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/002-5229942-8183256) if ya wanna have it all...

`Late

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The Original Kings of Comedy achieves the seemingly impossible task of capturing the rollicking and sly comedy routines of stand-up and sitcom vets Steve Harvey, D.L. Hughley, Cedric the Entertainer, and Bernie Mac and the magic of experiencing a live concert show. Director Spike Lee and his crew plant a multitude of cameras in a packed stadium and onstage (as well as backstage, as they follow the comedians) to catch the vivid immediacy of the show, which is as much about the audience as it is about the jokes. And the jokes are funny.

All four riff fast and furiously (and with much swearing) on the world in terms of race, family, sex, and in one routine, outer space. Hughley takes comedic aim at extreme sports and eating disorders, while Cedric harks back to the day when gang fights meant calling opponents out onto the dance floor. Bernie Mac, the self-confessed id comedian of the group, presents a routine that is simultaneously offensive and hilarious--an apt reminder that comedy can and should be vicious if we are ever to learn to laugh at ourselves and hopefully be the better for it. Harvey, who acts as the MC for the show, has some transcendent moments with the crowd (a '70s slow jam sing-along, anyone?) that have to be seen to be believed. There's no doubt as to why Kings was a hit with concert and movie audiences; the laughs keep coming, in the tradition of Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy, with a sharp eye on the nuances of today's racially affected culture. --Shannon Gee

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Clever, engaging, and boosted by the sublime casting of Willem Dafoe as Nosferatu actor Max Schreck, Shadow of the Vampire is a film full of good ideas that are only partially developed. Its premise is ripe with possibilities, but the movie's too slight to register much impact, so you're left to relish its delightful performances and director E. Elias Merhige's affectionately tongue-in-cheek homage to a landmark of German silent cinema. John Malkovich is aptly loony as the eccentric director F.W. Murnau, whose passion in filming the 1922 classic Nosferatu leads to the extreme casting of Schreck as the vampire, a vision of evil who, in this movie's delightfully twisted imagination, actually is a vampire, sucking the blood of cast and crewmembers who've dismissed Schreck as an overzealous method actor.

As these on-set maladies and "accidents" continue, Schreck wields greater control over Murnau, who descends into a kind of obsessive art-for-art's-sake madness until diva costar Greta Schroeder (Catherine McCormack, doing wonderful work) is served up as the actor's ultimate motivation. Merhige and his actors (including Cary Elwes, as intrepid cameraman Fritz Wagner) have great fun with this ghastly escapade, and the humor is kept delicately subtle to balance the movie's artistic aspirations. To that end, Dafoe is just right, his bald pate and gaunt features a perfect match for the mysterious Schreck, his grimace and talon-like fingers suggesting a human vulture on the prowl. Likewise, the re-creation of Nosferatu's expressionist style is both fanciful and brilliantly authentic. Too bad, then, that this movie suffers a mild case of vampiric anemia; if it shared the depth and richness of, say, Ed Wood, this might have been a cult classic for the ages. --Jeff Shannon

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This notorious Canadian sexploitation cult classic is one of the most sick and sadistic features ever released to a general audience, and the only film that producer David F. Friedman, the king of sleaze himself, was so ashamed of that he removed his name from it. Statuesque, buxom blonde Dyanne Thorne is Ilsa, the ruthless commandant of a Nazi medical camp who subjects her patients (mostly naked women) through the most painful and brutal tortures she can think of to prove the superiority of the female sex to Nazi high command. At night she goes through the male prisoners like boy toys to be discarded and castrated the next day ("Once a prisoner has slept with me, he'll never sleep with another woman!"), until she meets a man she can't conquer in bed. It proves to be her downfall. Vamping it up with a corny German growl, Thorne leers with gargoylish delight at her latest diabolical tortures: grotesque, gangrenous infections, exploding sex toys, boiling alive, and a dinner centerpiece involving a naked girl, a noose, and a melting block of ice that leaves her dangling by meal's end. Directed with an artless bluntness and a cold cynicism, it's a brutal, nasty film, utterly tasteless yet perversely fascinating. It was reportedly shot in a week on sets left over from the sitcom Hogan's Heroes, and proved so successful that it spawned two official and one unofficial sequels.

Anchor Bay's restored print is letterboxed and reportedly restored. The DVD edition also features commentary by Thorne, producer Friedman, and director Don Edmunds, moderated by humorist Martin Lewis. --Sean Axmaker

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Insensate and depraved

"Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS" is perhaps one of the better known exploitation films made in the last thirty years. The picture, directed by Don Edmonds and starring Dyanne Thorne in the titular role, is also one of the most disturbing. Oddly enough, I found this movie even more sickening the second time around. The first time I watched Ilsa do her stuff was on an old VHS tape about five years ago, and I didn't think the film was as horrific as many viewers made it out to be. Usually, the disgust factor works the other way around: the first viewing is the worst with the shock value wearing away on subsequent viewings. I should probably question the value of even watching "Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS" more than once, but I wanted to see what the picture looked like with a snappy new transfer to DVD. Moreover, I wanted to listen to the commentary track with Edmonds, Thorne, and producer David Friedman of "Blood Feast" fame (billed here as Herman Traeger). I wasn't disappointed; the picture quality of "Ilsa" is stunning for such a low budget piece of trash. The commentary track too makes this disc a must have for lovers of schlock cinema. Just don't pop this one in the DVD player when the relatives show up or as a substitute for taking your gal out on the town.

Set in the waning days of the Second World War, "Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS" takes place in a special medical camp where the brutal camp commander Ilsa (Dyanne Thorne) and her busty minions wreak havoc on a bevy of female prisoners. There are a few guys around too, mostly to act as boy toys for Ilsa's ravenous appetites. Ilsa's supposed to be conducting experiments on helpless prisoners that will benefit the German military effort, but she's got quite the disturbing side project going on as well. According to the She-Wolf, women possess certain biological characteristics that make them more resistant to pain then men. You can almost guess what happens next. Ilsa sets aside a hidden little laboratory in the basement of her office to test out her personal theories while the approved experiments take place in another building. Both sets of trials are excruciating to watch. The Germans test the effects of high pressure, boiling temperatures, and diseases on the female inmates of the prison. Down in the basement, Ilsa and her two blonde goons strip down to the waist in order to administer severe beatings to selected troublemakers. There's a lot more I could detail, but believe it or not these are the least offensive scenes in the movie. "Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS" is sick, sick stuff.

A sort of hope fills the prisoners' hearts when Wolfe (George Knoph) enters the camp. The new inmate has a "special ability" that allows him to find a way into the frosty heart of the buxom camp commander. Behind the scenes, the prisoners plot to escape from the prison any way they can. It won't be easy, not when one faces Ilsa, her she-wolfettes, her male assistant, a pack of sadistic guards, and machine gun towers. In the meantime, the degradations continue unabated. Ilsa whips up a few special treats for a visiting general (Wolfgang Roehm) that truly turn the stomach as Wolfe, Mario (Tony Mumolo), and Kala (Nicolle Riddell) carefully map out there plan. Will the prisoners escape? Will Ilsa and her handmaidens receive their just desserts? Will the Allies arrive at the camp before everyone perishes at the hands of the Germans? Will tough chick Anna (Maria Marx) withstand Ilsa's experiments and thus prove the commander's theory? Will you be able to keep your lunch down during the hour and a half it takes to watch the movie? These questions, and many others, will find resolution by the time the final credits roll.

What won't find resolution is your utter disgust with the film. A gallon of mouthwash won't remove the bad taste this movie leaves behind in your mouth. I found myself inadvertently comparing Edmond's picture with "Schindler's List," another film dealing with German atrocities during the Second World War. Truth be told, "List" is much more harrowing in its depictions of the concentration camps and the horrible living conditions of those people enslaved by the Germans. What sets "Ilsa" apart, what makes it even worse than "Schindler's List," is that it's all done for cheap, value neutral kicks. Why else play up endless scenes of nudity in a movie about war crimes? Despite Thorne's amazingly campy performance, "Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS" is a ghastly film that should repulse more than it exhilarates. Even more disturbing is the admission on the commentary track that the movie sets come from the television show "Hogan's Heroes." You won't see LeBeau, Carter, Sergeant Schultz, or Colonel Klink in this movie! If you find anything remotely exhilarating about this picture, you've been falling behind on your electroshock therapy treatments again.

Dyanne Thorne does pull off her role with ease, coming across as a heartless, cold monster without an ounce of remorse in her bones. It's quite the contrast to listen to the commentary track and realize the actress seems like an intelligent, sunny personality with a good sense of humor. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your view), the commentary track, a trailer, and a few biographies are the only extras on the disc. If you feel up to it, after you watch Ilsa ham it up as a German camp commander, you can watch her in three other films reprising the character-with slight modifications-in the Middle East and in Siberia. These are classic movies, for sure, but they're upsetting ones as well.

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After forming a match made in trash-movie heaven in John Waters's Polyester, Tab Hunter and Divine reunited for this deliciously tasteless Western comedy, which borrows its title from the nickname for Duel in the Sun, the turgid Western that inspired director Paul Bartel's affectionate spoofery. With Hunter wearing two hats as hero and coproducer, the movie indulges its own outrageous excess while staying true to the dustiest traditions of the Western genre. It's just good enough to watch without shame, and rude enough to hide from more offendable members of the family.

Nothing's sacred in Chile Verde, the wild western town where lone gunman Abel Wood (Hunter) arrives after rescuing corpulent saloon singer Rosie Velez (Divine) from being defiled by Hard Case Williams (Geoffey Lewis) and his gang of misfit gunslingers. Saloon owner Marguerita Ventura (Lainie Kazan) gets hot 'n' heavy for Abel's wood, and passions flare up in a race for hidden treasure, the map to which is tattooed in two sections on Rosie's and Marguerita's ample posteriors. To reveal more would spoil the wretched hilarity; one needn't love Westerns to enjoy this pig-wallow of a comedy, but it helps if you know the legacy of screen villains like Henry Silva, who's riotous here while barely shifting his vile expression. No doubt, this is the wackiest Western that ever cooked under the "blistering, burning, blazing, scorching, roasting, toasting, baking, boiling, broiling, steaming, searing, sizzling, grilling, smoldering, very hot New Mexico sun." --Jeff Shannon

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"You're going to have your filthy way with me."

Divine was at the peak of his short career when he was cast as Rosie Velez in the Paul Bartel western film, "Lust in the Dust." Divine (AKA Glenn Milstead) plays Rosie Velez--a woman who waddles her way to a town named Chili Verde. With a parasol to protect her from the baking desert sun, Rosie runs into Hard Case Williams and his libidinous motley gang of outlaws. Williams--the bible-quoting, perfume-allergic, bad man isn't prepared for Rosie's zest for survival or the murderous power of those thunder thighs. So after leaving the gang members in the dust, Rosie continues on her way to Chili Verde. Rosie meets a mysterious, silent stranger, Abel Wood (Tab Hunter), and the unlikely pair travel together.

Chili Verde is more or less run by saloonkeeper, Marguerita Ventura (Lainie Kazan). Soon it is clear that both Rosie and Marguerita are vying for the attentions of Abel Wood. To this love triangle throw in buried treasure, a tattooed map showing the location of the buried treasure, the world's oldest salon girl (Big Ed), gunslingers and a couple of very raunchy songs, and you have a splendid parody of the spaghetti western. The title "Lust in the Dust" is a reference to the film "Duel in the Sun," and you'll understand why if you watch the film. All the elements of the spaghetti western are here--the silent stranger who protects the sanctity of womanhood, the hidden agenda of the mysterious stranger, and even the familiar baddie, Bernado, who wears black. The film is full of some great lines. For example, Rosie says to Marguerita, "I've been poor all my life," and Marguerita replies, "You've got it all wrong, Honey. You're not poor--you're cheap." The best lines and the best laughs are delivered by Rosie and Marguerita. The songs performed by Divine and Lainie Kazan are priceless.

For Divine fans, this film really shouldn't be missed. It's a good, crude, tasteless laugh, and that's all it's supposed to be. The film reunites Divine and Tab Hunter--they made a successful screen pair in "Polyester.""Lust in the Dust" has adult themes, and adult humour, and it's not for the kiddies--displacedhuman

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Here's how director Sam Peckinpah described his motivation behind The Wild Bunch at the time of the film's 1969 release: "I was trying to tell a simple story about bad men in changing times. The Wild Bunch is simply what happens when killers go to Mexico. The strange thing is you feel a great sense of loss when these killers reach the end of the line." All of these statements are true, but they don't begin to cover the impact that Peckinpah's film had on the evolution of American movies. Now the film is most widely recognized as a milestone event in the escalation of screen violence, but that's a label of limited perspective. Of course, Peckinpah's bloody climactic gunfight became a masterfully directed, photographed, and edited ballet of graphic violence that transcended the conventional Western and moved into a slow-motion realm of pure cinematic intensity. But the film--surely one of the greatest Westerns ever made--is also a richly thematic tale of, as Peckinpah said, "bad men in changing times." The year is 1913 and the fading band of thieves known as the Wild Bunch (led by William Holden as Pike) decide to pull one last job before retirement. But an ambush foils their plans, and Peckinpah's film becomes an epic yet intimate tale of betrayed loyalties, tenacious rivalry, and the bunch's dogged determination to maintain their fading code of honor among thieves. The 144-minute director's cut enhances the theme of male bonding that recurs in many of Peckinpah's films, restoring deleted scenes to deepen the viewer's understanding of the friendship turned rivalry between Pike and his former friend Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan), who now leads a posse in pursuit of the bunch, a dimension that adds resonance to an already classic American film. The Wild Bunch is a masterpiece that should not be defined strictly in terms of its violence, but as a story of mythic proportion, brimming with rich characters and dialogue and the bittersweet irony of outlaw traditions on the wane. --Jeff Shannon

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Incredible movie, horrible DVD

Does anybody at Warner DVD care about Sam Peckinpah? This movie deserves much better than this edition. One disc? With two sides you have to flip halfway through? Very distracting! Decent scene selection guide. Terrible menu. No commentary. Very disappointing to say the least. But you've gotta have Wild Bunch on DVD, so this will have to do.

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Fans of Armageddon might see one or two resemblances between that 1998 box office hit and Hellfighters, a 1968 action film by Andrew V. McLaglen, one of John Wayne's favorite directors in his late career. (Their joint ventures included Chisum, Cahill: United States Marshal, and McLintock!) Wayne plays an oil well firefighter in the mold of Red Adair, turning up anywhere in the world where a geyser of fire is shooting up from a once-profitable gusher. His right-hand man (Jim Hutton) has questionable judgment about safety matters and is a scoundrel with the ladies--and neither fact is lost on Wayne when Hutton's character marries his long-lost daughter (Katharine Ross, a mere year after The Graduate). The film is an early entry in the disaster-meets-soap-opera genre that flourished in the '70s with such titles as The Towering Infernoand The Poseidon Adventure. McClaglen gets a lot of crackle out of his action scenes (many of the firefighting sequences are still startling in their intensity) and turns twin love stories (Hutton and Ross, Wayne and Vera Miles) into frothy studies of adult manners, with equal hints of Howard Hawks and Sidney Sheldon. The widescreen image on DVD offers viewers a chance to see what was then a developing vogue for gratuitous breadth and scope in all its goofy, self-congratulatory glory. (Is it necessary to look at a golf course the way one might look at an African veldt? Hellfighters says yes!) The DVD also includes production notes and written bios on the stars, plus optional French and Spanish subtitles and an optional Spanish soundtrack. The cast and sundry thrills make this film highly enjoyable, and easily forgivable for indulging in such inanities as a subplot concerning--hold on--Venezuelan terrorists! The Duke lives! --Tom Keogh

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Hardly ever mentioned in the category of lightning-paced comedies--the His Girl Friday and Preston Sturges kind--is this breathless cold war farce from the great Billy Wilder. Adapted from a one-act play by Ferenc Molnár, Wilder and collaborator I.A.L. Diamond's hilarious screenplay is a whirlwind collection of one-liners, gags, and double-entendres, anchored for the cameras by Jimmy Cagney's cagey and frenetic performance (one of his best), and, under Wilder's direction, executed with diamond-like precision. The gangster-movie icon plays a Coca-Cola executive in West Berlin (the film's 1961 release put it squarely in the middle of the world's laserlike focus on East vs. West tensions) who has parlayed expanding American consumerism into a chance to break through the Iron Curtain and sell "the pause that refreshes" to thirsty comrades. But when his Atlanta boss's visiting 17-year-old daughter (Pamela Tiffin), a boy-crazy Southern tornado, reveals that she has secretly married an American-hating German Commie (Horst Buchholz), Cagney's big-American-fish-in-a-European-pond lifestyle is threatened, especially once Daddy hops a plane to Germany. As the plot accelerates, the lines literally spit out of the cast's mouths--the title refers to Cagney's character's rapid-fire rattling off of lists of tasks--and Wilder's penchant for urbane nastiness is perfectly measured by the order of the whole crazy circus. This movie takes gleeful potshots at both sides of a conflict that terrified audiences in its day, but has aged beautifully to become a fascinating time capsule, an exhilarating litany of zingers and a potent blueprint for razor-sharp political satire. Cagney would retire after this movie for 20 years (returning for 1981's Ragtime), and it's hardly any wonder: he has the energy of 10 performances in this one film. --Robert Abele

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