BEFORE: I'm watching this on late Tuesday/early Wednesday, but I may be a bit late in posting because Wednesday night I have to work at a screening of "Pinocchio" - not the new Disney remake, but the newer Guillermo del Toro stop-motion one. The director's going to be there - actually, both of them, and the co-director I know from one of my past jobs. Should be a wild evening, and the theater's probably going to be packed. I'll post this as soon as I can, after.
Jane Seymour carries over from "The War with Grandpa", which was released in 2020 (but filmed in 2017). Today's film was released in 1984, which means I'm jumping back 36 years in Ms. Seymour's career - I love actors with LONG filmographies, it really makes this a lot easier for me.
The reason this is on the list is that it was on the HBO Max platform, but just for a brief time. So I added it to my list there, but then I wasn't able to link to it from "Quigley Down Under", which I watched last year - was it last year? I want to say last year. Anyway, this one made it to my list, then got stranded there after I couldn't link to it - and it's not even on HBO Max any more, which means I have to rent it from iTunes for $3.99. But I'm OK with that, because this film is going to get me closer to Christmas, and hey, now it's off the list - it's very rare that I have to delete something from my list because it's not available anywhere, but I did have to do that with one of my planned Christmas movies this year. More on that in a couple of weeks.
THE PLOT: A handsome jewel thief is arrested and in order to avoid prison, must break into the heavily guarded German Embassy to steal millions in diamonds.
AFTER: Well, I knew there was a reason why I don't dip back into movies from the 1980's very often, it's just too depressing. Bob Hoskins (who'll be in my next movie, too) died back in 2014, and everybody agreed it was too soon. Warren Clarke died the same year, and so did Christopher Malcolm, and Ed Lauter the year before - when I go through the IMDB list, it seems like half the cast of this movie is no longer alive. Tom Selleck is still alive, I know because there are new episodes of "Blue Bloods" airing, but while searching the internet it's easy to find his fake obituary being used as clickbait - sure, you can follow the link to "Dead Celebrities-dot-net", but they phrased the article VERY carefully to not really indicate whether he's alive or dead. I guess so when he does pass away, they won't have to re-write it? That's kind of sick, but also genius.
The other reason is that everyone else is getting older - Jane Seymour and Lauren Hutton have both reached the age where the IMDB graciously doesn't even LIST their birth years, and you have to go to Wikipedia to find out how old they are. (Jane's 71 and Lauren's 79.). We just lost Kirstie Alley at the age of 71, and honestly it kind of feels like every famous woman I had the hots for when I was in my teens is over 60 now. Brooke Shields is 57, Lynda Carter is 71, Loni Anderson is 77, and it just gets worse from there. Phoebe Cates is 59, do I have to go on? It's too painful that everybody keeps getting older, but I guess that beats the alternative.
But I avoided "Lassiter" for 38 years, somehow. Hey, today's the day, no time like the present - or no time like 1939, when the film takes place. This was released JUST as Tom Selleck had hit it big on TV as "Magnum, P.I.", but after "High Road to China". The story is that Selleck was supposed to be cast as Indiana Jones in "Raiders of the Lost Ark", but he had to make a choice, it was either Magnum or Indy, and he chose Magnum, which left the role open for Harrison Ford. Selleck later played an Indy-like character in "High Road to China", then followed that up with another period piece, "Lassiter". Back then it wasn't very easy for movie stars to do TV shows, or for TV stars to make movies, but Selleck crossed over like it wasn't even a problem. (Selleck is back on TV and he's 77 now, but nobody seems to care how old male actors are.)
"Lassiter" is supposed to be a film about a jewel thief, but there are really only two scenes where he steals anything, one at the beginning and one near the end, and then the entire middle part of the film is him either trying to avoid doing the embassy heist, or talking about how to do the embassy heist - and it's a LONG middle part in a shortish movie. During this long middle part he gets threatened a lot by the British inspector, cajoled by the U.S. FBI agent, and seduced by the German fraulein with a taste for torture and rough sexplay. Oh, and he's married, by the way, and his wife keeps threatening to cheat on him, but she never goes through with it. Lassiter, on the other hand, keeps saying he'll never cheat on his wife, but then of course he does. He says she would know if he were lying because he'd tell her - yeah, right.
But if he doesn't steal the gems from the German embassy, then the Inspector's going to frame him for some made-up crime and he'll serve 20 years in prison. Why does the inspector need to make up a crime, if he knows that Lassiter is a thief? Why not just arrest him for his real crimes? Ah, but they need to steal those Czech diamonds and keep Hitler from selling them in South America to fund the Nazi military buildup. OK, sure, let me know how that works out.
It's important above all to remember that there were NO GOOD Nazis. We don't talk about World War II and say, "There were good people on both sides." Why do people like Donald Trump and now Kanye West think that they can advance themselves somehow by saying good things about neo-Fascists, or even Hitler? Who, exactly, are they trying to appeal to? Saying "I like Hitler" is only going to get you shut down, it's not going to appeal to anyone. If you admire Hitler even a little bit, it's best to keep that to yourself - and I say this as someone of mostly German descent. If you're out there saying Hitler was great, you might have missed the message somewhere.
Well, just six more films to go - and five more shifts at the theater - before Christmas break and the end of Movie Year 14.
Also starring Tom Selleck (last seen in "Frank Sinatra: One More for the Road"), Lauren Hutton (last seen in "I Feel Pretty"), Bob Hoskins (last seen in "Mermaids"), Joe Regalbuto (last seen in "The Goodbye Girl"), Ed Lauter (last seen in "Magic"), Warren Clarke, Edward Peel, Paul Antrim, Christopher Malcolm (last seen in "Reds"), Barrie Houghton, Peter Skellern, Harry Towb (last seen in "Barry Lyndon"), Belinda Mayne (last seen in "Wonder Woman 1984"), W. Morgan Sheppard (last seen in "Cry Freedom"), Brian Coburn, Jane Wood (last seen in "Legend"), Tristram Jellinek (last seen in "The Trouble with Spies"), David Warbeck, Nicholas Bond-Owen, Clive Curtis (last seen in "The Gunman"), George Lane Cooper.
RATING: 4 out of 10 crazy boxing fans
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