Word: gould
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Frozen in bronze, the black infantrymen trudge forever forward, their rifles scraping the metaled sky. On horseback alongside them, stern, proud, aristocratic, rides their young colonel, Robert Gould Shaw. Here, just across from the gold-domed statehouse, Shaw led the North's first black regiment down Beacon Street and off to war. "The very flower of grace and chivalry," John Greenleaf Whittier wrote of Shaw's departure, "he seemed to me beautiful and awful, as an angel of God come down to lead the host of freedom to victory...
...Edward Asner) is giving Murphy a hard time but Murphy can't really be concerned with this since his new love, a Puerto-Rican nurse, has a dark secret and the local drug-dealer is up to no good and the whole neighborhood is being torn apart by riots. Gould orchestrates these dramatic situations with the skill of an armless conductor...
Measure for measure, Petrie's incompetence matches Gould's. As illustrated by The Betsy and Resurrection, Petrie is an equally mediocre talent. In Fort Apache he relies on pointless camera meanderings, a la Brian De Palma, to give the illusion of a consistent style. The frequent tracking, zooming, and panning--usually from Paul Newman's right profile to his left--generally serve no purpose...
...poorly concieved, poorly written character. He's the Last Honest Cop, supposedly appalled by the corruption in the precinct and the squalor in the streets, an ancient cliche. Murphy might have been utilized as the liberal mouthpiece for the film-makers' ideas on urban blight--but Petrie and Gould blow it again. Murphy tells his Puerto Rican girlfriend that he stays in the Bronx because he wants to help the victimized citizenry, he says he understands them: "You see Puerto Ricans are really no different from us Irish. We both like to dance and drink and make love." Great; ethnic...
...rest of the cast fares better, though their performances display little more than simple competence. Particularly good are Wahl who brings an authentic Brooklyn charm to Corelli and Rachel Ticotin who, as Isabella, manages to survive several of Gould's most abysmal lines...