Word: mobbing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, the heavy iron gates were trampled down by a crying, shouting mob. The homecoming Israelis who debarked from the DC-6 chartered by the International Red Cross were literally passed hand over hand above the crowd to joyous relatives. Attending dignitaries, led by retiring Premier Golda Meir and her successor Yitzhak Rabin, had to scramble for their safety as well as their dignity. At Damascus International Airport, meanwhile, 10,000 delirious people, ignoring streams of water played on them from fire-engine hoses, broke through cordons of paratroopers who attempted futilely to hold them back...
...humble hopes for this poorhouse thriller evaporate in the opening sequence. Two mob gunmen arrive at a back-country farm to make a hit. Their quarry is doing some chores. Without a word, they confront him, pull their weapons, shoot him twice in the heart, and go away. Around his still body his pet dog capers and moans. Over in the corral a horse paces desperately. And the screen door on the porch bangs open and closed in the wind. Cliches are not the exclusive province of dialogue...
...Outfit is the sort of yarn (ex-con goes up against the Mob biggies for revenge) that needs to have every moment blasted by visual invention. Director Flynn makes a movie that has been seen before, without either the skill or spirit that distinguished such excellent predecessors as Point Blank and Get Carter...
Duvall is a professional criminal, already at odds with the straight world. Now he must also stand against the criminal world as he wages a bloody vendetta against the Mob that had his brother killed. He gets to them by busting up some of their more successful undertakings (a casino, a bookie parlor) and turning the profits over to his sister-in-law. He himself waits for a clear shot at Mr. Big, a long and weary wait...
Hughes creates a real character, possibly to the detriment of some others in the play. The townspeople are given time to develop individual identities--they are much more than a mob--but often each is only a grotesque caricature, too easily contemptible. The point about these people, even as they stand up for solo absolution speeches--the I-take-no-responsibility echos of collective murder--is that they're supposed to be nice middleclass folks. Maybe the moral resonance of the play infects the actors with a louder evil. Anyway the only ones who can carry off the bourgeois ambivalence...