Welcome to the Sunday Morning Antidote Movie!
We are trying something new here at Naked Capitalism. Every Sunday morning a new movie from YouTube will be posted, including Westerns, foreign cinema, documentaries, horror, comedy, sci-fi, war dramas and much more. I want to find films that will appeal to the sophisticated sensibilities of our readership but the occasional clunker will be allowed to sneak in for a bit of cheesy goodness.
Each movie will be viewed before posting to avoid the truly terrible and the terribly edited. A synopsis and a review will accompany each offering, as well as the occasional link to music videos and other interesting items. So take a break from the news of the day and enjoy a curated movie courtesy of Naked Capitalism and yours truly, Semper Loquitur! We look forward to your comments, critiques, and of course movie recommendations of your own.
The first movie we present is The Incident. Set in a New York city subway car circa the late 1960s, it’s a gritty tale of grinding tension. Two hoodlums, fresh from a night of debauchery and violence, terrorize a subway car filled with passengers whose lives are problematic enough without this mayhem.
Written by Nicholas E. Baehr
Directed by Larry Peerce, whose work includes the theatrical feature Goodbye, Columbus (1969), the early rock and roll concert film The Big T.N.T. Show (1965), One Potato, Two Potato (1964), The Other Side of the Mountain (1975) and Two-Minute Warning (1976).
Notable actors: Beau Bridges, Martin Sheen, Ed McMahon, and Ruby Dee.
Warning: Spoilers
Review: Honestly, I was first attracted to this movie because I’d never seen Martin Sheen in his youth so I felt I had to take a look. I’m glad I did. It’s a movie worth watching but also a deeply frustrating one. The cowardice exhibited by most of the passengers will make you wonder if they don’t deserve the terror they have to endure. After a couple of opportunities to gang up on the hoods are let pass by, one passenger finally takes a stand. The fact that no one, including his buddy, assists him will leave you with the satisfaction of seeing the hoods get theirs but with a bad taste in your mouth at the spinelessness of the others.
The movie briefly explores the unhappy lives of the victims before they converge on the subway car. No ones life is in a good place, everyone suffers from problems with themselves and others. Is there a message here? Is their inability to work together to stand up to the hoods a symptom of their internal struggles? If it was meant to be that way, I don’t know if the director succeeded in making that connection clear.
I struggle to categorize the movie. Is it film noire? It’s gritty enough and there is crime aplenty. What do you think?
