From the Rental Vault: A Mixed Trio

Only seven times in the history of the Oscars has one movie taken the awards for both best actor and best actress; the last time was 1997. In South Korea, the last time was 2011, as Park Hae-il and Moon Chae-won captured the Grand Bell Awards (Korean moviedom's Oscars) for their roles as brother and sister in the historical drama War of the Arrows.

The pair play the grown-up Choi Nam-yi and Choi Ja-in, orphaned when their father is killed by agents of a king opposed to the ruler he serves. At his direction, they have fled to a remote village in Joeson (the name given to Korea in the 17th century) to stay with his friend. But when the friend arranges Ja-in's marriage against Nam-yi's wishes, he prepares to leave the village, only to return to try to warn against an invasion by Manchurian solders intent in kidnapping people of Joeson for slaves. With only his skill as a bowman, Nam-yi must track the invaders, stop them and rescue not only his sister but the other villagers as well.

Leading the Manchurians who track Nam-yi is Jyuushinta (Ryoo Seung-rong), a warrior who despises the weak villagers and can't believe one of them is standing up to them. Park clearly displays the desperate determination of a man trying to save his last relative against impossible odds, and Moon adds surprising layers as the sister who is something more than a damsel in distress. Ryoo is also effective as Jyuushinta grows in respect for the skill and spirit of man he hates and seeks more than anything to kill. Kim Mu-yeol as Kim Seo-goon -- the man Ja-in will marry -- adds some dimension as well as he finds himself stronger than even he believed he could be. In one sense, War of the Arrows is a long chase scene, but it's done well, with a lot of suspense and characters in which a viewer can take interest without wasting his or her time.

-----

Character actors are often known for working in a whole lot of movies. Rarely if ever taking lead roles, they nevertheless rarely lack for employment in movies that want their particular "type." That can also mean they work in movies of widely varying quality. During 1956, longtime Western actor Chill Wills found himself onscreen opposite James Dean, Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor in the award-winning Giant. And he also found himself onscreen opposite Lance Fuller, Sterling Holloway and Cathy Downs in the award-avoiding Kentucky Rifle.

Wills is a part of a wagon train with longtime friend Jason Clay (Fuller) and a cast of folks who happened to show up for work that day. Tobias and Clay have joined the train to haul 100 Kentucky rifles westward to help protect settlers. The extra-long rifled barrel of the "Kaintuck" makes it much more accurate that other weapons in common use at the time, and Willis often waxes rhapsodic about it -- he has at least two speeches singing its praise. But the wagon breaks down and the train boss can't wait for them to fix it, so the people traveling in that wagon are stranded while they make repairs. Unfortunately, sparks are flying between Clay and Amy Connors (Downs), although she has been traveling west with another man. Still more unfortunately, Comanches want the rifles and are ready to attack the lone wagon to get them.

Even though Wills has top billing, the actual leading man is Lance Fuller, who blands his way through the movie like he got paid 1) up front and 2) not much. The conflict between him and Amy's original suitor is paint-by-numbers and the Comanches are notable for having what is at best an inconsistent plan of attack. I suspect that if the Wills family sent out a Christmas newsletter in 1956, it featured Giant pretty heavily and Kentucky Rifle not at all, and I couldn't blame them.

-----

There are probably not many actors in movie history who could manage to bring intensity to the screen like Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier, but their third onscreen partnership in The Bedford Incident seems curiously lacking in that quality. Widmark is wrapped quite a bit too tightly as Eric Finlander, captain of the USS Bedford on patrol near Greenland. But Poitier is distinctly laid back as writer Ben Munceford, on board the Bedford to write a story about a U.S. Navy destroyer at sea.

It turns out, though, that Munceford aims as much to write a story about Finlander as about the Bedford, as the captain has drawn attention of the wrong kind for his role and his remarks following a confrontation with a Soviet submarine near Cuba. Now nearly obsessed with locating the subs he knows patrol the North Atlantic, the captain is driving his crew dangerously hard in order to locate them and force them away from NATO nation waters.

The movie is taken from Mark Rascovich's novel of the same name, and Rascovich drew heavily on the obsessed Captain Ahab from Moby-Dick for his story.

But we don't see the tension that's supposed to be draining the crew except in a very few instances towards the end when it needs to be there for the story. James MacArthur especially, as a young ensign that Finlander rides hard in order to help shape him as an officer, exhibits no particular signs of stress until late in the story. We're just told the crew is stressed instead of shown it, which is one of the least effective storytelling choices for writers as well as moviemakers.

Other movies have explored similar themes more effectively and with a much more developed sense of suspense and tension. Crimson Tide pitted Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman against each other in a similar crisis situation, Bedford might have benefited by making Poitier an officer on Finlander's crew who had some notion of reining in his increasingly obsessive captain. As it is, The Bedford Incident is a showcase of some good performances, a little bit of submarine-hunting tension, some slice-of-life work aboard a US Navy ship (as well as some wildly improbable elements too) that doesn't manage to add up to the sum of its parts.