Donal O'Brien Movies
Adapted from Umberto Eco's best-selling novel, director Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Name of the Rose is a 14th century murder-mystery thriller starring Sean Connery as a Sherlock Holmes-esque Franciscan monk called William of Baskerville. When a murder occurs at a secluded Benedictine Abbey, William is called in to investigate. As he and his apprentice, Adson von Melk (Christian Slater), delve deeper and deeper into the case, more dead bodies begin to turn up. Eventually, Bernardo Gui, an inquisitor played by F. Murray Abraham gets involved, but he may not have the best intentions. Sean Connery's performance earned him the award for Best Actor at the 1988 British Academy Awards. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sean Connery, F. Murray Abraham, (more)
- 1986
- R
In a complex sci-fi tale set at some point in the not-too-distant future, an evil industrialist named Francis Turner (John Saxon) has created Paco Querak (Daniel Greene), a cyborg who is 70% robot and 30% human. Paco has been programmed to murder a blind ecologist whose environmental activism does not sit well with Turner's bottom-line motivation. But once he is set up to do his job, the 30% human component in Paco only permits him to injure the ecologist, not kill him. With the local police (and eventually just about everyone else) after him, Paco detours to Arizona to look for his true identity. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel Greene, Janet Agren, (more)
- 1982
Blood and gore abound as good takes on evil in this futuristic sci-fi actioner that is basically a knock-off of the Mad Max series with a low-budget Italian twist. The year is 2020 and the setting is post-nuclear holocaust Texas. It's a dusty, nasty world now as can be seen in the opening scenes when a band of drunken outlaws viciously rape and murder innocent nuns at a mission. They then crucify the priest. Their debauched reveling is interrupted by roving rangers who engage the villains in a blood-soaked, bone crunching fight. The rangers manage to save a terrified young woman from the melee, and the heroic leader and she fall in love and head for the peaceful land she describes to him. Years pass. The hero and the girl are married and she is pregnant. He is working at a refinery. Trouble erupts when a meglomaniacal Neo-Nazi dictator and his cruel minions attack the heavily fortified refinery and begin trying to convert the hapless workers to his insane idea of the New Order. Of course, the hero, after witnessing the rape of his wife, decides to get revenge. Unfortunately, the dictator blows the hero away with a machine gun. More time passes and the workers have become slaves to their new leader, but fortunately at this point, the story is far from over and eventually after considerably more blood is graphically spilled, the forces of good inevitably triumph. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Harrison Muller, Al Cliver, (more)
- 1975
This spaghetti western spoof originally travelled under the cumbersome title Jesse and Lester, Two Brothers in a Place Called Trinity (Due Fratelli in un Posto Chiamato Trinita). Jesse is played by former sword-and-sandal habitue Richard Harrison, who also served as coproducer. Lester is portrayed by Donald O'Brien, evidently a newcomer. Choosing different paths in life, Jesse prefers spending time in the local brothel, while Lester opts for the Mormon church. Putting their differences aside, Jesse and Lester fight shoulder to shoulder when the bad guys come calling. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anna Zinneman, Donal O'Brien, (more)
There's a few million dollars' worth of star power and a nickel's worth of plot in the lavish race-car melodrama Grand Prix. Among the participants in this annual cross-continent competition are characters played by James Garner, Yves Montand, Brian Bedford, and Antonio Sabato. Interested parties include Toshiro Mifune (his voice dubbed by Paul Frees), Adolfo Celi, and Claude Dauphin, while the women who agonize on the sidelines include Eva Marie Saint, Jessica Walter, and Françoise Hardy. The racing sequences are top-rank, cleverly utilizing those 1960s devices of helicopter angles and multiple screens. Oscars went to editor Frederic Steinkamp (among others) and the sound-effects supervisor Franklin E. Milton. Filmed on location, Grand Prix made back its cost about half a week into its run. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- James Garner, Eva Marie Saint, (more)
John Frankenheimer directs Burt Lancaster in the tense spy thriller The Train. Lancaster plays Labiche, a French railway inspector. Allied forces are threatening to liberate Paris, so Col. Franz von Waldheim (Paul Scofield) is ordered to move the priceless works of art from the Jeu de Paume Museum to the fatherland. The head of the museum (Suzanne Flon) attempts to convince Labiche that he should sabotage the train on which they are transporting the art. Labiche is more focused on destroying a trainload of German weapons. After his friend is killed trying to stop the train with the art, and after a consciousness-raising conversation with a hotel owner (Jeanne Moreau), Labiche resolves to save the antiquities. Lancaster and Frankenheimer had worked together previously on both Birdman of Alcatraz and Seven Days in May. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield, (more)
