Ron Nyman Movies
- 1978
Quincy (Jack Klugman) and Sam (Robert Ito) are abducted by the minions of mob boss Vince DiNardi (John Vernon), who makes an offer that our hero can't refuse. DiNaldi has been poisoned, and the doctors have given him only 24 hours to live. With Sam's life being used as a bargaining chip, Quincy is ordered to find out who has administered the fatal dose to DiNaldi, so that the doomed Mafioso can exact a final vengeance. This is the last episode of Quincy, M.E.'s third season. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1977
In an episode obviously inspired by the death of Bruce Lee, Quincy's assistant Sam (Robert Ito) takes it personally when his cousin Tad Kimura, a martial-arts movie star, dies mysteriously while filming his latest picture. As Quincy (Jack Klugman) prepares to perform an autopsy, Sam begs him not to do so, since such an operation would be against Tad's religious beliefs. So adamant is Sam on this point that he quits the Coroner's Office, putting Quincy on the outs with LA's Japanese community and forcing him to chart a brand new course in his investigation. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Director Robert Aldrich (The Longest Yard) re-unites with Burt Reynolds for this hard-edged neo-noir. Lieutenant Phil Gaines (Reynolds) is a cynical Los Angeles police detective amorously involved with an icewater-veined Parisian call girl, Nicole Britton (Catherine Deneuve). On the job, he begins to investigate the shady death of a teenage girl that appears to lead straight to Leo Sellers (Eddie Albert), an attorney with a frightening number of connections. The problem is, Nicole herself has a direct connection to the case - Leo is one of her clients. Meanwhile, Marty Hollinger (Ben Johnson), the victim's father, decides to undertake a grassroots investigation of his own - little realizing that his seemingly murdered daughter was in up to her neck with prostitution, porno movie acting, and dancing as a stripper, facts which suggest that she may have offed herself. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Burt Reynolds, Catherine Deneuve, (more)
- 1963
Based on the novel by Irving Wallace, The Prize takes place in Stockholm, where several laureates gather to accept their Nobel Prizes. At first, the film concentrates on iconoclastic novelist Paul Newman, but he is temporarily shunted to the background when physics expert Edward G. Robinson is kidnaped and replaced by his wicked twin brother. The real Robinson is to be spirited behind the Iron Curtain, while the "fake" Robinson is to disrupt the awards ceremony with an anti-American tirade. Newman gets wind of the plot, and with the help of Swedish foreign office functionary Elke Sommer, he endeavors to rescue the real Robinson and expose the phony-who has yet another trick up his sleeve before the film is over. We'll go along with the fantastic plot convolutions of The Prize, provided we don't have to swallow the premise of another man's voice emanating from that familiar Eddie Robinson mug. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Newman, Edward G. Robinson, (more)
John Ford's last film to deal with World War II, Donovan's Reef is an alternately comical and sentimental look back on the fighting Navy men from that war, and how and where -- in Ford's eyes, and Frank Nugent and James Edward Grant's script -- they should have ended up. Michael "Guns" Donovan (John Wayne), Thomas "Boats" Gilhooley (Lee Marvin), and Dr. William Dedham (Jack Warden), a trio of navy veterans who fought on the Pacific island of Haleakalowa during the war, now live on the island. Donovan and Gilhooley, biding time and enjoying themselves, engage in rough-house hijinks among themselves, and are both part of the doctor's extended family, enjoying the good will of the islanders for whom they fought during the war. While Dedham is away on a call to a neighboring island, his grown daughter, Amelia (Elizabeth Allen), from his first marriage, whom he has never seen, announces that she is arriving from Boston to determine Dedham's fitness of character to inherit the majority shares in the family shipping business. Donovan contrives to present Dedham's three Polynesian children, whom the doctor had with the island's hereditary princess, as his own, and also squires Amelia around the island in her father's absence. In the process, the cold Bostonian woman discovers a whole world -- of passion, joy, heroism, and a life among men and women whose lives have been about something other than making money -- that she's never known. She also understands all of the good that her father has accomplished away from Boston, even though it entailed abandoning her. Sparks and even a few fists fly between Donovan and Amelia (and between Donovan and several other characters), in the usual Ford rough-house manner, before their eventual reconciliation and a romantic clinch at the end, in this sweet, sentimental comedy-drama. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Wayne, Lee Marvin, (more)
