Victor Argo Movies

Set in the Caribbean, Firepower is one of those "celebrity salads," featuring a glittering all-star cast. Sophia Loren heads the ensemble as Adele, the widow of a murdered chemist. Believing that a multimillionaire industrialist is the culprit, Adele determines that she can expect no help from the authorities. Thus she engages the services of retired professional assassin Jerry Fanori (James Coburn), who in turn enlists the aid of troubleshooter Catlett (O.J. Simpson). Watch for Jake LaMotta, the ex-prizefighter whose life was dramatized in Raging Bull, in a supporting part. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jim (James Garner) wants to know why his dad Rocky (Noah Beery Jr.), currently vacationing in Hawaii, has been receiving huge sums of money in the mail. The Feds would also like the answer to that question--and there are several other interested parties lurking in the shadows. As usual, Angel (played by episode director Stuart Margolin) is no help whatsoever in extricating Jim from the plotline's deadly complications, but Rocky manages to "repay" Angel with a sublimely unique revenge. Future Magnum P.I. costar Roger E. Mosley appears in this final episode of The Rockford Files' third season as a sinister loan shark who has a remarkable way with words. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

"All the animals come out at night" -- and one of them is a cabby about to snap. In Martin Scorsese's classic 1970s drama, insomniac ex-Marine Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) works the nightshift, driving his cab throughout decaying mid-'70s New York City, wishing for a "real rain" to wash the "scum" off the neon-lit streets. Chronically alone, Travis cannot connect with anyone, not even with such other cabbies as blowhard Wizard (Peter Boyle). He becomes infatuated with vapid blonde presidential campaign worker Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), who agrees to a date and then spurns Travis when he cluelessly takes her to a porno movie. After an encounter with a malevolent fare (played by Scorsese), the increasingly paranoid Travis begins to condition (and arm) himself for his imagined destiny, a mission that mutates from assassinating Betsy's candidate, Charles Palatine (Leonard Harris), to violently "saving" teen hooker Iris (Jodie Foster) from her pimp, Sport (Harvey Keitel). Travis' bloodbath turns him into a media hero; but has it truly calmed his mind?

Written by Paul Schrader, Taxi Driver is an homage to and reworking of cinematic influences, a study of individual psychosis, and an acute diagnosis of the latently violent, media-fixated Vietnam era. Scorsese and Schrader structure Travis' mission to save Iris as a film noir version of John Ford's late Western The Searchers (1956), aligning Travis with a mythology of American heroism while exposing that myth's obsessively violent underpinnings. Yet Travis' military record and assassination attempt, as well as Palatine's political platitudes, also ground Taxi Driver in its historical moment of American in the 1970s. Employing such techniques as Godardian jump cuts and ellipses, expressive camera moves and angles, and garish colors, all punctuated by Bernard Herrmann's eerie final score (finished the day he died), Scorsese presents a Manhattan skewed through Travis' point-of-view, where De Niro's now-famous "You talkin' to me" improv becomes one more sign of Travis' madness. Shot during a New York summer heat wave and garbage strike, Taxi Driver got into trouble with the MPAA for its violence. Scorsese desaturated the color in the final shoot-out and got an R, and Taxi Driver surprised its unenthusiastic studio by becoming a box-office hit. Released in the Bicentennial year, after Vietnam, Watergate, and attention-getting attempts on President Ford's life, Taxi Driver's intense portrait of a man and a society unhinged spoke resonantly to the mid-'70s audience -- too resonantly in the case of attempted Reagan assassin and Foster fan John W. Hinckley. Taxi Driver went on to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, but it lost the Best Picture Oscar to the more comforting Rocky. Anchored by De Niro's disturbing embodiment of "God's lonely man," Taxi Driver remains a striking milestone of both Scorsese's career and 1970s Hollywood. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

The made-for-TV Force Five can be described as "The Dirty Dozen Minus Seven." All that's missing is the WW II backdrop and the murderous impulses of the protagonists. Lt. Roy Kessler (Gerald Gordon) heads a police undercover unit, consisting of former convicts with unique lawbreaking skills (one is a swindler, another a burglar, etc.) The audience is never certain whether or not the members of "Force Five" have truly reformed, adding an extra layer of tension. In this pilot for a potential TV series, Kessler's men tackle the case of a basketball star's murder. For the record, the rest of the "five" are played by Nicholas Pryor, James Hampton, Roy Jenson and Bill Lucking. Force Five first aired March 28, 1975. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

David Janssen stars as private eye Harry Orwell in the made-for-TV Smile, Jenny, You're Dead. Investigating the murder of his friend's son-in-law, Harry sizes up the dead man's wife Jenny (Andrea Marcovicci) as the most likely suspect. The actual killer--and we're really not giving anything away here--is Zalman King, a psycho photographer who carries a torch for Jenny. There's a particularly exciting rooftop climax in this one, made doubly so by Andrea Marcovicci's depiction of stark, raw, terror. First telecast February 3, 1974, Smile, Jenny, You're Dead served as the 72-minute pilot for the David Janssen TV series Harry O. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

"You don't make up for your sins in church; you do it in the streets; you do it at home. The rest is bulls--t, and you know it." Returning to the autobiographical milieu of his 1968 debut Who's That Knocking at My Door? for his third feature, Martin Scorsese examined the daily struggles of a wannabe hood to keep his morals straight on the streets of Little Italy. Driven equally by his wish to become a respectable gangster like his uncle (Cesare Danova) and his desire to live his life like St. Francis, Charlie (Harvey Keitel) takes on his energetically unhinged friend Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro) as his own personal penance, intervening to get Johnny Boy to pay off a debt to the local loan shark Michael (Richard Romanus). Despite his promises to his epileptic girlfriend Teresa (Amy Robinson) that they will move out of Little Italy once he strengthens his position in his uncle's world, Charlie's involvement with Johnny Boy further ensnares him in the neighborhood. When Johnny Boy decides to mouth off to Michael rather than pay him, Charlie, Johnny Boy, and Teresa try to flee Michael's murderous anger (and an assassin played by Scorsese), forcing Charlie to realize that the rules of the streets do not mesh with absolution. Whereas fellow "film school generation" director Francis Ford Coppola transformed the Hollywood gangster movie into metaphorical epics about the Mafia and capitalism in The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974), Scorsese revised the genre in the opposite direction, focusing on the gritty minutiae of daily life and drawing from personal memory. Combining documentary-style realism (even though most of the film was shot in L.A.); kinetic editing and camera movement; and expressionistic lighting, angles, and film speed, Scorsese presents an intimate picture of the trivial incidents and latent violence of Charlie's and Johnny Boy's world, naturalistically unfolding their experiences rather than simply explaining what motivates them. They lead a claustrophobic, petty existence that Scorsese and screenwriter Mardik Martin witnessed growing up in Little Italy, complete with a soundtrack of hit songs like "Be My Baby" and "Jumping Jack Flash" that had poured out of neighborhood radios. Mean Streets opened at the New York Film Festival to excellent notices and played strongly in New York but failed to duplicate that level of business elsewhere. Even so, Mean Streets established Scorsese and De Niro as formidable young talents and marked the beginning of a long-running and fertile collaboration that continued in such films as Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1983), and Goodfellas (1990). Scorsese's exceptional grasp of the texture of day-to-day life, the rhythm and cadences of street talk, and cinema's visual and aural possibilities makes Mean Streets one of the pivotal films of the 1970s, as well as of Scorsese's career, and an influence on such future filmmakers as Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino, among many others. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

In this organized crime drama (one of many that came in the wake of The Godfather, Tony (Frederic Forrest) and Vince (Al Lettieri) are two brothers whose father is a high-ranking Mafia kingpin; they've followed him into the family business, operating a profitable drug ring. While waiting for a delivery of a large supply of heroin, the pair are ambushed, which leads them to suspect their associate Frank (Robert Forster) is a snitch. They soon realize that the corruption within their organization runs deeper than expected when they discover that their father has been assassinated. Don Angelo (Anthony Quinn) is chosen to be the new boss in a tense meeting of the Mafia brass, but Tony and Frank refuse to follow his leadership. Meanwhile, Orlando (Charles Cioffi), a mob accountant whose boss, Don Bernardo (J. Duke Russo), is behind bars, has a plan to bring himself to a position of power in the mob; he engineers a situation that will put Frank's fiancée Ruby (Angel Thompkins) into the arms of Don Angelo, thereby sending Frank into a murderous rage. Cult figure Sid Haig has a supporting role as The Arab. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Claudia Jennings stars as Karen Walker, a woman who sets her sights for roller derby success. Released a few months after Raquel Welch's Kansas City Bomber, Unholy Rollers gives the Welch film a run for its money, despite its exploitation budget, by adding nudity and lesbianism. After being sexually harassed by her loutish boss at the factory, Karen walks out of her job and tries out for the roller derby. She quickly wins a spot on the team and rises to the top, intent on ignoring the violence and grandstanding and concentrating on winning games. Although her teammates dislike her, Karen becomes a hit with the roller derby fans. But soon, her desire for victory becomes an obsession and she ends up losing not only her cool but also most of her clothes. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide