David Keith Movies

Bull Meechum (Robert Duvall) loves fighting almost as much as he loves the Marine Corps. Profane, cocky, and arrogant, he's a great fighter pilot -- and he knows it. His boss hates his guts, but knows that if he's going to straighten out his lagging squadron, Meechum is the man to do it. The story and irony of The Great Santini is in Meechum's total intolerance of family life and fatherhood. Meechum has a lovely, supportive wife, Lillian (Blythe Danner), an earnest, likeable son, Ben (Michael O'Keefe), three smaller children, and a good home, but Meechum finds the pastoral nature of peacetime totally incompatible with his gung-ho nature. So he begins to drink. He drills his family unmercifully, like recruits. He hammers his son relentlessly until, in a basketball game, his son fights back, and the family cheers Ben's efforts. Tension builds in the household until, during one drunken night, Meechum breaks down. Based on a best-selling novel by Pat Conroy, The Great Santini earned critical raves but fared poorly at the box office. Duvall's performance as Meechum is generally regarded as one of his greatest. ~ Nick Sambides, Jr., Rovi

The Emmy-winning TV movie Friendly Fire was adapted by Fay Kanin from the fact-based book by C.D.B. Bryan. Carol Burnett and Ned Beatty play Peg and Gene Mullen, the parents of a young soldier who is killed in Vietnam. Dissatisfied with the "official" version of their son's death, Peg and Gene conduct a soul-wrenching investigation of their own. Only after months of military stonewalling does the truth come out: their son was accidentally killed by "friendly fire" from American artillery. This revelation leads to Peg Mullen's full-scale embracing of the anti-war movement. Even allowing for the grimness of the story, Carol Burnett's taciturn performance wears on the viewer after a while (one wonders if Peg Mullen ever smiled before her son died). Far better within the framework of the film is the superbly detailed performance of Ned Beatty as Gene. Friendly Fire was originally offered on April 22, 1979, as an ABC Theatre presentation. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Fact-based drama starring Robert Redford as Henry Brubaker, the new inmate at a run-down Southern prison that's become notorious for corruption and violence. After he witnesses several instances of gross misconduct and defuses a tense confrontation with a crazed inmate (Morgan Freeman), Brubaker reveals to the guards and administrators that he's not a criminal at all, but the new warden, assigned by the governor to infiltrate the facility undercover. His identity confirmed, Brubaker takes office and sets about shaping up policies and procedures, despite resistance from, incredibly, even some of the more entitled convicts. With the help of the prison's chief trustee (Yaphet Kotto) and a compassionate ally (Jane Alexander), the warden effects some positive change, but powerful business interests line up against him when his ideas threaten their financial bottom line. A reform-minded, socially conscious, and politically liberal picture of the type usually associated with director Norman Jewison, this fact-based prison drama was the result of a troubled production that saw original director Bob Rafelson replaced with Cool Hand Luke (1967) and The Amityville Horror (1979) helmsman Stuart Rosenberg. Despite the backstage turmoil, Brubaker was an acclaimed release and an Oscar-nominated, career-finale triumph for co-screenwriter Arthur A. Ross, creator of Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954) and father of successful writer/director Gary Ross. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

Inspired by Johnny Paycheck's song of the same name, Take This Job and Shove It is a comedy/drama of big business vs. little guys. His corporate employers put Frank Maclin in charge of a project to shape up a newly acquired brewery. It just so happens that this places him back in his Iowa hometown after ten years of being away. He soon is faced with a dilemma and he must consider both his position with the company and the interests of the blue-collar employees. ~ Kristie Hassen, Rovi

In this run-of-the-mill romantic drama, the title Independence Day refers to the usual Fourth of July fireworks festival in the U.S. but also to the dilemma of Mary Ann Taylor (Kathleen Quinlan) who lives in a small town but has a big ambition to go to the city and study photography for a profession -- should she go, or should she stay in her hometown with the man she loves? Focus on Mary Ann's dilemma slips to other characters -- her boyfriend's suicidal sister (Dianne Wiest) who is abused by her husband, the abusive husband's equally nasty father, and Mary Ann's boyfriend himself who is preparing his Camaro for the annual Fourth of July race. With the story moving from here to there, hampered by some extraordinary leaps of imagination, the narrative is thinned considerably by the time the Fourth is at hand. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Set at an indeterminate point in the future, this drama with an overt anti-communist message begins as an ostensible war movie: Russian and Cuban forces have invaded the U.S. and are viciously eliminating the inhabitants of a small town, when a group of teens escapes and plans a counterattack. Jed (Patrick Swayze), Robert (C. Thomas Howell), and six of their friends watch in amazement as soldiers parachute into their town and start shooting. The teens grab a pickup truck, stock up on supplies at the local store, and head for the hills. Meanwhile, the men in the town -- after a minimal resistance -- are rounded up and held at a drive-in theater converted into a concentration camp. The sadistic Soviet military then make them watch acclaimed Russian director Sergei Eisenstein's 1938 classic Alexander Nevsky, as their punishing rehabilitation begins. Meanwhile, after minimal resistance from the adults, a Cuban, Bella (Ron O'Neal), is put in charge and is not certain how he can really defeat the teen army. The Soviets and Cubans have so far defeated the American Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force, but these teens are really something else. After a successful ambush, the teen guerrillas gear up for future forays, when they are suddenly betrayed by one of their number and by doubts about the morality of what they are doing. Red Dawn is noteworthy for being the first movie released with the PG-13 rating, created by the MPAA after public outcry over violent content in the PG-rated Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

In this made-for-TV thriller, a sportscaster engineers a daring escape from a Soviet prison camp after being snared by a KGB scheme. Mickey Almon (David Keith), a sports star-turned-journalist, arrives in Moscow to cover an international tournament. Soon, though, he's tempted to play the hero once again, this time not as an athlete, but as a smuggler of repressed scientific research. Against the advice of his wife (Nancy Paul), Mickey agrees to help the Russians who've approached him, but the entire intrigue turns out to be a set-up. Physically neglected and emotionally tortured in a stinking hole for several weeks, Mickey agrees to sign a confession after being told that it will guarantee his release. Instead, he receives a ten-year sentence and soon finds himself on a train bound for Siberia. Sewing rough-hewn gloves with the other foreign prisoners and living for the day each month when his care package arrives, Mickey soon resolves to escape or die trying. To that end, he enlists a cynical British spy (Malcolm McDowell) and a group of Soviet prisoners in a plan to escape via a supply train that can get them within reach of the West -- if only they can find a way to get onto it undetected. Gulag was directed by Roger Young, who previously helmed such lauded TV movies as Bitter Harvest and would go on to direct the original televised version of Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi

A stylish take on the woman in jeopardy and mad killer genres, White of the Eye poses the question, What would you do if you suspected your loving husband to be a serial killer? Arizonan Paul White (David Keith) is an expert at installing high-end stereo systems in the homes of wealthy citizens. He has been married to Joan (Cathy Moriarty) for ten years, having seduced her away from a violent criminal, Mike DeSantos (Alan Rosenberg). A series of brutal murders of well-to-do women has citizens of Paul and Joan's town on edge. When evidence at the scene of the second murder points to Paul, Joan tries to fend off the suspicions of police detective Charles Mendoza (Art J. Evans), even as she begins to see signs of violence in her husband that confirm the accusation. Director Donald Cammell, who co-wrote the script with his wife China, offers a fragmented narrative characterized by quick cutting; subjective, handheld camera work; and optical tricks that suggest the unraveling of Paul's mind. ~ Tom Wiener, Rovi

Johnny Wolfe (Charlie Schlatter) is an Ohio teen whose alcoholic mother Marie (Tuesday Weld) has been a huge Elvis Presley fan since the 1950s. To cheer her up on her birthday, Johnny kidnaps the king of rock & roll (David Keith) after a 1972 concert. Elvis settles in to the Wolfe's den by decorating the house to his flamboyant tastes and helping Marie and her daughter Pam (Angela Goethals) through some difficult times. After Johnny convinces Elvis to perform with him at a high-school talent competition, he also lectures Elvis that he has lost touch with his roots and urges him do drop his schmaltzy Las Vegas image. This implausible but entertaining feature was given the go-ahead by the Presley estate and contains none of the legendary excesses that led to the king's death in 1977. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

The made-for-TV Guts and Glory: The Rise and Fall of Oliver North was heralded by the following ad copy: "Patriot. Zealot. Husband. Soldier. Honored. Accused." Add to that "Pedantic" and "Plodding" and you've summed up the film. Presented in two parts, the film traces the career of Oliver North (David Keith) from his years at the US Naval Academy, on to his tour of duty in Vietnam, and ending up with a post on the National Securities Council. Part Two of Guts and Glory covers the Iran-Contra affair, but is forced to leave the denouement open-ended, since North's guilt or innocence was still being deliberated when the film premiered on April 30 and May 2, 1989. The audience is permitted to draw its own conclusions, though Ollie North is no more warm and fuzzy on film than he was in real life. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The Two Jakes is the much-delayed and rather convoluted sequel to the 1975 classic Chinatown. Released in 1990 after an abortive stab at shooting that began in the mid-'80s, the film was the subject of a creative feud between its principals, star Jack Nicholson, producer Robert Evans, and screenwriter Robert Towne. Private eye Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is a middle-aged war hero, paunchy, snobbish about his golf game, and about to marry a lovely and much younger woman. Then a fleeting reference to a woman he once loved that he heard on a wire recording plunges him into a past he has tried to escape. It comes while he was spying on a philandering wife (Meg Tilly) and her paramour in her motel room for her husband, Jake Berman (Harvey Keitel). Then Berman shocks Gittes when he shoots his wife's lover. Gittes is doubly stunned when he learns that Berman was partners with the dead man in a subdivision that may contain huge oil deposits. So now Gittes wonders, was it justifiable homicide or murder? The answer lies in the wife (Madeleine Stowe) of the dead man, her shady oil baron friend (Richard Farnsworth), and in the past he has tried to avoid. ~ Nick Sambides, Jr., Rovi

In Ron Oliver's erotic psychodrama, Shannon Tweed stars as a mother whose teen-age son is traumatized by her new husband and her husband's freeloading brother. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi