*This review contains miner spoilers*
As time goes by, people look to the past decades and usually laugh. They laugh at the clothes that were worn, the lingo that was used, the music that was popular, and the dances that were performed. They also look (and often laugh) at the style of movies. Few decades seem to get more flak than the 70's (though there has been a recent surge of 80's bashing, something I am not very fond of since I liked the 80's). Cinema of the 70's pretty much belonged to gritty cop thrillers brought on by the likes of the Dirty Harry and Shaft and many of their clones. Some of these were good movies with things that make you chuckle in retrospect. However, the recent remake of `Shaft' should have taught us that making a throwback to the past set in the present is not a good idea and `Wilder,' made in the same year, is more proof.
Few actresses can be associated with the 70's as much as Pam Grier, the title character of this movie. Detective Della Wilder and her partner, Harland Lee (Romano Orzari), are pretty tough cookies working the streets. They are good cops, despite Wilder's regular bending of the rules that gets her in hot water with her boss. They get assigned the case where a woman was strangled and her body about to be taken away when the killer was interrupted. The main suspect is a doctor (Rutger Hauer), the former lover of the victim. As Wilder, certain of the doctor's guilt, begins heavily interrogating him, a second murder occurs and evidence starts to show up that it is not the simple work of a serial killer. Instead, Wilder discovers that the two murders, along with numerous disappearances, are linked to an experimental drug administered by a pharmaceutical company, and that this company has some dangerous political connections.
While Grier and the story are pretty good, there is a lot about `Wilder' I did not like. For one, the movie's twists aren't very exciting. A twist is revealed and it leaves very little affect on you. It is also strange how Wilder's tough persona warms up to Hauer's character's very blunt passes. There is also a really terrible, unneeded subplot involving Wilder's quarrelling with her rude and abusive neighbor. But the worst stuff about `Wilder' is Gibbon's 70's frame of mind. His style just isn't very fun to watch. He does things like pepper the whole movie with 70's-like music that feels incredibly wrong. He also does annoying transition tricks like freeze-framing the end moment of a scene for a few seconds before moving to the next scene. That's very awkward, but not quite as awkward as an editing trick of splicing different takes of the same scene together. It looks so disjointed and wrong, like no individual take was correct so they just meshed them together to try to make it look stylish. The worst moment of this occurs in the movie's worst scene within the worst subplot: Wilder has broken into her neighbors' apartment to console the battered wife while the drunken husband shouts at the both of them. As the goofy scene splicing is occurring, you can see things in the background change, like the busted-open door suddenly being closed! Even aside from all this, `Wilder' still isn't up to par because you lose patience with it by the second half. And with that feeling of being a flashback to the 70's, you start to realize not only why we laugh at the things of thirty years ago, but why those same things should be left forgotten. Zantara's score: 4 out of 10.
As time goes by, people look to the past decades and usually laugh. They laugh at the clothes that were worn, the lingo that was used, the music that was popular, and the dances that were performed. They also look (and often laugh) at the style of movies. Few decades seem to get more flak than the 70's (though there has been a recent surge of 80's bashing, something I am not very fond of since I liked the 80's). Cinema of the 70's pretty much belonged to gritty cop thrillers brought on by the likes of the Dirty Harry and Shaft and many of their clones. Some of these were good movies with things that make you chuckle in retrospect. However, the recent remake of `Shaft' should have taught us that making a throwback to the past set in the present is not a good idea and `Wilder,' made in the same year, is more proof.
Few actresses can be associated with the 70's as much as Pam Grier, the title character of this movie. Detective Della Wilder and her partner, Harland Lee (Romano Orzari), are pretty tough cookies working the streets. They are good cops, despite Wilder's regular bending of the rules that gets her in hot water with her boss. They get assigned the case where a woman was strangled and her body about to be taken away when the killer was interrupted. The main suspect is a doctor (Rutger Hauer), the former lover of the victim. As Wilder, certain of the doctor's guilt, begins heavily interrogating him, a second murder occurs and evidence starts to show up that it is not the simple work of a serial killer. Instead, Wilder discovers that the two murders, along with numerous disappearances, are linked to an experimental drug administered by a pharmaceutical company, and that this company has some dangerous political connections.
While Grier and the story are pretty good, there is a lot about `Wilder' I did not like. For one, the movie's twists aren't very exciting. A twist is revealed and it leaves very little affect on you. It is also strange how Wilder's tough persona warms up to Hauer's character's very blunt passes. There is also a really terrible, unneeded subplot involving Wilder's quarrelling with her rude and abusive neighbor. But the worst stuff about `Wilder' is Gibbon's 70's frame of mind. His style just isn't very fun to watch. He does things like pepper the whole movie with 70's-like music that feels incredibly wrong. He also does annoying transition tricks like freeze-framing the end moment of a scene for a few seconds before moving to the next scene. That's very awkward, but not quite as awkward as an editing trick of splicing different takes of the same scene together. It looks so disjointed and wrong, like no individual take was correct so they just meshed them together to try to make it look stylish. The worst moment of this occurs in the movie's worst scene within the worst subplot: Wilder has broken into her neighbors' apartment to console the battered wife while the drunken husband shouts at the both of them. As the goofy scene splicing is occurring, you can see things in the background change, like the busted-open door suddenly being closed! Even aside from all this, `Wilder' still isn't up to par because you lose patience with it by the second half. And with that feeling of being a flashback to the 70's, you start to realize not only why we laugh at the things of thirty years ago, but why those same things should be left forgotten. Zantara's score: 4 out of 10.