Editor’s Note: There’s nothing like a good movie bromance, that straight guy buddy thing when two guys become pals. Freeline Media critic Mike Fried believes the buddy comedy/adventure is one of cinema’s most sublime genres, and here are his picks for the best of the bunch.

By Mike Fried

GUNGA DIN

5/5

Some people say that 1939 was the best year for cinema (me me me) and what a year it was: Gone With The Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Dark Victory and Stagecoach are the movies most often cited for support of this premise. 

And they are great. But another one that keeps being forgotten is the one I just watched (again!), Gunga Din.

The British Army has lost contact with one of their outposts so a team of men from the British Indian Army led by Cutter, Mac and Ballantine are sent to investigate. The soldiers are surrounded by hostile locals, part of a murderous Thuggee cult. When they get back to headquarters, the Colonel wants to send them back to retake the outpost and fix the telegraph. Ballantine is due to muster out and marry his girlfriend but Cutter and Mac have other plans, spiking Ballantine’s replacement’s punch so that he cannot replace him. And Ballantine is back in the mix. And while Cutter, Mac and Ballantine who are the brawn of the escapades in the film, it is Gunga Din, their water-bearer, who longs to become a soldier of the British Queen, who provides the heart of this film. 

Although it borrows its title from Rudyard Kipling’s poem, it really borrows element of the stories in his book Soldiers Three. And the three soldiers in this film are Cutter, Mac and Ballantine ably played by Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Which really makes this the first buddy action comedy movie to come out of Hollywood. 

Cary Grant was already a star and had done some terrific comedies but this movie took him to the next level in my opinion. His Cutter is the prototype for the wisecracking action heroes we have today. The scene where Cutter sneaks into a Thuggee Cult ceremony and is outnumbered a hundred to one but he bravely and cavalierly tells them “Alright, you’re all under arrest!” underscores this. And he is the opportunistic one of the bunch which gives rise to much of the humor.  

And Cutter’s relationship with Din, well-played by Sam Jaffe, is a thing of beauty. Cutter knows that Din wants to be a soldier and encourages him to reach his goals by teaching him how to salute and stand at attention. It’s a great relationship. 

Jaffe’s intense stare and serious demeanor is the antidote to the three sergeant’s lighthearted demeanor. He really is the star of this film as he is the man whose actions will dictate the fates of the heroes. Some would put down the film due to Jaffe’s casting as an Indian and while I am cognizant of this, I cannot condemn a film made 87 years ago for doing this since it would eradicate a whole bunch of classics. The same goes for perennial bad guy Eduardo Cianelli’s role as the head Thuggee. Does the dark complected makeup bother me? Yes. Does it destroy the film for me? No. 

But the best relationship is between the three men. Besides Grant, McLaglen and Fairbanks match Grant in both action and wisecracks. The three of them are equally suited to the task. Legends differ in how Grant got the role of Cutter. Some say it was a coin toss between him and Fairbanks devised by director George Stevens, some say he lobbied for it but whatever the reason all of the roles were perfectly cast. Although Fairbanks might have missed out on the biggest role of his career, I don’t see him being an equal to Grant in the wiseass department. He was a dashing leading man and that’s the role he played in this film as did McLaglen as the tough, brutish but fun loving brawler MacChesney. Even when the odds are against them, they sit and wisecrack with each other. 

Written by no less than 10 writers, including Oscar winners Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur and future Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize winner William Faulkner, the script and story has maintained its influence for decades. William Goldman’s first story is named after the location of the climax of the film. It was remade as Rat Pack film, Sergeants 3 and the movie Help! features a similar Thuggee type cult. The Blake Edwards- Peter Sellers movie The Party starts off with Hollywood making a movie called “Son of Gunga Din” one of the funniest opening sequences I have ever seen in a film. And most famously, Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom lifts many of the events and scenes from this film. 

Howard Hawks was supposed to direct this film but after the budget overruns on Bringing Up Baby (which was a box office flop), George Stevens was recruited to helm it — not a bad second choice. And it was Stevens’ biggest budget film by that point in his career — but you can see the $2 million on the movie. Filmed on location in Alabama Hills, California, standing in for the Khyber Pass, the sets and the cast of over a thousand in the climactic battle sequence really looks impressive up on the screen. Joseph August’s black and white cinematography is absolutely dazzling and was certainly helped by Stevens’ earlier stint as a cinematographer. 

’E’ll be squattin’ on the coals

Givin’ drink to poor damned souls,

An’ I’ll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din! Yes, Din! Din! Din!

You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!  

Though I’ve belted you and flayed you,   

By the livin’ Gawd that made you,

You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

It truly is a magnificent action film, one that resonates with audiences when it was released and which continues to enthrall them.  The last forty minutes are incredibly rousing — as well as funny and heartrending — and provide the template for all action films that followed. 

Thanks for turning me on to this movie, dad! 

WATCH IT!

MIDNIGHT RUN

5/5

Jack Walsh is not popular with the Chicago Police Department. He quit his job as an honest cop 10 years earlier and became a bounty hunter, accepting assignments from a slime ball in a sea of puss named Eddie Moscone. Eddie has a proposition for him because Jack is the best at what he does. You see, Eddie posted $450,000 bail on a guy named Jonathan Mardukas. “The Duke” as he is affectionately known, was an accountant who did not realize he was a mob accountant so he stole millions of dollars from the mobster and donated most of it to charities. Mardukas has to be brought back to the LA County Jail by Friday night, 5 days from now, or Eddie goes out of business. Jack demands $100,000 and a written contract because all he wants to do is open up a coffee shop and get out of “this miserable fucking business.” Eddie claims this is “a midnight run — an easy gig” but Jack persists. Knowing he has no choice, Eddie caves in.

But Jack meets his match in Mardukas, who is an extraordinary “pain in the ass” and he must contend with The Duke’s whining, all the while trying to evade mob hit men and Feds while Jack is just trying to get The Duke back to Los Angeles by midnight on Friday.

This movie sets the standard for all modern buddy comedy road movies — and I’ll tell you, I don’t know of any others that have come close in the 38 years since this movie opened. This movie has one of the funniest scripts ever written (by George Gallo, who wrote the very funny Wise Guys) but even more than that, the direction by Martin Brest gets the absolutely best performances by his actors, both large and small. There is not a bad line delivered in this film.

Robert De Niro is what Jake LaMotta would have been if he was a cop – he doesn’t tread any new ground, but he proved that he could do comedy. Jack is a rageaholic with an ulcer and De Niro plays him perfectly.

Charles Grodin, who has always had the drollest sense of timing but has been placed in roles that didn’t really suit him, is perfectly cast as Mardukas. He’s smart and he knows how to get on Jack’s nerves and proceeds to do so with reckless abandon. “How come you’re not popular with the Chicago Police Department?” is a phrase he utters during awkward pauses and it only serves to get Jack annoyed.

But the two of them are like a comedic Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup: peanut butter on its own is good; chocolate on its own is good – But put them together and WOW.

And we get a lot of WOW from these two guys. I think I have to go back to Lemmon and Matthau to find a teaming where the two actors just felt the rhythms of each other, like jazz musicians. They are the movie. Somebody persuaded some studio to make three made for TV movies in 1994 with Christopher “Shooter McGavin” McDonald as Jack Walsh. These movies stunk on ice. And yet if DeNiro and Grodin reprised their roles, I think it wouldn’t work – unless the script was perfect. I am kind of glad that they have so far resisted the temptation to do a follow up because it would undoubtedly not meet the expectations I know that I have.

But I digress.

This movie has a cast of wonderful supporting actors.

Former cop turned actor Dennis Farina is tremendous as Jimmy Serrano, the mob boss that drove Walsh out of Chicago before the Duke stole his millions. He has mobster rage but likes to end his diatribes with lines like “Don’t say a word to me, Sidney, don’t say a fucking word to me or I’ll get up and I’ll bury this telephone in your head.” He plays Serrano with menace but the script gives him the ability to give the audience some real belly laughs, especially when he says “”Is this moron number one? Put moron number two on the phone.”

As Morons number 1 and 2, Richard Foronjy and Robert Miranda are excellent. Familiar supporting characters in many movies, they are given an opportunity to shine in this film and they drive a lot of the comedy. Just wait for “Hopalong Cassidiche.”  And when Jimmy is reaming out Foronjy on the phone, Miranda is playfully hitting Foronjy, totally distracting him. 

And I’d be real remiss if I did not mention two other cornerstones of this production. John Ashton, who previously worked with Martin Brest on Beverly Hills Cop as the conservatively moralistic Sergeant Taggart, shows off more comedic chops as the slimy, kinda stupid fellow bounty hunter Marvin Dorfler who thinks he is smarter than he really is. As good as Jack is, Marvin isn’t. He’s sneaky, duplicitous and keeps losing his cigarettes to FBI Special agent, the late great Yaphet Kotto. Kotto has had so many great roles and he plays this one straight, not comically, to great effect. His Special Agent Alonzo Mosely is a real tough guy and as much of a rageaholic as Walsh, although he seems to bottle it up more. He is leading the team looking for Mardukas and he is surrounded by his team, which are lesser than him. He is an absolute joy to watch – he takes no crap, not even from Walsh, but has the ability to make a deal and stick with it.

This is just one of the great comedies of all time — a movie with a lot of hilarity as well as drama and action.

DON’T MISS IT or, in the words of Jimmy Serrano “I’m gonna blow-torch the both of yous if you don’t!”

WISE GUYS

4/5

Forget all the other mob comedies. This is the one that Siskel and Ebert gave two very enthusiastic thumbs up 

Danny Devito and Joe Piscopo are two low level gangsters in a mob family run by Dan Hedaya whose main enforcer is played by Captain Lou Albano

Hedaya asks these two moaks to go to the Meadowlands and place a $10,000 bet on a horse that Devito knows is not gonna win so they bet it on Devito’s horse — and of course the horse that their boss bet on wins. 

The mob boss doesn’t kill them but orders them to kill each other separately. 

From there it is manic fun  And even though it is a fairly predictable film it benefits from an excellent cast with the aforementioned Devito, Piscopo, Hedaya and Albano as well as a nice performance from Harvey Keitel as the Atlantic City casino manager and Mimi Chechini as Devito’s grandmother. 

There’s one particularly hysterical sequence where Hedaya asks Devito to start his car and everyone flees.  Brian DePalma proves he can handle comedy. 

It’s a thoroughly entertaining film. 

Don’t ask me – ask Gene and Roger!

Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.

Contact Mike at moviemike3@gmail.com