Cinema Canada (Aug 1976)

FILIYI REVIEWS Bob Clarth:‘s Breaking Point d. Bob Clark, asst. d. Tony Thatcher, sc. Roger E. Swaybill and Stanley Mann, ph. Marc Champion c.s.c., sp. Bud Cardos, ed. Stan Cole, sup. ed. Ian McBride, sd. Russ Heisse and Mel Lovell, a.d. Wolf Kroeger, cost. Debbie Weldon and Judy Gellman, l.p. Bo Svenson (Michael McBain), Robert Culp (Frank Sirrianni), Belinda J.: Montgomery (Diana McBain), Steve Young (Peter Stratis), John Colicos, Linda Sorenson, Jeffrey Lynas, Gerry Salsberg, Richard M. Davidson, exec. p. Harold Greenberg and Alfred Pariser, p. Claude Héroux and Bob Clark, p. manager David Robertson, p.c. Twentieth Century-Fox and Breaking Point Production Ltd., 1975, col. 35 mm, running time 94 minutes, dist. Astral. The full house was encased in the plush environment of the Ontario Science Centre auditorium, the comfort that your bottom experienced totally forgotten as the extreme punishment your mind was subjected to overwhelmed it. Breaking Point, a co-production between Twentieth Century-Fox of Lotus Land and Astral Communications of Canada was unfolding on the screen. The main cause of the discomfort was more indirect, but the movie itself must be faced first in this discussion. If you’re lucky, you didn’t have to face it. Another formula picture combining Walking Tall morality (you’ve got to take the law into your own hands) with revenge (you’re the only one who can make them pay properly for their dastardly deeds) and plenty of action, preferably violent in ways not seen recently on the screen (break the guy’s neck so the sound effects department :can Film Credit Abbreviations: d.: Director. asst. d.; Assistant Director, sc.: Script. adapt.: Adaptation, dial.: Dialogue. ph.: Photography. sp. ph. eff.: Special Photographic Effects. ed.: Editor. sup. ed.: Supervising Editor. sd.: Sound. sd. ed.: Sound Editor. sd. rec.: Sound Recording. p. des.: Production Designer. a.d.: Art Director. set. dec.: Set Decorator. m.: Music. m.d.: Music Director. cost.: Costumes. choreo.: Choreography. I.p.: Leading Players. exec. p.: Executive Producer. p.: Producer. assoc. p.: Associate Producer. p. sup.: Production Supervisor. p. man.: Production Manager. p.c.: Production Company. col.: Colour Process. dist.: Distributors. 56/Cinema Canada search for a new sound); in short, let’s get the action market and take the money ané run. Bo Svenson is a good citizen of a North US city who testifies against crummy mob hoods after witnessing a murder. He appears in court only after impotent cop Robert Culp assures him that he will be protected. But archvillain John Colicos wants revenge, and so kills Svenson’s assistant and threatens his family. Culp arranges an identity change and a move to Toronto. Svenson likes Toronto because he likes to play hockey. But Colicos lures him back by killing his sister’s boyfriend; Svenson takes things into his own hands and destroys Colicos’ hoods, plush office cabin at the real estate tycoon’s construction site, and finally the archvillain himself. There are several inconsistencies. Svenson runs a karate school and never uses karate to protect himself or get revenge; maybe it’s too lofty a technique forthe dirt he’s after. Neither, strangely enough, does his assistant, who prefers to be killed without any protest, probably for the higher good of furthering the plot. Svenson’s wife is divorced; her exhusband, played with some life by Stephen Young, stupidly endangers all their lives by finding the group after being told he must never see them again for their own good. He promptly leads Colicos’ hood, played with excellent but one-dimensional leering by Gerry Salsberg, to the group, and, in an idyllic scene in High Park, is set on fire by Salsberg’s fire bomb. Young, burnt to a crisp after being enveloped in flames, is thrown into the pond by Svenson’s mighty, splitsecond leap, and survives with hairdo perfectly intact. Nor are we presented with any indication of motivation. Why Colicos cares about such crummy hoods is not only left unexplained, it hardly suffices to make Colicos go mad, which he becomes instantaneously. Nor can we discover how Culp ever got his job, because he spends the entire movie telling Svenson how sorry he is. But he probably got a lot of money for having to memorize so little dialogue. Perhaps it’s the fault of the script. The story is by Roger Swaybill and ncn; fe ot McBain (Bo Svenson) uses his judo expertise on mobster Vigorito (Gerry Salsberg) the script by Swaybill and Stanley Mann. Their forte is not dialogue; ‘a love scene between Svenson’s sis ter, played totally incognito by Belinda Montgomery, and her boyfriend, contains a remarkable collection of clichés — all the clichés possible, according to my count. Perhaps it’s the fault of director Bob Clark. He can infuse a suspense plot with some good psychological effects, as evidenced in Black Christmas. Here the characters just leap from script page to script page, killing someone as often as possible. Clark’s use of under-exposed lighting and much graininess (Reg Morris was DOP on Black Christmas and Marc Champion did this film, but both visuals bear the stamp of Clark more than the individual DOPs) can be effective, but the editing, credited to Stan Cole, renders any psychological effect useless by its fast jumps, more for TV than film; no scene contains less than millions of cuts, and each scene seems to last seconds. Perhaps it’s the budget. Producers Claude Heroux and Bob Clark had a tight one million dollars to spend, including a last scene of mass destruction. That explains why so few extras turned up for a gala project party that Colicos threw for the town elite. Maybe the town didn’t have any elite.