BRASS TARGET (1979) ** When it comes to being General George S. Patton, George Kennedy is no George C. Scott, but there's less to it than the tale of three Georges. In a conspiracy thriller it's good to have something conspiratorial, or thrilling-but here they blow the mystery on the visual equivalent of page 4, and little of any particular interest occurs thereafter. Even for the time (immediate wake of Vietnam) it wouldn't have been particularly astounding to find Americans behaving badly in nations they're protecting, and only slightly more miffing to find them aiming their guns at each other. It wasn't yet the common procedure of any urban area, but we're talking about a nation predicated on the wild, wild west. There may have been subtleties to the plot that escaped me, but they were peripheral anyway, the kind of stuff to be seized upon by someone who scans a text primarily in search of typos. It's those gay soldiers subverting foreign policy again, and tormenting poor Patton (no wonder the Republicans don't want them)! Something like that as Max Von Sydow, John Cassavetes, and Robert Vaughn lumber about in unmemorable roles, probably plotting against one another. Somehow they even manage to present Sophia Loren as not particularly interesting. Her hair gets improbably longer from scene to scene, as they make token efforts to glamourize her character, but they put her in a uniformly lousy wardrobe, and she makes a similarly inspired run at her lines. Was Patton murdered? Maybe, but it would be difficult to make a duller film about it with this cast.