ONE-EYED JACKS (1961) *** The rare film that would be intriguing even if it wasn't any good. Marlon Brando apparently became so enamoured with his performance that he ran Stanley Kubrick off the set, and directed himself. He brought the baby in at a mere three times budget, and even managed to make half the money back. Critics complain, to this day, that he spends too much time allowing himself to brood, onscreen. Um....what the hell do they expect, he's fucking Marlon Brando! He broods!! That's what he does. Other guys smile and make great speeches and any manner of other equally useless things, but Marlon Broods. He also projects a fantastic sense that if he gets what he wants, whatever it is and whether or not he knows what it is, that would be a bad thing. He makes sinning squalid, but he does it with style. No one in their right mind could ever want to be him, but it's all the more fascinating for the multitude of reasons why not. There's still a lot of Kubrick in the film, in the wide open shots of the Mexican desert, and the more nourished version of the Monterey coast, and Marlon himself reminds you more than a little bit of young Elvis, morphing into a palate touched upon by Johnny Cash, and the silent, brooding side of Dylan. And that's all before you even start thinking about what it must have been like off-camera, with Brando "directing" Slim Pickens. There is honour in the film, not least in Larry Duran, just no honourable men. Only honourable motivations and moments, the exceptions to everything else in this putrid world of double-cross, wastefulness, and emptiness. I think that was a statement of honesty, for Marlon, from Marlon, and just because it looks eloquent after the smoke all clears doesn't mean that it was easy to get it all out. He had an eye for telegraphing foreshadowing in an immediate manner that was appealing, and real. It's too bad that it was the only film that he ever directed. I would have liked to see him direct himself as Dr. Rieux, in an adaptation of Camus' The Plague, without supporting cast or script or location; and only a six-gun, a scalpel, a bottle labeled "vinegar," and a plastic dwarf palm tree as props.
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