Beyond the Law

Starring: Rip Torn, George Plimpton, Norman Mailer, Mickey Knox, Buzz Farber, Beverly Bentley, Marsha Mason, Jose Torres
Directed by: Norman Mailer
Rating: Not rated
Genre: Comedy, Drama
1968

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A number of policemen and alleged criminals interact in a Manhattan police station.

Review:

Tim: After hating Norman Mailer's directorial debut, I was hoping for an improvement with his second film. I guess I have to admit Beyond the Law is better than Wild 90, but we're really just talking about degrees of awfulness. I give Mailer credit for expanding the scope and somewhat fixing the audio issues of his previous film, but this is still a fairly terrible movie.

The movie revolves around a group of policemen and incarcerated suspects. There's a lot of yelling and posturing. A politician stops by. There's an unnecessarily long look at the personal lives of some of the policemen. I don't know, it's hard to sum up everything in this junky movie. The biggest issue here is that Mailer is a bad director and maybe a worse screenplay writer. Nothing in this movie draws our attention in. I couldn't care about a single character in the film. It helped being familiar with Mickey Knox and Buzz Farber, but there wasn't much in their characters that mattered. Mailer is obviously recognizable, but I disliked his character more than anything else. We get a whole host of additional characters, but never get enough time with them to identify with or care about them. There's a lot of yelling. Mailer once again tries to make an experimental film- it felt like he tried to let the cameras roll and the actors just go and the hope was that he could edit together into a compelling film. That's not the case. I firmly believe movies work best when the script is solid and the directing hits the right balance between control and freedom. Mailer gives way too much freedom here and as a result, his film is an utter mess.

I'm stunned that this film received some amount of critical acclaim when it was released. Sure, it's different and it might have a few decent moments that feel authentic, but that's not enough to make up for the inanity of the story or characters. The film is also technically horrible. Mailer focuses all his attention on making an artistic film and almost no effort goes into a technically competent movie. This film doesn't have the horrendous audio issues that Wild 90 did, but it's still difficult to hear a lot of the dialogue. The movie looks cheap and like it was filmed quickly (it was). It all adds up to a film that's not worth seeing.

I admit that I liked this movie better than Wild 90. It's an improvement and Mailer is trending in the right direction. Unfortunately, Beyond the Law is still a very bad movie. It's not well made and underneath some energetic acting, the film is surprisingly shallow. It was fun seeing Rip Torn for a few scenes, but I can't remember much about his performance. As a whole, I very much disliked this movie. Mailer is now 0-2, delivering two of the worst films I've seen in quite some time.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 3



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Wild 90, Maidstone