Mitchell is available in The Warner Archive
The Action/Adventure Section — A regular column that will exclusively highlight and review action movies. The most likely suspects? Action cinema of the 1970s and 1980s. But no era will be spurned. As the column grows, the intent will be to re-capture the whimsy of perusing the aisles of your local video store with only ragingly kick ass cover art to aide you in your quest for sweaty action glory. Here we will celebrate the beefy. This is a safe place where we still believe that one lone hero can save humanity by sheer force of will and generous steroid usage.
Tagline: Brute Force With A Badge
Everything was better in the 1970s. I guess I wouldn’t technically know since I missed them by a few months, but I always take every opportunity to remind people that I was conceived in the 70s. You know, cred and all that. Blood in, blood out. But regardless, all one has to do is watch movies to know that society reached its zenith of cool in the 1970s, and we’ve been on a constant downward spiral ever since.
I offer as exhibit “A” the film Mitchell, which will also serve as my only exhibit. Can you imagine that glorious time when Joe Don Baker was starring in major motion pictures? And while wearing a plaid sport coat? The helicopters all had those clear plastic dome things, the cars all stretched across zip codes, and overzealous cops who played by their own rules were still actually busting bad guys like Martin Balsam and John Saxon instead of shooting small children armed only with BB guns or the “wrong” skin color.
Okay, perhaps I’m talking only about the “movie 70s” and not the real thing. Seriously, has there ever been a more cringe-worthy action movie tagline when viewed through the lens of 2014 than “Brute force with a badge”?
Mitchell is very much a product of its time… the era of the tough cop with his own style sticking it to the man by going it on his own. More or less a clone of Dirty Harry, Mitchell had a lot going for it, such as the aforementioned plaid sport coat, as well as Enter The Dragon and Nightmare on Elm Street’s John Saxon. Throw in The Taking of Pelham 1–2–3’s Martin Balsam and director and frequent John Wayne collaborator Andrew V. McLaglen, and you are guaranteed a fun time at the movies, right?
Well, not so fast. There’s a reason why Mitchell was featured as an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Having selected this specific title from the Warner Archive as my first ever Warner Archive film experience, and specifically setting it aside as a feature for The Action/Adventure Section, I hate to have to report that Mitchell is a pretty dull affair. I’ve been kind of dreading writing about it only because of how little of an impact it ultimately made on me, despite being crafted in the right era with all the right people in front of the camera.
Before I go down a rabbit hole of complaints, however, I do want to make it perfectly clear that this film does feature a big dune buggy action sequence in which Joe Don Baker is running around on foot trying to avoid being killed by a murderous John Saxon. And the whole thing ends in a billowing fireball of death. So obviously, the movie can’t be that bad.
But from the matter of fact way that Mitchell goes about his day to day business of working all the angles, to the bizarre “Hooker with a heart of gold” subplot involving Linda Evans as a love interest that Mitchell seems to specifically resent and want nothing to do with, to the ho-hum conclusion involving a dome-helicopter and a boat fight finale, the movie just never gains any momentum or energy to speak of. The dialogue never pops, the crime elements never rise above weekly television levels of intrigue, and in the end I can barely remember much at all after having just watched the film a few weeks back.
Look 1970s, I still love you and always will. You have the best movies. And you didn’t know the “Brute force with a badge” tagline would make us want to vomit here in 2014. I ain’t mad at you, Baby. But precisely because you have the best cars, helicopters, hairstyles, and plaid sport coats, I expect more from you. It seems man cannot live on Joe Don Baker alone, but rather we also need interesting direction, crackling plots, and even more than Saxon V. Baker dune buggy showdowns. (I’m starting to sound pretty demanding).
And I’m Out.