by Brendan Foley
Two Cents
Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.
The Pick
In 1972, producer Philip D’Antoni found himself in a highly privileged position. A film he had produced, Bullitt, was a giant success. A gritty cop drama with an instantly iconic car chase centerpiece set-piece, Bullitt was a license to print money.
And D’Antoni had followed that success up by producing The French Connection (which the Two Cents crew covered last year). A gritty cop drama with an instantly iconic car chase centerpiece set-piece, The French Connection was a license to print money, and it earned D’Antoni an Oscar for Best Picture.
So now it was 1972 and D’Antoni decided to step into the director’s chair and show the world what he had to offer. And what did he have to offer?
The Seven-Ups. A gritty cop drama with a big car chase centerpiece set-piece. ’Cause sometimes a man just has to stay in his damn lane.
Roy Scheider stars as Buddy Manucci, a NYC detective loosely inspired by the same cop that influenced Scheider’s French Connection character. Manucci leads a special task force within the NYPD, a group of detectives notorious for their dirty methods and high profile collars (their arrests targeting convictions of seven years or up — see what they did there?). But the criminal world is experiencing turmoil as shady characters are grabbing up white collar criminals and holding them for ransom. The Seven-Ups get involved and things get real messy and real bloody really fast.
We put it to the team and to our guests to decide if The Seven-Ups (here referring to the movie not the characters) is an underappreciated gem worthy of riding alongside Bullitt and Popeye Doyle into cop cinema Valhalla, or are The Seven-Ups (here referring to the characters not the movie) little more than posers playing cops and robbers?
Did you get a chance to watch along with us this week? Want to recommend a great (or not so great) film for the whole gang to cover? Comment below or post on our Facebook or hit us up on Twitter!
Next Week’s Pick:
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon hit the pop culture scene like a bomb going off. The highest grossing foreign language film ever released in the United States, Crouching Tiger brought the arthouse and the blockbuster together in a historical epic that gave a new legitimacy to the wuxia subgenre of martial arts film.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny is getting released by Netflix today (it’s also opening in something like ten IMAX theaters — good luck with that). Swapping Ang Lee out for legendary choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping (responsible for 90% of your favorite fight scenes from martial arts movies of the last 20 years) and with Donnie Yen stepping in as the new leading man, we really don’t know what to expect from this film.
Fingers are crossed that the returning Michelle Yeoh is not the only element of the masterful Crouching Tiger that was carried over to this new film. But you’ll have to tell us!
Would you like to be a guest in next week’s Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your under-200-word review to twocents(at)cinapse.co!
Our Guests
Brendan Agnew:I went into The Seven-Ups blind, having never seen it before and only mentioned in passing relation to its more well-known cousin The French Connection. What I found was a taut, reserved (yet still surprisingly personal at times) well oiled-machine of a crime thriller with Roy Scheider renegade-copping around New York City.
Retrospectively, you can see this film in the DNA of more modern movies like The Fugitive here (Sam Gerard’s’ team owes at least some inspiration to Buddy’s), and this is exactly the sort of movie that Michael Mann and Christopher Nolan obviously have a huge yen for — serious, business-like dudes doing serious dude business (there is precisely 1 female character with screen time), and the movie doles out a series of “well, THAT’S gonna complicate things” reveals that lead to just the right morally ambiguous outcome.
Not everything has aged as well as the slick pace or kick-ass mid-film car chase, and a bit more time with some of the characters wouldn’t have hurt. But there’s a lot to be said for how THE SEVEN-UPS handles a lot of its key moments by a sidelong glance or a telltale frown instead of browbeating the viewer with “THIS IS IMPORTANT” or “YOU MUST FEEL THIS.”
Although, “Never piss off Roy Scheider” gets stated pretty explicitly. (@BLCAgnew)
Trey Lawson:Let’s get this out of the way first: The Seven-Ups has my favorite cinematic car chase of all time. Almost directly in the middle of the film, there is a rollicking chase through New York City featuring the work of stunt coordinator/driver Bill Hickman and driver Jerry Summers. Their skills, plus the expert cinematography and editing, make that one tour de force sequence worth the price of admission.
The Seven-Ups is often dismissed, or at leased relegated to footnote status, by comparison to its cinematic cousins Bullitt (1968) and The French Connection (1971). Director Philip D’Antoni produced those films, and the aforementioned Bill Hickman worked on both of them as well. The Seven-Ups is perhaps not as polished as those earlier films, but its premise, an elite team of cops using questionable and unorthodox tactics, is one that has reverberated throughout the police action/drama genre. The cast is a veritable smorgasbord of 1970s character actors, with Roy Scheider playing a loose cannon detective who is not quite the same character as his role in The French Connection. Almost as important as the action is the sense of mounting dread that permeates the film, which is aided immensely by Don Ellis’s moody score.
Some might call the film’s sparseness of plot and character development a weakness, but in many ways it is a throwback to the action and spectacle-driven B-movies of the 1930s and 40s (up to and including its surprisingly abrupt ending). The Seven-Ups may not have the cool factor of Steve McQueen in Bullitt or the pedigree of William Friedkin’s direction in The French Connection, but it’s a gritty, scrappy action flick that remains one of my favorites of the genre. (@T_Lawson)
Jaime Burchardt: These are the kind of Two Cents pieces I look forward to in the future: watching a movie I know virtually nothing about. The Seven-Ups is the only directorial effort that came from longtime producer Philip D’Antoni, who helped give us Bullitt and The French Connection. He definitely stayed in familiar territory here, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The ensemble cast, including a game Roy Schieder, all seem to be having fun. It’s nothing unique (except for that exquisite score by Don Ellis), but The Seven-Ups is a solid movie to add to one’s line-up for a crime movie marathon. On the second/third day. (@jaimeburchardt)
The Team
Justin:The Seven-Ups features a classic car chase scene that I’d heard about many times prior to watching the film. Despite the hype, the car chase delivered everything I wanted it to. The scene, however, is likely to be the only thing about this film that proves memorable to me.
I think a film being ultimately forgettable is one of the worst things it can be. A bad film at least leaves an impression, while a mediocre one can often be forgettable… the type of film you put on and realize 20 minutes in that you’ve seen it before.
The film features solid acting, a handful of strong action scenes, and some genuinely likable characters. The pacing of the film annoys me at times, but otherwise I can’t pinpoint why it doesn’t resonate with me. I’ll probably forget in the next 2–3 years that I’d seen this film, though perhaps that doesn’t happen on the strength of the chase scene alone.
To summarize, it’s not a film that I’ll bitch at Austin and Brendan for making me watch, but also not a film that I’m going to care enough about to consider clicking “play” on again. (@thepaintedman)
Ed: If you ever suddenly become self aware that you are, in fact, a character in a 1970s crime film, I have a few pro-tips for you thanks to The Seven-Ups.
1) Don’t go into an automatic car wash. Ever. No good can happen to characters in movies in those things. (See also: Sheba, Baby) 2) Never get involved in a business deal with Richard Lynch. That dude ain’t right. 3) Assume that Tony Lo Bianco isn’t on the up and up. Because he’s not. Just steer clear of that guy. 4) Assume Roy Scheider is more man than you’ll ever be… especially if you aren’t a man at all. He is, indeed, more man than you’ll ever be.
5) Assume Maniac’s Joe Spinell is greasier than you. He is.
6) There will be a car chase. Just sit back and let it happen.
While The Seven-Ups never even approaches the filmic heights of The French Connection, it very much feels of a kind with that film. A less character driven, pulpier cousin of sorts. Fans of crime dramas or 1970s cinema should press play on this one post haste. (@Ed_Travis)
Brendan:It breaks my heart to say this, but I actually agree with Justin on this one. Much as I love the look and aesthetic of this era of NYC on film, there’s just something curiously unengaging about this film. Both Bullitt and French Connection get a lot of mileage (natch) out of their straight-ahead storytelling, but The Seven-Ups is overly convoluted, to the point that Scheider’s central cop feels anecdotal to his own movie until the mid-film car chase (it’s a heckuva car chase, with a helluva finish).
The movie even wastes the central premise. The Seven-Ups are introduced to us as hucksters and conmen, using dirty tricks and carefully planned schemes to hoodwink crooks into incriminating themselves. But then throughout the rest of the film, Scheider and his crew are indistinguishable from the tough-cookie cops you see in every other 70s crime film, with no indication as to why this particular group is special or interesting. It’s a shame, since Scheider is great (and as elder Brendan pointed out, terrifying) central figure, but this one just never sparks to life. (@TheTrueBrendanF)
Austin:Admittedly we do a lot of 70s NYC movies here on Two Cents, but there’s a good reason: they’re friedkin’ great. Gritty old New York City is the best kind of New York City — cinematically speaking, of course.
I love that The Seven-Ups gives a great feel for the city, from streets and alleys to grimy interiors. There’s one scene in particular in which a couple of characters complain about the massive tower block that wasn’t there when they were kids that just really gave a sense of the time and place. The chase sequence that everyone has raved about is indeed epic, both in terms of the distance covered and its abrupt end. I wouldn’t place The Seven-Ups in the upper pantheon of the subgenre, but at the same time some of our number — myself included — had never heard of it before so maybe it deserves a bit more exposure these days. (@VforVashaw)
Did you all get a chance to watch along with us? Share your thoughts with us here in the comments or on Twitter or Facebook!