Daryl Hannah is quite fetching and few can blame Robert Redford for not kicking her out of bed (even though it’s a ridiculously obvious violation of legal ethics) in “Legal Eagles” (1986). But if you can find a woman that looks at you the way Debra Winger looks at Redford, you make her your co-counsel and never let her go. Otherwise, the film is another one of those dopey 1980s lawyer movies that bear no resemblance to actual lawyering. Writer/director Ivan Reitman has Redford and Winger defend Hannah, who’s accused of murdering someone(s?) over a generation-old, art-world grudge. Hijinks ensue.
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I don’t know how much producer Robert Redford influenced “The Mustang” (2019) but it has a quiet poetry to it that I’ve felt in some of his other late-career works. The analogy at the root of the story is blatantly obvious. Convicts training mustangs. Wild horses, wild men. Both must be tamed, for their own good. Get it? Yet what could have been a cookie-cutter film is filled with nuance, much of it ugly, as one might expect in the real world of a state prison. But it’s the nuance, including the mournfully symphonic soundtrack, that will draw you in.
There’s a sexy/macho passing of the torch that takes place between Robert Redford and Brad Pitt during “Spy Game” (2001) and it’s not subtle. Redford’s last day as a CIA operative before retirement, Pitt goes rogue, yada, yada, yada. Usual spy stuff. The old master spy somehow gets the best of an entire agency full of spies (exemplified by lots of lame, stock bureaucrat types in dark suits). Still, not a bad flick. We do like our underdogs. Good tension. Tony Scott directs, and within this film, we catch a faint whiff of something. That something became “Man on Fire.”
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