Friday, May 5, 2023

Caboblanco (1980)

 
CABOBLANCO  (1980)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: J. Lee Thompson
    Charles Bronson, Dominique Sanda, Jason Robards,
    Fernando Rey, Simon McCorkindale, Camilla Sparv,
    Gilbert Roland, Denny Miller, James Booth
What if they did a remake of "Casablanca" with Charles Bronson in the Bogart role? Well, they did, sort of. It's called "Caboblanco" and it's set in Peru and it stars Bronson as a saloonkeeper named Giff Hoyt, an expat with a shady past who can't go back to the States. Dominique Sanda plays a mysterious French woman and Fernando Rey plays the local police chef, who's under the thumb of a Nazi played by Jason Robards. There are no letters of transit, but there's a ship at the bottom of the bay that the French woman, the Nazi and British intelligence all want to get their hands on.There are ceiling fans and shifting alliances and treachery and even a parrot, but no Sydney Greenstreet or Peter Lorre, no night plane to Lisbon, no Warner Bros. backlot magic and no "As Time Goes By". It's about what you'd expect a Charles Bronson movie to be, but "Casablanca" seems a long way off.