Till There Was You | Mark Harmon, Martin Garner

Till There Was You | Mark Harmon, Martin Garner | a mystery worth dying for

vhs video:

Till There Was You

	Till There Was You Mark Harmon, Martin Garner Universal Studios, 1993 average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

A Big Ole Guilty Pleasure

This is the kind of "B" film you saw all through the 1940's. It is definitely a guy film, and a guilty pleasure. It's a kick back and relax movie for a weekend afternoon with a big sub and a bigger coke. It is probably best to watch alone, however, so no one is around to point out how dumb it is.

Cinematographer John Seales, who photographed Picnic at Hanging Rock and The English Patient, made this old-fashioned action adventure. Mark Harmon is the stoic hero and Deborah Unger is about as gorgeous as the island of Vanuatu where this was filmed. Even the song Seales chose to frame the film around recalls the 1940's and the terrific Australian Kate Ceberano gets to sing a bit of "Till There Was You" as the closing credits roll.

Frank Flynn (Mark Harmon) is tending bar at "The Blue Nile" in New York on the night it closes its doors for the last time. It is one of those old jazz clubs everyone has affection for and hates to see die. When Flynn receives a three month old letter from his brother Charlie saying to come to Vanuatu because he's finally struck it big, he heads off to the island as he is at loose ends.

The island is exotic and stunning but the news is bad as Charlie is dead and no one knows why. The Chief of Police on the island appears to want Frank to go home and stop asking questions. But when Frank meets the wife of the island's worst bad guy he smells something rotten. Jerome Krabbe is slimy as the off-kilter Viv, who isn't about to let his gorgeous wife Anna (Deborah Unger) leave him.

Of course she and Frank hit it off and when their plane crashes on Pentecost Island she tells him some, but not all, of what his brother Charlie was up to. It all revolves around the legend of Betty Blue, a plane supposedly filled with Japanese gold during WWII that was lost. This might explain why these little gold bars keep popping up. But Frank is fixing to learn things about his brother Charlie he'd rather not have known.

When the natives of the island take them deep into the jungle he discovers Charle was a member of the tribe and had a native wife and two small boys, Charlie and Frank Jr. There are some pretty amusing moments as Frank has to go through some rituals to become a member of the tribe himself. His being a member of the tribe comes in handy when he finds the sunken plane and Viv finds his wife and forces her back. It all leads to a showdown between everyone involved and the real truth about Charlie's death comes out.

Harmon and Unger are likable and there is sort of a fun 1940's "B" movie atmosphere. Beautiful to look at and fun to watch, it is most certainly a guilty pleasure. A nice ending with The Blue Nile back in business will make this a favorite. Just make sure no one else is around to see you enjoy it.

for more information click here

a mystery worth dying for

John Seale was camera operator on seminal Australian films like Picnic at Hanging Rock and Gallipoli, and DOP on Careful He Might Hear You, The Mosquito Coast, Rain Man and Gorillas in the Mist. This pedigree perhaps makes the disappointment of his directorial debut all the worse. He would manage to restore his reputation as DOP on Lorenzo's Oil, The Firm, The English Patient and The Talented Mr Ripley. A mire of thriller, romantic triangle and jungle adventure genre conventions, Seale's film is only memorable for the glimpses of the Ava Gardner sloe-eyed beauty of Deborah Unger (later realised in Whispers in the Dark, and Crash), and his anthropological observation of the Bunlap tribe of Pentecost Island, Vanuatu where the film was shot. The plot concerns Mark Harmon as a New York barman come saxophonist who visits Vanuatu to see his brother, now believed murdered because of his association with Jeroen Krabbe and his wife Unger. The screenplay by Michael Thomas never decides what it wants to be, which subsequently means we don't care about the fate of Harmon's unseen brother, though going on how the locals have deified him, we can be sure he'd be unbearably pious. Thomas delivers a stale plot about Krabbe being a colonial white supremacist, and Seale doesn't help by reducing the natives to giggling exotics, or copycat Americans with their own bar and a bouncer wearing a t-shirt labeled "local boy". The only interesting point is the legend of the Betty Blonde, an American WW2 bomber which disappeared over the Islands and believed to be carrying captured Japanese gold (though how the Japanese gold was captured is not explained), and the discovery of a sunken underwater treasure with the likeness of Unger painted on it. Seale uses music appallingly, provides an ominous game of poker with Unger playing the title song on piano in the background, and people conveniently wear all white for night chases in blue light. However things pick up a little when Harmon and Unger are lost in the jungle and find a native camp, though soon Krabbe and his henchmen are in pursuit. Seale has one good edit, a cut from Krabbe kissing Unger in public to a private slap, and he effectively creates tension for the climactic confrontation, however exhaution and miscasting undermine our sympathies. Harmon is the kind of bland TV pretty boy like Don Johnson and Corbin Bernsen, who has some skill but no screen empathy, so that no matter how terrible Krabbe's actions and how poorly Seale protects him from acting humiliation, his comparative magnetism sways our allegiance to him. Seale even employs the wonderful Kate Ceberano to perform the title song at the conclusion then cuts away from her after one verse!

for more information click here

products you might be interested in