SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Just so...so bad

A Brilliant Conflict

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Otto Preminger....one year before Skidoo (which you HAVE to see if you haven't seen it. he even uses some of the same cast in Sundown... John Law, Burgess Meredith). The weirdest part of this whole thing is star Michael Caine trying to do a southern accent. Some fun names in this one.. Jim Backus, George Kennedy, Robert Reed, Jane Fonda. It's post WW II, and the land developers are buying up all the land for a housing development. Of course, there are two holdouts, and one of them is African American. And this town is dealing with serious racial tensions. Pretty much everyone has to choose a side. The married couple, the Warrens, (Fonda and Caine) are battling over trying to convince the black family to sell their property, where Mrs. Warren's mammy still lives. This one is very different from some of Preminger's other wacky films; a pretty serious drama, tackling some serious issues of the time. especially in the south, where this takes place. The story is pretty uneven, and everyone's performance is over the top. One bright spot was the singing they were doing in Reeve's house. of course, the it sounded like a lot more voices than the few that were in the room, but it was quite pretty. If you haven't seen this, its worth it to see all those big names in 1967. It IS available on DVD from Olive Films, but I have not seen this one on Turner Classics.

In 1946 Georgia, Henry Warren (Michael Caine) is setting up a land deal to make himself richer and put his town on the map. To complete the deal, he just needs two landowners, Reeve Scott (Robert Hooks) and WW II veteran Rad McDowell (John Phillip Law) to sell their land to him. Neither one will sell. The rest of the film is about Warren's attempts to make them sell, and about how everyone in this economic backwater is affected by that and racism.The main problem here is a rambling, diffuse script that attempts to fit a 900 page book into just over two hours. When Preminger first announced he would be filming this book, he said it would be a four hour film; the final cut was two hours and twenty minutes. Some performances have been noticeably cut; characters drop out of sight from the film without warning, plot threads are set up, then abruptly dropped. The performances are all over the map in terms of effectiveness.However, Jane Fonda, as Julie Warren, is unexpectedly good as the Southern girl who grows up and finally sees what a louse she's married to. When angered, she oozes sarcasm overlaid with a dose of charm. Madeleine Sherwood, as Eula Purcell, the woman who won the social lottery when she snagged herself a judge to marry, is very funny as she tries to improve her social and financial position. Her best scene is when she throws a tantrum because her husband has jeopardized their daughters' wedding. Diahann Carroll, as the sharp-witted schoolteacher from the North, is very amusing as she puts on an subservient act to get access to land records. Robert Hooks and John Philip Law both put in solid performances.The problematic part includes Michael Caine's involvement in all of this. He gets off to a dreadful start when in his first scene he sounds like he came from London with stops in Little Rock and Savannah; his accent is that bad in the beginning. He improves over the film, but he tends to overact all film long. As a sheriff, George Kennedy is effective in a part that has noticeably been edited. Burgess Meredith's role as Judge Purcell is so poisonously and obviously racist that I don't see how anyone could play it believably. Hugh Montenegro's musical score sounds more like contemporary 1960's music than anything that would take the viewer back to the 1940's.The film is obvious and a plodding and ponderous effort at that, but is much better than its reputation as it was counted among the "50 Worst Films of All Time" in the 1978 book.

i really enjoyed this movie when i first saw it back in 1968 and loved it. if people like barney had really looked at the movie instead of looking for all the faults they would have seen what i saw and that is what the movie is about. the racial hatred and bigotry against the whites and blacks in the south. if you have the money you can get anything you want peoples land, their children and look at all the corruption in the system and no one to help the poor people. just for your information i am white and i am one of the poor people and i care about all people even you. it may be dull and boring to you but watch it again and really watch it this time. maybe those actors got the message the producer was trying to send just my 2 cents worth if it gets people to watch it again and not condemn the movie because one guy did not like it.

The job of an actor is to find 'THE' moment in his/her material and to stir the audience in either dramatic or comic terms. All the negatives and some positives have already been stated in this column about "Hurry Sundown." However, no one has bothered to really tell about the actress who plays Rose. Her name was Beah Richards, best remembered by some as Sidney Poitier's mother in "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner." Ms. Richards has lingered in my memory since I saw "Hurry Sundown" in the theatre all those years ago. Her performance is monumental here, although, the material, as already stated by many, stunk as skunk! She 'rose' over all the 'stars' in this sorrowful piece to create her memorable portrait. The only reason I'd want to see this film on DVD would be to see her amazing performance once again. Ms. Richards truly found that moment to stir the emotions in an otherwise poorly conceived film.