The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 41

''V" The Boston Globe Thursday, June 24, 1971 'Plaza Suite' a film review 'Horsemen' action exciting but story stumbles and, further, no indication that Walter Matthau will really hold the film together by the simple fact that he plays three different roles, one in each of the stories. (In the Broadway production Miss Stapelton played opposite George C. Scott and matched him role for role.) At any rate, in the first tpisole Miss Stapleton is a nice, dumpy 48-year-old housewife who learns that her marriage is falling apart. Matthau, her vain, 50-year-old husband, is having an affair with his comely young secretary. And his wife makes the discovery, in a battle of bickering quips, on the night she planned their anniversary celebration which, by the way, he tells her is their 23rd, not 24th.

The discovery is meant to be saddening and it is, particularly Miss Stapleton's brave attempt to go on wisecracking through the gloom, but, somehow, it was close to heartbreaking in the theater and here it isn't. Matthau preens through his performance too, uncuous and calculating and all-too-credible as a Hollywood stereotype. The third story is an anecdote about a recalcitrant daughter who refuses to go through with her wedding plans at the very moment the guests await her arrival in the Plaza's Baroque Room. At that very moment, she locks herself in the bathroom of 719 and her distraught parents, Lee Grant as the mother, Matthau as the father, do their best to dislodge her. The piece is whackily funny and it breathes pretty close to farce.

There's a technical mistake here: Miss Grant leans out a window of the suite to follow her husband's attempt to reach the bathroom by creeping along the ledge of the building and, when she does, she's drenced in rain. Her silk, petalled hat gets soaked and part of her dress, yet, although the action is continuous, she is perfectly dry the next moment, then a second later the hat drips rain. Miss Grant is very good as the This you get to see in action packed closeups. They prove "the Horsemen's" real highlights, except for the aformentioncd scenery and flavor-filled shots of native bazaars and festive rites. For the story, adapted to the screen by Dalton Trumbo from a novel by Joseph Kessell, is muddled, aimless with psuedo-philosophical overtones that just don't come across.

Nor is John Franken-heimer's turgid direction any help. Ditto for Sharif's brooding presence and almost monosyllabic mut-terings. He may look the part, but he far from gives it his all. Equally at sea in another poorly defined role that of a slave girl is doe-eyed Leigh Taylor-Young, while David De doesn't fare much better either as her male counterpart to the Princely Omar. Only Jack Palance conveys any real conviction as Sharif's stern and aging father, once a leading "chapandaz" himself.

Handsomely photographed by Claude Renoir, this Edward Lewis production is at its best in the action scenes, closeups of native types and customs and at its worst when it tries to expand on the brave, cruel, superstitous world of the main characters. Plot lines get crossed or truncated 'Wild Rovers' low-keyed, visually lovely By Kevin Kelly Gobe Staff "Plaza Suite," at the Cleveland Circle Cinema, is a triple bill of one act plays by Neil Simon which he has adapted to the screen from his original script wit a fair degree of skill. While the film seems considerably less funny than the play, It is still reasonably entertaining and, in addition to a quartet of winning performances, it has a share of typical Simon insights into the often troubled world of romance and marriage. In other words, despite some technical mistakes, "Plaza Suite" rather successfully makes the grade from footlights to celluloid. The film begins in a misleading fashion.

Maureen Stapleton is featured under the credits, heading along Fifth Avenue to the Plaza where she checks into suite 719, after informing the clerk that she celebrated her wedding anniversary in the suite 24 years earlier. There is no indication that Miss Stapleton's story is to be but one of three Starring PAT BOONE as David Wilkerson NEVER HAS A MOTION PICTURE IEEN MORE TIMELY! NOW PLAYING BkIm Ma, Framingham Peabody Braiotrte BuriingtM CINEMA Brockton 1) BSTfVFiELQ THE EFFECT Of GAMMA RAYS ON tUMW-THIMOOH "A BEAUTIFUL PLAY." Norton, RKord-Amtrian ORDER NOW BY PHONE 661-1610 THE NEW THEATRE 12 HOLYOKE CAMBRIDGE ijlBlW LAST 4 DAYS crd. Final Wk Last 4 Dayi Baf ora Vacation AIR CONDITIONED lrVll 3 k'i I fiVSi 43 1 iTl uTH THE GREAT PUT-ON At the. twA thaitrat TTLE BIG MAN MAN 1 I I 1 i MIDDLE-AGED ROUE, played by Walther Matthau, berates his wife (Maureen Stapleton) on their anniversary in "Plaza Suite. mother and Matthau, this time with his hair dyed grey, is antically funny as the father, whose main concern is the wedding's cost of some $8000.

"Plaza Suite" is certainly a much better Simon movie than "The t-o f-Towners" which, incidentally, he wrote initially as the fourth story to these three. Arthur Hiller has directed it competently, if without much style and with occasional distractions (a camera spins a slow circle around Miss Harris to indicate her slow spin into giddiness). O'Neal, in his first film since "Love is in a bland sort of way. Neither does any acting to speak of, although O'Neal does scream realistically when Holden digs a bullet out of his leg. Others who turn in subdued characterizations, obviously under Edwards's specific direction, include Karl Maiden, as a ranch owner, Leora Dana as his wife, and Rachel Roberts as a madam.

ED i i ii L-mx i 1 1 I i i V62flA.T0N AIR-CONDITIONED FEATURE BUILT AT 12 liOON, 2.M; 4.Q0; 1.00; ivSyi tm mm i 1 early on; motivations never fleshed out; lines art tossed off almost as af' terthoughti and wh1 drama there is when Sharif and the other leads aren't mounted such as Misi Taylor-Young going at Omar with a knife in a blizzard become melodrama at its worst. Ah well, if Omar, who has his gangrenous right leg amputated half way through, can manage to ride again, so may you. After all, in "The Horsemen," the horses are the thing. Globe presents; summer guides Movies, records, restaurants, shows on the "Straw Hat" circuit, concerts, pa-' perback books, art exhibits, and workshops. Those and other topics will be given a thorough coverage in the Friday ana Sunday Theater-Arts secH tions of The Globe.

FrW day's section will revie the best entertainmefii available for the summerj And Sunday's section offer comprehensive HsCiJ ings of all important playir concerts and exhibit throughout New England Let The Globe be youij guide. A SMALL REGULAR ENGAGEMENT STARTS TOMORROW AT 10:00 A.M. cWilllamCHoldcn cKariJVIaldcn ijftLl llUktMwa4arilai a iij mi 3T UV111U ifEnr Jt LAST 6 DATS! HALWALUS ProOurtrm RED SKY AT MDRNINQ Imi II Kl i "1 mwiV rinotnwichfcthcreJ SUMMER OF M' Am By Edgar Driscoll Jr. Globe Staff "My journey is from nowhere to nowhere," Omar Sharif moans at one point in "The which galloped into the Center and assorted suburban theaters and drive-ins yesterday. He could have been talking about the film.

Lavishly produced and a scenic wonder to behold (filmed in Afghanistan and Spain), this Columbia Pictures release stars the dark-eyed, swarthy Sharif as a half-barbaric adventurer whose chief claim to fame is his premier ranking at Buzkashi, which many believe to be the world's most violent sport. Still played on the Steppes by the horsemen descendants of Genghis Khan, the "game," calls for the snatching up of a headless calf from a small chalked circle and carrying it across a half mile field and returning it to its former resting place. About 20 horsemen are involved and there are no holds barred as they thunder across the turf lashing out at one another with whips as they try to wrest the calf from its carrier. In Genghis's day they used to play it with the living bodies of the Mongol chief's prisoners. Time may have changed the equipment, but it's still a most violent and lethal sport.

JOWN LI 2-4III 213 1IEWHT I SrV' iIIamV V7 breatHin9 on the other Jj end of the I phone I A7 i ti PIOUS OPEMTnMII. perfectly, a middle-aged roue lost in a gluttony of pride. The second story involves a smarmy Hollywood producer who arrives at the Plaza in a Rolls and quickly phones a number of girls to fill a couple of loose hours in 719. He's rebuffed until he connects with an old girl-friend from Tena-fly, now married and the mother of three. Because of the producer's great success, she hustles in to the city full of moral promises to herself to stay for a single drink.

But the poor, dumb lady is so star-struck you really know Lee Marvin? What's Frank Sinatra really she escapes beyond her nervousness and right into seduction. Barbara Harris is wonderful as the wife who steadily loses her way in a tangle of vodka martinis and Hollywood gossip. Miss Harris is both lovable and hilarious. Matthau, in a reddish, Ion g-h aired, skull-cap wig, and the mod clothes of an oldster mimicking youth, is wonderful as John Wayne is from a midnight cowboy. He achieves his purpose, admirably eschewing the pointless blood baths in recent Westerns (such as last year's similarly titled "The Wild but at the expense of turning out a rather listless, if visually lovely, film.

There are no real villians in the movie, nor heroes either, and no basic moral cause to stir audience reactions. To add to this gray-ness everyone has been directed to act at a low key, and the pacing of the film is lethargic. Blake has taken an intellectual approach to the cowboy as a rootless, almost pathetic wanderer and dreamer, and to carry out this theme has set his movie in late autumn and early winter, in the 1880s. William Holden plays a 50 year old cowboy who dreams of getting enough money to retire to a hacienda in Mexico staffed by black eye Mexican girls. The weather-beaten cowhand (who sometimes in his philosophical musings sounds like a cross between Lionel Barrymore and Walter Brennan) teams up with a likeable, 25-year-old cowhand, about as brainless as they come, played by Ryan O'Neal.

O'Neal, not wanting to end up like his older friend, decides that instant satisfaction is better and the old cowhand to join him in a bank robbery. It is all done very smoothly and without violence and the rest of the I 1:99. 1:110, IITJtf twr- ONC6 THf WAJ A GKH. AND A eUlTAK 'AND A SummcrIrcg 1ICHAELDOUGh3 JKX. WARDEN RPENDAVACCARO BARBARA BELGEDDES color I iHH iiwi.alaala.aai al IB I DOVE.

HE SAID JACK (rt MCHXSOH JTF Hi color rMy "fUitrietit. Nt One UntW 1 ML picture is the slow chase through some awesome scenery. Ther are some bits of violence and humor to jar up the movie a nice barroom brawl, a card-game shoot-out, a funny scene in a brothel and a very lovely slow motion bronco-busting episode in a snow-covered mountain meadow. Holden walks through, with his customary veteran's ease, the part of the dreaming older man. W0 SCI M.n in' i i Qffi mm ByGeorge McKinnon Globe Staff Writer-director Blake Edwards's evident intent in "The Wild Rovers" at the Gary was to fashion a realistic, low-keyed Western, autumnal in mood and as different from the ritualistic good guys and bad guys shoot 'em up horse operas LAST 3 DAYS Nightly at 8:30 TICKETS NOW Frl.Sat.

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