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| Images courtesy of Arrow Films |
Howard Hawks, it goes without saying, was a legendary Old
Hollywood film director responsible for not just some but many of Tinseltown’s
most beloved and enduring classics.
Ranging from everything to Scarface to Sergeant York, The
Big Sleep and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes as well as producing the
original Christian Nyby directed The Thing from Another World, Hawks was
a cinema giant spoken of the same breath as Louis B. Mayer or Darryl F. Zanuck,
dangerously close to becoming a mogul himself.
One of his very first movies, the 1932 pre-code racing drama The
Crowd Roars, fulfilled his longstanding childhood passion for racecar
driving, including but not limited to using a professional auto racing driver
Harry Hartz in the film for authenticity.
Thirty-three years later, nearing the end of Hawks’ career, the
moviemaking genius would revisit his lifelong passion once again and usher in The
Godfather actor James Caan in his first starring role with the ensemble auto
racing saga Red Line 7000.
Set in a racing team managed by Pat Kazarian (Tora! Tora!
Tora! actor Norman Alden), the film opens on an auto-race gone bad when one
of Kazarian’s drivers dies in an accident, breaking the heart of his girlfriend
Holly McGregor (Gail Hire) and leaving driver Mike Marsh (James Caan) disillusioned. Meanwhile a new young driver named Ned Arp
(John Robert Crawford) joins the team and seeks to date Pat Kazarian’s sister
Julie (Laura Devon) while a third Dan McCall (Skip Ward) arrives from France with
his French girlfriend Gabrielle (Marianna Hill) but soon takes an interest in
Holly. Complicating matters, apathetic
stoic Mike takes an interest in Gabrielle while Ned suffers a debilitating
injury that threatens the remainder of his career. All of this is interspersed with documentary
footage of real-life racing and/or brutal car crashes on the racetrack.
A film seemingly about racecar driving that’s actually a chipper
romantic drama about the women in love with race car drivers and all of the
baggage that comes with such a relationship, Howard Hawks’ Red Line 7000 co-written
by George Kirgo and produced by Hawks is one of the top racing films of the 1960s
not directed by John Frankenheimer or Peter Yates. An ensemble piece where no one takes the
center stage except for a little while per vignette, a tense racing drama and
action-thriller of sorts about the thrill and terror of being betrothed to a
professional racer whose life could end in the blink of an eye, it is also a
time capsule of then mod-60s culture. A
big portion of the film takes place in a dance club frequented by the racers
with Holly having her moment to shine in song and Gabrielle a chance to dance
her feet off.
Shot with crisp precision by All About Eve cinematographer
Milton Krasner before being replaced by Haskell Boggs, the look of the world of
Red Line 7000 is sharp and often brightly lit, even in the darker dance
club scenes. The racing footage incorporated
into the narrative, carefully edited and blocked by Stuart Gilmore and Bill
Brame, has a noticeable shift in image quality but that’s to be expected given
the source. The score by Nelson Riddle
is a mostly fine jazzy score and features an original song Let Me Find
Someone New on the soundtrack. The
cast of characters is strong though sadly outside of Norman Alden, James Caan,
George Takei (pre-Star Trek) and Teri Garr none of the newcomers found
star power following this film, an aspect of the production Howard Hawks
lamented for years. James Caan as a
young hothead smitten by Marianna Hill is wonderful and shows early on some of
his angry bark and bite that would come up in The Godfather.
Though a theatrical success with critics and audiences, its
key members Howard Hawks and leading man James Caan felt otherwise calling it a
“joke” while Hawks said “I don’t think I did a good job”. Despite some noting later on the character of
Mike Marsh was reprehensible, the film did show up as a favorite of cult
director Quentin Tarantino years later who remarked if he were to direct a
racing film it would be in the style of either Grand Prix or Red Line
7000. In addition to being sort of a
viral promotion for the Holiday Inn hotel chain, Red Line 7000 has the
feel of a shaggy dog hangout movie in the mold of a racing actioner.
Previously released on a now out-of-print Kino Lorber
blu-ray disc, this new Arrow release ports over the commentary track from
Twilight Time people Julie Kirgo and the late Nick Redman as well as newly
filmed extras including visual essays on the film replete with a booklet,
double-sided sleeve and poster-art. If
you already own the expensive Kino Lorber disc, there’s not much reason to pick
this up other than obtaining the new extras.
But if you’re new to this, Red Line 7000 is an underrated racing
gem by an already established master of Old Hollywood studio filmmaking.
--Andrew Kotwicki
