Directed by Peter Carter | Written by Dick Guttman and Ian Sutherland | 87 min | ▲1/2 | DVD
It felt appropriate on the weekend of the Canadian Screen Awards to dig into the dark, dirty past of the Canadian movie business. Highpoint was made during the much-maligned tax shelter years in Canadian film, a time when a lot of bad movies were made but it gave a chance for the industry to get up on its feet. Recognizing this was one of those titles — and a not especially beloved one, unavailable for streaming — I located an old DVD copy to give it a watch.
It starts with a meeting between two men (Peter Donat and Robin Gammell) in a poorly appointed office, one flipping through a folder with “Highpoint” written on it. These are representatives of the mafia and the CIA. One apparently paid the other $10 million, something to do with money laundering and the planned assassination of a foreign leader — the plot is entirely opaque — but someone absconded with the money.
The man in question, James Hatcher (Christopher Plummer in a silly hat), then faked his own death in a yellow Corvette going over a California cliff, leaving his mother, Mrs Hatcher (Kate Reid), and sister, Lise (Beverly D’Angelo). Into this air of recent bereavement walks Lewis Kinney (Richard Harris with an unconvincing scouse accent), an unemployed accountant who somehow lands a gig as Mrs Hatcher’s driver and Lise’s bodyguard.
Did I mention this is a comedy thriller? Laughs are so intermittent you might not notice them, with the possible exception of two chucklesome thugs following the Hatchers, Centino and Falco (Saul Rubinek and Maury Chaykin, both young and stylish). For a few minutes this looks like it’s going to be the missing link between The Long Goodbye and The Big Lebowski, but the way the plot continues to keep Kinney involved, well, calling it contrived doesn’t do it justice. An occasional action sequence lifts the tedium — a car chase through Venice (the one in Los Angeles) is a good time, especially a stunt where one car appears to jump over another.
For reasons we move to Quebec City, and all of a sudden a romance sparks between Lewis and Lise in the Chateau Frontenac. Then we’re in Toronto and up the CN Tower, as if the producers only priority was to forefront prominent Canadian tourist attractions. There’s a lot of time spent in the tower’s elevators, restaurant and observation deck, though footage of downtown Toronto at the time confirms it was a city of parking lots and not much else. In the end, stuntman Dar Robinson turns out to be the MVP for an impressive jump off the tower.
The DVD includes an interview with producer William J. Immerman, who immediately offers the disclaimer that the film was made with tax incentives in a nascent industry without much in the way of experienced crew. He also suggests Harris did the movie because he had the reputation of being difficult, so couldn’t get work in other more reputable productions at the time. He tells a story of how when Harris showed up in Toronto to do looping after the shoot he was drinking so much he passed out on the street in mid-winter. He subsequently had to be sent to Bermuda to thaw out and recover, delaying the ADR for six months, which helps explain why though the film was shot in 1979 it was initially released in 1982.
The version of the film on this DVD is the recut US version from New World Pictures, which came out in 1984. It’s apparently a lot less comedic than the original. Harris does plenty of voice-over, but he only breaks the fourth wall once, at the end. In the earlier version apparently he does that all the time, to help explicate the plot in the style of Tom Jones.
Too bad the original version isn’t on here, though apparently a blu-ray edition exists with both versions. Hmm. Did I find enough here to want sit through it a second time in an alternative version? We’ll see.
