'Sunset' is one of Blake Edwards's best; far better than the later Pink Panther films, which documented Peter Sellers's descent into self-parody. It is also, despite some complaints, reasonably accurate, for what it is - an entertainment with some roots in history, for color. Marshal Wyatt Earp did spend some of his last years in Hollywood, and was friends with several silver screen cowboys, including Tom Mix. Mix, in fact, was on of the pall bearers at Earps's funeral.
And Charlie Chaplin, the obvious model for the villain of the film, was a sonuvabitch. He was often gratuitously cruel to people around him, became physically violent with the women in his life on more than one occasion, and eventually had to flee the country for a variety of reasons including his propensity for (slightly) underage girls. He was certainly not a complete psychopath, like the character in the movie, but there is a basis for the fable...just as there is for most of the other points in the film.
People who cannot bear to see 'Chaplin' in any but the most flattering of lights should avoid Sunset....but they should also avoid passing judgment on it. The film succeeds amply at what it sets out to do; tell a thrilling and often funny story about a make believe land called Hollywood in a time when Legends walked the earth.
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A Great Fable
"Give Or Take A Lie Or Two"
I appreciate Sunset the film because it gave the man who I consider the best big screen Wyatt Earp, James Garner, a chance to reprise the role.
Garner played Earp back in the mid sixties in John Sturges's Hour of the Gun. That film took the unusual plot line of beginning with the famous Gunfight at the OK Corral and showing the aftermath from that event. It was a pretty grim western, and Garner was not playing his usual likable con artist.
It took twenty years from Hour of the Gun to Sunset, but it was over 40 years in real life from the OK Corral fight until the events of Sunset that take place in Hollywood in and around the first Academy Award dinner in 1928. Wyatt Earp was in fact in Hollywood and did in fact know Tom Mix. Earp died in 1929 at the age 80 and Garner is one of the liveliest 80 year olds ever on screen.
Blake Edwards must have hated Charles Chaplin because Malcolm McDowell as Alfie Alperin, the Happy Hobo and villain of the film is one loathsome creep. No doubt Chaplin's character is used as the basis for McDowell's. The famous Thomas Ince shooting on board a yacht is also worked into the plot. Topping all that the first Academy Award dinner had a triple homicide in the lobby.
Bruce Willis as Tom Mix stars as Wyatt Earp in a film about the OK Corral and of course with Wyatt still being alive, Garner is brought in as a technical adviser. The two of them get involved in a lovely web of intrigue during end of the silent era that starts with the murder of a bordello madam who had a lot of blackmail information concerning the mighty of Tinseltown. Wyatt Earp discovers a few personal facts about himself he didn't know also.
Patricia Hodge is McDowell's long suffering wife and Jennifer Edwards is his equally loathsome sister. Another pair that Willis and Garner have to deal with are Richard Bradford as a corrupt LA detective and M. Emmet Walsh as the studio cop who do a lot of McDowell's dirty work.
Sunset is entertaining enough, not a great film for either Willis or Garner. And it does capture the ambiance of old Hollywood, give or take a lie or two.
"You're a long way from Tombstone, Marshal."
More than the actual story itself, what intrigued me about this picture was the way it mashed together historical elements at the turn of the silent era in Hollywood. At the time, Tom Mix was a genuine movie legend, and he lived a lavish lifestyle that the picture barely touches on. The story references Mix as having made his last silent film, and he's about to appear in a picture about the Gunfight at the OK Corral, on which Wyatt Earp has been called in to be a technical adviser. In real life, Earp did become friends with Tom Mix and another veteran silent film star, William S. Hart.
The setting for the film is 1929 with the very first year of the Academy Awards serving as a backdrop to the murder mystery at the center of the story. The event was held on May 16th, and Earp was already deceased for four months. It's unlikely an eighty year old Earp would have been running around Los Angeles getting involved with crooked cops and hookers, though I wouldn't put it past Mix. Even so, Mix would have been fifty himself, and it was getting harder with each passing year to get up on a horse.
As cowboy star Tom Mix, Bruce Willis gets to wear some outrageously colorful outfits and drive some of the best looking vintage vehicles I've ever seen. Mix had a free spending lifestyle, and Willis's reference in the picture to owning sixteen cars was probably pretty close to the mark. Content with portraying Mix as a rather hip and fashionable playboy, no mention is made that he was married five times in real life. Just as well, it wouldn't have worked for the story at all.
For his part, James Garner does a competent job as former marshal Wyatt Earp, now a private citizen and working as a consultant in Hollywood. I like Garner, and if you're going for a buddy team-up, the chemistry between himself and Willis is enjoyable. However the script calls for an affable Earp, and from what I've read about the real life lawman, Garner's portrayal seems out of character here. Which is OK, just not very believable. But we already established that.
The main villain of the piece is portrayed by Malcolm McDowell in a thinly based caricature of Charlie Chaplin. A number of reviewers on this board opine on why director Edwards would have tarnished Chaplin's reputation with such an obvious parody (Happy Hobo/Little Tramp). It may simply have been a way to include another Academy 'first' in the proceedings. Chaplin was honored that year with a special award for his all around contribution to producing "The Circus".
Another reviewer puzzles over the title of the movie. Personally, having seen hundreds of TV and movie Westerns, it's probably a convenient way to memorialize just about every B oater in which the cowboy star gets the girl at the end of the picture and rides off into the proverbial sunset. But then again, in researching the first Academy gathering in 1929, one learns that the Best Picture winner for 'Unique and Artistic Production' went to Fox Studio's "Sunrise". So if this was another overt accolade to the original Oscars, it was cleverly done.
I guess I'd like to close out by mentioning one more bit of trivia regarding Tom Mix and Wyatt Earp. The last surviving brother of the infamous Gunfight at the OK Corral died on January 13th, 1929. His pallbearers were all prominent men from Los Angeles and Hollywood, including friends William S. Hart and Tom Mix. Newspaper accounts of the occasion state that Mix cried at the funeral.