Highpoint

(Peter Carter, 1982)
This 'mainstream' tax shelter movie hints at what's wrong with this whole era of Canadian filmmaking. I mean, if you are going to pay somebody a MILLION dollars to do a stunt jump off the CN tower, how about CAPTURING IT ON FILM??? The footage of this alleged climax is so shoddy it looks like Dar Robinson lost his grip before Peter Carter yelled 'action'. This director made "Rowdyman", "Rituals" and, well, "High-Ballin'", so don't blame the hired gun: laborious and pointless, this movie was clearly made by bean-counters who lost their calculator. This is the kind of movie where Richard Harris and Beverly D'Angelo will fall in love the first day they meet for no reason except that the genre demands a romantic subplot; and where Toronto and Quebec City locations seem to have been selected as a sop to Tourism Canada. Slathered in too-loud voiceover, its chase scenes eventually degenerating into stereotyped Quebecois bumpkins running down the street in fast motion with chipmunk sound effects on the soundtrack. Harris is game, and the Maury Chaykin/Saul Rubinek bumbling-hit-men routine might have been priceless, but this movie has gaping black holes where the jokes should be. If you're going to be crassly calculating, you better make it worth my time, and this movie sucks.