The MacKintosh Man (1973)
Sean Connery was an aging, mostly bald man with a beer belly and rapidly growing jowels in the early 70s. The public didn’t know about the bald part thanks to some creative hairpieces, but the rest was all too obvious when he reprised the role of James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever. Americans and Brits still had an appetite for espionage thrillers. Just not necessarily starring Bond. That’s how you get oddities like this John Huston flick about a British spy played by Paul Newman.
Joseph Rearden (Newman) is an Australian man who steals 140,000 pounds worth of jewels and gets caught. He goes to jail and gets broken out by a secretive organization. That all happens in the first 30 minutes. And it’s really just a preamble for a convoluted mole hunt.
Rearden is actually the alias for an MI6 agent, a fact made somewhat confusing by Newman’s decision to not even try a British accent. Rearden has a bad Australian accent but he sounds like an American when not playing the role. It feels like MI6 hired Newman’s character as a private contractor for this sting operation.
The story does provide many opportunities for wardrobe changes. Newman starts in a suit and tie. A few minutes later, he’s in denim overalls. Before you know what happened, he’s setting an old manor on fire while wearing a cardigan.
Being filmed in the early 70s, the lapels and ties worn by these characters are wide but the pants are relatively un-flared. Earth tones dominate most scenes. The more casual looks on display here (cardigans, check shirts, jeans) aren’t just easily achievable today, they’re actually in style. If you dropped the short black ties, those prison uniforms would be pitch perfect business casual wear for meeting someone over drinks in our troubling modern age.
Stylistically — and in some ways, politically — the 2010s are very similar to the 1970s. Facial hair is in in a big way. Loud prints are in. Jeans are in. They only really diverge around jacket lapels and ties. And that doesn’t really matter because both decades’ fashion is casual as all get out. Seventies bell-bottoms were flared way wider than should have been legally allowed, yes, but they were otherwise just as skin-tight as the pants of today.
Joseph Rearden never became a style icon like James Bond because he wasn’t supposed to. He didn’t even become a Harry Palmer. (In a perfect world, Michael Caine left the role of Palmer to take over Bond for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.) Rearden was a one off, like the movie itself.
The MacKintosh Man is good for exactly what it is: a spy thriller. There’s nothing bad about it. There’s just not a lot more to it. Walter Hill wrote it. Huston kept it at just about 90 minutes. It’s an efficient, technically sound spy movie. However, if you ever wanted to see Paul Newman lean back in a brown shower robe and “How about a poke?” in a terrible Australian accent, The MacKintosh Man is just the film for you.
Sunday 12.03.17 Posted by John Locanthi Newer / Older
Originally published at www.johnlocanthi.com on March 12, 2017.
