1975 Movie- The Road To Revenge

The film my group created was called The Road to Revenge. The story is based around an ex-police officer (Clint Eastwood) in New York City who is told by the government to kill his long term partner because he has been dealing drugs. After not following through with the government's plan, they have his wife, kids and partner are killed. He then ventures out on a cross-country trip to get his revenge on the government officials. Along the way he meets and recruits some young impressionable rebels who tag along with him in his evil plan. 

My group came up with this type of movie because we thought it had a lot of characteristics of a 70's film. One of our main focuses was the overall feel and look of the movie. We wanted it to be more experimental and more realistic. Most movies in this era were stretching the boundaries of censorship and of taboo themes, so we wanted to incorporate that into this film as well. Another aspect of 70's film we wanted to include was the idea of social commentary. This movie questions the government's authority over society and also personal morals and ethics. Clint Eastwood obviously plays the antihero which was new and different for this time in film.

We chose Clint Eastwood for this role because he has a background earlier in his career of playing a good antihero in Dirty Harry. Jon Voight was chosen for the role of Clint's partner because in past films such as Midnight Cowboy he dealt with social commentary and he also was in films dealing with murder. Lastly, we chose Robert Shaw to play the main government official because he is very talented at being a menacing and mysterious character in his films. 

For our studio we chose Malpaso Productions. We chose this for a few reasons, one was that it was founded by Clint Eastwood in 1967. So we thought it would be smart to go with a studio he would be comfortable with and know well. Also, we chose this because Malpaso was linked with Warner Bros. Studios who is involved with larger movies and also ones that include social commentary. 

As far as genre is concerned we blended a couple together. This was very common in the 70's era of film because they was a mix between all of the genres within one film. We thought it would be mostly action/crime because of Eastwood's main plan to get his revenge against the law, but it can also be considered a drama since it deals with Eastwood's character's inner struggles and emotions.

For our director we chose Ingmar Bergman who was a Swedish director, writer and producer. He made and was associated with a lot of movies dealing with death/crime and betrayal, so we thought he fit perfectly for our film. He also during his career got caught up in a alleged tax evasion which placed him in a similar criminal investigation as in our film. So he could put some of his own feelings into the movie and make an accurate character development. 

The rating we decided on for this film was M for mature. We chose this rating so we could appeal to a larger scale audience and be able to show more gritty scenes, but still get the audience we wanted. 

And lastly we wanted our main focus to be editing because we wanted there to be jump cuts which showed more of the experimental side of the film that we wanted to show. We chose Don Cambern as our editor who previously worked on Easy Rider in 1969.

If there were anything I would be able to change I think I would agree with Hope. I would change the rating to R because even though we might lose some viewers it would be able to be more realistic and show more of the experimental element we wanted to showcase.