Radical Chic

By J.C.

STEELYARD BLUES

Directed by ALAN MYERSON Screenplay by DAVID S. WARD

In Robert Aldrich's excellent The Flight of the Phoenix (1966), an ill-assorted group of renegades, soldiers, businessmen and misfits were marooned in the middle of a desert, their sole hope of survival being to somehow piece together their crashed plane. Steelyard Blues more or less rips off the same plot, but dispenses with suspense in favor of fey comedy and ragtag radicalism.

Donald Sutherland plays Jesse Veldini, a cheap crook and demolition-derby contestant with a pronounced contempt for private property. "I'm not a criminal, I'm an outlaw," he explains to his occasional paramour Iris (Jane Fonda). Jesse's ambitious brother Frank (Howard Hesseman), who is running for state attorney general, sees it differently. To him, Jesse is not only a public nuisance but a threat to the campaign. Jesse's real interest lies in consorting with a group of benign crazies (Peter Boyle, Garry Goodrow and John Savage) in a plot to get a behemoth airship off the ground. Destination: some political Cloud Cuckoo-land where there are no hassles, no jails, no discrimination.

Director Myerson, who has worked with the San Francisco improvisational cabaret group, The Committee, has not made a movie before, a fact that becomes obvious in the first few minutes of Steelyard Blues. Technically the film is a shambles. The narrative only occasionally lapses into coherence. That may, in fact, be a blessing. The fairytale atmosphere that decorates the film like an icing makes the political palaver seem all the more frivolous.

"You're pretty tough," an old con tells Sutherland at the beginning of the film, "but you ain't dangerous." Steelyard Blues tries to be a little tough, but isn't; it never even tries to be dangerous. Myerson has all he can do to be funny once in a while, what with jokes like "We could go to Rome, Paris, Pittsburgh, all those places," and sight gags like Peter Boyle's not being able to boost himself up on a windowsill.

The actors, who have all been excellent elsewhere, are at loose ends here. Jane Fonda's Iris is a warmed-over, heart-of-gold hooker; Sutherland's Jesse so unflappable and cool he suffers from frostbite. Peter Boyle's jolly schizophrenic has lots of identities to assume. Only one -- a mock-up of Brando in The Wild Ones -- seems to suit him.

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