Change Your Image
![](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjQ4MTY5NzU2M15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNDc5NTgwMTI@._V1_SY100_SX100_.jpg)
lthanlon-1
Reviews
Cardinal Matter (2016)
See-worthy indie thriller
"Cardinal Matter" bites off more than it can chew, but is a tasty time nonetheless.
The steadily advancing story focuses on what happens when rural meth cookers in search of raw materials unknowingly steal a defense contractor's experimental supersoldier serum. Those juiced on this stuff can temporarily survive serious injuries, but will suffer brain damage and risk reopening wounds unless administered a second drug - which is not among the serum samples.
The contractor wants the samples back and dispatches a hitman to the small community to clean things up and eliminate loose ends. He's using dangerously high doses of the serum and is becoming psychotic.
If you enjoyed "The Bourne Legacy" and "Limitless," you'll like "Cardinal Matter." Just be prepared to suspend disbelief big time when the body count and its accompanying mayhem reach a level at which any small-town law-enforcement operation would have called in the cavalry. (However, this plot hole is no more of an issue than similar ones in, say, "Wind River" or any episode of "Yellowstone.")
The movie was lensed on location in Dubois, Wyoming, but little use is made of its small-town ambience; "Cardinal Matter" could have been shot anywhere. Locals do seem to have been used as extras in a couple of scenes.
We're not getting Anthony Hopkins and Meryl Streep here, but performances aren't bad and the young leads are likeable. Matthew Stannah is especially good as the drug-enhanced hitman, delivering a disturbing performance right up there with Andrew Robinson's Scorpio in "Dirty Harry."
One area in which "Cardinal Matter" seriously stumbles is that director Medeline Puzzo and writer Thomas Arthur Major introduce some potentially useful sci-fi elements but don't pursue them fully.
Overall, however, the movie is enjoyable and has the comfortable feel of an "X-Files" episode in which Mulder and Scully never show up.
The Chairman (1969)
Flawed but fun
Location footage in late-1960s Hong Kong highlights this espionage yarn with sci-fi overtones in which scientist Gregory Peck is persuaded to go to China in search of a revolutionary crop additive that can prevent famine. The technological gimmick has Peck outfitted with a tiny radio that allows him to be a mobile human bug and transmit everything he hears to an intelligence arm of the CIA and MI6 based in London. The movie feels like a big-budget version of a "Time Tunnel" episode -- minus the time travel.
I've always thought that this film inspired the short-lived NBC series "Search."
Vanishing Point (1971)
Great views of downtown Denver and Glenwood Canyon
Beyond an exciting story, "Vanishing Point" shows some great commercial views of Denver and Colorado that now are, sadly, lost to history.
During the early part of the film, we're treated to numerous location shots of 16th Street downtown and several industrial areas. Once the chase gets under way and Kowalski is pursued by the motorcycle patrolmen, the filmmakers used portions of what was later to become Interstate 70 through Glenwood Canyon. That stretch of highway was two-lane then, but now is superslabbed throughout the canyon.
Also note an appearance by longtime Denver TV newsman Bob Palmer, who interviews Sandy about "the Kowalski saga." Palmer holds a mic during the scene, but his cameraman is wielding what appears to be a silent 16 mm camera.