SnoopyStyle
Maverick (Mel Gibson) is a charming gambler who needs $25k to enter a poker tournament with at least half million at stake. It's happening in a few days on a steamboat run by Commodore Duvall (James Coburn). Maverick is a quick draw and one of the best card player. He encounters other characters like the macho Angel (Alfred Molina), the sexy con Annabelle Bransford (Jodie Foster), and Marshal Zane Cooper (James Garner). The tournament is not just about the money but a challenge to his abilities. It's one misadventure after another as he tries to gather the money together.It's a good fun western that has a nice comfortable charm. To emphasize that, director Richard Donner got 'Lethal Weapon' cohort Danny Glover to play a cameo as a bank robber. By no means is this a gut busting comedy. The best thing is the great chemistry between the film's trio.
Mr-Fusion
As TV show adaptations go, "Maverick" is a movie that excels because of a rollicking sense of fun and good humor. It doesn't take itself too seriously, and I think everyone involved is perfectly chosen for the job. The film opens with Mel Gibson's eponymous gambler, out to prove he's the best poker player. He's $3,000 short of the $25,000 buy-in, and his quest finds him in an unlikely partnership with like-minded gamblers Annabelle Bransford (Jodie Foster) and Marshall Zane Cooper (James Garner). And it's a journey that will see our hero tangle with rattlesnakes, renegade Indians and even a runaway stagecoach."Maverick" is an Action/Adventure/Western/Comedy that runs high on likability and even a few great setpieces. Everyone involved is clearly having fun, and it goes a long way in inviting the audience in on the laugh. It's the kind of TV show adaptation that doesn't require the viewer to have seen the original show. There's enough here in the engaging protagonist to keep the audience interested in the free- standing story. And what an affable hero Maverick is, a role that greatly benefits from Mel Gibson's trademark boyish charm and joking sense of humor. It's not just Gibson; Foster and Garner also show an unexpected flair for comedy. Maybe the real star of "Maverick" is William Goldman's terrific screenplay; one that infuses the movie with a delightfully wry sense of humor and lightheartedness. In almost every scene, things aren't always as they seem; and it's usually played to great comedic effect. This is the movie that made me a Goldman fan (in my defense, I haven't yet seen his greatest hits, so to speak). I found myself constantly grinning from ear to ear. You don't even have to be a Western fan to appreciate "Maverick". It's just an overall likable movie.8/10
Guy
Plot: A card player in the Old West tries to win a cards tournament worth $250,000 but finds that someone is out to stop him.MAVERICK is a big screen adaptation of the old TV show about a gifted card player (and crook) in the Wild West. After learning about the tournament Maverick has to raise the $25,000 entrance fee, which is what he spends most of the movie doing. He finds himself chased by villains, hunted as human prey by a mad Russian noble and alternately assisted and hindered by a female grifter and a leathery old lawman. He also meets a bunch of post-modern Indians but the jokes are pretty thin and it only serves to pad the movie out far beyond what it ought to have been. The leads are good, the script fun and the direction competent yet the film never quite suckers you in. There are enough fights (OK), plot twists (a goodie at the end) and jokes to keep you going but it doesn't lift off and a good half-hour ought to have been left on the cutting room floor.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
A worthy little film on the far west the way we can see it today, a big farce. Everything is false. A woman is playing poker and picking pockets. A Marshall is robbing the bank of a poker competition, with the agreement of the organizer. All kinds of players who are cheating and trying to win with weapons or violence, or even unfair padlocks. Indians who are organizing wagon train attacks for some dollars and the killing of some fake Indians still for a lot of money from a Russian ambassador. In one word everything is false, a big lie and a big laugh between or among the gun fire and the bullets. And yet all those crooks are trying to steal one another and the only woman in the tale will get the last word, except that she will only get a small part of the stake. Never put all your eggs in one basket. The only real interest of this film is not to show you what the far west used to be but to make you enjoy a comedy about it and that comedy is of course absurd. And that's why it is funny with some good actors who can play surprise and fear and joy and pleasure (you see the one I mean) and horror just as if the rattle snake under their feet were a real rattle snake. It sounds like one all right but it is nothing but a fake plastic rattling device and it won't bite. Even though they had a rattle snake tamer on the team, or rather because. I guess he is the one who dubbed them for the rattling to sound really real. Speaking of Canada Dry. Well we are in the country of the saints, Saint Louis and so many others down to New Orleans.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID
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