Film Review: Maverick (1994)

In 1990s Boomers’ power in Hollywood reflected in ambitious big budget remakes of television shows that had been popular during late 1950s or 1960s - formative years of that particular generation. While some of those films failed, others became big hits. One of the latter was Maverick, 1994 western comedy directed by Richard Donner.

The film is based on eponymous black-and-white television series starring James Garner, originally aired between 1957 in 1962. The protagonist of the film version, played by Mel Gibson, is Brett Maverick, professional gambler who makes his living travelling around Old West and using his superb poker skills at every opportunity. Maverick, who also possesses gun skills, has learned about huge poker tournament that is about take place at riverboat with winner taking 500,000 US$. He, however, lacks the money for tournament entry fee, so he is forced to travel around and engage in all kinds of schemes in order to get it. Along the way he meets Annabelle Bransford (played by Jodie Foster), charming Southern woman who is actually a con artist as well as elderly lawman, Marshall Zane Cooper (played by James Garner). Before he gets on the boat and take his place at the table, Maverick will confront outlaw named Angel (played by Alfred Molina).

Mel Gibson has built stardom playing serious and often very dark characters in dramas and action films. Yet, Gibson occasionally showed knack for comedy, although most of such films didn’t succeed. Here he was involved in one of the most light-hearted films of his career and showed great skill playing charming rogue who relies more on his wit than gun and whom the audience like despite his some of his action being slightly questionable. Gibson’s work was enhanced by good chemistry with Jodie Foster, an actress who at that point of her career also enjoyed opportunity to participate in more light-hearted film; Gibson and Foster enjoyed their work and later became lifelong friends in real life. James Garner, veteran who played Brett Maverick in the original series, is easily overshadowed not only by those two, but also by some of his younger colleagues like Alfred Molina and Max Perlich who played notorious real life gunslinger John Wesley Hardin.

The general tone of the film was, however, set by Richard Donner, director with prolific, often very successful and rather diverse filmography. Donner, aided by the screenplay by veteran writer and Hollywood’s top script doctor William Goldman, was obviously enthusiastic about doing a light comedy. Some of this enthusiasm can be seen in couple of scenes that are obvious spoofs of his own earlier work, most notably Lethal Weapon film series. While Donner displayed great skill, Maverick still had problems. The most obvious is episodic nature of the plot, which it takes a great deal of time to actually get going and, consequently, leads of to slow tempo and two hours of running time, which is usually too much for this sort of film. This also allows that the varied quality of humour, with some jokes that don’t work, become more apparent. However, Maverick was very fortunate to be released during the mini-renaissance of Western genre and it provided the audience with more escapist and family-friendly incarnation of the genre than serious “Oscar”-winning epics of Costner and Eastwood. As such, it got a very good results at the box office and those who watch this film today are likely to agree with the original audience’s verdict.

RATING: 6/10 (++)

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