drqshadow

6/10

Buster Keaton, in his first work as a solo headliner, drifts into a new town and winds up hired as both assassin and bodyguard to a rich old gentleman with unpaid debts. Right away, it’s clear that Keaton wants to get more narrative-driven than in his preceding pictures. Not that there’s anything wrong with selecting a topic and free-form riffing on it for twenty minutes, but he seems to yearn for something more complicated, something to make those goofs and pratfalls carry a bit of purpose. This one’s spotty, but it’s an early effort; a growing pain, of sorts. The establishing shots are tame and somewhat dull, probably why Keaton elected to hold back on widespread release until he'd made a good first impression, but it all comes together for the climax, which is absolute mayhem. The indebted old miser at the heart of it all must’ve seen trouble coming, because he's rigged his abode with all sorts of well-hidden switches and escapes. Keaton’s barely learned the ropes when local gangsters show up to force his hand. So, with the criminal element in hot pursuit, Buster trips and stumbles through a maze of trap doors and secret chambers, disarming or disabling the bad guys mid-tumble and unwittingly saving the day. It's a dazzling single-shot scene, filmed in an incredible four-room, two-story cross-section, with enough simultaneous action to chew up two or three repeat viewings. The whole minute-long shot is simply remarkable, given its age and budgetary constraints. Big set pieces had already been a target of fascination for Buster, even during his later pairings with Fatty Arbuckle, but he'd never approached anything of this scale. Hell, most modern films don't show half as much ingenuity or gumption. It's an omen of greater things still to come.