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List Price: $19.99 | | Label: Paramount
Salesrank: 71316
Released: December 11, 2001 |
| Our Price: $81.00 |
| Used Price: $89.95 |
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MPAA Rating: X (Mature Audiences Only)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Medium Cool is an almost impossible oddity: director Haskel Wexler wanted to shoot a fictional, narrative film wherein actors mingled with real people in an uncontrolled social environment. With that in mind, he began filming a movie about racial tensions in Chicago during the weeks prior to the 1968 Democratic National Convention, on the assumption that there would be a riot there. Then he brought his cast, crew, and camera to the scene of the proposed mayhem, and waited. . . and lo and behold, civil disorder broke out. It's intensely strange to see actors, playing characters, interacting in a real-life situation with real cops and real hippies fighting and running about. This is made stranger still by the story, about a reporter covering the growing unrest in the black ghettos of the city who discovers that the FBI may be in cahoots with his network. In preparing his script, Wexler assumed that the riot would be racial, but in fact it turned out that most of the rioters were white, so the final scenes seem to interrupt the narrative and make the film an odd pastiche and a commentary on the lack of connection between politics and life. Perhaps more of a curiosity than a wholly successful film, Medium Cool is still worth seeing for its striking footage and unprecedented combination of the real and the imaginary. --James DiGiovanna
Medium Cool Reviews:
Involvement versus Detachment - The Personal is Political 
2009-07-27 - Over 40 years after its initial release, Medium Cool still stands as that rarest of commodities: a truly original film. Director Haskell Wexler set out to create a film that introduced actors into "real" street scenes in order to create a new type of movie. The result is interesting, but only a partial success.
Medium Cool's basic plot concerns a TV cameraman in Chicago, John Cassellis (Robert Forster), who views his work with complete detachment. As Medium Cool progresses, however, Cassellis finds that he cannot remain neutral. This is the basic tension in Medium Cool; Wexler suggests that no one can avoid involvement in a time of great upheaval.
Cassellis eventually becomes involved with Eileen, a single mother from Appalachia. Eileen, too, is drawn in to the events of the day. The "love interest" aspects of Medium Cool seem forced. Eileen allows Wexler to make some comments on gender discrimination in the USA, but Medium Cool's personal and political subplots never seem to gel. Moreover, both my wife's family and my family are from Appalachia; we agreed that Wexler's script draws Eileen in a way that reveals a shoddy knowledge of Appalachian culture.
Wexler believed that, given the riots in many of the USA's cities in 1967, his film would focus on the efforts of black Americans to gain equal rights. Once filming began in Chicago, however, his focus shifted to the violence surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention. This creates problems in the film; Wexler filmed several scenes with black actors in apparent anticipation a "race riot." Given that no riot actually occurred, these scenes are mere "loose ends" that are not tied to the rest of the movie.
The film serves as a backdrop against which Wexler can comment upon the culture wars of the 1960s. Wexler forces the viewer to examine his or her perceptions of violence, sexism, racism, and many other ills. Sometimes Wexler's views still seem insightful; at other times, they seem dated. Wexler also includes some unsubtle praise for Senator Robert F Kennedy (whose assassination is mentioned in the film).
Medium Cool is the cinematic equivalent of a musician's jam session; Wexler started down a road and wasn't quite certain where he would end up. I give the film an A for ambition but only a C for execution. Still, it's worth a look.
Medium Cool 
2007-06-28 - Haskell Wexler's one-of-a-kind film seamlessly blends narrative and documentary forms, as the actors actually played their scenes as the Chicago riots were exploding all around them. Thus "Medium Cool" attains a heightened sense of tension, immediacy, and danger, as the line blurs between drama and reality. Evocative and extremely well-played by Forster and Bloom, this is a fascinating time-capsule for the ages. Look for Peter Boyle as an impassioned right-winger.
Excellent Counterculture Cinema
2007-04-15 - `Medium Cool' was directed, scripted, produced and filmed in 1968 by Haskell Wexler who had had success the previous year working as a cinematographer for Norman Jewison (In the Heat Of The Night, 1968) and Mike Nichols (`Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?', 1967). He would also later work with George Lucas, Hal Ashby, Milos Forman and Terence Mallick in the 70s shooting important films of the `New Hollywood'.
Of all the films considered to be counterculture works this has to rank as one of the best mostly for the fact that it accurately captures the atmosphere of the period. I rank this up there with other films like `Punishment Park' (Watkins, 1970) and `Zabriskie Point' (Antonioni, 1970).
The title is from Marshall McLuhan who described TV as a cool medium.
Incredible time capsule of late 60s Chicago 
2007-01-16 - This film is a must-have for anyone interested in the sociology, history, and physical development of Chicago. Done in a neo-realist style using a mixture of professional and amateur actors, the story revolves around real scenes shot during the 1968 Democratic Convention and the "police riot" that ensued. The deus-ex-machina ending is a bit disappointing, but the street scenes and footage are mind-blowing for students of Chicago and its history.
Something very special...
2005-07-20 - Absorbing, thought provoking and, above all, a unique record of an important "place & time", why "Medium Cool" still fails to gain the attention it deserves remains one of life's great mysteries.
First off, it's a pretty good if somewhat disjointed story... two "world-wise" middle class news reporters are sent to film the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago and become unwittingly involved in its political demonstrations, the inner city problems that have precipitated them, and the lives of a single mother and her young son in this harsh, confusing and seriously under-privileged world. Its acting, in particular from Robert Forster as the lead reporter and the 13 year old Harold Blankenship as the son, is excellent and at times so effective that it's difficult to remember you're watching a rigidly sequenced film rather than a social documentary. And, it's overlaid with some quite stunning cinema-photography from director Haskell Wexler, one of America's very best exponents of the art, backed up by a perfectly pitched late 60's soundtrack.
Good enough so far, but that's just the start. Add-in its extensive live footage from the streets of Chicago as the riots develop, taken by the film's camera crew as they themselves are caught-up in a very "real" political drama, its ominous sequencing of the build up of events from a fun "day in the park" for the hippies/yippies to serious "police state" level violence, its equally chilling images of what was going on inside the Convention Hall while all of this was taking place, and the clever and disturbing scenes of the mother's desperate search for her lost son as Wexler films her within the increasingly anarchic crowds of demonstrators & troops actually on the streets at the time, and you've got... something very special.
Part film and part documentary, not all of what you think is "real" in "Medium Cool" is, and the lines between live and acted scenes are sometimes confusingly and frustratingly blurred, as in the famous call from one of the camera crew of "look out Haskell this is real" as a tear gas canister lands in front of them, which was in fact over-dubbed afterwards. But that's the whole point of the film as the final, almost startling scenes reveal. How far is the media in control? Is what you're seeing real, distorted or contrived? Wexler's brilliance is to take this underlying theme and to mould it into a fascinating exploration of inner city life, American society in a period of huge change, and the power/needs of the media in a TV dominated world, while, in parallel, producing a gripping record of what it's like to be in the centre of a demonstration that's spiralling out of control. Juxtaposing the impersonality of reporting with the very personal situations that are involved, it raises a whole series of questions on the way without falling into the trap of most films of the era in trying to ram home too many answers. And, as a result, it remains as relevant today as it did then.
Quite rightly regarded as one of the best "counter culture" films of the late 60's and much richer and more thought provoking than this classification usually implies, it remains one of the most under-rated films out there.
