Save the Tiger

source: Save the Tiger

Horrible "character study" stinker, with Jack Lemmon suffering from a common comedian affliction: the desperation to "prove" himself in a dramatic role. Chip on shoulder, and all that... Plus a solid dose of "I wanna win an Oscar too, but I can't because they make me do comedies!" Hilariously enough, I wrote the paragraph above without knowing that he'd actually won one of those ridiculous "awards" for this very movie! Whoever voted for this movie must have had one helluva powerful and diverse basket of the latest Tim Leary goodies to pick from. And because 5,000 people vote for who gets to "win" those silly little statuettes, that's a LOT of goodies, i.e. baddies... Someone's always getting rich through frying Hollywood's brains. Their suppliers are making billions in revenue annually. Sillier still, he had already "won" this "award" 18 years prior (as Supporting Actor though) for the comedy-drama "Mister Roberts". Perhaps this 2nd "Oscar" finally quenched his greed for "acceptance" and "respeC". He was finally free to do more comedy, going back to the business of filling his pockets, because dramas like this do NOT support a lush lifestyle in Beverly Hills. They only temporarily bless the actor's bloated ego. One reading of the script, and a bell must have rung, a light-bulb must have switched on in Lemmon: "yeah, this is anti-Establishment stuff, and even more importantly a boring social drama, i.e. my chance to finally get a Best Actor Oscar!" Do not doubt this for a second. Odds are that's how things went down in 1972. Or, perhaps, Lemmon really did think that this terrible script was great, in which case that wouldn't speak very highly of him. (Not that the other option serves as a compliment for his character either.) STT, which in abbreviated form reminds me of something really icky (and very common in Hollywood), is a tiresome social drama about the supposedly despondent middle class - who in the writer's opinion are close to mass-suicide - and about how dead the American Dream is, about allegedly deplorable capitalist America... i.e. the usual left-wing pessimistic hippie-era nonsense, the usual Hollywood propaganda we've been getting incessantly since the late 60s. This bomb has the Frankfurt School written all over it, but considering who wrote and stared in it - no surprise whatsoever. Aside from the socio-political drivel, this turkey features very dull and uninvolving characters, almost no plot, and dialogues so dreary (and even dated) that you'd have to rewind occasionally to keep track of the non-plot. It's kind of tough to follow a plot-free movie, you know. Naturally, I didn't rewind, though I did fast-forward once or twice. But there is also cringe: the male-fantasy scenes in which the empty-headed brainwashed hippie girl invites middle-aged Lemmon for some "balling" is just plain embarrassing. I did say STT was dated... and cringy... and very boring. Just plain awful. I expected a solid movie (because the plot outlines on most internet sites don't warn you about these things) but got a pile of junk instead. The 70s gave us some of cinema's very best produce, a great film decade, and yet this monotonous turkey got far more recognition at the time than some movies light-years superior to this piffle. Time has however proven the irrelevance of this picture. How many people have this "classic" on their top 50 or top 100 lists? In a sense this is the "Out Of Africa" of its era, or at least a minor version of it, because it won "just" two Oscars as opposed to the 57 won by the awful Mery Streep vehicle - which nobody is interested in either.

Jack Lemmon was the finest American motion-picture actor of the late twentieth century. He is often written off as a comedy star, and certainly some of his efforts in that realm of Hollywood entertainment are forgettable (though more than a few are still very human and very funny). But it is always exciting to see Lemmon unlimber his acting chops and portray the middle-class schlub trying to thrive and then just trying to survive modern life. His portrayal of Harry Stoner in SAVE THE TIGER ranks with his Joe Clay in THE DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES, Ed Horman in MISSING, and Shelley Levene in GLENGARY GLEN ROSS, to mention only his most notable dramatic roles. I'd like to think the Best Actor Oscar that Lemmon received for SAVE THE TIGER (he had been awarded Best Supporting Actor for playing Ensign Frank Thurlowe Pulver in 1955's MISTER ROBERTS) was the film community's overdue recognition that he could play for sighs and tears as well as for laughs. Seeing this film recently on TCM through the filter of 35 years, I was still moved by the commitment of Jack Lemmon to Harry Stoner. Unfortunately, SAVE THE TIGER remains an awkward and extremely self-conscious movie, as much so as when I first saw it in a theater in 1973. Steve Shagan's script contains no references to the Watergate scandal that had started the year before; but in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, American popular culture was becoming increasingly obsessed with moral decay. Many novels and films of the 1970s suggested that political corruption and official deceptions had blurred the boundaries of conventional good/bad, black-and-white morality with which most Americans had supposedly been comfortable. (That was the standard they usually saw in the movies, after all.) Viewed from the perspective of the early 21st century, the suggestion that government and corporate wrongdoing could somehow make personal immorality understandable, or even commendable, seems rather quaint -- a sop, perhaps, to a movie-going Baby Boomer generation that was coming of age and groping for its own moral grounding. There are many problems with this clunky script, not so much in terms of plot as in terms of texture. Harry Stoner's obsession with the joys of his youth -- baseball and big bands -- quickly turns into a heavy-handed exercise in nostalgia, as though Shagan is showing off his knowledge of 1940s popular culture (Shagan was born in 1927). Harry's apparent readiness to hire an arsonist to save his troubled business makes his moral agonizing less involving, though perhaps Shagan meant to enhance the difference between Harry's seeming confidence and the severe misgivings of his partner Phil (Jack Gilford). The big dramatic setpiece of the film -- Harry's speech to the buyers at his firm's fashion show -- is extremely suspicious. Harry strikes me as too much of a professional to start losing it at such a vital moment. Why THAT event for a PTSD flashback? (There's another scene toward the end of the film -- Harry standing alone on a beach, replaying the soundtrack of Anzio in his head -- that's more subtle and more effective.) And then there's Myra, the happy-go-lucky hippie chick with whom, Shagan apparently thought, "the kids" could identify. (With a smile, she offers to have sex with Harry about 47 seconds after they meet. Yeah, I could identify with that.) Myra's seeming innocence and optimism have so little to do with Harry Stoner that she seems not a contrast but an irrelevance. Shagan's script benefits from the direction of John G. Avildsen. The opening shot of Harry's swimming pool is haunting, and industrial Los Angeles looks appropriately unglamorous. All of the actors (including Laurie Heinemann as Myra) are credible. But the real reason to see SAVE THE TIGER is Jack Lemmon portraying Harry Stoner. If his performance can't rescue the film, it is still compelling -- an exploration of a human heart that will break your own.

Jack Lemmon's wonderful gift for portraying the every day man is fully at work here. The film almost has a low budget, made-for-television feel and look. But it still delivers an engrossing story of people under stress.

"Save the Tiger" is friggin' awesome!!! The best movie I seen since "The Fast and the Furious". Jack Lemmon's sweet in this movie. He plays a business dude who sets his buds up with hookers. I guess that's makes him a pimp! He rocks!! But he also hooks up with some twenty-year-old chick, and he's like forty. Sick! And where are the tigers?!! Lemmon's the man, thou! He's friends with this other guy who doesn't like his pimpin' ways! I think it's Walter Matthau, but I'm not sure. All those old guys look the same, anyways. There's an old Italian guy in it too. Rent this now!!!

I must have missed something -- I was not at all impressed with this story. I felt it was a waste of time watching something I see everyday at rush hour. The manic pace of the film was not tiring but tiresome, and I felt little sympathy for Lemmon's character. I did like Jack Gilford's performance -- the man has such a wonderful face and uses it exquisitely in an overall superior performance. The Oscar was misplaced -- it should have gone to Gilford.

Jack Lemmon won a best actor Academy Award as Harry Stoner, a middle-aged businessman whose business(a struggling apparel company) is severely in debt, with accounts being canceled, forcing Harry to degrade himself by pimping prostitutes for the salesmen. He finally agrees to see a professional arsonist, who will burn down the building so that he can collect the insurance money. The fact that it will also affect another business in the building is just too bad...besides, they're insured too, or so that's what Harry tells himself. He finds himself thinking about the past more, as he drifts into an affair with a young hippie girl. Lemmon is excellent, but also the whole show in this otherwise dreary and hollow film, that just doesn't have much dramatic impact, and wallows in seediness too much. Ending is also unsatisfying, and inconclusive.

As an audience grows older, their perception of life changes. When viewing a movie in your youth, you may not understand the tiny, subtle remarks, nor the innuendos. But as you reach mature milestones, suddenly those secret words, phrases and remarks make so much sense, you wonder why you didn't understand them the first time. That is the message in this film called " Save the Tiger." Although the initial message in the movie was to try and save an endangered species of Indian Tiger, the subliminal message was it could also apply to an American Original; an Idealist American businessman on the verge of extinction. Jack Lemmon plays Harry Stoner, a middle age clothing designer trying to save his faltering business. Despite having a winning fashion line which will yield a sizable profit, they can achieve their goal if they can meet their payroll. As a result, Stoner and his business partner Phil Greene (Jack Gilford, superb acting) may have to resort to criminal options to survive. Thus enters a professional arsonist named Charlie Robbins (Thayer David, is brilliant in this role) who for 10% of the insurance will make short work of an aging property and make it look like an accident. Phil wants nothing to do with the arson plan despite the fact he is already part of last year's fraudulent scheme. Added to his worries, is the fact that Stoner like so many other Veterans, cannot seem to lose the nightmarish visions of the war, where so many of his fellow soldiers died. Stoner fades in and out of reality often dreaming of a past where the highlight of a day was to see the 'Old Fashion Wind-up and pitch' of his youth. This is truly a Classic for anyone wishing to recall a younger segment of one's life which we all understood. ****

Jack Lemmon was one of the finest actors that had ever graced the screen. He could effortlessly switch from dramatic roles to comedic with ease, making most of his peers green with envy. While his performance in "Save The Tiger" is Oscar-worthy, I feel it was given to him as he had missed out on his other opportunities to win the award due to other, better roles that had preceded this current one. This is also one of those pretentious movies that comes out to basically showcase the talent of the cast, or in this case, one particular member. It's too bad the screenwriter's output didn't match that of Lemmon's. Don't waste your time with this one.

Jack Lemmon will always be remembered for his comic performances. However, he could have been just as great as a dramatic actor. Save the Tiger and his tour-de-force performance in it more than proves that. He plays Harry Stoner, owner of an heavily indebted ladies designer clothes manufacturing company. The film covers just 2-3 days of his life and we get a pretty good idea of his sad existence in the urban jungle and what he has become - no longer a good, decent person fighting for the right cause. There are references to Stoner's war record and patriotism throughout the film. The fact that the US was fighting the very unpopular Vietnam war could have influenced the themes of this film. There is little in the way of plot but there is a rich characterization made deeper by the crises in Stoner's life and Lemmon's excellent depiction of a man who is cracking at the seams. My favorite scenes were the ones in the car with the hippie girl towards the beginning of the film and the question she asked him and Lemmon's comic reaction....