Popular reviews

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  Review by Brian Saur ★★★½

  My favorite “Golf Noir” melodrama. Hard to see for years and never in widescreen (& it’s an 2.35 movie) until the new Blu-ray from Imprint Films. So glad more folks will get a chance to check it out now. Some interesting similarities to CADDYSHACK.

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  Review by Luke Thorne ★★

  Ron Winston’s romantic drama in which a professional golf player uses his talents to stay ahead of a loan shark. Starring Robert Wagner, Susan Clark and Gene Hackman.

  The story concerns a suspected golfer’s (Robert Wagner) history which tracks of him to a Los Angeles country club where he is employed as an assistant pro.

  Robert Wagner gives an okay performance in his role as Mike Banning, the title character golfer who is suspected of being up to no good, but doesn’t show a great deal of determination in terms of what to do with himself, which makes it frustrating for the viewer.

  Elsewhere, Anjanette Comer as Carol Lindquist, Jill St. John as Angela Barr, Guy Stockwell as Jonathan Linus,…

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  Review by Hannah Lynch ★★★

  "You better not go near any reflecting pools, you're liable to fall in and drown."

  A common complaint of any mumblecore/"hangout" film made from the 1970s to the present day is, "what was the point?". However, there's never been a movie more deserving of such a question than Banning, which falls into none of the above descriptors.

  Robert Wagner plays our title character, an ex-golfer of limited emotional range who gets a job at a country club where the only things members know how to do is play lawn games, cheat people out of money, cruise steambaths, be bisexual, eat hot chip, and lie. Any explanations of why Banning chooses to work at the location and what he plans to…

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  Review by proofrock ★★½

  Odd one here, maybe novel in how a screenwriter convinced a film exec that country club intrigue could so neatly overlay onto a romantic Western potboiler template. There’s even a high stakes poker game! Robert Wagner is robotic as golf hustler Mike Banning, overleveraged after a huge loss to gangster Mike Kellin (cool sunglasses bro + you menaced a dentist) and drifting into a new town where he becomes the club pro, fresh meat for the wives and female staff, and a needy, desperate (and self-maneuvering) pawn in the game of the wealthy. Kinda redeemable in just how strange of an idea this is, and we get to see a young Gene Hackman in a character role as the club’s drunken owner. Not sure who this was for though I’m certain some people saw it after a late lunch.

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  Review by Ric Dube ★★★★

  Robert Wagner plays "Banning" as a charmless stick of wood, though this seems to be an unfortunate acting choice rather than limited ability. The film is a western posing as a golf course melodrama, and it's no accident this subgenre never caught on.

  Still I defend this movie and recommend it, strongly. It was released in 1967, but was either shot a few years earlier, or in a pre-Woodstock pressure chamber for generations thoroughly unprepared for what we currently understand as 1967. Nobody drinks anything but alcohol, dance music is drenched in strings, and when hot chicks slip into something sexy, it looks more like a giant tablecloth than a garment of any kind.

  The plot is complex but engaging,…

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  Review by Ryan Meyers ★★★★

  This is actually the coolest movie ever fucking made. Absolutely dripping with 1960s trash in every way from perfect insults to psychedelic wallpaper to cool-as-ice masculinity to every woman being sexually liberated and witty to somehow making a western set at a country club engaging and cool. It shouldn’t work. This is like a textbook 5/10 but I was so on its wavelength the entire time. Only in 1967.

  Even Robert Wagner’s stiff, terrible performance can’t break this for me. He’s outweighed by Jill St. John and Howard St. John who shine every single time they’re on screen.

  The first Gene Hackman performance that really feels like the stuff for which he’s best known.

  Watched somewhere on the internet.

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  Review by Cameron Casper ★★★★

  A scuzzy hidden gem. Goodfellas on the golf course and everyone’s fucking. Just a sheer good time, and Hackman doing his Hackman thing in a small role.

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  Review by PHILLIPJEFFRYS ★★★½

  Banning is one hell of a super fun sports melodrama starring Robert Wagner, Jill St. John, James Farentino and Gene Hackman in a very small but pivotal supporting role. Personally, I find golf to be a snore, but in this picture restored in 2K from the interpositive by Imprint Films I found myself having a blast and a half. Wagner's charisma is nothing short of ebullient and he lights up the screen with his magnetic presence. Will this film change your life? No, no it will not. It will have you thinking about the heightened realities that characters in gialli and Douglas Sirk flicks lived. My viewing partner kept calling this an American giallo... I get what they mean, but…

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  Review by Paul Elliott ★★

  Directed by Ron Winston and featuring a screenplay by James Lee, Banning attempts to navigate the glitzy but morally murky waters of the country club elite yet ultimately stumbles under the weight of its limp plot. The film stars Robert Wagner as Banning, a former professional golfer entangled in a web of sexual politics and financial desperation. Set against the backdrop of an upscale country club, Banning seeks refuge from a threatening loan shark, only to find himself caught between the advances of predatory women and the machinations of the club's male hierarchy. Despite his undeniable charisma and a tan that screams 1960s Hollywood, Wagner is given little to work with. He delivers a performance reliant on subtle eyebrow raises…

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  Review by Wilson ★★★½

  You'd think a golf-noir would be more fun but Banning is a weirdly dour movie. It could have been great with Paul Newman, or good with George Peppard, with Robert Wagner...it is just all right.

  Still, there is plenty to enjoy. Banning is such an oddity. A crime film, that doesn't really have any criminality. A swinging 60s clubhouse melodrama but it has more 1950s aesthetic than any kind of youthful energy. Frank Sinatra could have played Banning. But maybe not played the golf.

  The film is 100 minutes of golf. Interspersed with Robert Wagner flirting (and occasionally trying to rape...) Jill St. John, Susan Clark and Anjanette Comer. But, again, it isn't funny, or fun. Just oddly dour.

  I had a great time.

  Gene Hackman turns up as an alcoholic golf-pro coward. One couldn't possibly want more.

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  Review by Walter

  Carl Hiaasenish gritty/glitzy golf club drama. A curiosity but mostly a snoozer. With Anjanette Comer playing it straight for once as the picture’s only honest character.

  At one point I was like “That old man looks familiar…” It was Gene Hackman ***before*** he became a moviestar!

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  Review by Vaswer ★★½

  Is Robert Wagner deliberately impersonating what he imagines a mannequin come-to-life might act like here?
  Drivel that gets a higher mark from me than it probably deserves, owing to the greatness of Gene Hackman in a couple of scenes, plus a genuinely good song whose Oscar nod was both deserved and literally the only reason I bothered to watch this.