Exoticalot
People are voting emotionally.
JinRoz
For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!
Tedfoldol
everything you have heard about this movie is true.
romanorum1
In "R.P.M." students take over and occupy the administration building of a California college as school President Tyler resigns. After midnight, the College Board of Trustees decides to replace Tyler with Professor "Paco" Perez (Anthony Quinn), a 53 year-old sociology teacher. He has three main assets: (1) He is popular with the student body, (2) he has a Spanish surname, and his hiring would exemplify progressivism, and (3) he lives with a 25 year-old graduate student Rhoda (Ann-Margret) who has difficulty in staying clothed. An obvious liberal, Perez attempts to negotiate with the students. A problematic situation arises as he became part of the "establishment" when he was appointed by conservative deans. He agrees with 75 percent of the student demands, but those concessions are not enough. One of the three demands not accepted is that the students want to hire the professors! But the students, led by 33 year-old grad student Gary Lockwood (Rossiter) and 31 year-old Paul Winfield (Dempsey), are reticent. When they do not obtain acceptance on ALL of their demands, they foolishly decide to destroy school property (computer equipment). As Perez is backed up against a wall, his option is to call in the police. So where is the resolution? Erich Segal's script is trite and hardly rises above comic-book level. Concerning the film's direction, where is the genuine emotion and character development? Anthony Quinn is always good, but in this movie he is miscast. Worse, 30 year-old Ann-Margret's performance as a collegian is ludicrous; she is way too old to be a typical grad student. As she does not exactly radiate intelligentsia, one wonders how she ever became an undergraduate. The impression does arise that she may have earned her bachelor's degree by lying on her back. Chemistry is lacking between her and lover Quinn, whom she even calls a hypocrite. Both Lockwood and Winfield are also too old for their respective characters.The late 1960s and early 1970s was a time of college campus radicalization, although the students on the far left comprised only a small percentage of the school population. But they were both vocal and active. They were quite volatile, hence R.P.M. = Revolutions per Minute. All in all, this pointless movie certainly shows its age.
SanteeFats
Okay some people really didn't like this movie but I did. Yeah the revolting students are stereotypically revolting in their acting and words. Of course I may be just a little biased as I was over in Nam in 1970 (71 and 73 too). So when the cops start busting up the hippies it didn't bother me too much. Now everything leading up to that part was okay as far as acting went. The script seemed a little trite with the speeches by the protesters, pretty standard gibberish of the times. Anthony Quinn did his usual fine job. He is a liberal professor who gets stuck with the deanship of the school when the former one retires from stress caused by the sit in. He tries to talk with the sitters but they not only will not yield on the last three of twelve demands even after getting 1 thru 9 agreed too but are extremely insulting and rude to him. Not really the way to get what you want if you make the powers that be mad. Quinn finally has enough and sends in the cops. Heads get busted and 7 students and 4 cops get sent to the hospital. Ann-Margret is the half his age grad student who he is living with at the time. She is a liberal and cannot understand when Quinn sends in the cops. At the end you see her and other students break the police line to help the sitters who are getting the snot beat out of them. Teda Bracci plays one of the sitters. She is a horse face with the worst attitude of the whole bunch, then when she breaks out with the others kicks two cops in, shall we say, the lower regions. I was so hoping to see her clubbed to the ground and be one of the seven. Oh well, it is only a movie after all.
gamay9
This film is relevant because nothing did change between the film's release date in 1970 and the two generations which have followed.In a conversation on the stairwell toward the end of the film, Anthony Quinn and Gary Lockwood discuss change, indicating that nothing happened between Quinn's and Lockwood's respective generations. Nothing has happened in the two generations that followed, i.e. 1990 and 2010.The sad fact is that society has degenerated. I graduated from a very liberal Big Ten school in 1962 and we didn't have campus unrest. After that, I began a successful career which was interrupted by the draft and a tour in Vietnam. I returned to work and became even more successful because I worked smart and hard. The draft saved me and I wish the draft would have never ended, although I think the Vietnam war was futile. Young men need military service to GROW UP! As for Ann Margaret, she always played sexy but never nude, except for her role in 'Carnal Knowledge' where viewers experienced her large arse.Despite Ann's frivolous on-screen characters (I wonder how she was in private life) this was a film that predicts the future, as in...'Oh yah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone.' (John Mellancamp).
bkoganbing
R.P.M. the abbreviation of Revolutions Per Minute is Stanley Kramer's attempt to get inside the head of the student movement of the late Sixties. It probably got a bit of box office coming out as it did in the year of the four students shot down by the National Guard at Kent State. But in the intervening years it really hasn't worn well.Anthony Quinn is a popular sociology professor of Hispanic heritage and has something of a following among the radical left on campus. When President John Zaremba just resigns in frustration because he can't deal with a bunch of students occupying the campus administration building. Quinn also has a student mistress in the person of Ann-Margret a rather open secret on campus.The Board of Trustees decide on what they consider a master stroke, make the popular Quinn the new president because they think he can talk the radical talk and make them walk. It doesn't quite work out that way as Quinn all too well realizes that he's now part of the 'establishment'.The students who are all too old to be playing campus radicals include spokesperson Gary Lockwood and black student leader Paul Winfield. Fine players but all showing their age. Ann-Margret is a graduate student, but even she looks a bit old to be college coed.It ends in a scene that was all too familiar in the Sixties, police raiding the school and making arrests. At some point the students have to get back to the business of education. Fascinating that the big threat they had was to destroy the giant computer that the college had if they didn't get their way. Now Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs would have a fainting spell dare they suggest such a thing.R.P.M. marked the beginning of when director Stanley Kramer started to lose his muse. It is truly truly dated.
