THE ‘HUMAN’ FACTOR (1975), dir. Edward Dmytryk

Two things elevate “The ‘Human’ Factor” from B-grade pot-boiler to a thriller that’s flawed, but not terrible: one is the casting of George Kennedy, who may be better recognized nowadays as Leslie Nielson’s sidekick in “The Naked Gun” comedies; the second is the score by legendary composer Ennio Morricone, who can make otherwise routine scenes such as men typing away at a computer screen seem downright intriguing.

Kennedy plays John Kinsdale, a NATO employee living in Florence, who suffers every devoted family man’s worst nightmare after his wife and children are murdered. The police have no leads; luckily, Kinsdale works with computer systems designed to predict an enemy’s actions during wartime. Using this advanced technology, he and a trusted co-worker named Mike (John Mills) figure out the killers’ modus operandi, and that they are terrorists targeting Americans living abroad.

Mike assumes this information will be turned over to the cops in order to prevent similar tragedies. But the closer Kinsdale gets to his family’s murderers, the less interested he becomes in protecting others as opposed to exacting revenge. Soon a behavioral scientist and an Italian police inspector are also racing the clock to stop him. Kinsdale, however, shuns them all, since they want to put the thugs in jail, while he wants them dead. “You don’t understand!” he yells. “These people murdered my family!”

Director Dmytryk, along with screenwriters Thomas Hunter and Peter Powell, telegraph early on that Kinsdale will be going the vigilante route: he shoots a television set broadcasting a news report about his dead family. The question is whether this middle-aged family man will succeed against a pack of younger, heavily-armed thugs? Although a computer simulation gives Kinsdale only an eight-percent chance of success, the filmmakers argue that the titular “human factor” – in this case, his grief, rage, and despair – can alter those odds significantly.

In the tradition of exploitative cinema, there are chase sequences, some good acting (Kennedy), mediocre writing at best (the terrorists, in particular, are given as little personality as political ideology, thus making them all the easier to despise), limited production values, and lots of violence. But “The ‘Human’ Factor” is an effective character study about an ordinary man pushed past his limits, and there are flashes of the western as well: Kinsdale is the civilized man driven to uncivilized acts, who finds himself on the margins of society as a result.

The first half is the movie’s best, mainly because of just how unassuming the main protagonist appears, and how that becomes his advantage. Indeed, a middle-aged George Kennedy may not particularly intimidating, but his secret weapon, it is pointed out early, is that he’s perceptive. In one scene, he gathers valuable clues by lending a sympathetic ear to an embassy official who doesn’t know who he is, but is outraged by all the news of dead Americans.

The second half, on the other hand, features car chases, rooftop escapes, and hand-to-hand fight scenes to go with Kinsdale’s emotional fall from grace. But as good as Kennedy is at conveying the emotions and will to vengeance of a shattered man, he is no Charles Bronson, and the action sequences strain credibility too far at times. There is no way Kinsdale should be able to effortlessly evade police pursuit, but he does. He also doesn’t seem like the kind of man who’d know how to whip a chain around someone’s neck, but he does that, too.

Yet none of Kinsdale’s prior superhuman feats compare to the final scene, a ridiculously over-the-top shoot-out in a supermarket, where his family’s killers have taken hostages. Despite being armed with machine guns, they are no match for Kinsdale, who only has a handgun. Adding to the surreal tone are moments of unnecessary levity – specifically, while guns are blazing, the disembodied voice over the loudspeaker calmly announces turkey cold cuts are on sale. Interestingly, there’s little enjoyment or satisfaction to go with these long-in-wait executions, as if the “human factor” that got Kinsdale this far had, ironically, reduced him to an unfeeling killing machine.

Overall rating: ** (out of ****)