14 Days of Paranoia #7: No Way Out (dir by Roger Donaldson)

Posted on February 22, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Trust no one in Washington would seem to be the message of this 1987 thriller.

Kevin Costner plays Lt. Commander Tom Farrell, a Naval Intelligence officer who is hailed as a hero after saving a shipmate who falls overboard. In Washington, Tom is recruited by a friend from college, Scott Pritchard (Will Patton), to work for Secretary of Defense Brice (Gene Hackman). Brice doesn’t trust the head of the CIA (played by future senator, Fred Dalton Thompson) and he wants Tom to serve as his mole within the service. What Brice doesn’t know is that Tom is sleeping with Brice’s mistress, Susan Atwell (Sean Young).

Still, Brice does suspect that the woman with whom he is cheating is also cheating on him. When he confronts her about it, their argument leads to him accidentally pushing Susan over an upstairs railing. Pritchard, who is implied to be in love with Brice, takes charge of the cover-up and decides to push the story that Susan was killed by a possibly mythical Russian agent who is known only by the name “Yuri.”

Tom assists with the investigation of her death, both because he wants to know who killed Susan and also because he knows that there’s evidence in Susan’s apartment that could be manipulated to make him look guilty of the crime. For instance, Susan took a picture of Tom shortly before her death. The picture failed to develop but, through the use of what was undoubtedly cutting edge technology in 1987, Naval Intelligence is slowly unscrambling the picture. For Tom, it’s a race against time to find the actual killer before the picture develops and he’s accused of both killing Susan and being Yuri.

Everyone has an agenda in No Way Out, from the ambitious Brice to the fanatical Scott Pritchard to the head of the CIA, who wants Brice to approve funding for a costly submarine. Even the film’s nominal hero has an agenda, which has less to do with finding justice for Susan and everything to do with protecting himself and his future. In fact, as is revealed in the film’s enjoyable if slightly implausible twist ending, some people in Washington have multiple agendas. The film portrays Washington as being a place where, behind the stately facade, everyone is a liar and everyone is ultimately a pawn in someone else’s game. If you have the right connections, you can even get away with murder. Loyalty is rewarded until you’re no longer needed.

It’s an enjoyably twisty thriller, one that makes good use of the contrast between Kevin Costner’s All-American good looks and his somewhat shady screen presence. The film introduces Costner as being a character who, at first glance, seems almost too good to be true and then spend the majority of its running time suggesting that is indeed the case. Gene Hackman is well-cast as the weaselly cabinet secretary, as is Sean Young as the woman who links them all together. In the end, though, the film is stolen by Will Patton, who plays Scott Pritchard as being someone who has unknowingly given his loyalty to a man who is incapable of returning it. As played by Patton, Scott is an outsider who desperately wants to be an insider and who is willing to do just about anything to accomplish that goal. He’s a version of Iago who never turned against Othello but instead devoted all of his devious tricks to trying to cover up the murder of Desdemona.

Even with an over-the-top final twist, No Way Out holds up well as a portrait of how the lust for power both drives and corrupts our political system.

14 Days of Paranoia:

Film Review: In The Line of Fire (dir by Wolfgang Petersen)

Posted on August 16, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Earlier today, it was announced that director Wolfgang Petersen had passed away. He was 81 years old and had been suffering from pancreatic cancer. Though Petersen started his career making films in his native Germany (and his 1981 film, Das Boot, remains the most Oscar-nominated German film of all time), Petersen eventually relocated to Los Angeles and established himself as a very successful director of thrillers and star-filled action films.

Last month, I watched one of Petersen’s films. First released in 1993, In The Line of Fire stars Clint Eastwood as Frank Horrigan. Frank is a veteran member of the Secret Service, still serving at a time when almost all of his colleagues have either retired or died. When we first meet Frank, he and his new partner, Al (Dylan McDermott), are arresting a gang of counterfeiters and Frank (and the then 63 year-old Eastwood) is proving that he can still take down the bad guys.

But is Frank still up to protecting the President? Of the agents that were with President Kennedy when he was assassinated in 1963, Frank Horrigan is the last one standing. He’s the only active secret service agent to have lost a president and he’s haunted by what he sees as being his failure to do his job and the feeling that America has never recovered from Kennedy’s death. Also obsessed with Frank’s history is a mysterious man who calls himself Booth. Booth (played by John Malkovich, who received an Oscar nomination for his performance) starts to call Frank. He informs Frank that he’s planning on assassinating the president, who is currently traveling the country as a part of his reelection bid. Booth views Frank as being a worthy adversary and Frank, looking for redemption, requests to be returned to the Presidential Protective Division.

While Frank struggles to keep up with both the President and the younger agents, Booth slowly and methodically puts his plan in motion. He builds his own wooden gun and tries it out on two hunters who are unfortunate enough to stumble across him. Making a heart-breaking impression in a small role, Patrika Darbo plays the bank teller who, unfortunately, comes a bit too close to uncovering Booth’s secret identity. Booth is friendly and sometimes apologetic and he quickly shows that he’s willing to kill anyone. It’s a testament to both the skill of Malkovich’s performance and Petersen’s direction that the audience comes to believe that there’s a better than average chance that Booth will succeed. He just seems to have such a strong belief in himself that the audience knows that he’s either going to kill the President or that he’s going to willingly die trying.

Meanwhile, no one believes in Frank. The White House Chief of Staff (Fred Dalton Thompson, later to serve in the Senate and run for President himself) views Frank as being a nuisance. The head of the detail (Gary Cole) thinks that Frank should be put out to pasture. Only Lilly Raines (Rene Russo), another agent, seems to have much faith in Frank. While Frank is hunting Booth, he falls in love with Lilly and she with him. (Fortunately, even at the age of 63, Eastwood still had enough of his old Dirty Harry charisma that the film’s love story is credible, despite the age difference between him and Russo.) The hunt for Booth reawakens something in Frank. Just as Booth has a psychological need to be pursued and challenged, Frank needs an enemy to which he can re-direct all of his guilt and self-loathing. Frank becomes a stand-in for everyone who fears that, because of one particular incident or tragedy, America will never regain the strength and promise that it once had. (In Frank’s case, that strength is symbolized by his idealized memories of JFK.) Defeating Booth is about more than just saving America. It’s about redeeming history.

It all makes for an very exciting thriller, one in which Eastwood’s taciturn style of acting is perfectly matched with Malkovich’s more cerebral approach. Just as the two characters are challenging each other, Eastwood and Malkovich also seem to challenge each other as actors and it leads to both men giving wonderful performances. Wolfgang Petersen not only does a good job with the action scenes but also with generating some very real suspense. The scene in which Malkovich attempts to assemble his gun under a table is a masterclass in directing and evidence that Petersen had not only watched Hitchcock’s films but learned from them as well.

As directed by Petersen and performed by Malkovich and Eastwood, In The Line of Fire emerges as a film that was more than just an exciting thriller. It was also a mediation on aging, guilt, love, redemption, and the national traumas of the past. It’s a film that stands up to multiple rewatches and as a testament to the talent of the man who directed it.

Cleaning Out The DVR: Class Action (dir by Michael Apted)

Posted on May 17, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Sometimes, it takes a really good actor to give a really bad performance.

That’s what I found myself considering tonight as I watched the 1991 film, Class Action. I recorded this film off of Starz a few months ago, mostly due to the fact that I usually enjoy legal dramas. Class Action is about a father and a daughter, both of whom are attorneys, who find themselves facing each other in court. Gene Hackman plays Jedediah Ward Tucker while Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio played Maggie, his daughter.

From the very first scenes, Jed Tucker is portrayed as being a firebrand, a crusader who stands up for the little guy against big corporate interests. (“Jed Ward is a great man!” one his clients exclaims while the other lawyers nod along in agreement.) Tucker is flamboyant, loud, perpetually outraged, in love with attention, and determined to make the world a better place. This is the type of role that would probably encourage any actor to overact just a bit. However, when you cast someone like Gene Hackman in the role, the performance becomes a masterclass in overacting. Gene Hackman was never a particularly subtle actor to begin with and casting him as Jed Tucker guarantees about two hours of Hackman bellowing, smirking, occasionally flirting, and basically coming across less like Gene Hackman and more like someone doing a particularly antic impersonation of Gene Hackman. Hackman goes so over overboard in the role that it becomes rather fascinating to watch. You watch and you ask yourself, “How much louder can he get? He much more obviously can he telegraph his intentions? Just how Gene Hackmanish is Gene Hackman going to get in this film?” Don’t get me wrong, Gene Hackman was a great actor. (He famously retired in 2004, after the indignity of appearing in Welcome to Mooseport.) One need only watch Bonnie and Clyde, The French Connection, Unforgiven, and The Royal Tennenbaums to see that Gene Hackman was a great actor. But sometimes, it takes a great actor to give a memorably bad performance.

Gene Hackman’s performance, as overbaked as it may be, is actually the only interesting thing about Class Action. It’s a well-made but ultimately rather silly mix legal maneuvering and family drama. Jed was a terrible father so Maggie becomes a corporate attorney in order to spite him. Class Action so embraces the idea that all professional women are motivated by daddy issues that even Aaron Sorkin would probably look at it and say, “Whoa, that’s really demeaning.” At one point, Maggie says to her father, “Have you ever considered that I might be a good attorney?,” just to have her father smirk and say that’s only because he’s her father. Jed’s response is to be expected, as he’s kind of an arrogant windbag. The problem is that the movie itself doesn’t seem to be willing to consider that Maggie could be a good attorney.

The other problem, of course, is that Class Action makes its good guys and its bad guys so painfully obvious that it’s hard to take any of the conflicts seriously. Of course, the big corporate law firm is going to be evil and of course, Jed Ward’s associates are going to be saints even if Jed isn’t. Laurence Fishburne plays Jed’s protégée and he gets stuck with all of the worst lines. Far more entertaining is future U.S. Senator and presidential contender Fred Dalton Thompson, playing a doctor who explains why it actually costs less for a car company to settle a lawsuit than to fix a design flaw.

Class Action is a forgettable film, not so much terrible as just bland. That said, if you want to hear some vintage Gene Hackman-style yelling, this might be the film for you.

Review: The Hunt for Red October (dir. by John McTiernan)

Posted on August 28, 2018 by Arleigh

The Hunt for Red October

Fresh off the success of his two previous films, The Predator and Die Hard, John McTiernan was now tasked with adapting one of the 1980’s most popular novels with Tom Clancy’s debut techno-thriller, The Hunt for Red October.

By 1990, the year the film was released, Gorbachev had thawed the Cold War that existed between East and West. The Berlin Wall was months away from being torn down and glasnost became the word of the day for most people who knew nothing but the spectre of nuclear annihilation hanging over their heads since before born.

It was during the final years of the Cold War that an insurance salesman with a penchant for military and spy thrillers tried his hand in writing one. this first attempt became a worldwide sensation and was quickly put up in a bidding war by all the major studios. It would be Paramount Pictures who would win to adapt The Hunt for Red October for the big-screen and John McTiernan would be hired to steer the film.

While Sean Connery would ultimately be cast in the main role of Soviet submarine Marko Ramius, he wasn’t the first choice. German actor Klaus Maria Brandauer was originally cast but ended up leaving production a coupe weeks into production due to prior commitments. So, in comes Connery and the rest, as they would say, is history.

The thing about film adaptations of popular novels has been how much of the novel could the filmmakers, especially the screenwriter, be able to fit into a film that would run around 2 hours or so. Some cutting of scenes that fans loves would have to be done and depending on the scenes in the novel, a backlash could begin against the film even before filming was completed.

Fortunately, this was Hollywood in the late 1980’s and there was no such thing as the internet as we know of it today. There were no blogs dedicated to reporting on every minute detail of a film production. No amateur film newshound bringing up unsubstantiated rumors of the going’s on during a film’s production. This was still a Hollywood who controlled how news of their activities were going to be reported and what they decided to tell and show reporters.

This would be a boon for McTiernan’s The Hunt for Red October since the film had some major help from not just the U.S. Navy, but from the Department of Defense in trying to make sure the film was as realistic as possible in portraying the life of American submariners, Naval personnel and how the intelligence community in the West operated. Again, this was also with the film portraying all these groups in a much more positive light in return for their assistance.

In today’s world, such a compromise from the filmmakers to gain the help from the military-intelligence apparatus would be akin to some as perpetuating warmongering and glorifying the military. I could see blogs shouting for boycotts if such a thing happened nowadays.

But returning to the film The Hunt for Red October, for a straight-by-the-numbers thriller it still brings a certain surprise and inventiveness in the action-thriller genre that other filmmakers decades later would try to emulate (Crimson Tide and the many Jack Ryan-based films). Despite a Russian accent that really was cringe-worthy even when first heard, Sean Connery made for a charismatic and sympathetic Marko Ramius whose reasoning for defecting with the titular submarine Red October went beyond just the politics of the era.

Backing him up was a strong ensemble cast with a very young Alec Baldwin in the role of Jack Ryan, James Earl Jones as his boss CIA director Adm. James Greer and Sam Neill and Scott Glenn as Cmdr. Borodin and Capt. Mancuso. The film goes in heavily into Clancy’s love for technobabble and military jargon, yet the actors involved seemed very game and convincing in acting out the dialogue that would sound ridiculous is just read without context and understanding.

While the film does sacrifice some of the more political maneuverings in the book, which meant less scenes with Richard Jordan as National Security Advisor Dr. Pelt, it does streamline the film to be more action-oriented. It was a shame they went that way in which parts of the novel to cut out since Jordan’s performance as Dr. Pelt was one of the highlights of the film, despite his limited screentime.

In terms of action, The Hunt for Red October proved once again that McTiernan knew how to handle both tension and action in equal measure. He makes the cat-and-mouse battle between the Soviet and American subs seem as thrilling as any fast-paced dogfight scenes that thrilled filmgoers when Top Gun premiered on the bigscreen.

Even the film’s orchestral score from the late and great composer Basil Poledouris would lend the film a certain level of martial prowess that Poledouris’ compositions were known for. Even after many viewings it’s still difficult not to hum the film’s Soviet national hymn-inspired theme.

While The Hunt for Red October was one of the last films of the Cold War-era that still showed the tug-of-war between the East and West, it was a fitting end to a part of Hollywood’s cinematic history that portrayed Communism, especially that of the Soviet Union, as the big go-to Enemy that made action movies of the 80’s so popular with the Reaganite crowd.

The success of this film would begin a cottage industry of sequels featuring the character of Jack Ryan who would be portrayed in subsequent films by none other than Everyman himself Harrison Ford then in a miscasting in a later sequel by Ben Affleck.