Jason Lively | Through the Shattered Lens

It’s hard to imagine that someone could overact while playing a corpse but Louise Fletcher somehow manages to do just that in 1983’s Brainstorm and I think we owe her some respect for that. The underrated Fletched won an Oscar for playing Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and she appeared in a handful of other films that I’ve liked (Strange Behavior, the 2012 restoration of Once Upon A Time In America) but, now that I’ve watched Brainstorm, I will always think of her playing a dead character with the biggest, hammiest facial expression ever on her otherwise lifeless face.

In Brainstorm, Fletcher plays Dr. Lillian Reynolds, a chain-smoking scientist who is always upset about something. When Lillian isn’t lighting a cigarette or yelling, “You sold me out!,” she’s clutching her chest and taking her heart pills. Working with her partner, Dr. Michael Brace (Christopher Walken), Lillian has developed a brain-computer interface that allows people’s brain waves to be recorded on tape so that others can then experience what they experienced. In practice, this looks like putting on a helmet and then seeing what appears to be a home movie. What fun! Lillian thinks that the interface can be used to change and save the world. Dr. Brace thinks he can use the interface to discover why his marriage to Karen (Natalie Wood) fell apart. Their associate, Hal (Joe Dorsey), thinks he can use it to experience his friend screwing the babysitter over and over and over again. Meanwhile, Alex Taber (Cliff Robertson) thinks that it can be used as a military weapon.

(Hal is probably the one who comes the closest to what people would actually use this technology for.)

Lillian is not happy about her technology being turned over to the military. She gets upset about it over and over again. Eventually, she suffers one of the most overdramatic heart attacks ever recorded on film. Before she dies, she hooks herself up to the machine and records her dying vision. Michael becomes obsessed with seeing what Lillian saw as she entered the afterlife. Unfortunately, the mean military folks have the tape so it looks like Michael is going to have to unleash some chaos. I can’t think of any other film that mixes Christopher Walken having a beatific vision with a bunch of slapstick humor featuring an out-of-control robot and a bunch of soap bubbles.

Today, if Brainstorm is known for anything, it’s as the film that Natalie Wood was shooting when she died. One popular theory about the circumstances surrounding Wood’s death is that she was having an affair with Christopher Walken. Watching the two of them in this film should disabuse anyone of that notion as the two of them have absolutely zero chemistry as a couple. (For the record, I think Wood’s death was an accident and that a lot of self-styled Internet sleuths owe Robert Wagner an apology.) If there’s anything that this film should be known for, it should be that it features a large number of Oscar nominees and winners and they all end up giving absolutely lousy performances. Even the usually wonderful Christopher Walken seems to be playing someone imitating himself. Watching this film, I was never quite sure why anyone was actually doing anything.

Director Douglas Trumbull was best known for designing the Stargate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey and, not surprisingly, Brainstorm’s vision of the afterlife is actually pretty effective. One gets the feeling that Trumbull was more comfortable with the special effects than he was with the human actors.

I have to admit that I always smile a little at films where scientists are shocked — shocked, I tell ya! — to discover that their technology is going to be used for military purposes. Why did they think the government was funding them in the first place? Lillian seems to believe that her technology will be used to allow people to experience what it’s like to ride a roller coaster. That’s what IMAX is for.

Max Tanabe (Richard Lynch) is Los Angeles’s biggest crime lord, involved in everything from prostitution to illegal fight clubs. But, because he’s rich, no one can touch him. He plays golf with the mayor. He’s paid off the police commissioner (Mickey Rooney). The police commissioner spends the entire movie riding around in a limo. How do you think he was able to afford that?

Captain Fuller (John Saxon) needs some new jack cops to take down a new jack gangster so he goes out and recruits three. Cody Randal (Sherries Ross) works vice. Rick Carver (Jason Lively) is a “tech expert” who rigs toy cars with explosives. Mike Crews (Sam J. Jones) is looking to avenge the death of his partner. Fuller brings them together and put them through an extensive training course. At the end of it, he tests their skills and their teamwork by bringing in a secret team of ninjas to attack them.

Which begs the question: If you already have a secret team of ninjas, why do you have to recruit and train three detectives to take down Tanabe? Why not just have the ninjas do it?

So, logic is not exactly Maximum Force‘s strong point but it still has some good points. For instance, you have to respect any movie that can bring together Richard Lynch and John Saxon, not to mention Mickey Rooney! Of course, there’s not really much of a reason for Mickey Rooney to be there. All of his scenes feature him in the limo and they are edited together so awkwardly that it seems probable the he never actually acted opposite any of his co-stars. But it doesn’t matter because he’s Hollywood legend Mickey Rooney, picking up a paycheck in his twilight years. As for Saxon and Lynch, they do what they do best and bring gravitas to their otherwise stock roles.

As for the three heroes, they’re adequate even if none of them really shine. I liked the tech expert the best but that was just because he rigged all of those remote control cars to explode. Sam J. Jones and Sherrie Ross are both better at throwing punches than showing emotion but that’s what a film like this demands. Some of the fight scenes are exciting. There’s a helicopter attack early in the film. Towards the end of the film, when Mike decides that the team needs some extra help, he calls in an amateur wrestler named Bear who just randomly shows up during the final battle. Maximum Force knows what its audience wants and that’s the important thing.