| OCR Text |
Show by Rick Drouth ' 1 ? " , : , . , . f i , ."., J . .. . I ' :';' , . - y ' t ?'( - f;v;v-k-.. t ' 1m . - - .. f If . .1 J , ' I X $ ' f V4 Timothy Hutton as the idealist falconer Christopher Boyce and Sean Penn as rebellious Daulton Lee take on the CIA and the KGB in "The Falcon and the Snowman." 'Blood Simple' leads U.S. Film Festival After a while the movie begins to look like an overlong docudrama for TV. The families of the two spies are shadowy characters and the girlfriend girl-friend of Boyce (played by Lori Singer) is a token love interest. But ultimately director John Schlesinger gives us something sad in this tale of a romantic and a hot-dogging rebel crushed by circumstance and their own mistakes. ' Seventeen This film was originally part of the "Middletown" PBS series that examined various facets of Muncie, Indiana. It still seems packaged for TV, at a solid 120 minutes, and could have done with 30 or 45 minutes cut out. The style is "cinema verlte" with no narration and follows its subjects with a rhythm of real life. But the film rambles even more than you might expect. It doesn't take long to get the message. The teenagers here are bored, indifferent or snotty to their teachers, and interested mainly in parties. The main "plot" concerns Lynn, a white girl who takes up with a black boyfriend for a while; she ultimately abandons him, partly because of neighborhood prejudice and partly because he's too unreliable to be worth the trouble anyway. In another area, a boy dies in a car crash and his friends mourn, but no one thinks of giving up the fast life. Other topics, like the high school basketball season and a "rumble" that never comes off, only serve to prolong the proceedings. V Blood Simple "Blood Simple" is a wickedly stylish redneck update of Hitchcock that starts from a simple premise. The owner of a bar (Dan Hedaya, who looks stolid and Nixonesque) finds his unhappy wife (Frances McDormand) is fooling around with the bartender (John Getz). So the husband hires a fat, giggling private detective (M. Emmet Walsh) to kill them. However, the detective decides it would be easier to kill the husband, pocket his money and frame the killing on the wife. Then, somebody else finds the body and . . . The complications go on from there. If you described the plot, it might sound like a Texas "Arsenic and Old Lace." But the film takes more after the artfully deadly "Psycho." Hitchcock's film stood melodrama on its head; it taught you that heroines don't necessarily survive the movie and your sympathy can be engaged for the "villain" or shifted quickly away to someone else. This picture, by Joel and Ethan Coen, is an equally complex tale with the moral boundaries blurred and the audience led to fear, pity or laugh at the characters, often all at once. The extra-special ingredient to this cynical plot is ignorance and confusion. As the four characters shoot, stab plot or murder, none ever realizes the whole picture of what's happening. In the detective's lexicon, going "simple" means something propels ' you into doing dazed, dumb things. In "Blood Simple," the first act of violence sends the characters down a dark path, and they can't seem to stop. f The directors make their presence known with garishghoulish touches that equal the Texas atmosphere. My guess is the character they like the most is the yellow-suited detective. He is the most scummy person in the movie, but is also the one with conscientious style. In the most bloody circumstances, he still remembers to put on his stetson. M. Emmet Walsh, a long-time character actor, does his best work here, and so does the rest of the cast. i Almost You In "Almost You" the quirkiness of that genre we call the "relationship" movie begins to wear out its welcome. Griffin Dunne and Brooke Adams play a testy couple who are about to take their languishing marriage on a vacation when the wife is struck down by a car. At one point, someone tells the hero that he goes around acting miserable all the time, but people are inclined to put up with it because he's cute. I agree with the first place but not the second. Dunne's character isn't cute. He lives in his childhood apartment, sulks about working for the family business and charmlessly falls into an affair with the nurse giving physical therapy to his wife. (The wife herself is a pouty drip.) Two characters that are a little more likable are the nurse (Karen Young) and her jealous actor boyfriend (Marty Watt) who begins to trail Dunne and stumbles into a job at his business. The film has one marvelous scene where the four characters and others gather around a dinner table to flirt, subtly challenge each other and throw out theories about sex and love. (But typically, the most vibrant personality person-ality here is Josh Mostel, Zero's son, in a brief appearance as the couple s friend. ) "Almost You" asks us to be charmed by people who are rather irritating and peevish. Vi The Falcon and the Snowman Christopher Boyce and Daulton Lee may have been an unlikely team for espionage, but dramatically they were right for each other. As played by Timothy Hutton, Boyce is an idealist but a wavering one. As the movie begins, he abruptly adandons the priesthood in the '70s and drifts into a job with a firm that makes satellites for the CIA and processes minor information. When he stumbles across CIA cables about their manipulation of Australian politics he decides to protest by selling information to the KGB. Boyce seems not to be aware of the dubious record of the CIA that was known by any alert liberal college student of the era. It's appropriate that Boyce is into falconry. He's both noble and flighty. While Boyce is appealing for his ideals, the amoral, irresponsible Daulton Lee is attractive for his rebel spirit. Sean Penn steals the movie as the weaselly Lee, who became Boyce' s courier to the Soviet embassy in Mexico City. Penn makes him a funny, tragic character who is enterprising enough - that he tries to interest the Soviets in a drug-smuggling operation. But he also goes so far off the deep end that he exasperates everyone involved. Against this, Hutton tends to fade into the background, but he conveys a few interesting moments as a character whose dreams are dragged down to earth. Now showing Beverly Hills Cop V-i Terminator Heavenly Bodies (Not yet rated) |
