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Show by Iliek Drouth f t, iff F-". , . a1 "" - (! Bernie Osterman (Craig T. Nelson) puts the choke hold on John Tanner (Rutger Hauer) as tension ten-sion reaches peak levels during the long, terror-filled "Osterman Weekend." , ' ' ' i N A Classic Recommended Good double-feature double-feature material Time-killer For masochists L only j Deal of the Century Chevy Chase plays Eddie Muntz, a small-arms dealer who wears a pair of moral blinders. (They're a ghastly, snug fit.) From his headquarters head-quarters in a church (where grenades and M-ls are stacked to the ceiling) Eddie will sell to foreign rebels, juntas, and even a tinpot dictator who wants anti-tank weapons to stop the pesky whales off his coastline. When another traveling salesman (Wallace Shawn) commits suicide next to Eddie's South American hotel room, Muntz takes '' over hia sales deal, clinches " it, and gets hired by a big weapons firm, the Luckup Corporation. He's assigned to sell their new "Peacemaker," "Peace-maker," a non-killer drone plane. Meanwhile, Shawn's vengeful widow (Sigourney Weaver) cuts herself in as a partner. Chase gives one of his best satiric performances. To show Eddie as the hollow man, Chase starts with his usual poker-faced glibness and holds on to it, instead of flipping to silliness, as he's done before. The early scenes are like Bogart I material, roasted lightly by writer Paul Brickman and director William Friedkin. The picture throws in MAD-Magazine scenes where a fanged corporate head (Vince Edwards) presides pre-sides over an arms bazaar. Weaver is as insubstantial as a drink of water. She's just tall and cool. Wallace Shawn provides a funny dash of bathos. And Gregory Hines exudes sweetness in a jerkily-written part. He's a salesman with pacifist urges. By now, you get the idea. "Deal" fires out a lot of ideas that strike only glancing glanc-ing blows. Vz The Osterman Weekend Director Sam Peckinpah doesn't show the lacerating edge that made him famous in the 1960s. In "Osterman," he does a reasonably efficient effi-cient job with a mediocre script. John Tanner (Rutger Hauer) is a TV newsman with an expose show. Fasett (John Hurt) is a CIA agent with evidence that apparently apparent-ly shows Tanner's three best friends are Soviet spies. Tanner doesn't believe it, but plays along on the condition that he can grill CIA chief Danforth (Burt Lancaster) as a future guest on his show. He agrees to let the government eavesdrop as he hosts a weekend in the country with his three buddieshot-tempered Joe Car-done Car-done (Chris Sarandon); ner- ' 1 vous Richard Tremaine (Dennis Hopper); and sly, tough Bernie Osterman (Craig T.Nelson). The screenplay by Ian Sharp is from a Robert Ludlum novel, so no one is what he seems to be. But aside from the major plot twists, the movie is more concerned with its big action scenes. At the climax, everyone every-one starts running around the foggy woods with exotic weapons. (Early on, we see that Tanner's wife, played by Meg Foster, is a crack shot with bow and arrow. If you don't think the movie is going to play that up, you should go to your room ! ) But none of the characters is very involving. (Hauer looks unsure of his portrayal, portray-al, as he goes through the movie with an enigmatic half -smile on his face.) The movie's slapdash message denounces CIA nastiness and video voyeurism. TV cameras constantly spy on the characters (mostly when they're in the bedroom, for the sake jOf titillating us). ., But the moralisms andm hoked-up intrigue don't yield much in "Osterman." 12 Never Say Never Again Sean Connery as James Bond is older but wiser, and so is the movie. The filmmakers film-makers know they can't match the frenzied chases of the Roger Moore Bonds. So the story here is about a dry-docked dry-docked Bond brought back into active service. A younger, snootier M (Edward (Ed-ward Fox) has used him as an instructor all these years. Now he limbers up his muscles in a world where the villains are more dastardly, his colleagues are eccentric or inept, and people are attuned at-tuned to Pop technology. The usual games-playing sequence is updated Bond and the villainous Largo (German actor Klaus Maria Brandauer) fight on a videogame video-game board where the loser gets progressively more painful electric shocks through the joystick. The film is essentially a remake of the 1965 Bond film "Thunderball," as the evil organization SPECTRE hides two stolen atomic missiles in the Caribbean. Connery expertly plays the old story with new inflections. inflec-tions. His stock charm and self-confidence is mixed with chagrin that his punch isn't what it used to be. Barbara Carrera cackles over her every dirty deed as Fatima Blush, and joins the gallery of great Bond villains. (She overshadows "Octopussy's" Louis Jour-dan, Jour-dan, who until now looked 'pretty decent.) Brandauer has a grin like an evil Dutch boy, but Max Von Sydow, as the cat-loving Blofeld, merely adds to his list of wasteful cameos. "Never Say Never" would get a full-fledged recommendation recom-mendation if it wasn't pallid in the department where it competes directly with the Moore films. The action sequences, like a car chase and submachine-gun battle, are old hat. Connery's Bond is fine, except for the yellowed edges around his license to kill. |