leaving the cinema at 2:47 p.m. with the Blue Moon so big and close to the earth, the vacant parking lot was more eerie than usual - the filmmakers did their job - that shadowy paranoia
a good conspiracy flick generates. You are in the conspiracy film - eyes are everywhere watching you. It's a hot summer night, driving up to the red light which quickly turns green,
are the laws that keep us safe, the stop light - for instance - are they actually triggers that do something other than let us stop and go, stop and go ???
As a film this was much more mature than Conspiracy Theory(1997), the somewhat amusing Mel Gibson / Julia Roberts improbable romance. More like Erin Brokovich (2000) meets Fahrenheit 911. Political movies galore. But Liev Schreiber - in multiple films/tv specials heard more than seen as a voice-over expert - ( though he was in SCREAM, SCREAM 2 and SPHERE) is a handsome actor with little sex appeal here. His robotic performance is the embodiment of pulling the soul out of a human being - kind of like Mark Famiglietti going A.I. when T-X Kristanna Loken turns into him and gives slow, methodical answers to the Feds in TERMINATOR 3. (To digress, check out this cool Terminator 3 interview with Famiglietti
http://www.thearnoldfans.com/news/archives/2003/september/591.htm )
It's hard to call this wonderfully filmed epic "escapism" as the parallels with a dumbfounded George W. Bush in his starring role (Fahrenheit 911) just sitting there while planes were penetrating the World Trade Center just can't escape the consciousness of any logical person viewing this. Dean Stockwell gets the "Dick Cheney is Halliburton" award for his corporate shenanigans role and there are cool near-cameo appearances by Roger Corman , Robyn Hitchcock (who was directed by Jonathan Demme in STOREFRONT HITCHCOCK in 1997, so nice that he remembers), even a "Tom Chapin" - most likely the late Harry Chapin's brother. Two of the three producers are daughters of the original film's star, Frank Sinatra, those being Nancy Sinatra and Tina Sinatra. As stated, there are wonderful images created by the camera, an angle shot of the telephone when Vice Presidential nominee Raymond Shaw ( Liev Schreiber ) knows it is his ever-present stalker ....no, not Bennett Marco ( Denzel Washington ), but his Mommy Dearest, Meryl Streep. Streep comes off like a malicious doppelganger of Laura Linney's victim in Clint Eastwood's 1997 flick ABSOLUTE POWER. She has the same exact laugh as Linney - straight out of Thespian Cliches 101. And if Meryl over acts in some parts of the film, she's so much fun in the others we just let it slide. Washington is all business as the troubled soldier, though it is a stretch to think he could actually get that close to a Vice Presidential candidate, no matter what their Kuwait camaraderie. There are so many people
keeping an eye on Denzel that probability goes out the window. The once innovative but now
cliche concept of turning soldiers into killing machines seems a lot more likely than the holes in the plot. But the film moves at a very good pace and is more of a statement for the times than it is an evening's entertainment. Maybe it will turn into entertainment a decade from now, maybe it will pale next to Sinatra's original, and quite possibly it could be a companion piece to the Frankenheimer flick, conspiratorial bookends.
With rumors (oh, so sorry, "theories") of Halliburton harvesting organs from soldiers and Iraqis to sell to countries with socialized medicine (each organ worth 10K or thereabouts), a dead soldier is worth more than the oil. This movie makes you think that maybe Halliburton itself is blowing up the pipeline, beheading soldiers and civilians, putting Bush into office in order to wreak havoc and pull in the greenbacks. It's a lot more probable than The Manchurian Candidate script.
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Boy am I pissed I didn't do the John Frankenheimer interview when I had the opportunity during the promotion of 2000s "Reindeer Games". This new film is a nice tip of the cap to his memory. It gets an A-.
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When rambling on (or doing research) for these B-Logs sometimes interesting urls are discovered - like this one: http://www.utoronto.ca/religion/synopsis/syn-ini.htm
If you don't want to read it, don't fret. I want it - it's there for ME! But I like to share!!
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