BEFORE: Travolta-Thon continues, and you might have noticed the absence of such films as "Saturday Night Fever", "Grease" and "Urban Cowboy"...and if so, my response is that you are indeed a keen noticer of exactly this sort of thing. Again, the goal here is not to watch every John Travolta film ever made, but to watch the ones that are already in my movie collection. Anyway, my personal ban on "Saturday Night Fever" and "Grease", imposed back in 1978, remains in effect, to the best of my knowledge.
After watching 4 or 5 Travolta movies in a row, I'm working on a theory...which is the main reason for watching them consecutively, for comparative purposes. I want to watch a couple more before I post my theory, though.
THE PLOT: A sound-man accidentally records the evidence that proves a car "accident" was murder, and consequently finds himself in danger.
AFTER: From John Woo to Brian DePalma, another director with a signature style (and both directed films in the "Mission: Impossible" series). The DePalma film I'm most familiar with is probably "Body Double", and there are some obvious similarities - riffs on horror movies, women who are all either b-grade actresses or prostitutes (or both), and a lot of loose ends that don't get tied up.
This film is set in the world of low-budget filmmaking, a world I know all too well (since I spend a couple days a week in it) - who knew they made slasher films in Philadelphia? Travolta plays Jack, a sound-FX engineer, and there's some great footage of him working with those old reel-to-reel tape recorders, and Steenbeck flatbed editing machines - and a synchronizer! I tell my co-workers about working with Bolex cameras and Nagras, and film splicers where you actually had to cut the film with a blade, and they look at me like I'm talking about Victrolas, and phones that you had to crank. No, I used all these now-outdated things at NYU film school in the late 80's (OK, I never could get the hang of that synchronizer...) and then I rode home on my pet dinosaur... You kids today with your crazy scanners, and your FinalCut software, and your pixel-based CGI!
Anyway, Travolta's character is out recording sound effects in a park one night, and he accidentally records the sound of a gunshot, followed by a car crash. He rescues a girl from a car that's driven into a lake, but is later told by the cops and the media to forget the whole thing - but Jack is sure that he's heard an assassination. Try telling the police that you're an "ear-witness" to a murder, good luck with that.
Jack puts the moves on the girl from the car, and they exchange back-stories, while he sets out to prove what he heard. Apparently someone also filmed the crash, and Jack syncs up his sound with still frames cut out of a magazine - nice trick, but wouldn't it just be easier to get a copy of the film? Oh, yeah, this was back in the days when you had to bring film to a lab, then wait three days to pick it up... (that was how it worked, and we LIKED IT!) Jack then scans the film for the shot from the grassy knoll that killed ArchDuke Ferdinand...wait, that can't be right. Anyway, the accident more closely resembles Chappaquiddick than Dealey Plaza.
So, if it's an assassination, who's behind it? And what's the connection to a serial killer targeting loose women in the Philadelphia area? And why does Jack need to drive his car straight through the middle of a parade? Jeez, I wish I'd known that the film's climax takes place during a parade and fireworks, I would have watched this film on July 4, instead of "The General's Daughter"!
The ending was disappointing to me, since nothing really got explained, and the movie has a very callous disregard for its main characters, as well as for the audience. The movie pretty much falls apart near the end, the main character makes some very bad decisions, and just seems to lose his interest in bringing the truth to light. And if he's not interested, you can guess how I felt.
Also starring Nancy Allen, Dennis Franz, and John Lithgow (last seen in "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers"), one of my fave actors, but he's very underused here.
RATING: 4 out of 10 boom mikes
No comments:
Post a Comment