Most British movies of the early 80s were so relentlessly anti-Thatcher that this one has novelty value for being a right wing conservative piece. It was inspired by the Iranian embassy siege, which deserved a big screen adaptation (war movies used to be a stock genre for the British film industry and the public still has an appetite for them... this was a hit in England).
It stars Lewis Collins of The Professionals, who isn't the most charismatic actor in the world but is terrifically believable as an SAS guy - he seems like the real deal, as if he's doing it himself, and I wonder he didn't make more action films, because the 80s were the decade for them.
This is done in however by its dopey plot. It starts off promisingly enough - a man is killed during a protest, who turns out to be an undercover agent, trying to discover if there are militants in the peace movement. Now a lot of people will find that concept offensive, but it's not impossible there are hardline militant leftists in the peace movement, and killing an agent is good. So Lewis Collins of the SAS is called in to investigate.
And this is where the film gets silly. Collins is married with a kid but promptly sets out to seduce one of the leaders of the group, Judy Davis as a Vanessa Redgrave type. Davis' performance is superb incidentally - intense, passionate, beautiful, touchingly vulnerable with Collins. Collins says he's from the SAS but got kicked out, so she is enthusiastic about him. Then she discovers he's got a wife and kids and is lying and - get this - she doesn't have him killed; instead they get some terrorists to hold his wife and kid for ransom (why?), so he can come along when they hold the US embassy for siege (why) so he can... why? Then they let him go to the toilet (why?) enabling him to signal to the forces outside.
It's really dopey, dopey filmmaking. It also doesn't have nearly enough action - Collins kicks some butt towards the end, and the SAS raiding the embassy and Collins' house is pretty good. But up until then it's a hard slog. Even the scene where the terrorists take over the embassy isn't that exciting. And there's far too much talk, including a scarcely believable scene where Richard Widmark (US ambassador) and Robert Webber (general) scold the terrorists whhen the terrorists are pointing a gun at them.
There's some beautiful rugged scenery, it is a fascinating time capsule of hawkish early 80s politics and Collins, when called upon to be active, does it very well. It's also amazing to see Judy Davis knocking it out of the park in such a mediocre film.
No comments:
Post a Comment