Sunday, November 03, 2024

Movie review - "The Osterman Weekend" (1983) **1/2

 Sam Peckinpah's famously mediocre last movie. Dutch actor Rutger Hauer plays an all American TV host who hosts weekends for his old college friends. Then CIA agent John Hurt (a British actor) tells him that his friends are spies. The friends are played by Dennis Hopper, Chris Sarandon and Craig T Nelson.

Actually this film wasn't as bad as I thought it was. I felt it was easy to fix - they should have told the whole story through Hauer's eyes. The reveals come when he's revealed. Also more characterisation work please - I couldn't tell the difference in personality between Hopper, Sarandon and Nelson. 

Everyone had a blonde wife too - Hopper ( a sort of trashy hooker), Hauer (scary eyed Meg Foster who at least got to kill someone with a bow and arrow), Hurt (whose wife masturbates before being killed). Sarandon's wife was played by the woman who was Kris Kristofferson's sad eyed lover in Convoy.

 The action scenes are done very well. The voyeur stuff is irritating - the CIA watch everything on screens. How did they film everything? I got confused in a lot of places.

This actually should have been a character piece - dig into the notion of friendship.

But I didn't mind it. I guess my expectations were super low.


No comments: