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March 03, 2005
The Falcon and the Snowman
The Falcon and the Snowman (1985), John Schlesinger:
Heaven help me. After his embarrassing presentation at the Oscars, I inadvertantly reward Sean Penn by pulling this and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. It's a Sean Penn lovefest.
I put this on my queue after Woody Allen mentioned it in Celebrity. I'd been wanting to see more good spy dramas so Woody's recommendation seemed as good as any. After watching it, I see where this fits into his idea that modern celebrity encompasses any number of dubious heroes, but it's not very good.
It plays more like a drug movie than an espionage movie, running from the law rather from the Government (with the capital 'G') as the deals get larger and larger. Considering the subject material, Schlesinger even plays that relatively straight. He toys a bit with the idea of espionage as protest, setting up promising ideological clashes from the start, and then promptly drops it. The only fruit it bears (and probably the best thing to come from the movie) is when Penn's being arrested outside the Soviet embassy in Mexico: "I'm not a spy! I'm Republican!"
Schlesinger also hesistantly tries to go the paranoia route, stealing for twenty seconds from The Conversation and seemingly ashamed enough not to bring it up anywhere else, and not for lack of opportunity.
I think either one of these routes could've made this something interesting. I know he can do it because his grubby little fingerprints are all over Midnight Cowboy and everything that made it great. Cowboy was just so brash at times and though it didn't hit on all counts, Schlesinger didn't hold anything back. This isn't bad, by any means, but it's something you'd expect from a Movie of the Week.
7/15
Posted by bing at March 3, 2005 02:42 PM