Boundless ingenuity in special effects

Press, 24 February 1987, Page 16

Boundless ingenuity in special effects

By

DAVID WILSON

Route Tyler is an FX (effects) expert — a movie illusionist whose special effects have unleashed tidal waves, turned men into monsters and taken filmgoers through time and space. Whether raking a restaurant with machine-gun fire, launching a space probe to a dark planet, or unleashing a psycho on an unsuspecting family, his ingenuity is boundless. It’s, about to be put to the test in the new video release from RCA-Colum-bia-Hoyts, “FX — Murder By Illusion” (M). Rollie has been approached by the Justice Department with a strange offer. An underworld crime boss is to testify against his former colleagues, then vanish into the void of the Witness Relocation Computer Programme. To make his disappearance complete and eliminate the risk of underworld revenge, the government wants Rollie to stage a fake assassination. For his services, he will receive $30,000 taxfree cash.

It’s a tempting offer, and an intriguing creative challenge, until the murder with special effects suddenly turns real and Rollie finds himself the prey in a web of doubledealing and intrigue.

“FX” stars Australian Bryan Brown, Brian Dennehy, Diane Venora, Cliff de Young and Jerry Orbach.

For Bryan Brown, who stars as Rollie Tyler, the “FX” role offers a fresh new field to explore. After losing his life in the Boer War in “Breaker Morant” and wooing Rachel Ward on the sprawling sheep farm of “The Thorn

Birds,” Brown now finds himself in the centre of a fast-paced suspense thriller.

It also takes place in New York City, a new milieu for the Australian actor who is currently starring in “The Shiralee,” a remake of the 1957 movie starring Peter Finch, and based on D’Arcy Niland’s famous Australian novel being filmed in Quorn, South Australia. Brown’s substantial film credits include more than 18 films including the $43 million epic, “Taipan,” based on James Clavell’s best-selling novel “Newsfront,” “The Angry Shot,” “Winter of Our Dreams,” "Far East,” and “The Empty Beach.” He has also worked in several major series and telemovles such as the successful “A Town Like Alice,” “The Thorn Birds,” “Eureka Stockade” and “Kim.”

“FX” marks Brown’s real emergence in the international film arena, as it was his first film to be hailed a hit on an international scale.

In complete contrast to Brown’s on-screen persona comes the out-sized presence of another Brian, Brian Dennehy. Whether portraying an anti-hero like the corrupt western sheriff in “Silverado,” a friendly alien scientist in “Cocoon,” or even a bartender who helped Dudley Moore “bed” Bo Derek in “10,” Dennehy is used to combining his physical and artistic prowess to his acting roles. “Building an acting career is like building a brick wall,” he explains. “Every performance either helps or hurts, but

they’re all bricks in the wall.”

As the maverick member of the New York Police Department, he sums up his role as Detective Lt. Leo McCarthy as “a renegade but he’s a tough, honest cop who hates to see good police work screwed up.” In the part of Rollie Tyler’s actress-girlfriend is Diane Venora, a part she admits is her most startling yet.

The role marks Venora’s fourth appearance in a major film, and her second as co-star. She made her screen debut as Honey Bruce in Bob Fosse’s “All That Jazz” and followed with the lead opposite Albert Finney in the stylish “Wolfen.”

An elegant, selfpossessed brunette, Venora as Ellen Keith, at one point early in “FX” gets made up as a Mon-roe-type blonde threatened by a hit man in a chic seafood restaurant.

“What' happened,” she recalls, “is that I became different with the blonde hair. I was suddenly sexy,

blatantly sexual. Even a few members of the crew, with whom I’d worked for weeks, were interested in a way that they hadn’t been before.” But the blondness, as well as the blithe urbanity, proves short-lived as “FX” takes an unexpectedly harrowing turn. And the brutal scenes in Ellen Keith’s apartment, so shocking after a night of civilised lovemaking, is the final madness that propels Rollie Tyler into a night world of illusion versus reality.

“FX” is the third film directed by Robert Mandel, who came to the medium from the New York theatre via the American Film Institute. His first effort, the 45minute “Night at O’Rears,” which explored a small-town girl’s crush on the local Romeo, was impressive enough to gain entry in the New York Film Festival and the Los Angeles Filmex. It led to

an after-school special for television entitled “Sunshine on the Way” (which brought Mandel an Emmy nomination) and eventually to his first feature film, "Independence Day.”

Again set in a small town, this highly-praised picture starred Kathleen Quinlan as a would-be photographer who falls in love with a garage mechanic (David Keith). Mandel’s second film was “Touch and Go.”

The Academy Award winning musical genius of Bill Conti was secured for the “FX” musical score. Conti’s other credits include “The Right Stuff,” for which he won his Oscar, the “Rocky” trilogy, “An Unmarried Woman,” and “I the Jury.”

In the 104-minute “FX — Murder By Illusion,” Conti’s scoring plays a significant part in making this a thriller with a capital T.