Film

Rip It Up, Issue 157, 1 August 1990, Page 21

Film

TOTALRECALL Director: Paul Verhoeven It was Paul Verhoeven's name rather than the pectoral-bound machismo of Arnold Schwarzenegger that tempted me into Tofal Recall a few weeks back. For much of this film the time passed easily— taken from Philip K Dick’s short story ‘We Can Remember it for you Wholesale’ — it has hip literary credentials and the script is crisply witty. ‘Let's go to Mars', the hero casually suggests to his wife over breakfast, while later in Mars the inhabitants complain about price hikes in the colonies. - The sure sense of style which made the first Robocop so much superior to its sequel shows in the first half of the film, reaching a high pointin Schwarzenegger’singenious disguise as a Marianne Sagebrecht clone at the ‘Mars Airport. The spirit of Blade Runner looms overthe Mars settlement, particularly in Venusvile, with its freaks parading alongside billboards for Best Western and Pepsi. By the last half-hour of the film, with our granite-jawed hero pitted against the steely villainy of Ronny Cox, the film losesiits lightness— conventional

showdown, shoot-out antics have taken over from the engrossing dilemma of Schwarzenegger’sidentity problems. Perhaps we expecttoo much of sucha movie, a mere entertainment and an expensive one at that (Total Recallhad one of the greediest budgets of all the American summer releases) but overall this film gives the impression of opportunities missed. WILLIAM DART MIAMI BLUES / Director: George Armitage It's difficult not to think of producer Jonathan Demme while immersed in the gleaming locations of Miami Blues — the Demme of Married to the Mob, although Miami Blues’is a very different sort of film. Armitage, who shares with Demme a background in the Roger Corman stable — they met while Demme was writing Angels Hard as They Come and Armitage was directing Private Duty Nurses— approached Miami Blues as a challenge to see how unattractive an anti-hero one might be able to get away with. Alecßaldwin is all lined up as hunk of the moment'making his firstimpact as Melanie Griffith’s thick, chauvie boyfriend in Working Girl. In Miami Blues he plays atotally amoral ex-jailbird for whom life is an endless, if inventive rip-off, casually linked with violence where necessary. As he explains to Jennifer Jason Leigh, he’sin ‘investments. .. | take people’s money and putitto work.” ; Armitage’s game is to see how long his audience might accept a ruthless killer as a bit of a scamp. The first touch of violence, an airport-canvassing Hare Krishna dying of a heart attack when Baldwin yanks his finger overto touch the back of his hand, is casual, throwaway even. By the end of the movie, there's a retributory echowhen Baldwin himself has a handful of fingers cleaved off by the formidable Shirley Stoler as he tries to raid her pawnshop. There’s a more subtle moral ambiguity fo Leigh’s character as Baldwin's waifish girlfriend — putting herself through business college by being a hooker on the side. She stands as a symbol of compliance in an age when we are now having to take moral stands on some issues. Her life is so limited that she can only assess their relationship on the most basic level. ‘He always ate everything | ever cooked forhim and he never hit me.’ Although you do find yourself

succumbing with some fascination to Baldwin's little schemes, the most

substantial characteris his nemesis, the beaten-up Sergeant Hank Moseley, amiably played by Fred Ward. Crumpled and sly, hanging outina tacky apartment that seems notto have been decorated or cleaned since the 40s, itis Ward, the pragmatist cop, who provides the film with something of a moral edge. : WILLIAM DART ENEMIES—ALOVESTORY Director: Paul Mazursky Paul Mazursky's track record has always been inconsistent, reaching its low pointin last year's Moon Over Paradorone of the mostinept political satires ever made, notable only for what must be Sammy Davis Jr's last film appearance. Enemiesis one of Mazursky's best. Taken from a novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer, this wry tale of a marital and extra-marital web in post-World Warll New York has a rightness of touch and tone that usually eludes the director. You can sense this in the quality of performances — Angelica Huston relishes her resolutely worldly Jewish wife, Margaret Sophie Stein her naive Polish maid and Lena Olin is touching as the tragic and beautiful Masha, the only one of the three women who doesn't survive the turmoil. Ron Silveris the quietly spoken man caughtinthe middle ‘ The setting, which was a strong point of Mazursky's earlier Next Stop Greenwich Village, is suitably evocative: the Jewish country clubin the late 40s, with women in playsuits gushing over John Garfield contrasts with the tawdry energy of Coney Island. : i For all the humour (and Enemiesis a very funny film) itis also very movingin its portrayal of the personal tragedies thatlay in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust. WILLIAM DART