Movie Madness!

ABSOLUTE POWER

In his latest exhibition as star, producer and director, Clint Eastwood plays a crafty thief who, while trying to make one last big score before retirement, finds himself in the wrong place at the very worst time. While hiding in a Washington D.C. mansion's secret room, he witnesses Gene Hackman's altercation with a young woman - and the young woman suddenly becomes very dead. Making things infinitely worse for Clint is the fact that Hackman is the President of the United States, which means he is the target of some very powerful enemies.

William Goldman's script of David Baldacci's novel jettisons much of the plot's intrigue - and much of the plot - in favor of linear simplicity. This often makes a complex story more suitable for motion picture entertainment, but here it only serves to make Eastwood's character the hero, instead of a supporting character. The film focuses almost entirely on Eastwood, his dilemma, and his relationship with his estranged daughter Laura Linney, while simplifying everything else to the point of implausibility. For example, we're asked to believe that President Hackman ditched a party to have a tryst with his best friend's wife, and only two secret service men (and aide Judy Davis) know of his whereabouts? Don't those guys have to keep in constant contact with each other while guarding the chief exec? Shouldn't police detective Ed Harris be able to solve the murder without Clint's help?

The opening half hour of this movie is nicely put together - amusing, suspenseful, and promising more to come. Too bad the rest doesn't live up to that promise. ½

DANTE'S PEAK

About a year ago, I met a volcanologist who had been assigned the task of reading the scripts for the two competing big screen volcano movies being released this year. He described Dante's Peak as being "the least ludicrous" of the two.

For better or worse, we're in the midst of a Hollywood disaster-fest. The digitally manufactured spectacle created for last summer's Twister was so successful that producers jumped to the conclusion that the public was eager for a lot more bad weather. They failed to realize that Twister was actually a monster movie, more akin to Jaws than The Towering Inferno.

Pierce Brosnan plays the volcanologist who's the only one who realizes that the sleeping mountain is about to erupt. Linda Hamilton is the foxy small town mayor (and single mother) who's just trying to do the Right Thing. Both actors are very good, and I found myself enjoying the subplot of their hesitant romance so much that it was a bit disappointing when the volcano finally erupted. When it does, there can be no doubt that Universal had their theme parks in mind when they made this movie just as much as world box office receipts. Brosnan, Hamilton, and the whole family are kept moving in whatever bumper car is handy from one exciting and unlikely predicament to another, making hairbreadth escapes from certain death while dodging lava, ash, and debris. They hardly have time for the obligatory rescue of the family dog.

Dante's Peak is ludicrous all right - but it's ludicrous in the same way as an old fashioned adventure serial, or the thrill ride it's likely to become. I don't really have to tell you not to take it seriously.

GRIDLOCK'D

Tupac Shakur and Tim Roth play two Detroit musicians who, after the New Year's Eve overdose of their girlfriend Thandie Newton, become determined (or at least semi-determined) to kick their heroin habit. The title refers to the system they become enmeshed in while trying to get into a rehabilitation program, which only seems to tie them up in ever more red tape. To make matters more troublesome, the boys are also wanted by the police as suspects in a murder, and pursued by the gangsters responsible for the crime.

While attempting a satirical ambiance somewhere in between Trainspotting, Pulp Fiction and After Hours, the script gets a bit too caught up in it's own machinations. It's easy to predict that Shakur and Roth will continue to get the run-around from the moment they get in their first line.

They do score pretty well in their comic chemistry, with Shakur playing relative straight man to Roth's buffoon. This is surely the kind of movie that Cheech and Chong might have made if they'd started out today.

MARGARET'S MUSEUM

I'm not a big fan of coal mining movies, be they stories of the Irish "troubles" or union wars in America, so this movie already has two strikes against it. Helena Bonham Carter plays a waifish beauty in a late '40s mining town on the Canada coast who meets and falls for a sweet, bagpipe playing oaf (Clive Russell). Having lost a father and brother in "the pit" already, she makes him swear never to work in the mines, but the Company's crushing system of virtual slavery proves hard to escape. Only Carter's enchanting beauty, and occasional flashes of sharp wit, makes this worth sticking with until your rewarded by the surprisingly macabre and gruesome end.

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