The crew's hairpieces are worse than ever, the bags under their eyes could hold a month's worth of groceries, and still no one in the cast wears a seat belt. None of that matters, though, because in this latest—and promised last—voyage of the Starship Enterprise, the Star Trek crew has returned to top form after a listless couple of pictures. Translation: Hard-core Trekkies will get their rockets off with Star Trek VI, while nonfans will at least be able to sit through this movie.
Giving this episode some of its extra kick is the fact that The Undiscovered Country is a parable about the fall of Communism. Those evil cabbage-heads, the Klingons (read: Russians), have seen the future and decided it means joining Earth's Federation. Capt. James T. ("I've never trusted Klingons and I never will") Kirk and his crew, only three months shy of retirement, are dispatched to accompany the Klingon bigwigs to a peace conference.
Credit for the success of this farewell—and, please, do let it be goodbye—goes to director and cowriter Nicholas Meyer, who also directed the best of the earlier Star Trek movies, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982). He has seen to it that this film is better plotted and more liberally salted with self-deprecating wit than recent starship outings, but he hasn't stinted on the requisite cheesy special effects (shaking the camera to simulate an explosion), the glorified marching-band-crossed-with-pajamas costumes, or Scotty (James Doohan) beaming 'em up.
As Captain Kirk, Shatner is his usual monosyllabic self, but heat least has a light touch these days with such lines as, "Once again, we've saved civilization as we know it." Nimoy is up to his old Vulcan tricks, lending class and gas to the Enterprise, and new recruit Kim Cattrall, as the Vulcan lieutenant Valeris, earns her pointed ears. As for the rest of the starship's crew (regulars DeForest Kelley, Waller Koenig, Nichelle Nichols and George Takei), they do their wooden best. (PG)
Tom Berenger, Daryl Hannah
Deep in the Amazon rain forest, a near naked Brazilian Indian takes aim with a bow and arrow at a small plane passing over his village.
It's a poignantly futile gesture, but it makes for a riveting cinematic image, one laden with meaning. And, indeed, At Play in the Fields of the Lord is about the havoc wrought when cultures collide—specifically when Christian missionaries, with gifts of beads and mirrors, set out to convert the wild tribes of the rain forest.
"Who knows what we might learn from the Indians, but we always try to teach them," says a local priest, underlining the theme of this faithful screen adaptation of Peter Matthiessen's 1965 cult novel. Directed by Brazil's Hector (Ironweed) Babenco, the movie has sweep and narrative drive to spare but tells too many stories. At three hours, it is too long and too discursive. Characters disappear for lengthy stretches and, while the Brazilian jungle is spectacular (the entire film was shot on location), this is a movie, guys, not a National Geographic special. Still, At Play is moving and, if nothing else, will spur donations to save the rain forest.
Berenger and Aidan Quinn, both appealing actors who always bring an unexpected facet to a part, have the movie's best roles. Berenger is flinty yet yearning as a dissolute part—Native American who finds himself when, stuck in a small Brazilian village, he joins a rain-forest tribe. Quinn is both amusing and affecting as a missionary who grows to doubt his mission. Others in the impressive cast include Kathy (Misery) Bates, as the missionary's wife, who has fine comic scenes (trying to put bras on the Indians) and some touching ones as she loses her mind; Daryl Hannah, in a surprisingly small role, who is, as usual, lovely to behold and an embarrassment to listen to; and John Lithgow, who does one of his patented priggish turns as another missionary. (R)
Eileen Atkins, Tom Courtenay
It does not follow that behind every great miscarriage of justice lies a great movie. Case in point: the well-intentioned but ultimately unsatisfying Let Him Have It, based on one of the more sensational trials in Britain in the 20th century.
Derek Bentley (newcomer Chris Eccleston), a 19-year-old epileptic with the mental capacity of an 11-year-old, was tried, convicted and executed for his part in a botched 1952 robbery that ended with the murder of a police officer. The case against Bentley hinged on his having cried "Let him have it" to his armed crony, a cold-blooded 16-year-old hoodlum played by Paul Reynolds. But was Bentley's shout (which set off a hideous shooting spree) a command to kill or—as all the evidence suggested—simply a plea for his accomplice to surrender his gun?
The movie's impact is dulled by sluggish pacing, the frequent—and ultimately contrived—use of high camera angles, and some flat-footed foreshadowing. While the ease was supposedly a cause célèbre in Britain, the movie fails to give more than the most perfunctory sense of the media circus surrounding the trial, the public outrage at Bentley's conviction and the political climate that permitted the sentence to stand. Tom Courtenay and Eileen Atkins are dependably fine as Bentley's anguished parents, but Eccleston plays the doomed Bentley as a bashful patsy rather than as a young man of severely impaired mental capacity—thus weakening the sense of outrage and horror at his fate. (R)
Valentine Nonyela, Mo Sesay
It's no small risk to try to weave a dark murder mystery through a bright tapestry of London's music scene in the 1970s, complete with social commentary on British racism, sexual diversity and the hysterical jingoism inspired by the Queen's Silver Jubilee. But that's just what young British filmmaker Isaac Julien has succeeded in doing in his first fictional feature film, which won the Critics Week Prize at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.
It is summer 1977 in London, a time when the Union Jack waved furiously across the city in preparation for the jubilee. Meanwhile, Chris (Nonyela), a heterosexual, and his longtime pal Caz (Sesay), a gay black, go about their modest business as disc jockeys on a black pirate-radio station, Soul Patrol, which operates out of a dingy East End garage. They try to parry, as best they can, the constant harassment by white skinheads, extremists of the right-wing National Front. But harassment turns to violence when Chris and Caz's friend TJ is murdered one night while cruising a neighborhood park.
Acting on a planted clue, police arrest Chris for the murder. Released for lack of evidence, he realizes that the real killer's identity lies in a tape that his younger sister found near the crime scene. Even as he and Caz split over mutual disapproval of their love affairs—Chris with a beautiful black woman (Sophie Okonedo) and Caz with a white punk musician (Jason Durr)—Chris must track the killer through a countercelebration ("Stuff the Jubilee"), which ends in violent disaster.
A warning here: Young Soul Rebels' brutal depictions of East End life and the homoerotic love scenes may not be everyone's cup of Earl Grey. Still, American moviegoers who can brook the talented Julien's calculated excesses will gain something of value from this lurid, lyrical tour of London's warring underbelly. (Unrated)
- Contributors:
- Leah Rozen,
- Joanne Kaufman,
- Mark Goodman.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
