Douglas has a presence unlike any other actor's. He's classy, yet a smidge clammy, as if he had spent his formative years behind the tinted windows of a luxury sedan. This makes him ideal for roles as powerful establishment jerks—and this character is one of the biggest jerks yet. A ruthless, obscenely rich investment banker just turning 48, Douglas is as lonely and unloved as Ebenezer Scrooge. Then his kooky, estranged younger brother (Penn) gives him a gift certificate (how thoughtful!) to Consumer Recreation Services, an adventure outfit that...well, the whole trick of the movie is trying to figure out what CRS does do once Douglas signs on as a client.
He quickly learns that he is trapped in an elaborate, possibly deadly game (which rules out Pictionary). CRS, which apparently has agents and influence everywhere, engineers a terrifying cab ride from hell, stages an unscheduled burial and, most diabolical of all, gets newsman Daniel Schorr to talk directly to Douglas from his TV.
Still, The Game, directed by David Fincher (Seven), has too few convincing twists. One should feel that Douglas is hopelessly lost in an ominous maze. Instead, it's as if he's not sure what aisle he has wandered into at the local Kmart. (R)
Bill Pullman, Andie MacDowell
Director Wim Wenders has a lot on his mind. Unfortunately, he wants to share it with us. Violence is meant to be a mosaic portrait of a criminally savage Hollywood on the cusp of the millennium. Pullman, a producer famous for his bloody action pictures, is kidnapped and, in a sense, subjected to a taste of his own cinema. His emotionally needy wife (MacDowell, with an exquisite little frown) was planning to leave him, but now discovers she has a head cool enough to enjoy running his affairs. Meanwhile, in the Griffiths Observatory, high above L.A., a technological wizard (Gabriel Byrne) is installing an elaborate, city-wide surveillance system that can spy on anyone, from lonely women sitting in apartment windows to muggers prowling the alleys.
This is all very earnest, portentous and more than a little annoying. (R)
Kevin Kline, Tom Selleck
On Oscar night a Brad Pitt-ish young star (Matt Dillon) is up for Best Actor for his performance as a gay soldier in a drama called To Serve and Protect. Beating out not only Paul Newman but Steven Seagal, he thanks his gay high school drama coach (Kline), who is watching back home in Greenleaf, Ind. You recognize the inspiration for this bright comedy's setup: Tom Hanks's acceptance speech for Philadelphia in 1994, when he thanked his gay high school teacher Rawley Farnsworth. The difference is, Kline is still deep in the closet and about to lock the door. He's getting married in three days.
Scriptwriter Paul Rudnick (Jeffrey, Addams Family Values) is close to unbeatable when it comes to sharp topical humor. He makes light mockery of homophobia (a reporter asks, "Should homosexuals be allowed to handle fresh produce?"), gay culture (Kline's stag party ends with a fight over Yentl) and Hollywood films about gays (there's a funny movie-within-a-movie clip of To Serve and Protect). Rudnick is not so great at fleshing out his characters. Selleck's role, a gay TV correspondent, barely exists. Selleck isn't a strong enough actor to work without a solid script.
Kline is the opposite. With his charm and poise, he's like someone in a musical comedy, happily expecting his cue from the orchestra. He can make a limp wrist into elegant pantomime. There's also Debbie Reynolds as his sweet, occasionally tart mother, Bob Newhart as his conservative principal and Joan Cusack, howling with rage as the woman who finally understands the source of her fiancé's Streisand fixation. Cusack almost steals the movie, but what else is new? (PG-13)
>Director Mimi Leder
GETTING INTO ACTION
UNTIL RECENTLY THERE WERE AS MANY women action directors as there are female fullbacks in the Dallas Cowboys' backfield. But when it came time for Steven Spielberg, cofounder of DreamWorks SKG, to pick a helmer for the studio's first flick, the $50 million nuke thriller The Peacemaker (opening Sept. 26), he turned to Mimi Leder. "I'm a drama director," says Leder, 45, whose directing on NBC's ER caught Spielberg's eye. "I hope when people see my movie they'll think it's smart—smart is what's important—and not a guy movie."
Just because she's already moving on to her second action epic, Deep Impact, a $100 million Paramount May release about a menacing meteor, doesn't mean Leder has gone macho. "I don't do anything guylike," says Leder, who lives with her husband, actor Gary Werntz (who appears in The Peacemaker), and their 10-year-old daughter, Hannah, in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley. "I wear sneakers, not hiking boots. I like to dance and go to the movies. I like to shop, thank you." In fact, Leder plans to shoot a film about her family, in part to honor her father, independent filmmaker Paul Leder, who died of cancer last year. Her brother Reuben, 47, is writing the film, and her sister Geraldine, 35, will cast it. "My father told me I could succeed at anything," says Leder. "And he told me not to be afraid of it."
- Contributors:
- Jeffrey Wells.
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!
