BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Numerootno A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Jonah Abbott There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Bill Slocum It's Sam Peckinpah's last film, and as a fan of this brilliant, troubled man, I wanted it to be a good one to go out on. What I got instead is another of his problem pictures, an interesting premise and eye-raising performances done in by a loss of focus.John Tanner (Rutger Hauer) is a TV interviewer given an unpleasant assignment by CIA operative Lawrence Fassett (John Hurt): Confront a group of college friends with evidence they are working for a KGB operative named Mikalovich. An array of videotapes provided by Fassett demonstrates their culpability to Tanner. So he sets to work, his home the setting for a prearranged weekend gathering. If it works, a live interview with CIA Director Maxwell Danforth (Burt Lancaster) will be his reward.For Peckinpah, it was his first film in more than half-a-decade, and a chance to show he was still able to deliver a solid action film well after his gritty early-'70s peak. The CIA comes equipped with cool surveillance equipment and laser-sighted automatics. The Weekend itself, once it gets going, has a nice "Big Chill" vibe with paranoid undertones.So what goes wrong?It starts with a 40-minute intro that establishes the premise in clunky fashion. "I'm Cloak, you must be Dagger" Tanner says upon meeting Danforth, whom Lancaster plays with brio but not subtlety. "Being wrong is not nearly as important as not admitting it, not these days," he tells one Company weasel, and acts throughout as the kind of clod you wouldn't put in charge of a shoe store, let alone the CIA.Then we get to the Weekend itself, with Tanner's college friends taking center stage. Each has their quirks. Osterman (Craig T. Nelson) is a very cool TV producer who describes himself as "a nihilistic anarchist who lives on residuals". Nelson is great fun, though the rest of the group, including Dennis Hopper, gets lost in the mix. Only Helen Shaver's turn as a coked-out floozy stands out, as much for her gratuitous nude scenes as for her entertaining freak outs.Sappy lite-jazz music by Lalo Schifrin underscores a lack of suspense. Hauer's Dutch accent keeps creeping in like Nastassja Kinski's, and his fragile relationship with his bow-toting wife (Meg Foster) isn't developed any more than those with his once-merry, now-sullen Berkeley chums.The actual jigsaw puzzle we get here is indifferently assembled and seems at end a few pieces short. At one point Tanner hears Osterman on tape tell his friends "Let's go to our friend John Tanner's house and set him up". Tanner doesn't take this kindly, reasonably enough, yet what Osterman may have meant is never explained. A lot of threads are pulled out this way only to be left floating in the breeze.John Coquillon's cinematography does capture something the rest of the film flails at, a sense of mystery and foreboding. Hurt's tortured performance as Fassett is nicely underplayed, watching beady-eyed between sips of wine from a china cup as the gears shift into play. And Nelson does crack me up, as in one scene which finds him running for cover."It'd be nice if we had weapons!""We do!" he is told. "Bows!""Bows?" Osterman replies. "That's keen!"In the end, we get a wrap-up lecture about the pervading influence of television and how this all was, as one character puts it, "just another episode in this snuff soap opera we're all in." Peckinpah supposedly hated this script, only using it because he needed the film, but I think those sad words represent his actual mindset all-too-well. Distrait, somewhat lethargic, and depressing, "The Osterman Weekend" gives us lots of clues but no answers as to where Sam fell off.

Bjorn (ODDBear) The poster reads; "What would you do if a total stranger proved to you that your three closest friends were Soviet agents?" Then you see that this is based on a Robert Ludlum bestseller. Then you see a to-die-for cast and the director of all this is Sam Peckinpah. Still, "The Osterman Weekend" doesn't gel all that well.It's very confusing all the way. Stylistically, this flick is all over the place, with some trademark Peckinpah visuals that really feel out of place. The characters are total bores, each and every one and when the audience doesn't care for them it's hard to empathize with their plight.The actors are pretty solid though. John Hurt is appropriately crazy as the villain, Craig T. Nelson pretty effective as the no-nonsense leader of the pack (Osterman himself) and Helen Shaver is good as a drug addicted nymph. Others are OK but sadly Hauer is miscast as the hero, he's simply so much better at playing villains.Ironcially, the story behind "The Osterman Weekend" is a lot more interesting than the film itself. This was Peckinpah's last feature and he went through a lot to finish it, only to have his version somewhat altered by studio execs. Peckinpah's version can be seen by way of a horrible VHS transfered copy but the difference isn't all that huge.Still, there's something about the flick that begs repeat viewings. Everyone has a few guilty favorites and "The Osterman Weekend" is one of mine. There's something about the isolated setting, the cat and mouse game (although not played to it's full potential) between Hauer and Hurt and the pool scene is just terrific. Also, the scene where Hurt pretends to be a weatherman is simply hilarious.Plus the sight of Meg Foster with that crossbow is the coolest poster I've ever seen.

jaibo Nobody should claim too much for Sam Peckinpah's final movie, yet it's an intriguing work which communicates - in the midst of a lot of confusion, grandstanding and fustian - a real sense of unease about Western pseudo-democracies and their broadcast media.Rutger Hauer plays a David Frost-type chat show host who has made a career out of grilling powerful government and military big-wigs. He finds himself caught in the middle of a CIA action against three of his former college friends, who are alleged to be traitors. CIA operative John Hurt installs state-of-the-art surveillance equipment in Hauer's home and when the three friends come over for one of their regular reunion weekends all hell breaks loose, with accusations, counter-accusations, set-ups and assassinations the order of play. Eventually it becomes clear that Hauer and his friends have been entrammelled in Hurt's plot to revenge himself on his boss, Burt Lancaster, who green-lighted the murder of Hurt's wife some time in the past.All of this makes The Osterman Weekend your usual le Carré-type spy story. Yet the film has wider ambitions, as the surveillance and final showdown on TV are straining to say something about the way in which the media mediates every act we perform. The final showdown between Hauer, Hurt and Lancaster is enacted on a seemingly live talk show, a kind of untra-violent version of Frost/Nixon, and in the end Hauer does a Howard Beale and challenges his audience to turn him off with their last remaining ounce of free will. In a way, the film is a companion piece to Cronenberg's contemporaneous Videodrome, but sadly The Osterman Weekend's critique of the media-age lacks that film's formal precision, and the final shift from formula spy pic to media apocalypse is unearned. Perhaps if the producers had allowed Peckinpah's original cut to be released, the film would be more consistent - those who've seen the VHS of the preview edition might enlighten us.As a Peckinpah film, The Osterman Weekend gives us another portrait of an individual forced to take action against the forces threatening his family, a la Straw Dogs. It shows a corporate/military establishment corrupt and murderous, a la Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. It shows a group of friends torn apart when history and larger forces overtake them, a la The Wild Bunch. But it does so less convincingly than any of these previous films, and whilst its merits make it worth watching, it probably can't be thought of as anything but an intriguing coda to a remarkable career.

lost-in-limbo The last hurrah of legendary maverick director Sam Peckinpah was a cynically interesting, but unsatisfying accomplishment. Taken off Robert Ludlum's novel, and penned by Alan Sharp. This tight and calculated adaptation on the intrusiveness of media manipulation and surveillance for personal gain effectively exposes the dark corrupted underbelly, and the paranoia that follows it within the Cold War era. It's quite a topical subject. The complex script can feel convoluted, but the lean and nervous layout pulls you in. Appearances can deceive, and it becomes a real relationship tester between the characters on just who's behind the puppet work. The drama within these moments work well, and draw you in as the characters begin ask questions about each other, and their motives. Although the more I think, and concentrated on the plot details. The more I seemed to question the story's progression, and outcome. Sure it compels, but it leaves some niggles.Leading the way is a very solid showing by the ensemble cast of character actors. Rutger Hauer' superbly uneasy, but patriotically brave lead performance heads up the cast. John Hurt builds quite a good turn, in getting you suspicious about his CIA character. The three men that are under the microscope are brilliantly played by a twitchy Dennis Hopper, hasty Chris Sarandon and a spiritually calm Craig T. Nelson. Showing up in strong support are the ladies too. Meg Foster ably holds her own with a hard-nose turn. Her eyes are beautifully striking. Helen Shaver is lively seductive and lewd, as Hooper's cocaine addict wife and Cassie Yates is prominently good. Burt Lancaster's small, but controlled performance lends well too.Peckinpah's structured direction features a lot of his recognizable staples. Like his precisely polished set-pieces of slow-mo (no one else does it better) to the kinetic camera-work and the poetic-like violence. It's beautiful to watch, and quite suspenseful. However sometimes it just felt like an uneven balance between what the writer wanted, and Peckinpah visualised. Technically the film was competently executed, but seemed a little cold. Lalo Schifrin's fantastic music score is experimentally saucy, and eerie with some delicate acoustic touches.Intellectually too smart for its own good? Maybe, but this paranoia political thriller does keep one watching until the end.