No Way Out (1987)

Director: Roger Donaldson

Cast: Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman, Will Patton, Sean Young

Have I Seen it Before: It lived on cable in the 90s. Most people probably saw the last few minutes—which pretty much negates the need to see the movie at all—before catching an airing of something else.

Did I Like It: The question becomes during a normal screening of the film: Does it earn it’s ending? 

On the tragic vibe it occasionally goes for, I’m going to say no. The relationship between Farrell (Costner), and Atwell (Young) is not so much established as it is preposterous revved from 0-60 in the span of the first reel. I’m not kidding. Scene 1: They Meet and don’t care much for each other. Scene 2: They have sex. Scene 3: They are so ridiculously in love that when she dies, his emotional distress makes more sense…

…except, it doesn’t. It’s all a ruse. Maybe Farrell got in too deep to keep up his cover (last chance for spoilers) as a Soviet agent, but there’s not a hint or an ounce of suspicion that he isn’t who he says he is until his handlers start speaking Russian?

I guess the ending doesn’t really work for me on any front. Even if it were a surprise, it’s too out of left field. As is the sudden shift in motivation when Pritchard (Patton) that allows the movie to swing wildly toward something resembling a resolution to its plot.

There’s at least some of the trappings of an 80s tech-thriller that I’m here for, and the film incorporates location shooting in Washington DC better than most films, but when it’s central reason for existing falls apart under the slightest scrutiny, that should tell us all something, right?

Blade Runner (1982)

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos

Have I Seen it Before: Yeah…

Did I Like It: …I was really hoping you weren’t going to ask me that.

Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner is just one of those movies… People love it, and they’re not wrong. To have the special effects for any movie still work past six months the initial release of the film in question is something of a small miracle*. The cast is pretty great, and this is prime pre-sleepwalking Harrison Ford. I can see the fusion between postmodern sci-fi and film noir is very particularly designed.

And yet, it’s never all come together in my eyes. It might be that it’s too slow for me—or for that matter, modern audiences—but I’ve enjoyed slower films before. It could also be that the film may still come from that heralded era where films were truly meant to be enjoyed on the big screen, and the home video market was a faded afterthought. Ultimately, though, I think that—even though the special effects are obviously well-crafted—the film’s aesthetic can’t quite reach for any degree of timelessness, and every frame and every sound within the movie screams “THIS MOVIE WAS MADE IN THE 1980s.” Even Ridley Scott’s other great science fiction film of the era—Alien (1979)— can more often than not avoid any sort of fashionable quality and maybe look for a few seconds as if it might have been made any year.

Maybe things will change on this new screening of the film…

And—upon further review—I’m just not that into it, and beyond the reasons I noted above, I’m having a hard time quantifying my apathy. Maybe it’s the music? Maybe it’s the pacing. Maybe all of those elements fuse together and introduce in me some pervasive feeling of unease. I don’t necessarily dislike a movie that wants me to feel ill-at-ease, but I would like to be able to point to something particular that’s making me feel that way. This film just doesn’t do it.

*What’s more, I just can’t buy George Lucas’ argument that he couldn’t have made the prequels until CGI technology reached the “Jurassic Park” phase. All of his Coruscant scenes have been pretty much worked out on Scott’s canvas.