Word: foils
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...alone either. After the race, he and another sprinter, Frank Dunne become "mates" and head off to hop a freight train to Perth, where the underage Archy hopes to slip into the ranks of the Light Horse cavalry regiment. Dunne, as portrayed by Mel Gibson, provides a good foil for the golden-looking and piously good Archy. Sly but good natured, Dunne is an Irishman with little interest in fighting someone else's war but whom Archie finally cajoles into enlisting with remarks like "You have a greater responsibility to go...you're (big Australian twang) an athlete...
...foil to Fine's growth from wimp to "man," the character of Mr. Eddie degenerates from a giant among men (Kiel stands over seven feet tall) to the movie's only loser, an ultimately weak and impotent "non-man." This question of what is and is not a man, posed repeatedly throughout the movie by him and a variety of minor characters unifies the storyline and raises it above the level of simple fluff...
...some hotel owners are turning to computerized electronic locks to foil burglars. The most popular system is made by Uniqey International of Santa Ana, Calif., and is used in 20 European and American luxury hotels from the Helmsley Palace in New York City to the Hilton International in Dusseldorf, West Germany. Instead of being given a normal key that can be easily copied, guests receive a thin paper card containing a metal foil strip with a precise pattern of holes punched in it by a computer. When someone inserts the card into a small box on his room door...
Save for one or two which don't work, however, the performances are extraordinary. Bridges plays the languid stud with perfection. His Golden Boy is the perfect quirkly foil for Cutter's sometimes maudlin, been-to-hell-and-back humor and disrespect. Cutter uses his maiming to control people at times, but he knows he's doing it, and it becomes, like Bones' good looks, just another method of dealing. And they know this. They've read the same psych books we have. To see Cutter coquettishly discussing "duty" to get out of a drunk driving...
...missiles is now nearly synonymous with MX itself and with the controversy surrounding it. Under this $40 billion scheme, the missiles would be wheeled around 200 high-security drag strips scattered over 10,000 miles in the desert wastes of the West. This brobdingnagian shell game is intended to foil any Soviet strike by baffling the enemy: unaware of each missile's actual location, the Soviets would be obliged to target all 4,600 MX shelters to guarantee success. But the drag strip system has been assailed by critics (including Presidential Candidate Reagan) as technologically dubious and ridiculously expensive...