Word: pakula
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...years ago Paul Mazursky presented Jill Clayburgh in An Unmarried Woman, the story of a not-so-gay divorcee who on her own vanquished the neuroses of Manhattan. Enter the flipquel. Alan Pakula flips the sex of the divorce victim, alters the plot a bit, and calls the new film Starting Over. Burt Reynolds stars alongside Clayburgh and Candice Bergen in this film which, unlike its prototype, deserves no more praise than a cute, melodramatic, made-for-T.V., movie...
...Bree Daniels, the call-girl who is the object of a shadowy killer, involves us so totally that the girl-in-the-abandoned-warehouse routine at the end doesn't even appear schematic (well, it does, but we're still scared to death). You gotta credit Alan J. Pakula though, who here, as in All the President's Men and the Parallax View, conveys the someone-is-always-watching-you motif with incomparable creepiness. Donald Sutherland is an intelligent, if pallid detective, but the protagonist is Jane all the way, the frustrated hooker trapped by the emotional and physical perils...
...council is hoping to bring "Starting Over" co-star Candice Bergen to Harvard in two weeks, and director Alan J. Pakula in March...
...Since Pakula's recent films have dealt with little guys battling huge conspiracies of money and power, it is easy to see why he was drawn to Clark's script. What is missing here is the director's usual skill at transforming abstract evil into a palpable and frightening force. Perhaps Pakula has been lulled by Horseman's bucolic landscapes, because his characteristic tension is missing here. In this director's best movies, he arouses terror and paranoia by making it impossible to separate heroes from villains until the end. This time around the cast...
...technical level, there is nothing in Comes a Horseman to be embarrassed about: Pakula seems incapable of visual sloppiness or vulgarity. He has also coaxed a performance from Fonda that is superior to her rather saintly appearances in Julia and Coming Home. Her face as weatherbeaten as her dad's in The Grapes of Wrath, this beautiful woman manages to capture the essence of frontier toughness in the film's first half. When she finally melts for a man, Fonda's blushing radiance almost melts a movie that has long since congealed. - Frank Rich