Word: pakula
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...character, not investing him with quite the fanatical glitter a political gunman ought to exhibit," says TIME's Richard Schickel. "But you have to balance that against the reality of Ford?s work?no one half-suppresses, half-reveals strong feelings better than he does?and director Alan J. Pakula?s analogous strengths. Pakula develops his story patiently, without letting its tensions unravel. At a moment when everyone is saying the studios have lost the knack for making solid, broadly appealing entertainments, 'The Devil?s Own' suggests the skill may only be mislaid. Of course, it helps when you hire...
Ford is presently working on a film called Devil's Own, co-starring Brad Pitt and directed by Alan J. Pakula, who also directed Ford in Presumed Innocent. He was an Academy Award nominee for best actor for his role in the movie Witness, and has also starred in the films Blade Runner, Patriot Games, The Fugitive and Clear and Present Danger. This year he played the male lead in a remake of the 1954 classic Sabrina...
...that pretty much completes the short list of pleasures afforded by writer-director Alan Pakula's adaptation of John Grisham's gazillion-copy best seller. Mostly this is a movie about people getting in and out of cars, which either do or do not blow up when they turn on the ignition. They also talk on the phone quite a bit, usually in darkly lighted rooms, to callers who are not entirely forthcoming in their messages. From time to time, they are chased by nameless people who are boringly expert at dealing out sudden death...
...only a few members of the supporting cast, all of whom -- Culp aside -- are drably written and impossible even for actors as good as Hume Cronyn, John Lithgow and John Heard to sink a fang into. And we never get to see, even in the shadows that are a Pakula specialty, Mr. Big -- who has ordered the assassination of two Supreme Court Justices...
...Pakula, who has proved his ability to turn paranoid suspicions into scary reality (Klute, All the President's Men), gives his movie the dark glow we have come to expect from this genre. But we don't go to movies like this in search of stylish apercus. We go to see innocents like ourselves getting swept up by irresistible tides of terror. And to have the pants scared off us. That doesn't happen in The Pelican Brief. An airplane read has been turned into nothing more compelling than an airplane...