Word: scoundrel
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WATCHING GOIN' SOUTH makes you think Burt Reynolds must have had something to do with it. The cutting one-liners are tossed off with a certain macho flair, the male lead is yet another in a series of adorable scoundrel types, and the woman is one more unfulfilled, sublimated prude who all too willingly gives herself up to the irresistible charms of a confirmed ne'er-do-well. The film, in fact, aspires to little more than giving the audience a good belly laugh every 15 minutes or so. Your funny bone is taken good care of, all right...
Director Peter Hyams' script does its best to exploit the latest fashions in paranoia. There are interwoven conspiracies and cover-ups; every U.S. Government official on view is a venal scoundrel. Hyams' cynical fantasies about the space program are an especially amusing treat. He suggests, with malicious wit, that NASA'S space walks could actually have taken place on Earth: indeed, he demonstrates that for the price of a video camera and a few buckets of sand, any American can take a giant step for mankind in the privacy of his own home...
...first time a note of personal passion and conviction appears. The attitude of moral outrage which Pusey adopted during the student outbreaks in 1969, his indignation that "Harvard men" could act in such a way, continues even nine years after the event. If the '50s were a "scoundrel" time in American history, Pusey considers in the student rebellion in the late 1960s even more reprehensible...
...played the village atheist. To prohibitionists, he was a beery provocateur. To the U.S. at large, he was an intellectual who saw culture only in Europe. "The average citizen of a democracy," he announced, "is a goose-stepping ignoramus ... The average democratic politician, of whatever party, is a scoundrel and a swine...
...Shakespeare's work, the fallen knight Falstaff, a wonderful scoundrel of a man, tends to dominate the play, by the force of his wit if not by his sheer weight. Brilliantly played by Paul Redmond, Falstaff far outshines all the other roles in the show. In Redmond's hands, Falstaff is an incorrigible bundle of contradictions. Lusting after the role of moralizer, he pulls his bulging body up underneath him, only to find that a stamping foot or a waving hand takes on a life of its own. Redmond shows Falstaff as a weak old man lying about brave exploits...