Word: viewers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...case has always been an espionage trompe l'oeil, its outline and impact differing for each viewer. After getting over their initial shock at Pollard's acts, most Israelis and many U.S. Jewish groups believe Pollard, who has been in jail for 13 years, has been adequately punished. But inside the U.S. intelligence and military communities, there remains little doubt that Pollard's perfidy not only warranted but required the life sentence he received. To U.S. intelligence officials Pollard was a traitor whose release would give other allies a green light to spy on America. Pollard, they argue...
Ross and his team make brilliant use of color technology; the blossoming of each character really does touch the emotions of an openhearted viewer. But the scheme has heavier undertones. For creamy black-and-white read white: white bread, pasty white skin, whites-only neighborhoods, the last decade of white-male culture and, yes, the white sheets of the Ku Klux Klan. For color read colored, as in "colored people" and other oppressed minorities--artists seeking free expression, women in search of the apocalyptic orgasm...
...played by Hung, who has been assigned to the Los Angeles police department. In many ways it is an old-fashioned cop show, with crude plots and characterizations--but this actually makes it a pleasure to watch since it provides a B-movie charge and doesn't require the viewer to care about anyone's alcoholism or love life. What makes Martial Law distinct though is its intricate, speed-of-light action sequences and its humor, and these both derive from the talents of Hung, who has been a star of comedy-action films in Hong Kong since the 1970s...
...pushes a line of patter that is just a bit too slick to pass for charm. And when his life starts crumbling, you can almost smell his comic flop sweat through the screen. Tom Schulman's script is smart about the media's ability to create celebrities--and the viewer's need to embrace them--until it goes soft-hearted and -headed by denouncing the very salesmanship that Hollywood and TV are built on. For an hour or so, though, the film has the gaudy assurance of a Ginsu knife infomercial...
...voice-over readings of letters and diaries (the narration is spoken by Angela Bassett). If there's a quibble, it's that the re-enactments, done in soft-focus and slow motion, are overused, and one wishes for a fuller description of the slaves' separate culture. Nevertheless, the viewer will come away with a vivid understanding of how slavery flourished in the land of freedom and what costs it imposed...