User Comments: Date: 2 December 2003
Summary: Don't ignore the beautiful, delicate interplay between Christopher Walken and Natalie Wood.
Everyone knows this was Natalie Wood's last film, and that some of her
scenes were filmed after her death with a stand-in you only see from behind.
It's somewhat odd that Natalie's swan song should be a sci-fi movie, since
she was hardly known for work in the genre, but she brings a grace and
charm, as well as depth and beauty, to the genre that is usually
lacking.
Most sci-fi films based on technology don't age well, and there are times
where this is no exception. The idea of recording on tape, let alone making
tape loops, must seem like wax cylinder recordings to today's MP3
generation. But the concept is timeless, and so well done that, all in all,
the film still works as well as it did 20 years ago.
Lesser screenplays would have been content with the main story line;
scientists invent a way to record brainwaves and play them back for a real
life out of body experience. But then along comes the incomparable, utterly
fabulous Louise Fletcher, who, as one of the co-inventors of the
aforementioned device, records her death when she suffers a heart attack
while working late one night. For the rest of the film, people are either
trying to play the tape or prevent others from playing it. Meanwhile, the
technology gets hijacked by two-dimensional government lackeys trying to
exploit the weapons potential of the invention.
If you want to find out what happens, watch the film, but when you do, don't
ignore the beautiful, delicate interplay between Christopher Walken and
Natalie Wood. Their careening relationship seem somehow tied to the
invention they helped make, and there are sequences so beautiful that I
sometimes take out the DVD just to watch them.
Despite changing styles in special effects, this is a timeless and beautiful
story that transcends the genre and, with Walken, Wood and Fletcher, becomes
more than just a story about shiny gold tapes that record brain waves. It's
more about immovable objects and irresistible forces and what happens when
they collide. Intrigued? Good. Go watch it.
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