Everyone wanted Vangelis the year after Chariots of Fire, and the two movies who landed him were Blade Runner and this downbeat drama. It’s a dialogue-heavy movie, light on the music, but whenever those classy synths kick in, you float for a little while.
Missing Charles aka TV’s Lex Luthor, talks with his pet duck:
Gavras was by now typecast as the guy who makes depressing movies about leftists getting destroyed by oppressive military governments, so the coup in Chile was right up his alley. Shot and cut like a standard prestige drama, without the nervy energy of Z. The physical action can be clunky too, but casting late-career Jack Lemmon and post-oscar Sissy Spacek as the leads really helps for authenticity. The most impressive thing here is the shifts in perspective, following one character then another, jumping through time, and rewriting history (showing different versions of a past event depending who’s telling it).
Was there a rash of “parents’ worst nightmare” movies around then, or have I just seen the poster for Hardcore too many times? Lemmon’s son has disappeared during the coup, but surely he’s fine because he is a documented American, and therefore immune to foreign political violence. Straightlaced Jack reluctantly teams up with the son’s wife Spacek and their dirty leftist friends, scouring hotels and hospitals while the embassy is being prickly. Faith begins to falter in the “helpful” men in suits, the American exceptionalism, and the safety of the son, as the bodies mount up – it doesn’t help that their government contacts are played by the stalker/murderer of Klute and the guy who fails his blood test in The Thing.
