Nobody should claim too much for Sam Peckinpah's final movie, yet it's an intriguing work which communicates - in the midst of a lot of confusion, grandstanding and fustian - a real sense of unease about Western pseudo-democracies and their broadcast media.
Rutger Hauer plays a David Frost-type chat show host who has made a career out of grilling powerful government and military big-wigs. He finds himself caught in the middle of a CIA action against three of his former college friends, who are alleged to be traitors. CIA operative John Hurt installs state-of-the-art surveillance equipment in Hauer's home and when the three friends come over for one of their regular reunion weekends all hell breaks loose, with accusations, counter-accusations, set-ups and assassinations the order of play. Eventually it becomes clear that Hauer and his friends have been entrammelled in Hurt's plot to revenge himself on his boss, Burt Lancaster, who green-lighted the murder of Hurt's wife some time in the past.
All of this makes The Osterman Weekend your usual le Carré-type spy story. Yet the film has wider ambitions, as the surveillance and final showdown on TV are straining to say something about the way in which the media mediates every act we perform. The final showdown between Hauer, Hurt and Lancaster is enacted on a seemingly live talk show, a kind of untra-violent version of Frost/Nixon, and in the end Hauer does a Howard Beale and challenges his audience to turn him off with their last remaining ounce of free will. In a way, the film is a companion piece to Cronenberg's contemporaneous Videodrome, but sadly The Osterman Weekend's critique of the media-age lacks that film's formal precision, and the final shift from formula spy pic to media apocalypse is unearned. Perhaps if the producers had allowed Peckinpah's original cut to be released, the film would be more consistent - those who've seen the VHS of the preview edition might enlighten us.
As a Peckinpah film, The Osterman Weekend gives us another portrait of an individual forced to take action against the forces threatening his family, a la Straw Dogs. It shows a corporate/military establishment corrupt and murderous, a la Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. It shows a group of friends torn apart when history and larger forces overtake them, a la The Wild Bunch. But it does so less convincingly than any of these previous films, and whilst its merits make it worth watching, it probably can't be thought of as anything but an intriguing coda to a remarkable career.
Rutger Hauer plays a David Frost-type chat show host who has made a career out of grilling powerful government and military big-wigs. He finds himself caught in the middle of a CIA action against three of his former college friends, who are alleged to be traitors. CIA operative John Hurt installs state-of-the-art surveillance equipment in Hauer's home and when the three friends come over for one of their regular reunion weekends all hell breaks loose, with accusations, counter-accusations, set-ups and assassinations the order of play. Eventually it becomes clear that Hauer and his friends have been entrammelled in Hurt's plot to revenge himself on his boss, Burt Lancaster, who green-lighted the murder of Hurt's wife some time in the past.
All of this makes The Osterman Weekend your usual le Carré-type spy story. Yet the film has wider ambitions, as the surveillance and final showdown on TV are straining to say something about the way in which the media mediates every act we perform. The final showdown between Hauer, Hurt and Lancaster is enacted on a seemingly live talk show, a kind of untra-violent version of Frost/Nixon, and in the end Hauer does a Howard Beale and challenges his audience to turn him off with their last remaining ounce of free will. In a way, the film is a companion piece to Cronenberg's contemporaneous Videodrome, but sadly The Osterman Weekend's critique of the media-age lacks that film's formal precision, and the final shift from formula spy pic to media apocalypse is unearned. Perhaps if the producers had allowed Peckinpah's original cut to be released, the film would be more consistent - those who've seen the VHS of the preview edition might enlighten us.
As a Peckinpah film, The Osterman Weekend gives us another portrait of an individual forced to take action against the forces threatening his family, a la Straw Dogs. It shows a corporate/military establishment corrupt and murderous, a la Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. It shows a group of friends torn apart when history and larger forces overtake them, a la The Wild Bunch. But it does so less convincingly than any of these previous films, and whilst its merits make it worth watching, it probably can't be thought of as anything but an intriguing coda to a remarkable career.