SIN Entertainment

'The First Wives Club'

— Lynne Konstantin

PH OTO BY ANDY SCHWARTZ

Wh

Three 50-year-olds, Goldie
Hawn, Diane Keaton and Bette
Midler, have an affinity for
Rodgers & Hammerstein.

Bruce Willis stars as gun-for-hire John Smith.

'Extreme Measures'

Rated R

E

xtreme Measures is the rare
film that presents a. genuine
moral quandary and then in-
vites its audience to ponder
dire alternatives. Director Michael
Apted's (Gorillas in the Mist, 28
UP) engaging suspense thriller
poses a number of tantalizing
questions that aren't entirely an-
swered, but that doesn't diminish
the quality of this situational
ethics spellbinder.
. Besides coaxing a credible per-
formance out of Hugh Grant (as
Dr. Guy Luthan), Apted has
added a sense of supreme per-
sonal urgency to the film. Luthan,
a doctor on the verge of a presti-
gious fellowship, uncovers a con-
spiracy to conduct medical
experiments on the homeless.
When an incoherent patient, vi-
tal signs palpitating in a "meta-
bolic meltdown," arrives at the
hospital, it signals the start of
Luthan's moral inquiry into the

cause of such an anomaly. Grant's
performance eschews his prissy,
eye-fluttering pretty boy persona
and instead shows us a troubled
and extremely vulnerable human
being. Competent, unruffled and
resourceful when routinely mak-
ing split-second life-and-death de-
cisions in the emergency room of
a New York hospital, Luthan dis-
covers nothing in his bedside-
manner training has prepared
him for this convulsing, delirious
patient spasmodically writhing on
the emergency room gurney.
Luthan's triage role in the
emergency room becomes crucial
to the ethical argument which
supplies the linchpin for the film.
Gene Hackman, in a pivotal
role as Dr. Lawrence Myrick, is
passionate and persuasive. There
is much to be weighed in his stur-
dily constructed argument. Josie
(Sarah Jessica Parker) looks drab
and put upon, but thankfully isn't
cast to simply provide the love in-
terest.

Rated R

The soundtrack by Batman
composer Danny Elfman is fine-
ly tuned to the plot, daringly
evocative in threatening passages
and subtly compliant when need-
ed. The cinematography is gritty
and realistic, particularly in the
operating room scenes and in the
catacombs of the New York sub-
way system.
Extreme Measures packs a wal-
lop despite the fact that the pro-
tagonist is not really a hero and
the antagonists are not really vil-
lains. Or are they? You decide.
q k . .) .. 40;

—Dick Rockwell

Bagel Barometer
iocs.) .® Outstanding

®c)

Very Good
Good
Fair

and watch as the rivals whittle
each other away. After a run-in
with one of the gangs, Willis, a
ndeniably, New Line Cine- natural gunslinger, assaults their
ma's Last Man Standing headquarters, but instead of be-
stands out as one of the coming a marked man, he be-
dumbest, ugliest films in re- comes a marketable man, as both
cent memory.
gangs bid for his services
seldom is a major
to help exterminate the
MOVIES
movie released so devoid
other. Willis plays one
of redeeming qualities at
side against the other as
every possible level. Each char- his earnings skyrocket almost as
acter in the film is repugnant, fast as the body count.
from hero to villain, and the only
Last Man Standing raises
way we know which is which is many questions. Simple questions
that the villains die violent, bloody like, "What is the point?" "Who
deaths while the heroes are just cares?" and "Where is the char-
bloodied.
acter development?" Probing
Set during the Prohibition era, questions like, "Did they really
the film stars Bruce Willis as a have automatic handguns in the CD
loner who drifts into Jericho, '20s?" or "Has Willis killed more
Texas, a border town almost en- here than in Die Hard yet?" Even
tirely inhabited by two rival crime temporal questions like, "Was it ti
families, one Italian, one Irish. really only 90 minutes long?"
The two gangs are warring over
Perhaps the name of the film is
control of a bootlegging operation an answer in itself, especially if
coming out of Mexico and neither the question is, "What will you be
of them is interested in welcom- if you stay until the end of this
ing Willis to town.
movie?"
Bruce Dern, the town's corrupt
1/2 ®
sheriff, seemingly has nothing to
— Richard Halprin
do but take bribes from both sides

S EP T EMBER

at's a woman to do when
her body's reached "mid-
dle age," and her husband
as found a young, new
and improved provider of female
affections who's receiving his
monetary affections to boot?
In the immortal words of
dumped-wife icon and cameo per-
former Ivanna Trump, 'Don't get
mad, dahlink, get everythink."
The First Wives Club stars
Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn and
Diane Keaton as college buddies
reunited 30-some years later to

attend the funeral of a fourth bud- adaptations of books — the "I
dy (Stockard Charming) who com- _liked the movie, but the book was
mitted suicide upon learning of better'' syndrome. Veteran screen-
her husband's philandering.
writer Robert Harding, author of
The remaining three find the stage and film version of Steel
themselves each in a similar Magnolias, did have a tough task
predicament — callously aban- ahead of him: It is never easy to
doned by their husbands for oth- translate a novel to the screen.
er women.
What is lacking in Harding's
The friends react by
interpretation is made up
forming the First Wives
for in the sheer presence
MOVIES
Club: Masked as revenge,
of his stars.
their ultimate goal is to "make
Although it is a constant
sure this never happens to an- amusement just to be in the midst
other woman again."
of this merrily casted threesome,
Olivia Goldsmith's novel- as well as bit performances by
turned-film suffers from a mala- Maggie Smith, Rob Reiner and a
dy commonly found in film cameo by Gloria Steinem, rarely
did the lines render the
expected laughs.
In this case, even if you
haven't read the book, it
is obvious that the movie
characters are lacking in
depth — a requisite for
their antics to be as funny
as they have the potential
to be.

PHOTO BY RALPH NELSON/NEW LINE CINEMA

Rated R

'Last Man Standing'

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