The Player (1992)
Country: US
Technical: col 124m
Director: Robert Altman
Cast: Tim Robbins, Peter Gallagher, Whoopi Goldberg, Greta Scacchi, Fred Ward, Richard E. Grant, Dean Stockwell, Lyle Lovett, Sydney Pollack, many more playing themselves
Synopsis:
A studio exec listens to pitches every day, most of which he has to turn down. Just as the arrival of a new player at the studio looks like his position might be threatened, he becomes a suspect in the death of a snubbed writer who appears to have been harassing him with threatening postcards.
Review:
A definite return to form for Altman, this was also a return to the large casts he favoured in his seventies satirical pieces, many of whom returned in Short Cuts and Prêt à Porter. The two factors are, however, coincidental since the virtues of this film reside in its blend of thriller conventions with very much an insider's view of the workings of the Hollywood machine, a rueful portrait of the town that sells out to commercial demand for happy endings, while kidding itself that it is making art. The film is a movie buff's dream, kicking off with a ten-minute take to rival that of Welles's Touch of Evil, which it openly cites, dropping in poster and postcard images of iconic movies past, and going on to draw self-conscious parallels between the fiction of the story in the film and other examples of Hollywood-mediated reality, all culminating in the crass betrayal of the Richard E. Grant character's story idea via a Hollywood ending that rings somewhat hollow in an otherwise subtle industry satire. Sniggering away along with the director are Whoopi Goldberg's detective and her colleagues at the Pasadena police station, who briefly threaten to destroy the protagonist's cushioned world, revealed by a final twist to be the subject a new movie. In brief, one couldn't get less Hollywood than this thoroughly reflexive movie, even if it ultimately becomes what it abhors.
Country: US
Technical: col 124m
Director: Robert Altman
Cast: Tim Robbins, Peter Gallagher, Whoopi Goldberg, Greta Scacchi, Fred Ward, Richard E. Grant, Dean Stockwell, Lyle Lovett, Sydney Pollack, many more playing themselves
Synopsis:
A studio exec listens to pitches every day, most of which he has to turn down. Just as the arrival of a new player at the studio looks like his position might be threatened, he becomes a suspect in the death of a snubbed writer who appears to have been harassing him with threatening postcards.
Review:
A definite return to form for Altman, this was also a return to the large casts he favoured in his seventies satirical pieces, many of whom returned in Short Cuts and Prêt à Porter. The two factors are, however, coincidental since the virtues of this film reside in its blend of thriller conventions with very much an insider's view of the workings of the Hollywood machine, a rueful portrait of the town that sells out to commercial demand for happy endings, while kidding itself that it is making art. The film is a movie buff's dream, kicking off with a ten-minute take to rival that of Welles's Touch of Evil, which it openly cites, dropping in poster and postcard images of iconic movies past, and going on to draw self-conscious parallels between the fiction of the story in the film and other examples of Hollywood-mediated reality, all culminating in the crass betrayal of the Richard E. Grant character's story idea via a Hollywood ending that rings somewhat hollow in an otherwise subtle industry satire. Sniggering away along with the director are Whoopi Goldberg's detective and her colleagues at the Pasadena police station, who briefly threaten to destroy the protagonist's cushioned world, revealed by a final twist to be the subject a new movie. In brief, one couldn't get less Hollywood than this thoroughly reflexive movie, even if it ultimately becomes what it abhors.
Country: US
Technical: col 124m
Director: Robert Altman
Cast: Tim Robbins, Peter Gallagher, Whoopi Goldberg, Greta Scacchi, Fred Ward, Richard E. Grant, Dean Stockwell, Lyle Lovett, Sydney Pollack, many more playing themselves
Synopsis:
A studio exec listens to pitches every day, most of which he has to turn down. Just as the arrival of a new player at the studio looks like his position might be threatened, he becomes a suspect in the death of a snubbed writer who appears to have been harassing him with threatening postcards.
Review:
A definite return to form for Altman, this was also a return to the large casts he favoured in his seventies satirical pieces, many of whom returned in Short Cuts and Prêt à Porter. The two factors are, however, coincidental since the virtues of this film reside in its blend of thriller conventions with very much an insider's view of the workings of the Hollywood machine, a rueful portrait of the town that sells out to commercial demand for happy endings, while kidding itself that it is making art. The film is a movie buff's dream, kicking off with a ten-minute take to rival that of Welles's Touch of Evil, which it openly cites, dropping in poster and postcard images of iconic movies past, and going on to draw self-conscious parallels between the fiction of the story in the film and other examples of Hollywood-mediated reality, all culminating in the crass betrayal of the Richard E. Grant character's story idea via a Hollywood ending that rings somewhat hollow in an otherwise subtle industry satire. Sniggering away along with the director are Whoopi Goldberg's detective and her colleagues at the Pasadena police station, who briefly threaten to destroy the protagonist's cushioned world, revealed by a final twist to be the subject a new movie. In brief, one couldn't get less Hollywood than this thoroughly reflexive movie, even if it ultimately becomes what it abhors.