Word: automaton
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...blandness has its advantages. Norris is seldom off-putting. In Code of Silence, an exceptionally deft movie of its kind, Director Andy Davis has provided a perfect schematic vehicle: a righteous, nice-looking automaton is caught in a lot of crossfire. There are rotten Italian gangsters, rotten Colombian gangsters and rotten fellow police officers. As Sergeant Eddie Cusak, Norris refuses to go along with the cover-up of a killing by a scruffy underling (Ralph Foody) and tries to mediate a gang war. He may be good, but he has no family and no girlfriend, and gets uncomfortable...
...women is the play's mainspring. Ivey bubbles with crude gaiety in her effort to be liked. Harris finds pathetic dignity in an emotional loss that makes her physically ill. The supporting cast is also adept, notably George N. Martin as Harris' stolid, stubborn husband; only McGoohan's automaton-like condescension seems unreal. Director Clifford Williams has sensitively evoked the rhythms of the play, which alternates between naturalistic bursts of action and spotlighted soliloquies. Much of the story is told after the fact, in an elegiac, ruminative tone, reminiscent of $ recent work by Tom Stoppard and Simon Gray. The epilogue...
...eyes hooded in apparent boredom, have not worn well on Capitol Hill. "It's like there's a tape recorder in his head," complains a Republican Senator. "You hear the same thing again and again." A former employee thinks that may be the real Cap, describing Weinberger as "an automaton, a robot...
...political automaton she: Ferraro stopped, swiveled her head 90° to the right and pointed to a placard 100 ft. away. "I see a sign over there saying 'Gerry-we need jobs, not cheese.' " The crowd applauded the personal touch and mobbed her when she finished. Says Campaign Manager John Sasso: "The crowd left more excited than when they arrived...
...Return to Return, retells the gothic catastrophe of French Edward, a good-looking tennis pro who discovers his mother in bed with his supposedly homosexual coach, nearly drowns in the Mississippi River and is fished out with most of his mental capacities washed away. He lives on as an automaton who is still a terror on the courts. The second reprised story, Midnight and I'm Not Famous Yet, deals chiefly with Captain Bob Smith of the U.S. Army and the crisis he undergoes during the war in Viet...