Word: plot
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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...separates the grounds from the town of Czestochowa. In addition, the government has long wanted to widen the road into an expressway. The solution: a pedestrian tunnel. But the project became another test of wills between Polish church and state. Bishop Stefan Barela complained that the underpass was a plot to cut off the monastery from the town and to "strike a blow at the cult of the Madonna." The tunnel, 30 ft. wide, was far too narrow for the throngs, he insisted, and its 8-ft. ceiling was too low for pilgrims' banners. After months of public denunciations...
Friedkin closets his film in ambiguity and elliptical action (he apparently cut several shocking scenes to appease viewers). Though it is superbly photographed in threatening shades of black, grey, blue and purple with effective use of moving and hand-held cameras, neither the characters nor the plot hold enough weight. Pacino has barely 100 lines. He is fine, as usual, but he is little more than Friedkin's pawn; the script never explores his relationships with Allen or Ted beyond a superficial level...
Marcello dined, drank and traveled with the disguised FBI men, laying out a trail of corruption that led to the staff of Louisiana Governor Edwin W. Edwards. Various state officials in Texas and local officials in Houston are also under investigation. Marcello further revealed to the agents a plot to bribe a federal judge in Los Angeles with up to $250,000 to fix a racketeering-murder trial of five Mafia figures. The judge was tipped by the FBI before he was approached by the plotters. The Brilab scam was shut down last week...
...making Cruising, William Friedkin was asking for trouble. This detective melodrama has something to offend almost everyone: the plot concerns a string of sex murders, and the main setting is Manhattan's unsavory demimonde of sadomasochistic homosexual bars. Last summer, gay activists picketed Cruising's locations, charging that the film would stir anti-gay violence. Two weeks ago, a big theater chain threatened to cancel Cruising 's bookings on the grounds that the film merited an X rather than its official R rating. When the movie opens nationwide this week, more protests may follow. Certainly Cruising will...
Still, Cruising's most crucial matters are hopelessly fouled up. As a simple detective story, the film is defeated by narrative loopholes, unconvincing plot twists and the last-minute injection of a demon who seems to have drifted in, half-baked, from The Exorcist. The psychological drama is forfeited by the handling of the central character. Though Pacino is in sensitive, even witty, form, he just does not have enough to do. Except for a few costume changes and some brief, cryptic conversations with his girlfriend (Karen Allen), his personality transformation is left undramatized. There are no scenes that...