Word: scriptful
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What saves the sketchy script just enough to make the particularly weak parts bearable is Figgis' direction. As in Leaving Las Vegas, there is often no separation between his bluesy score and his direction. Like the best of jazz, Figgis articulates as much passion in the silences (scenes punctuated by lulls and darkness) as in the straightforward action. A party scene late in the film, with the camera roaming through a drunk crowd under soft amber light, and an earlier incident in which Snipes wanders through a wild Manhattan parade, take on the rhythm and expressionistic flair that made Vegas...
...Remember: Bruce Willis is the bad guy. Despite the script's best attempts to make Richard Gere sympathetic, his character is simply too ineffectual to earn the respect of your average, testosterone-charged action movie audience. Lines like, "Yes, I promise it will end. And I will end it," only make matters worse. As for Willis, he is sufficiently ruthless but seems a little bored by the whole affair...
...channel surfing, looking for something sufficiently mindless, when I came across a Charles Bronson film festival. "Chow Down With Chuck!" ordered the WABU 68 announcer, so I did. Ah, the campy violence! The atrocious special effects! The liberal use of the bluescreen! The painfully illogical plot! The script wrought with Dadaist precision! In a fit of foolish idealism, I blurted to my roommate, "You know, we sure have come a long way, at least in terms of action films...
...special place in its heart for IRA terrorists. Such comprehensive forgiveness normally isn't extended to others who live on the moral margins, such as Islamic terrorists or Louise Woodward; but it allows Gere's Mulqueen, a convicted killer, to roam around unmanacled and largely unsupervised. The script strains to pardon Mulqueen's crimes by contrasting his noble, ideological struggle with the Jackal's vicious, gun-for-hire mentality, but both characters are so poorly developed that it's hard to care. What little friction there is between the two terrorists comes to nought...
...jump-start the barely realized "vendetta" between Mulqueen and The Jackal. The film's best character by far, Major Valentina Koslova (Diane Venora), is wasted (literally and figuratively) to give the ineffectual Mulqueen another score to settle--a terrible thing to do to a strong, interesting female character. The script tries to redeem itself by giving Mulqueen's former girlfriend, Isabella (Matilda May), a key role in the resolution of the plot; but because her role is so impoverished throughout most of the film, the effect is more baffling than empowering...