Screen

...And this buff must have seen a lot of B movies...

...Moreover, why, having been gripped by the film's The orthopedist jiggled the bone first half, did I feel my attention wander in the second, and why As I lay nerveless on valium...

...length of time...

...Both films criminal named Frank who then promises to be for his savior have show-biz protagonists who are forced to drop out of the "the expeditor of your dreams...

...And even inevitable in light of his developing character...

...I rec- B movie's speed, fluidity, modesty of scale, and unexpected ommend that you see it...

...Now this is what I call a bad week on the job: an admirable film that I can't love and a silly movie that I can't shake...

...with May Alice in order to win back custody of her daughter A magnolia drops petals on the lawn...

...But whereas Sayles tries to give his films some of the exhis new, rural family...

...pretty girl...

...And though when they are, the moviemakers keep shaking the passenger the filmmakers, Horton Foote and Bruce Beresford, show the cars so violently that you never get a chance to look down at tawdry side of show business, they also strongly convey its the track...

...Fish lacks...

...It is humanistic and compassionpolicy, human nature must be given its due...

...Yes, Mad Dog decision, you can't tell in which direction he will turn, and runs on rails, too, but unlike the ones in the Sayles film, these only in retrospect can it be seen that the choice he makes is rails are rarely visible while you watch the movie...

...This is his best performance since...

...But with her sacrifice thus the rescued...

...grace notes in the basically stock characterizations...

...It proffers the revelations of did not make and about which we have no choice, an unalien- character rather than the surprises of plot, yet its story able heritage from nature...

...In this movie, trashiness and artfulness so scene a present-tense vividness that, fortunately, leaves us litmeet and mingle that it's difficult to tell where one tle time to think about what we're seeing...

...There is a nice balance between scenes that unmore than consumers and their dignity-their need to be need- fold mainly through dialogue and others told more visually...

...countable to equal standards, offered and expected to live up And the actors are marvelous...

...Human beings are ate...

...The theme of Passion Fish resides in that interchange...

...Unexpected op- who has fallen into the gangster's clutches and is now on loan portunities to make comebacks then threaten to terminate their to Wayne for a week...

...But bring a little patience with you...

...which she lost temporarily because of a criminal episode involving drugs), and once we see that May Alice has become I imagine sweeping the pain away too attached to Chantel to leave her behind in order to renew In a minor resurrection, when, like her television career in New York City (where, for reasons I The magnolia, I blossom all at once won't get into, Chantel can't accompany her), we know just In branches of pink bloom, and only how the film must end...

...Chantel snaps May Alice out of her depression not just through Stephen Stepanchev professional competence but by inadvertently revealing her own A Minor Resurrection painful needs...

...It's a little too pat...

...And director John McNaughton (whose first release, Henry: Portrait of a don't highly recommend Mad Dog and Glory, I mere- Serial Killer was, indeed, a latter-day B picture) gives every ly love it...

...For if Mad Nevertheless, the skill of this film's execution (especially its Dog, at its worst, has a B movie's tinniness, it also has a good acting) almost mitigates the tameness of its conception...

...And Sayles makes Later put out my simple green leaves...

...Into Wayne's apartment and fast-track lane, and who become emotionally involved with celibate existence walks "Glory," a beautiful would-be actress loving and needy people in rural locations...

...can't redeem Price's worst conceptions, including a climactic While watching, I kept shaking my head at the whole fist fight in which the hero, after getting beaten to a pulp, sudretrograde project (a milquetoast spends two hours of reel time denly jumps up to thrash the villain...

...For other actress to pull out all the stops, Mary McDonnell is reAmericans, Bill Clinton's promise of a "new covenant" and a freshingly astringent as May Alice, a successful soap opera actress "new direction" sounded chords of memory...

...grave deficiency...

...At its core Mad Dog and summoning up the courage to whip a bully for the sake of a Glory is a boy's movie...

...De Niro keeps his body and head very still for this moment and allows only his outstretched hand to tremble...

...Mike Starr makes the cliche he succeeds at a very low level through a combination of film- plays-lovable, strong-arm moron out of Damon Runyon-bearmaking savvy and the curious knack of its makers for diluting able and, yes, rather lovable...

...It picked me up and flung gent dialogue, the elegant shape of each sequence) and I realMe down on a stone pavement...

...that abides even during Murray's comic moments...

...The film The acting helps immensely...

...From its Columbian beginnings, America has been caught up in the modern quest for RESCUE OPERATIONS the mastery of nature, the rejection of whatever humans have 'PASSION FISH' & 'MAD DOG' not chosen or made...

...There is only one thing wrong with Passion Fish, but it is a A shadow clung to a crucifix...

...But McNaughton leaves off and the other begins...

...In that contrast of motionless and tremor, De Niro makes us feel both Wayne's terror and the fundamental courage of the man who feels that terror...

...She uses nervousness as a mask, as a way of making Glory mysterious as well as sexy...

...For Robert De Niro's performance, I will try to go light on the superlatives...

...it all the more pat by satirizing, in the scene of May Alice's reunion with her former soap opera co-stars, the emotional brittleness of actors and the triviality of much of their work...

...RICHARD ALLEVA Commonweal 23 April 1993: 19...

...Bill Murray, helped a lot by a maketheir own juvenile modern skepticism about the compatibility up and hair style that give the very shape of his skull a brutal of the sexes, and a very unmodern willingness to suspend that appearance, is surprisingly scary as Frank and it's a scariness skepticism during flights of sheer romantic lyricism...

...true excitement and glamour...

...named "Mad Dog" by his cop buddies because of his seemYou can see what Passion Fish lacks if you compare it to ingly unshakable mildness, saves the life of a well-connected a film it rather resembles in plot: Tender Mercies...

...And that sense of impending sacrifice pansiveness and depth of a long novel, Price seems to be helps give Tender Mercies a dramatic excitement that Passion bringing only a veteran movie buff's sensibility to his work...

...It remains to be rendered paraplegic by a car accident, who retires in disgust to seen how far he can take Americans toward a rediscovery of her large, deserted ancestral house in Louisiana...

...Wayne, a police photographer sarcastically nickdevalued, the drama of her ultimate choice is lessened...

...But, after all, strange things happen to the mind in the darkness of movie theaters...

...It becomes ever clearer, however, that technological mastery subordinates us to the things we have made and, left to itself, tends to dispense with human craft and devotion...

...Once it becomes clear that Chantel simply must keep her job I lie in a green bed like a grave...

...Uma Thurman Like Passion Fish, Mad Dog is an account of a rescue op- as Glory achieves the first complete characterization I've seen eration in which the rescuer desperately needs the succor of from her...

...yet I couldn't take my eyes off the screen...

...The sky's clouds, airplanes, birds...

...The wall was a dizzying egg-shell white...

...Nurse and patient heal each other by giving each other a future...

...By the time we are through laughing at the performers, we may feel that May Alice really isn't giving up all that much after all 18: 23 April 1993 Commonweal when she renounces an actor's life...

...The film runs on rails to its predestined conUnder a sleepless window, swallowing clusion and those rails become all too visible in its final hour...

...The beauty of the setting-the bayous of rural Equality implies more than rights: it suggests that, within Louisiana-is gloriously exploited yet never overwhelms the the limits of our circumstances, we can and should be held ac- dialogue or actors...

...Trying to calm a crazed killer during a convenience store robbery, Wayne cautiously opens the cash register and urges the psycho to take the money and flee...

...Alfre Woodarf, the republic...

...Consequently, we know that Mac The script is by Richard Price who is, like Sayles, a novelwill be making a real sacrifice whether he stays with or leaves ist...

...well, it's his best, most committed performance in a long time...

...I howled...

...like Passion Fish and why do my fingers refuse to type superlatives...

...Why then do I merely Cracked, the muscles frayed...

...did I even feel the first stirrings of boredom...

...I broke my right arm in a high wind There is much else to praise (a perfect supporting cast, punIn Jamaica...

...I know of few other films in which so much emotion is communicated by two actresses simply looking at each other with the camera shifting viewpoints at just the right moments...

...In a role that might tempt anto the opportunity to contribute to the common life...

...Love, threats, and violence ensue in ways new, more modest lives...

...The bone ly wanted, still want, to love this movie...

...But by the time Mac Sledge, the coun- I needn't describe because you can now figure out the rest of try western singer played by Robert Duvall, must make his the story for yourself with perfect accuracy...

...Yet the United States also began by asserting the propo- John Sayles's Passion Fish is the sort of movie I want sition that both our equality and our rights are things that we to call a masterpiece...

...also hints at broader meanings, just as the reconciliation with SCREEN nature to which Al Gore calls America implies more than a relation to the nonhuman environment...

...There's not a moment in this performance that doesn't convey the same richness of counterpoint...

...The ed-must be afforded at least equal status with the pursuit of camera is always in the right place and held there for the right abundance and mastery...

...El as May Alice's nurse, Chantel, matches McDonnell in precision and tacit power...

...If people are to come first in public never meanders...