Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 28, 1995 TAG: 9501310012
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE MAYO
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
My own favorite of the bunch is "Remote Control," an Icelandic screwball comedy. For lack of a better thumbnail description, imagine Ingmar Bergman's version of "Wayne's World," and you've got some idea of what this one's like. It begins when Axel's (Bjorn Jorundur Fribdjornsson) mother calls him at work and says that if he doesn't return the remote control to the TV set, she'll pull the plug on the bathtub and let all of his tropical fish down the drain.
What's Axel to do? His sister's no-good rock 'n' roll boyfriend took the remote, and when Axel tracks them down, he discovers that they left it at a friend's house where an armchair caught fire and it sort of melted. That's when the comic gangsters show up wanting to know why they've been getting such poor quality bootleg hooch, and since Axel's sister knows the mysterious bootlegger, and since said bootlegger might also have a spare remote control, Axel agrees to drive her over there in his black "Smokey and the Bandit" Trans Am. Then things really get crazy.
Writer-director Oskar Jonasson tells his story with a dry, understated wit that makes the slapstick scenes that much funnier. Young Fribdjornsson has an appealing, hapless Buster Keaton quality. The pace bogs down a little in a long nightclub scene but that's a quibble. "Remote Control" has the kind of offbeat appeal that's usually associated with film festival sleeper hits, and the suburban Icelandic landscape is probably something new and different for most viewers. Recommended.
Heading south - way south - we find "Rapa Nui," or Easter Island as it was called by the original inhabitants and contemporary Hollywood.
This one was supposed to have been a Christmas release, but it must have fared poorly with test audiences because, at the last moment, it was pulled from the schedule. That's probably just as well. It's an interesting movie (in both the positive and negative senses of the word) that probably plays better on the small screen anyway.
Essentially, it's the story of those big statues - how and why they were created in the years before the island was visited by Europeans. Noro (Jason Scott Lee) is a prince of the Long Ear tribe, the ruling priest class, who orders the Short Ears construct the statues for religious reasons. Make (Esai Morales) is a honcho with the Short Ears. Though he and Noro were boyhood friends, they're now in love with the same woman, Ramana (Sandrine Holt).
At the same time, the demands of the chief are becoming more and more outrageous, and the islanders are rapidly running out of food and fuel. Clearly, writers Tim Rose Price and Kevin Reynolds (who also directed) mean for the film to have an important environmental message for today's audience, and they hammer it home with a sledge.
When they return to the main story, they follow familiar Hollywood conventions. First, there's the cliched love angle, and then there's a curious competition, complete with Rocky-esque training montages, that leads to an unintentionally hilarious big finish. Actually, there are several moments toward the end that are funnier than they ought to be, but "Rapa Nui" still earns a qualified recommendation.
It's imaginative, and never boring - well worth an evening's rental.
Sailing from the South Pacific to the Caribbean, we find "Temptation."
It's a so-so little thriller about ex-con Eddie Lanarsky (Jeff Fahey) who sets out to exact revenge on Michael Reddick (Philip Casnoff), the conman who set him up and has since married a wealthy socialite (Alison Doody). With his prison pal Bone (David Keith, sporting a ridiculous Aussie accent), Lanarsky manages to finagle his way into the captaincy of Reddick's yacht.
The overwrought plot is fueled by tempestuous affairs, murder plots and bomb threats. Somehow, it's never quite as suspenseful or as trashy as it might have been, and the story falls apart at the end. But the sense of place is strong, and the pace moves so quickly that "Temptation" is a completely adequate potboiler.
Good locations are virtually all that "Operation Golden Phoenix" has going for it. Otherwise, there's nothing to separate this martial arts flick from a hundred others. Producer-director-star Jalal Merhi shot his movie in Montreal and Beirut, Lebanon. The plot has something to do with the theft and retrieval of ancient treasures. The fight scenes are competently choreographed, but the Lebanese locations give the film an exotic atmosphere that can't be created on a studio set.
New release this week:
Clear and Present Danger ***1/2
Starring Harrison Ford, Willem Dafoe. Directed by Philip Noyce. Paramount. 141 min. Rated PG-13 for violence, strong language.
Constructed of roughly equal parts political intrigue and old-fashioned adventure, this a more satisfying film than previous adaptations of Tom Clancy novels. The reasons for its success are easy to spot: Director Noyce keeps the pace crisp for two hours-plus; the script by Donald Stewart, Steve Zaillian and John Milius doesn't sacrifice character to action; and the casting of Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan is inspired. This time out, he's up against Colombian drug lords and treacherous Washington bureaucrats. The action loses little in translation to the small screen.
THE ESSENTIALS:
Remote Control ***1/2
Columbia TriStar. 85 min. Rated R for strong language (subtitled), comic violence.
Rapa Nui **1/2
Warner. 107 min. Rated R for nudity, sexual material, violence.
Temptation **1/2
LIVE. 91 min. Rated R for strong language, violence, sexual content, brief nudity.
Operation Golden Phoenix. **
MCA/Universal. 95 min. Rated R for violence, language.
by CNB