Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, August 26, 1995 TAG: 9508280047
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The master storyteller behind ``Excalibur," ``Deliverance" and ``Hope and Glory" seems to have lost his way in the jungle in this film about the brutal suppression of a democratic revolution in Burma.
Patricia Arquette's far from nimble performance as the grieving American tourist Laura Bowman is part of the problem. But there's also some shockingly bad editing and a general lack of clarity - which raises the question of whether this film was rushed to be in theaters before Labor Day or if Boorman came down with some form of tropical fever halfway through.
There's got to be an explanation.
Maybe there's a problem inherent in setting the emotional state of an individual - the numb Bowman, who is touring Burma to try to begin to get over the murders of her husband and son back home in the U.S. - against the backdrop of the political upheaval of a nation. The story has Bowman discover very early on that - surprise! - there's suffering everywhere. Life guarantees suffering, and happiness is a rare, cherished thing, as her tour guide U Aung Ko wisely tells her.
Yes, Boorman offers us a big fat epiphany. It takes place on a river bank, and Bowman has just saved her guide from certain death at the hands of the military police. But he has been shot and is bleeding. Bowman, a doctor, has to do SOMETHING, and it looks like Boorman left it up to Arquette to decide what that would be.
She heaves many big loud sighs (bad idea with so many soldiers in the woods), climbs a tree, falls out of it, digs through the mud for her lost locket and looks at the muddied photos of her husband and son for inspiration. Then - and this is the really weird part - Arquette's eyes became utterly vacant, her face becomes as stony-still as the statues of Buddha she's been trying to admire, and she forges on, lugging her injured guide. Is she supposed to be summoning inner resources? Truly, it looks more like a catatonic episode.
The acting is bad, but to make matters worse it's as if all the character development that is going to take place in Laura Bowman is complete. And there's about another hour of film left to watch.
It's not that the political story is uninteresting. It's impossible not to leave the theater feeling sad and angry about the fate of Burma and the international community's inattention to the massacres that occurred there in the late '80s.
But somehow, showing the story through the eyes of this character Laura Bowman as portrayed by Patricia Arquette leaves us at a disadvantage - and isn't quite fair to history. It's like the 10-cent tour of a psyche and an event of major historical proportions: This movie never really engages you.
And all the while you have that cheated feeling - the kind of feeling you get on a quickie tour - that there is more to the tragedy of this woman and the tragedy of Burma than this movie will let us see.
Beyond Rangoon **
A Castle Rock release showing at Tanglewood Mall Cinema. Rated R for graphic violence. 100 minutes.
by CNB