
DATE: Wednesday, November 12, 1997          TAG: 9711110064

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E4   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Movie Review

SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC 

                                            LENGTH:   69 lines

HOFFMAN, TRAVOLTA VEHICLE FALLS SHORT OF SUSPENSE

`MAD CITY'' is a star vehicle for Dustin Hoffman and John Travolta. While they are playing totally different characters, the two never let you forget they are acting up a storm (or, possibly, just a breeze).

That's the thing about ``Mad City.'' It isn't really so mad. It's just a little angry.

It concerns a lowly janitor (Travolta) who, living from one paycheck to the next, is traumatized when he's fired from his job at a museum. He has a wife who doesn't understand him, several children and, now, no job. For days, he hides out, going to the movies and not telling his wife about his firing. All this would have made a good movie. The trouble is, it all takes place before ``Mad City'' opens. It's background.

Taking a gun along, he goes to try to talk the museum director (Blythe Danner) into giving him his job back. Almost inadvertently, he takes her hostage, along with everyone in the museum, including some pesky kids.

Hoffman plays an over-the-hill local TV reporter who longs to get back on the network. He just happens to be in the museum for the hostage-taking. Befriending the Travolta character, he manipulates the story so that he can turn the janitor into a nationwide symbol of the little guy who has been used.

``Mad City'' is one of those movies that is OK but not much. Considering the subject matter, it could have been expected to be engrossing. However, Constantin Costa-Gavras, a director who specializes in socially important subjects, is hardly the one to make the kind of comedy-drama that Hollywood money hunters want these days.

``Mad City'' has virtually no suspense because it tries to get funny, or at least cute, with its subject matter. Hostage-taking and threatening lives are not joking matters. The filmmakers would have been better off to have taken their chances with an outright drama.

In his vintage films (``Z'' and ``Missing'') Costa-Gavras attacked pervadingly dark subjects with subtlety and suspense. The media are much too easy a target. Everyone is attacking them, and many with a good deal more gusto than this film can muster. For one thing, the conniving reporter played by Hoffman turns coat at midstream. As it turns out, he isn't really so cynical and conniving.

We've seen ``Dog Day Afternoon,'' a film about hostage-taking that truly had both comedy and suspense. This one isn't even kin to it.

The creators admit that they based their ideas on Billy Wilder's classic film ``The Big Carnival'' (which was also called ``Ace in the Hole''). That was the classic tale of a reporter who manipulated a mine-rescue to keep his story going. It was powerful. Rent it. It was made back in the days when Hollywood didn't worry about the leading man (Kirk Douglas in that case) being a jerk.

Hoffman is too old for the part and approaches it with too much precious care. Travolta does little more than a half-baked imitation of Forrest Gump.

You, too, will wonder if you're ever going to get out of that museum. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MURRAY CLOSE

Dustin Hoffman and John Travolta star in ``Mad City.''

Graphic

MOVIE REVIEW

``Mad City''

Cast: Dustin Hoffman, John Travolta, Alan Alda, Mia Kirshner,

Robert Prosky, Blythe Danner

Director: Constantin Costa-Gavras

Screenplay: Tom Matthews

MPAA rating: PG-13 (some language, children held hostage)