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Player
© Guild - all rights reserved |
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| Tookey's Rating |
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8
/10 |
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| Average Rating |
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9.00
/10 |
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| Starring |
Tim Robbins  , Greta Scacchi, Fred Ward
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| Full Cast > |
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Directed by:
Robert Altman (AAN, LONDON CRITICS' CIRCLE AWARD - DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR)
Written by:
Michael Tolkin (AAN, LONDON CRITICS' CIRCLE AWARD - SCREENWRITER OF THE YEAR) from his own novel
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| Released: |
1992 |
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| Genre: |
CRIME
ROMANCE
COMEDY
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| Origin: |
US |
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| Length: |
123 |
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Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins, pictured), a ruthless movie executive receives death threats from a writer he has offended. In defending himself, Mill kills the wrong writer (Vincent D'Onofrio). |
Reviewed by Chris Tookey
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| | The Player has been praised as the ultimate satire on modern Hollywood, but if it had been all that vicious would it have picked up three Oscar nominations (for direction, script and Geraldine Peroni's editing)? Altman hits the targets at which he can be bothered to aim: the power games, the patronising attitude of movie executives towards anyone creative, the Hollywood parochialism, the idiocy of trying to "pitch" a film in under 25 words, the shameless insincerity. But Altman avoids attacking over-powerful agents or inflated star salaries (one reason, perhaps, he could get so many famous actors to appear). He neglects to pillory directorial egos or waste. Nor does he have anything to say about Hollywood's casual use of violence as entertainment. | | One reason the film didn't wow the masses was that Altman supplies no one they can "root for". Even the angry voices in opposition to our anti-hero are cracked. The English writer (Richard E. Grant) refuses to sell out to Hollywood stars and happy endings, but eventually does just that. The murdered writer who taunts Mill with the words "I can write, what can you do?" turns out to have no talent. Even Mill's betrayed girl-friend (Dina Merrill) has such a corrupted notion of friendship that she accuses Mill of flaunting his new conquest at a party "with several hundred of my closest friends". | | What about the anti-hero? Altman handles Griffin Mill beautifully; he skilfully makes us feel just enough sympathy for him, without unduly softening him. Mill really does have an impossible job, fielding 125 phone calls a day and trying to choose 12 ideas per year out of 50,000. He probably does love film and is less insensitive than some. He's even troubled by guilt when he kills the wrong writer. But this is black comedy: we mustn't feel too much for Mill. Otherwise we wouldn't be able to enjoy his discomfiture. | | Altman is at his most deadly accurate when he goes beyond Hollywood and satirises the extent to which audiences (and, by extension, society) love a winner. The "happy" ending is that Mill gets away with his crime, makes a successful film, upgrades his car from a Range Rover to a Rolls, and gets the girl. The film ends with a David Lynch-style shot of him with his new, pregnant wife outside their new, perfect house with that old American flag fluttering proudly. But, like Woody Allen in his unhappy ending to Crimes and Misdemeanors , Altman implies that there is more to life and happiness than not getting caught. | | In a twist too far, Altman "reveals" that The Player itself is a Hollywood film written by the very writer who has been stalking Mill. The death threats were, we are asked to believe, just a writer's way of researching his story-line. This might have been a masterly ending, except that any writer who was merely out to frighten a movie executive would hardly put a lethal rattlesnake in his car and risk going on trial for murder The twist is a clever but unconvincing way of rounding off the film: just the kind of cheap, crowd-pleasing trick which Altman clearly deplores if the audience, rather than a writer or director, demands it. | | Other weaknesses? The movie contains at least one star too many. Whoopi Goldberg, amusing though she is, is a distraction as the Pasadena cop who's trailing Mill. And it is hard to care about the love story between Mill and the murdered writer's girl-friend (Greta Scacchi). It may be that Altman is making a deliberate point: that Hollywood makes actresses like Scacchi play thankless roles. I fear, however, that the female character has a more serious purpose and symbolises Art as Self-Expression (she paints, but has no interest in selling her pictures). The scenes between Robbins and Scacchi are the weakest in the film. | | |
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