Charles-31

This is the usual TV movie fluff obviously tossed together to cash in on a few of those old conspiracy ideas floating around forever about airlines, the military, and evil corporations. What really astounded me, though, is the director: T. J. Scott. If you look at his credits, he's clearly a TV director, but his credits include some really powerful stuff. He directed some of the best episodes of Andromeda and La Femme Nikita. He directed what are really the best of the best of Xena including the Callisto episodes. Surely, he knows better than this nonsense. He not only agreed to direct this slop, but also involved in the writing of it.

A sure sign of a bad adaptation of a novel: Nowhere in the credits do you see mention of Nelson DeMille or Thomas Block, the authors of the book this film is based on. Clearly, they asked that their names be removed from the resulting disaster.

This is a film that fails dismally by itself, but is redeemed by a truly great DVD special feature.

I truly love experimental movies and imports and this clearly falls into that category. But, the film is not at all well done. It's dull in many places and too often reduces to sex for the sake of prurient interested. The plot, or lack of plot, rambles about and is very confusing. Some of the symbolism is so obscure you won't know it until you listen to the director's commentary. You have trouble identifying with any of the characters because they are so unrealistic.

But, it is in the area of the DVD director's commentary that this film shines brightly. Just out of curiosity, I turned it on after watching the film and was surprised how much I learned about the film, the directing process, the actors, and the director's life. Interestingly enough, the commentary is far better than the actual film. Though the film is meant to be somewhat autobiographical, the real facts of Asia's life are far more interesting and make much more sense, though they be somewhat strange to those of us looking from the outside. So many commentaries tend to be just some trivia about the shoot. This one tells lots of great stories about the people and process. You'll learn so much about stolen shots and when the sex is real and when it's not. I wish more commentaries went out on a limb to tell of truth about what is going on in the creative process as she has done here.

One scene sums up the entire problem with this film. Near the end, Rush is portraying Sellers in "Being There", an excellent and often overlooked film.

If you've seen Being There, the parts reenacted in this film demonstrate the clear difference between the genius that was Peter Sellers and the poor performance of Geoffrey Rush in this film. Sellers was smooth and fit the role perfectly. Chauncey Gardiner was a very difficult role to play and Sellers fit is perfectly. Rush looks awful, jittering around and not at all bringing the character to life. They made Rush look like Sellers, but he hasn't the acting chops to hold up in this role.

Am I the only one getting tired of "flawed genius" films? Do we really need to trash the memory of every great actor?