Afterburn

Based on a true story, this is a much better-than-average TV movie. Plus points are excellent, sympathetic performances from Laura Dern and Vincent Spano, good photography, and good music. The usual TV-movie faults of excessive sentimentality and a pat ending are there, but the strengths outweigh them. Worth watching. Rating: 7/10.

This is definitely a pretty riveting film, so strong that in fact it's surprising that it was only a TV movie. I say that because the screenplay is great, the directing very assured, and the performances outstanding. Laura Dern has done great TV and film work, and this actually stands as one of the best performances I've seen from her. She grounds this character completely while also delivering some truly dramatic material that her character goes through. It all feels very lived-in and it's particularly impressive when one compares her work here to what she had to do in films like Wild at Heart, and then Rambling Rose where she needs to find a middle ground between both types of extreme acting in her range. So great, she deserves more work, truly recommended film.

Based on a true story, "Afterburn" is about Janet Harduvel (Laura Dern), whose husband, Captain Theodore Harduvel, flew F-16s. When he is killed, supposedly due to pilot error, Harduvel sets out to clear his name, as her husband was one of the best pilots ever. She wants to prove that there was a malfunction of the new plane that was being covered up by the government, the Air Force, and the manufacturer, General Dynamics - and that it had been the cause of death for other pilots.

She seeks out an attorney (Robert Loggia) who agrees to take her case.

This isn't a typical made-for-TV movie, as it was produced by HBO, and is therefore a cut above. Laura Dern does an excellent job as the widow. Worth seeing.

Laura Dern is full of surprises. After seeing Dr. T. and the Women I wasn't sure what I wanted to look at, except she was so fascinating in Damaged Care. So here is another great movie, this time not a runaway, schoolteacher, drug addict, Med. doctor, scientist, bad wife, detective, but an Air Force wife. The way she can adapt to so many personalities in such a short space of time, (1992- 2002)is amazing. This was well laid out and a superbly directed true story based on a wife's love. As the dead pilot's wife, she was convinced that he was one of the best and was out to prove the death was not his fault, but a malfunction of a new plane which killed many pilots and was being covered up by the US Government, the USAF, and General Dynamics. For years she fought and searched, and eventually found the proof and sued the system and won. There was even a hint that an AF doctor, a Lt Col., had a "fatal accident" just before he was to testify on the pilot's behalf. It was brought out the real Janet H. had a small part in the movie and I'm still trying to figure out which one she was. The BAD thing here is that this movie was made for HBO and available to probably less than 1% of the viewing population. I've never seen HBO in my life so I rented it. This movie should have been on the Big Screen, and I think it would have been on a blockbuster level like "Sergeant York". It was well done and easy to follow, something I can't say for many movies today. Thanks.

There were a spate of movies that came out over the course of a decade or so in which ordinary women, rather than saints, saw injustice in the system and fought against it. In "Marie," Sissy Spacek was the woman next door who just happened to stumble over state corruption and righted it despite resistance. That was in, I think, 1984. A few years later, Jodie Foster turned in a first-rate performance as a victimized woman who fights the legal bureaucracy in "The Accused." The innovate feature of "Accused" was that Foster played a young woman who was not only less than saintly but positively low-class. The film won Foster an Academy Award and it must have light a few light bulbs among the MBAs who greenlight projects, because in 2000, Julia Roberts won accolades for a similar part.

This one, starring Laura Dern, and featuring Loggia, Spano, and perennial heavy Rooker, among others, came in between -- 1992. And it really is derivative. Vincent Spano is a sexy pilot and Dern is a sexy waitress in a saloon. She brash and vulgar. She talks back to authority figures and smartasses smug housewives. She smokes. She wears her golden hair up in a great big pile on top of her head. She wears cheap-looking clothes, and she's easy. We can all recognize her as exactly the type of girl a Captain in the United States Air Force, an officer and a gentleman by act of Congress, would propose marriage to.

But, not to worry. The producers and writers must have realized that if they wanted to hook the female audience, this coarseness could only be taken so far. Therefore, as the movie progresses, so does Dern. She remains an outspoken woman, of course, but her demeanor and grooming change, gradually, until by the end she is perfectly fashionable by any middle-class definition.

It's not Dern's fault. She gives the role everything she's got and is quite good, throwing her ectomorphic body with those endlessly long legs around so carelessly. Her face is an interesting object as well, long and thin, with appealing blonde hair and darker brows and lashes. Spano is handsome too, I suppose, although we see a bit more of him than we need to perhaps. Robert Loggia is his dependable self. Rooker plays a mixed-up family friend who's heart is in the right place.

General Dynamics is the villain here. Spano's F-16 nosedives into the ground. The Air Force deems it pilot error, but Dern, the faithful wife, knows there is what she calls "a cover up." And so there is. General Dynamics is taken to court. No power on earth could force me to reveal who wins the case.

The plot is conventionally structured. The music stays in the background. The location shooting, in Southern California, isn't bad. It's derivative, yes, but so were several films that followed "Accused." That floozy business is the most interesting part of the pattern, though, and this made-for-TV movie gets rid of it pretty quickly.