Le triomphe de la vérité

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hollywood has never quenched its thirst with enough anti-U.S. government stories. It just goes on and on. Better yet is to have a woman fight the government, since that gets more politic ally-correct points. Here, we have a mouthy woman who demands to know what was behind her husband's death as a test pilot. He also was Captain in the United States Air Force. Hey, nothing wrong with that because - as we recently discovered with the Pat Tillman case - the government does lie. However, in Hollywood the government ALWAYS lies and that theme can get tiresome.

Actually, in this story we go past the government and find out it is a big corporation that was at fault for producing the pilot's plane to crash. So big business - another frequent target of the film industry even though it qualifies for that status itself - is the real villain.

The main character ultra-profane, chain-smoking "Jane Harduvel," and in portrayed in here by Laura Dern, who has played a number of low-life roles in her career. At least her character in this one mellowed somewhat as the story unraveled, but she was so profane and obnoxious for so long that it turned me off to the film. Having a nice-yet determined woman fight for her husband would have made the story more attractive to more people.