The Osterman Weekend

The Robert Ludlum book of the same name is excellent, very tense and very well written. I waited ages for this film to come along at the right price (25p off ebay, ha ha), but how disappointed I was when I finally saw it. Maybe it wouldn't be a bad film if it wasn't based on a book, but it is, and a great book at that. Therefore, I have to compare the film with the original as the two can't be separated. Relative to the book, the film is, frankly, rubbish I'm sorry to say. I had such high expectations, but the film bore such little resemblance to the book that had I not known it was called "The Osterman Weekend", I would never have guessed that it was based on the book of the same name.

I gave this film 5/10 simply because I made it through to the end (and Rutger Hauer and John Hurt have done some great stuff), but it was more out of morbid curiosity as to how much more they could butcher the book than for any entertainment value. This was a film that was a product of its time (replete with cheesy music and bad acting) and it hasn't aged well. I'm glad I bought it for 25p because any more and I would've considered it a waste of money.

If it comes up on TV and you have 90 minutes burning a hole in your life, watch it - it isn't dreadful, but it's certainly not great. If you've read the book and are hoping to see it brought to life, or think that you're about to watch another Sam Peckinpah classic, give it a miss, it really isn't worth it.

After the utterly ridiculous good-ol'-boy trucker film CONVOY in 1978, Sam Peckinpah languished for five years before returning in 1983 with what would prove to be his final film--THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND, based on Robert Ludlum's maddeningly complex 1972 spy novel.

Despite the fact that it is often cold and sometimes confusing, this film's weakest moments are far superior to even the strongest moments of CONVOY. Rutger Hauer stars as a hard-hitting TV talk show host with a habit of skewering people inside the U.S. government. As this film opens, he is about to have a reunion with five friends of his from the good old days of 1960s radical college politics.

But then a CIA operative (John Hurt) drops a bombshell on him: Those friends of his (Craig T. Nelson, Dennis Hopper, Helen Shaver, Cassie Yates, Chris Sarandon) are supposedly traitors working for the Soviets in a scheme involving germ warfare sabotage. The result is that Hurt, with Hauer's reluctant acceptance, sets up surveillance equipment throughout Hauer's property to document further evidence of his friends' betrayal. When those people start coming unglued, however, more is at stake than just national security or the Cold War. So are peoples' lives!

Though Peckinpah was clearly on his last run while making it, THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND shows that he still could deliver the goods when it came to setting up great action sequences. The final shootout between Hurt's CIA underlings and Hauer and Nelson is edited in such a way as to resemble THE WILD BUNCH, while its actual filming suggests still another Peckinpah masterpiece, STRAW DOGS. Lalo Schifrin's score brilliantly accentuates things. Peckinpah, in depicting the head of the CIA (Burt Lancaster) as the heavy, also clearly makes a statement against America's heavy-handed approach toward Communism in the Reagan era.

All in all, despite its slight confusion, THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND works for those willing to give it a go.

When this movie originally came out, five years after CONVOY (a muddled, but in many ways spectacular entertainment), many critics moaned that Peckinpah had yet again displayed his diminished talent. A Ludlum spy thriller, pulp material, given the Peckinpah stamp was not to be taken seriously, period. What nonsense. To begin with, all of Peckinpah's films spring from pulp, and all of them, even the least successful ones, buck and spin with the way Sam applies his vision to the genre conventions he's messing with.

In simple terms, a Peckinpah movie always illustrates the world according to Sam; like a novelist writing in first person, Sam's point of view is the movie's. And that's why they endure today. In THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND, Peckinpah focuses Ludlum's cold war spy antics into a exploration of urban paranoia and governmental abuse. Video as a means to manipulate perception is one of the themes he exploits here, but that's not his main thrust. A group of affluent characters come together for a weekend that turns into a surreal nightmare. The trappings of success that surround this group are not in any way secure enough to withstand the violent, reckless games played on them by a rouge CIA agent (played by John Hurt) who's motive is personal revenge. And that motive, the revenge that fuels his need, in actual fact, has absolutely nothing to do with the affluent group he's playing with. Like the gods in Greek tragedy, the Hurt character uses the Osterman Weekend and its players as pawns, stepping stones, as a way to get at his real goal, the head of the CIA. This notion obviously strikes a chord in Peckinpah; the vision is certainly domestic, but the idea is epic: in the privacy of our homes a kind of virus colors our perceptions and poisons friendships, creates anarchy, and causes death. And the virus - where does it come from? Our own back yard - the CIA.

The film is charged with a constant underlying tension that holds and holds until all hell breaks loose and the affluent house becomes a battle ground. Visually, the movie is stunning. But then, so was CONVOY, but this time Peckinpah has harnessed what he shows and what he wants to say in a simple, tightly wound spy thriller package, Watching the movie today, it's hard to believe that some of the notions that seemed more like the paranoiac mechanics of a potboiler in 1983 have actually come true and don't seem quite as far fetched. By all accounts, Sam Peckinpah was a terribly difficult man, but he was also a visionary film maker who's work gets better and better as the years pass. THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND is not the bad film critics at the time bitched about, and it's not the sad conclusion to a career that started out brimming with possibility. It's a splendid, brilliant - better than brilliant - work of American art by a true American artist: a giant. The world according to Sam is a world that will be looked at a hundred years from now; it will inspire debate, continual analysis, and be ranked with the major artist of the entire 20th century. By 1983,Peckinpah's health may have diminished, but as a film maker he was still powerful and strong as hell.

"The Osterman Weekend" emits the feeling of a last gasp. What was an author's second novel later took this form of a director's last film. Sam Peckinpah was a good choice for directing, with film's like "The Wild Bunch" and "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" under his belt, Peckinpah wouldn't hesitate to show the grim world of betrayal and manipulation that Robert Ludlum showed through virtually everyone of his books. With spy films like the James Bond franchise being the most popular, this was the lesser seem side of that coin - the side that is less escapist adventure storytelling for boys.

However, the problems that Sam Peckinpah was going through at his last stages have noticeably affected the film. The intricate plot is there, but feels stitched together in parts, though that may very well be due the studio demanding re-editing work. The action is at times sloppy with very little of the mesmerizing details of Peckinpah's previous action sequences; a car crash even contains multiple repeats of the same angle and makes some disastrous continuity. The other action scenes are a notch or two better, but still far from what they could have been.

But, at least the plot and its many deceptions keep you guessing, right to the last shot. --- 6/10

BsCDb Classification: 13+ --- violence, sexual content

Sam Peckinpah is one of my favorite directors. I'll always see him as a visionary maverick responsible for crafting some of the most enjoyable movies I've ever seen. His The Wild Bunch and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia are among my favorite films. His last film, The Osterman Weekend, is something of a mixed bag. On the positive side, it has several good action set pieces that are very reminiscent of the other films I've mentioned. Scenes of bullets and arrows flying through the air and a particularly brutal fight scene with a bat filmed in slow-motion remind me of Peckinpah's glory days. Unfortunately, there's a plot in there that gets in the way of the fun. I've seen The Osterman Weekend twice now and I'm as confused about some of the events in the movie as I was the first time I saw it. I don't know if it was just Peckinpah being stubborn, but it feels unnecessarily confusing. There are plot points that go nowhere, plot holes big enough to drive the proverbial truck through, and plot twists that don't work. After a good set-up, the movie simply loses its way. A script that didn't try so hard to be clever and secretive and some judicious editing might have made The Osterman Weekend a winner.