Eureka

The Latter-Half of Nicolas Roeg's Filmography. A Career that Started On-Fire and Slowly Fizzled. Critics and Fans Did Not Associate or Relate to "Eureka" Fringy-Style and Off-Kilter Tone...Despite Similar Roeg Movies that Created the Buzz for the Cinematographer/Technician Turned Director in the First Place..."Performance" (1970)..."Walkabout" (1971)..."Don't Look Now" (1973)..."The Man Who Fell To Earth" (1976)..."Bad Timing" (1980)...

This String of Successful Out of the Box Offerings from Director Roeg is a Remarkable (both Critical and Financial) of Consistency that Hit a Chord. But Starting with "Eureka (1980) His Charm, Suddenly, No Longer Did the Trick and the Remainder of His Output is Considered, with Few Exceptions, Mediocre or just Bad.

"Eureka" became the "Kryptonite" for Roeg and He Never Seemed to Attain the "Magic" Again.

It's More Over-the-Top Disturbing. More Violent, More Decadent, More Outrageous Behavior, More of Everything. It's Still Roeg, but Roeg On Steroids Losing His Mind...

Unrestrained, Far From Grounded in Reality. Shocking Scenes, Including a Voodoo Ritual that Pulls No Punches, Sex, Ultra-Violent, and Disgusting Images.

A Dream Cast,,,Including Gene Hackman, Theresa Russell, Rutger Hauer, Joe Peci, Jane Laprtaire...

that All Seemed to Capitulate to the Rogue Roeg's Vision, of a Surreal Early 20th Century and the Monied Elite that Literally Lives on Their Own Private Island.

Nicolas Roeg, perhaps Guilty of Over-Reach that Pleased No One, and the Movie is Unsettling and Disturbing to Watch...but it's a Train-Wreck that has that Train-Wreck Allure that is Magnetism of "Rubber-Necking" and a "Guilty Pleasure" Watching the Dark-Side of Humanity that Contains Very Little Light.

Sounds Like a "Cult-Movie' Personified, but it's Not a Cult Movie Yet and is Mostly a Forgotten Misfire that Never Made its Mark, is Virtually Unknown, a Mystery Considering what's On and Behind the Screen. As Joe Pesci says in Oliver Stone's JFK..."It's a mystery wrapped in an Enigma"...By the Way...Pesci Plays, What Else? A Gangster and Nemesis to the Unhinged "Richest Man in the World"...Gene Hackman

The Movie Deserves A Closer Look, just because of All the Talented Folks that Put Together this "Crazy Man's Quilt. A Fascinating, if Bizarre and a Turn-Off for Most Folks. But Nonetheless an Artistic Experiment that is... Worth a Watch.

I too first saw this in London when it came out May 1983, at the Screen on the Hill. It was my O-level year, and I was a skinny, awkward 15-year-old, desperately trying to get into my first 18-rated film. It worked. But was it worth it? The film has an extraordinary opening section, as Gene Hackman finds the gold under the snow-encrusted earth, culminating in a spectacular, slow-motion explosion of rock and snow. Set to extracts of Wagner's DAS RHEINGOLD, it's unforgettable, thrilling cinema, and had my jaw dropping into my cappuccino. We also have the sight of a dying, half-frozen man blowing his brains out again and again, bringing to mind the disjointed, hallucinatory quality one recognises from the director of THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH and DON'T LOOK NOW. Stunning, disturbing stuff.

Unfortunately the momentum quickly slackens as we cut forwards in time to a rather dull, plodding melodrama about a Kane-like man who in his anguish says, "Once I had it all...now I only have everything." (Coming after the prologue, this also applies to the film itself.) There's some nasty scenes involving voodoo and Rutger Hauer doing something rather strange with a python, some gut-wrenching violence involving a blow-torch and the contents of a pillow, and a soap-opera court-room finale that feels as if it's wandered in from an entirely different film altogether. There are rumours of a different film lurking in this exuberant mess: one of the film's stars has hinted that it was not Roeg's final version that we saw. But I couldn't call this a success. Roeg fans should check it out as an oddity, but be warned: after the brilliant beginning, it's downhill all the way.

Eureka is the kind of film you think you'll hate unless you give it a fair shake. It is a interplay between many characters, much like a soap opera. It works only if you take a general interest in the trivialities of each character. Jack McCann (Hackman) is the center of the film. His life is all about the gold he felt he earned, and the principle that he will never have any partners to share a percentage with. His life is ravaged by Mayakofsky (Pesci) and his henchmen. Charles Perkins, a friend of Jack's spent much of the movie trying to warn him that these men were dangerous. Jack's dilemma wasn't that he was waiting for his death, but the fact that he thought he was invincible. Being stubborn and set in his ways, Jack refused to give in to Mayakofsky. Jack was a man preoccupied with gold, but not loveless. He seemed to love all the women in his life. Also his daughter, Spacey Tracy. A loose young woman married to Claude (Hauer). Tracy had her head in the clouds, and wanted to live in a fantasy world. She did not provoke the fights between her father and Claude, but instigated them. She wanted Claude to fight as a proof of his love. Claude was most elusive. You never get his angle. If he loved Tracy or was just using her. She even used the witness stand as a way of finding out where Claude stood with her instead of pinning for the guilty ones involved in the tragic end of her father. (Claude did his own defense in court!) The movie has it's funny points. Like the dinner table scene at the McCann's where Jack makes some insulting remarks to the guests. Some of the best scenes involve Aurelio D'Amato, played by Mickey Rourke. He's cast in another glossed over film where he is perfect, but forgotten. D'Amato is a yiddish associate of Mayakofsky. And one of the main guys pestering Jack to sign the Luna Bay deal.(Mayakofsky wanted to build a casino on it.) There are scenes where D'Amato is begging Jack to sign. His baby face and soft voice should have gotten the devil to sign the document, but Jack wasn't so easy. Rourke's performance alone is reason enough to see this movie. And its not surprising he has a night with Tracy. Tracy loved Claude, but how could she resist D'Amato? Eureka is more of a film about the desires of man. Each character wants something, and they spend the entire film in pursuit of those things.

Of the Nicolas Roeg films I've seen thus far "Eureka" is in many ways the most conventional. Probably this is due to its being based on real-life events, to wit, the horrific murder in his palatial house of a powerful and super-wealthy man just as the Second World War is nearing its close.

Before we get to that, there's an eerie, atmospheric prologue set in the Yukon twenty years earlier where Gene Hackman's Jack McCann character achieved his one goal in life, to strike gold and become rich beyond his wildest dreams. Fast forward those twenty years and he's married to his now dissolute wife, Jane Lapotaire with an impulsive adult daughter, played by Theresa Russell, waited on hand and foot, living the life of luxury on his own private island in the Bahamas named Eureka after the word he uttered when making his lucky strike.

But of course, great wealth doesn't guarantee great happiness and so Jack's peace of mind is beset on two fronts. Firstly his impressionable daughter has fallen in with a handsome, libertine go-getter, Rutger Hauer's titled Frenchman Claude van Horn. Jack thinks Claude is literally a gold-digger and is provoked to extreme rage and violence against him when he learns the couple have secretly married. His other concern is that he's being pressurised by his up till now trusted business partner who's now in tow to a shady mobster who wants to open up Eureka to gambling, like a second Cuba.

How this self-made man confronts head-on both of these problems and the disastrous consequencies which follow, determines the outcome of the movie, culminating in his horrific killing and the subsequent trial of van Horn, the verdict coincidentally falling due on the day the war actually ends.

Like I said, this Roeg film is perhaps easier to follow than others in his catalogue, but naturally he throws in a few curve-balls along the way and elsewhere demonstrates his undoubted directorial bravura. The depictions of sex and violence are graphic, especially the drunken orgy scene masterminded by van Horn and the nightmarish slaying of McCann in his own bed but these are contrasted with the opulent depiction of the trappings of wealth and the matter-of-fact gravity of the extended courtroom trial.

I personally felt that rather like McCann himself, the film peaks at the moment he hits the motherlode, in a remarkably staged scene with McCann literally awash in his new wealth. There are strong performances by Hackman, and Hauer, in particular with Joe Pesci warming up on the sidelines for his future gangster roles under the direction of Scorcese.

Yes, the film is uneven with occasionally overripe dialogue and some confusing plot-shifts but it certainly works as a study of greed, power and the corruption of wealth.

Perhaps the moral here is that it's better just to let the rainbow fade rather than chase the pot of gold you imagine is at the end of it.

I had never heard of Ed Lauter until he died a few months ago, even though I had seen him in a number of movies; he simply hadn't registered in my mind. While watching Nicolas Roeg's "Eureka", I was surprised to see that Lauter co-starred. I had also never heard of Harry Oakes until I read about the movie. The movie had a good plot but seemed as though it could've been shorter. In the end, I think that the main point to derive from the movie is that prestige makes people go crazy. Gene Hackman's character struck gold and it made him rich, causing him to go nuts, and the insanity extends to his acquaintances. As shown in "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" and "The Wolf of Wall Street", people will do anything for money.

Anyway, it's an OK not great movie.