Power - Potere

Perhaps this film would have hit me harder in 1986, but now, with so many movies and so much news reporting about the inner workings of politics and image-makers, I watched it on DVD (loaned by Ron and Evelyn) and came away thinking, "so what?" There really isn't anything new or Earth-shaking. Gere is good as the hot-shot political consultant who gets high dollars to get candidates elected to offices at various levels all over the USA and even Central and South America. He tells them, "do what I tell you and after you get into office, you can do whatever you want." I got the feeling that the movie is very authentic but has no great impact when it was over. The critic Ebert has a very fair and complete review. It's median IMDb vote of '6' is about right.

...the doors opened and fresh air rushed in as a weary audience trudged sleepily from the theater to the parking lot.

"Power" is powerful medicine for those unable to get some sleep. Buy this as a CD or VHS and keep it in your bedroom for those nights when you are wide awake.

Those who liked the film did so because they find a political reason for it. It was written in the 1980s and apparently for no particular reason at all other than to make some quick bucks...which it did not.

Reviewers and public held the project in such low esteem that only a few critics and political zealots bother to comment on it.

Power (1986) stars Pete (Richard Gere) , a ruthless media consultant working for politicians , with clients spread around the country . He's an amoral image-maker whose services , packaging politicians for a TV orientated society , guarantee success. Pete used to work for Wilfred Buckley (Gene Hackman) until a professional disagreement led to Pete deciding to start his own consulting business, Wilfred who is now a friendly rival for the same pool of clients . After a close friend (E. G. Marhall) drops out of politics, the political consultant helping to find a replacement finds a web of corruption and deceit as well. That retirement leads to Pete being sought out by political neophyte Jerome Cade (J. T. Walsh) , who is looking to win the vacated seat. More seductive than sex... More addictive than any drug... More precious than gold. And one man can get it for you. For a price. Nothing else comes close. Smart woman , ex wife . You have the ballot. But who has the power?

A tiring often downright embarrassing story of politics and media manipulation marked a real low point in the career of Richard Gere . Fine cast can't find the energy needed to make this great , but it's still interesting . Support cast are pretty good though wasted , including prestigious actors , such as : Gene Hackman, Denzel Washington, E. G. Marshall, Beatrice Straight, Fritz Weaver, Michael Learned, J. T. Walsh and Matt Salinger . In addition , veteran Julie Christie and Kate Capshaw , Spielberg's wife , add love interest but their roles are bland cyphers . All the plot twists are well telegraphed in a storyline that doesn't come anywhere near director Lumet's corrosive exposé of other movies .Lumet did better with same material in Network and other films.

It contains adequate cinematography by Andrzej Bartkowiak and atmospheric musical score by Cy Coleman. The motion picture was middlingly directed by Sidney Lumet and it failed at box-office . After starting an off-Broadway acting troupe in the late 1940s, he became the director of many television shows in the 1950s. Lumet made his feature film Adaptation of directing debut with 12 Angry Men (1957), which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and earned three Academy Award nominations. The courtroom drama, which takes place almost entirely in a jury room, is justly regarded as one of the most auspicious directorial debuts in film history. Lumet got the chance to direct Marlon Brando in The Figitive Kind (1960), an imperfect, but powerful adaptation of Tennessee Williams'. One of the best films was ¨Network¨, giving powerful scenes and providing a lavishly mounted vehicle for three great actors, Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway and William Holden. .Lumet was one of the best American filmmakers, including important films such as 12 angry men, Fail safe, The pawnbroker, The hill, The deadly affair, The group, The offence, Serpico , Equus, The wiz, Prince of the city , Deathtrap , Daniel, Power, The morning after, Family business, Night falls on Manhattan, Gloria, Before the devil knows you are dead, among others. Rating 4.5/10. Average.

There is a reason this political film flies under the radar; I doubt it's up for rediscovery, either. A power cast and a power director (Sidney Lumet--director of Dog Day Afternoon and Network) should somehow add up to more than this limp media expose, but once in a while a movie is just an entertainment, and with Richard Gere in thoughtful mode (without much of a character or a script), Julie Christie as a concerned ex-spouse, and Denzel Washington cast against type, this is an OK two hours that don't demand much from the viewer, and, while predictable, certainly meant well.

It was the script, Sidney, and someone should have told you. Wag The Dog is the political gem that works; The Candidate or even better, the original Manchurian Candidate with Sinatra are more persuasive--but if you like the stars, this one passes the time pleasantly.

The main character in "Power" is Pete St. John, a highly successful media consultant. Pete is to the world of politics what a public relations consultant would be to the world of business. His job is to advise candidates for political office on the best way in which to present themselves to the media and to the electorate. The film focuses on four of Pete's clients- Roberto Cepeda, running for the Presidency of an unnamed Latin-American country, Wallace Furman, running for the Governorship of New Mexico, Andrea Stannard, the incumbent Governor of Washington State, and Jerome Cade, running for the Senate in Ohio.

We are supposed to accept Pete as a ruthless and cynical individual, and he is certainly prepared to act for anyone regardless of their political beliefs. His four clients are, politically speaking, very different. Cepeda is a left-wing populist, Cade a right-wing businessman with ties to the oil industry, Stannard a social liberal and Furman another businessman but a man with few political ideas even though he is anxious for a political career. Cade is hoping to win the Senate seat being vacated by Sam Hastings, who is not merely a former client of Pete's but also a personal friend. Hastings holds environmentalist views which are diametrically opposed to Cade's pro-business opinions, and Pete suspects that his friend may have come under pressure to stand down from the Senate. Pete is forced to take a hard look at himself and to decide whether (as his ex-wife Ellen and his former partner Wilfred believe) he owes his success to a lack of principles.

The film came out in 1986, a time when America was just starting to recover from the trauma of the Watergate scandal of the previous decade. Although many (principally Republicans) believed that Ronald Reagan, who had just won his second successive landslide victory, had restored the American people's faith in their political system, there were many others (not only Democrats but also many foreign observers) who felt that the American people had been the victims of a gigantic political con-trick, that they had been induced to vote for Reagan by a slick political marketing campaign. A film about a slick political marketing man therefore seemed very topical in the mid-eighties.

The film was directed by Sidney Lumet, and could have been an opportunity to do for the American political system what Lumet had done for the American media in the brilliantly satirical "Network" around a decade earlier. Unfortunately, it never really works in the same way as "Network" had done, for a number of reasons. The first is the acting. "Network" had at its centre a towering performance from Peter Finch, well-supported by excellent contributions from William Holden and Faye Dunaway. There is nothing really comparable in "Power". Although Richard Gere is good in the earlier part of the film as the unscrupulous smooth operator, he seems less convincing later on when Pete rediscovers his principles. The supporting actors are not very memorable; there are some big names in the cast, but Julie Christie as Ellen, Gene Hackman as Wilfred and E. G. Marshall as Sam have all done much better things than this. Perhaps the best is Denzel Washington as Arnold Billing, Cade's ruthless public relations man.

The second reason for the film's relative lack of success is that it never actually succeeds in convincing us that Pete really is all that unprincipled. He may not care very much whether his clients come from the left or right of the ideological spectrum, but we never actually see him do anything unethical until, ironically, after his supposed "conversion" when he supplies confidential information to his client's opponent. We see commercials he makes in support of Furman and Stannard, but both are very mild and defensive in tone. A really unscrupulous politician like Richard Nixon, notorious for his use of "dirty tricks" against opponents, would have sacked Pete from his campaign team for being a pussy.

The third reason is that there are too many competing story lines. It would have made for a more dramatic and powerful film if Lumet and the scriptwriter David Himmelstein had concentrated on just one, preferably the Senatorial race in Ohio, which is the most important and most potentially interesting of the four stories. The Latin American storyline seems to be dropped quite early on- we never learn whether Cepeda becomes President of his country- but the Ohio story is continually interrupted as Pete jets off to Seattle or Santa Fe.

"Power" is not altogether a bad film. The problem is that it could have been so much better. The idea of a film examining political corruption, not just the corruption of those who seek to wield power through holding political office but also the corruption of those who seek to wield power by influencing public opinion, was a good one. It could have been the occasion for a brilliant film. Unfortunately, "Power" tries to be that film but falls some way short of what it could have been. 6/10