joe-734

Good setup and George C. Scott is strong, but the story loses credibility and the film abandons the cool tone that makes the opening promising. The primary supporting actors, Tony Musante and Trish Van Devere are both poor, though in different ways: he's hammy and obvious, she's bland--and she has no chemistry with Scott, though they fell in love making the picture.

Worst of all is the score, credited to.the able Jerry Goldsmith but often ridiculous, especially in the action sequences; I have a hard time believing that it's all his work. The move is not without virtues, including fine cinematography and beautiful scenery, but you won't be missing much if you skip it.

Amazing how worthless a movie with such talent involved can be. Meryl Streep is a great actress miscast here as a sex object; Roy Scheider can be charismatic (check out All That Jazz) but you wouldn't know it from this somnambulant performance. The writer-director seemed to think that random references to Hitchcock movies were all that was needed to create Hitchcockian suspense; not so. (Truffaut made the same mistake with The Bride Wore Black.) This is simply a tedious slog, with no excitement except for a few cheap jump scares. I rarely see a movie with no redeeming interest, but this is one. It makes me wonder if Kramer vs Kramer by the same director was as good as I thought at the time--and it makes me wary of finding out by watching it again.

I don't think I've ever seen a movie that seemed so assured in certain aspects and so inept in others. The concept is good; the script--which faces the considerable challenge of providing clear and witty blank verse dialogue and credible additional scenes for Macbeth--is often excellent; the tough parts of the actress and the ghost are handled well; and the cinematography is often lovely.

On the other hand, the pacing is poor, especially in the sluggish first half, in ways that could easily have been corrected. On at least two occasions, one character relates to another what happened in the previous scene--explanation that's begging to be cut. The set-up should have been established much more quickly, leaving more time for the payoff--the rehearsals and the performance of the play within the movie--which are entertaining, when they finally arrive.

The editing is far too busy: too many cuts, too many different shots, too much cutting back and forth during stretches of dialogue--all rather exhausting, undermining some decent material.

Finally, the actor playing the 'charmingly awkward' young theater director is all awkward and no charm. Not his fault, I suspect; he's not right for the part, and it doesn't seem he got much help from the director.

This could have been a fine little movie; it's hard to understand how the people involved could have missed such glaring problems.