Con Air

By all rights, Con Air (1997) should have been an awful waste of time – just another tired Jerry Bruckheimer testosterone action movie whose final fate should have been wedged between beer and pick-up truck ads on television. Instead, the movie cleverly sends up and celebrates nearly every action cliché in the genre. No expense is spared as Powers Boothe is enlisted to solemnly intone the virtues of the U.S. Rangers at the beginning of the movie and then has Trisha Yearwood sing a sappy love song (“How Do I Live”) over the protagonist reuniting with his wife.

U.S. Ranger Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage) is due to be paroled after killing a drunk who threatened him and his wife (Julia Roberts wannabe Monica Potter). We are subjected to the typical passage of time montage documenting Poe’s stint in prison as director Simon West and the screenplay by Scott Rosenberg slyly reference a similar sequence with Nicolas Cage in Raising Arizona (1987) and the prison riot scenes in Natural Born Killers (1994). No, really. The prologue clocks in at a speedy five minutes and change, economically setting up the premise. Then, the opening credits play over Poe in prison reading and writing letters to his daughter, employing every cliché in the book all with a thick as molasses Southern drawl.

Of course, Poe’s trip home isn’t going to be that easy as his knack of being in the wrong place at the wrong time continues when the plane he’s on just happens to be transporting the worst criminal scum on the planet. Chief among them, Cyrus “The Virus” Grissom (John Malkovich), a serial rapist (Danny Trejo), a Black Panther-esque militant (Ving Rhames), a Hannibal Lector rip-off (Steve Buscemi), a young Dave Chappelle riffing his way through the movie as a minor criminal that incites the jailbreak, and a whole slew of mass murderers.

Naturally, the convicts get free of their restraints and take control of the plane. To make matters worse, Poe’s buddy (Mykelti Williamson) goes into insulin shock. On the ground, U.S. Marshal Vince Larkin (John Cusack) and DEA Agent Duncan Malloy (Colm Meaney) get into a heated debate about how exactly to deal with the runaway plane – Larkin wants to take it down through peaceful means while Malloy wants to shoot it out of the sky. Naturally, it’s up to Poe to do the right thing and save the day.

Clearly riffing on his psychotic assassin from In the Line of Fire (1993), albeit with a much better sense of humor, John Malkovich gets the lion’s share of the movie’s best dialogue and delivers it with his trademark scathing dry wit. He really seems to be having fun with this role. Along comes Steve Buscemi as a criminal with a revered and feared reputation and yet we never actually see him do anything to support these claims. He and Malkovich get locked into a competition to see who can deliver the best one-liner with the driest of deliveries.

Colm Meaney and John Cusack have a lot of fun bickering back and forth, as the former plays an assholish DEA agent, a typical blowhard authority figure, while the latter plays a cerebral U.S. Marshal – one of his trademark characters dropped into a slam-bang Bruckheimer action movie. Part of the fun of watching Cusack in Con Air is seeing him navigate the kind of movie he doesn’t usually do, butting heads with Bruckheimer stereotypes with often interesting results.

You have to hand it to Nicolas Cage; he certainly knows how to pick action movies that allow him to play ever so slightly left-of-center characters like The Rock (1996), where he played an anti-action hero, and Face/Off (1997), a stylish John Woo movie with an insane role reversal plot twist. In this movie, the actor looks ridiculous with his glorious mullet, taking his cue from Jean-Claude Van Damme’s similar ‘do in Hard Target (1993). With Con Air, Cage wisely plays Poe as if it were a straight-forward action movie, which is in sharp contrast to many of the larger than life characters around him. He’s gracious and smart enough to know that when everyone around him is playing larger than life characters, go the low-key route.

Getting his start in commercials, director Simon West wears his influences on his sleeve, doing his best Michael Bay impersonation as he employs oh-so dramatic slow-mo shots of badass characters walking towards the camera (a ‘90s staple – see Armageddon), our hero outrunning an explosion, and everything is gorgeously shot and edited within an inch of its life.

For a big, loud action movie, the dialogue is quite clever and, more importantly, delivered well by the cast – which, incidentally, is an incredible collection of movie stars and character actors. It is so jam-packed with talented thespians that you wonder how in the hell did the powers that be get them all to be in this movie? Con Air looks and sounds like a Bruckheimer action film but it is Rosenberg’s screenplay that is the wild card. It sets up the standard, implausible action movie premise and introduces the genre archetypes (i.e. the lone wolf protagonist with his pretty, loving wife and the criminal mastermind, etc.) and starts messing around with the formula.

Scott Rosenberg garnered a lot of buzz from his screenplay for Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead (1995). Disney came calling and hired him to write a script. They gave him a Los Angeles Times article about a Federal Marshal program that transported inmates across the country. To research the operation, he went to Oklahoma City and spent three days on a plane with convicts. He observed, “hardened convicts at their worst. It was very unsettling, and a bit terrifying.” Rosenberg settled down to write the script, listening to a lot of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Allman Brothers albums and came up with an idea about a guy sent to prison when his wife was pregnant and had never met his daughter. This freed up Rosenberg to populate the script with “the craziest motherfuckers; the most absurd dialogue and set-pieces.”

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer read Rosenberg’s script and bought it for his production company but felt that it needed to be more character-driven. He worked closely with Rosenberg to “add more dimension” to the characters and make it a story about redemption. Bruckheimer hired Simon West to direct because he had been impressed by his T.V. commercial work.

Upon completing The Rock with Nicolas Cage, Bruckheimer asked the actor to star in Con Air. With this movie, he wanted to return to a “more old-fashioned style of action movie,” and used Gary Cooper in High Noon (1952) as a point of reference, playing a character with good values. To prepare for the role, he visited Folsom State Prison where he had to sign a “no hostage” clause in order to walk among hardened inmates in the Level Four lock-up. Everything was fine until he, Bruckheimer, Rosenberg and West talked to one group of inmates in the yard and not another. All hell broke loose as one inmate tried to stab another.

Cage observed that many inmates had chiseled physiques and decided to take his cue from boxer Ken Norton and “look like I could survive anything, anywhere.” To this end, he adopted a specific diet, ran five miles a day and lifted weights frequently. At one point, the studio was worried that the actor was getting too ripped, which he found amusing: “I thought, ‘Now that’s a new one – too built-up for an action movie.’” In the script, Poe wasn’t too smart, “just a skeleton of a character,” according to Cage, and made him a Southern man that idolizes his wife. He also decided to make Poe an Army Ranger to explain how he could survive on a plane without a gun. Winning an Academy Award hadn’t mellowed out the actor as West remembered, “If we were doing an intense scene, he’d howl like a banshee and he’d leap around like a banshee, too. I’d give him a minute or two and then I’d say, ‘Let’s move on, Nick.”

Con Air received mixed reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the movie three out of four stars and wrote, “The movie is essentially a series of quick setups, brisk dialogue and elaborate action sequences…assembled by first-time director Simon West…it moves smoothly and with visual style and verbal wit.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “Con Air has an important secret weapon: an indie cast. All of the principals normally work in films more interesting and human than this one, which gives Con Air a touch of the subversive and turns it into a big-budget lark.” Entertainment Weekly gave it a “C” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “Con Air may be the closest thing yet to pure action thriller pornography. Ultimately, there’s nothing to it but thrust.” In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan wrote, “But with a noise level so high the dialogue has to be screamed and more silly moments than sane ones, Con Air is an animated comic book put together to pound an audience into submission, not entertain it.”

Con Air works because the filmmakers take a simple set-up and expertly execute it. The movie still plugs in the usual, over-the-top set pieces. For example, a sports car is towed behind a cargo plane only to crash through a control tower and explode. Our hero’s best buddy even gets to utter a stirring soliloquy as he lies gravely injured. True to form, the ending is highly implausible and excessive even by Bruckheimer standards but you have to admire the filmmakers for going for it. There is a fascinating push and pull going on with this movie as it trots out all the usual action movie clichés while often commenting on them ironically in true ‘90s fashion – so much so that at one point, Steve Buscemi’s spooky killer even acknowledges said irony. Ultimately, what redeems Con Air – well-placed sense of irony – is, sadly, what goes missing when its sappy ending rears its ugly head, even if it tries to evoke the ending of Wild at Heart (1990). No, really.

SOURCES

Con Air Production Notes. 1997.

Longsdorf, Amy. “Traditional Values Drew Iconoclastic Nicolas Cage To Do Con Air.” The Morning Call. June 1, 1997.

“Screenwriter Scott Rosenberg Interview.” Kid in the Front Row. March 13, 2010.

Deepwater Horizon

Watching the movies that Peter Berg has directed, I wonder if he would have thrived better under the Hollywood system from the 1940s or 1950s, cranking out no-nonsense genre fare much like filmmakers Don Siegel or Robert Aldrich. His strongest efforts are the ones rooted in reality, usually based on real-life events, like Friday Night Lights (2004), and feature blue collar protagonists trying to do what is right with an emphasis on the minutia of their jobs, much like the films of one of his influences, Michael Mann.

His latest effort is the disaster drama Deepwater Horizon (2016), a dramatized depiction of the 2010 incident that involved the explosion of and subsequent fire on a drilling rig of the same name in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 workers and injured 17 others. Despite good reviews, the movie failed to connect with mainstream audiences despite the presence of popular movie star Mark Wahlberg and it was unable to make back its hefty budget with post-mortems in the press pointing to the studio’s mistakes in marketing it and the lack of broad appeal as reasons for its commercial demise.

We meet Mike Williams (Wahlberg) as he spends a morning with his family before another 21-day shift on an offshore rig. This scene is important because it humanizes the man and shows what he has to live for, which helps us care about what happens to him later. We soon meet two of his co-workers – Jimmy Harrell (Kurt Russell) and Andrea Fleytas (Gina Rodriguez) – and Berg does a fine job of showing the easy-going rapport between them while the actors use this brief amount of screen-time to flesh out their characters through casual conversations between them.

He juggles these moments with characters spouting technical jargon and inserting shots of the rig, which immerses us in the work these people do and it is done with the utmost efficient narrative economy. Even if we don’t understand what all the drilling-speak means, Berg makes sure we at least get the gist of it by also trying to convey it visually. This is Deepwater Horizon at its strongest – showing these people at work doing a job that most of us know nothing about. We see the nuts and bolts of the drilling operation and the comradery of the workers. Since this is a disaster movie, we know that this is the calm before the storm and everything will soon go to shit. As a result, there is a feeling of dread as we know it’s coming, we just don’t know when.

Jimmy is the first person to suspect that something isn’t right and confronts the powers that be in a forceful scene that sees Kurt Russell square off against John Malkovich’s shifty company man. This results in a wonderfully tense moment as Jimmy voices his concerns with Mike backing him up. For fans of good acting this scene is particularly thrilling if only to see guys like Russell and Malkovich go at it. The latter is ostensibly the villain of the movie with the screenplay laying most of the blame on the BP executive’s shoulders when in actuality there was plenty of blame to go around. This simple finger-pointing is the movie’s most glaring blemish on an otherwise impressive effort.

The decision to go ahead and drill is, not surprisingly, a pivotal one and Berg gives it the gravitas required, squeezing as much dramatic tension out of the scene as he can so that it is almost unbearable because we know what’s coming next. Sure enough, the well blows out sending tons of muddy water all through the rig at an alarming rate and this is soon followed by an explosion. The rest of Deepwater Horizon plays out as a frantic race for survival as the workers try to get everybody off the burning rig with the focus on Mike locating a badly injured Jimmy.

Mark Wahlberg excels at another everyman role in his second collaboration with Berg (they have another one on the way). With this actor, the director has found his cinematic alter ego and they bring out the best in each other. Wahlberg’s inherent likability gets us to empathize with Mike immediately. The actor also has all the technical lingo down cold and is believable as a hard-working rigger. In addition, he has excellent chemistry with Kate Hudson who plays his wife and their scenes together have a warmth to them. Perhaps the most powerful moment in the movie is Mike’s return home. He’s physically battered and is finally reunited with his family, breaking down emotionally in a surprisingly raw scene. It’s an unusual way to end the movie and an interesting choice as Berg eschews a traditional uplifting ending for a sobering one. Let’s face it, to end it any other way would have been dishonest.

At times, Deepwater Horizon feels like an angry movie, mostly during the scenes where Jimmy confronts the BP executives but then the disaster movie tropes take over and the anger simmers on the backburner until the text at the end that briefly explains the effects the explosion had on the environment. The righteous anger returns and it made me wonder what someone like Sam Fuller or Robert Aldrich could have done with this material and why, despite a few notable attempts, Berg is still not in their league but at least he’s trying. Unfortunately, Hollywood has changed so much since Fuller and Aldrich made movies.

In the hands of someone like Michael Bay there would be heavy-handed symbolism and glamor shots of heroic acts in Deepwater Horizon. Fortunately, for the most part, Berg keeps his head down and commits to telling this harrowing story as viscerally as possible. There are no superhuman feats of strength – just brave people doing the best they can in an extremely dangerous situation. It is incredible that anybody survived this disaster. There isn’t some rah-rah finale – just people grateful to be alive.

In the Line of Fire

The commercial and critical success of Unforgiven (1992) gave Clint Eastwood the opportunity to direct projects that interested him and be choosier in which films he acted. During the 1990s, he focused on appearing in and directing his own films with some he starred (White Hunter, Black Heart), others where he took on a supporting role (A Perfect World) and some where he wasn’t in them at all (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil). The notable exception was In the Line of Fire (1993), which Eastwood starred, but did not direct – instead Wolfgang Petersen was brought in to helm the project.

There was a lot of anticipation for In the Line of Fire as Eastwood would be appearing opposite John Malkovich, a highly-regarded actor that got his start in the legendary Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago and broke through in films with a deliciously amoral turn in Dangerous Liaisons (1988). Line of Fire would see him playing a more standard villain, but no less compelling thanks to the actor’s trademark commitment to the part. The film went on to be a big commercial and critical success.

Frank Horrigan (Clint Eastwood) is a veteran Secret Service Agent breaking in a new, younger partner, Al D’Andrea (Dylan McDermott), by throwing him into an undercover sting operation that shows how much he has to learn. Frank effortlessly shoots two assailants and casually arrests the ring leader while Al barely escapes with his life. This entire sequence is done in the kind of economical fashion we’ve come to expect from Eastwood films while providing insight into Frank and Al and their new partnership.

After the bust, Frank follows up on a complaint about an apartment’s missing tenant and makes a chilling find: on a wall is a collage of photographs and newspaper clippings about the John F. Kennedy assassination with suggestions that the apartment’s occupant plans to kill the current President of the United States. Frank checks up on the man renting the apartment and finds a fake identity so he and Al go back the next day to find the place cleaned out except for a solitary photo of the Kennedy motorcade with Frank circled in red. It turn outs that he was one of the men protecting Kennedy that day and failed to save him – something that has haunted Frank ever since.

That night, a man calling himself Booth (John Malkovich) calls Frank at home to inform him that he plans to kill the President. Frank uses what clout and seniority he has to get assigned to protect the President despite his age and reputation as a “borderline burnout with questionable social skills,” while also teaming up with a beautiful fellow agent by the name of Lily Raines (Rene Russo). Booth continues to call Frank at his home, taunting him and so begins an intense cat-and-mouse game as the latter tries to figure out where and how the former will try to kill the President. Will Frank be able to protect the President or will he fail like he did with Kennedy?

Thankfully, In the Line of Fire doesn’t shy away from Eastwood’s age or question his ability to do his job alongside much younger people. When his boss and good friend (the always terrific John Mahoney) calls him a dinosaur, incredulously asking if he can still cut the mustard, Frank replies wryly, “I’ve at least one pair of good shoes in the back of the closet somewhere.” The film makes a point of showing Frank huffing and puffing as he sweats it out running alongside the Presidential motorcade. There is even an amusing scene where his coworkers pull a prank on him with paramedics waking him up, while he’s on a break, with a heart attack scare. And yet, what he lacks in physical prowess, Frank more than makes up for in experience and instinct.

Eastwood has always been a smart actor that knows how to work within his limited range while managing to add little flourishes and variations to the kinds of roles he’s played many times over the years. Frank is yet another maverick law enforcement character that the actor effortlessly inhabits. One gets the sense that Eastwood knows he’s too old for the role and has fun with it. He’s also not afraid to play a flawed character. Wracked with a nasty bout of the flu that impairs his judgment, Frank misreads a moment and the President is publicly embarrassed. Eastwood also has a nice scene towards the end of the film when Frank tells Lily about that fateful day in Dallas, 1963. The stoic actor shows an impressive amount of vulnerability as his voice wavers at one point and his lip quivers as Frank comes close to breaking down. It shows how much is at stake for Frank and how personal stopping Booth has become. It makes the final showdown between the two men that much more important because so much is at stake.

Booth is a wonderfully evil role for Malkovich to sink his teeth into, which he does with gusto. Booth is a master of disguise so that no one can remember what he actually looks like and Malkovich approaches the role as if Booth was an actor preparing for the part of a lifetime. The actor brings a chilly determination to the role, playing a ruthless killer not afraid to kill two women who witness a slip-up in one of his disguises. One of the most fascinating aspects of In the Line of Fire is when Frank finds out about Booth’s true identity and how he used to be a CIA assassin by the name of Mitch Leary as recounted in a nicely played scene where Frank and Al cross paths with a CIA agent (an uncredited Steve Railsback).

Once Frank confronts Leary about his true identity, it is the first time the killer breaks his controlled façade, which Malkovich handles brilliantly. Leary blames the government for making him what he is: “Do you have any idea what I’ve done for God and country?! Some pretty fucking horrible things! I don’t even remember who I was before they sunk their claws into me!” Frank goads him by calling Leary a monster to which he replies, “And now they want to destroy me because we can’t have monsters roaming the quiet countryside now can we?” This is perhaps the best exchange between Frank and Leary as Eastwood and Malkovich rise to the occasion. The best parts of In the Line of Fire are the battle of wills between Frank and Leary that play out largely over the phone. As the film progresses Frank gets increasingly frustrated and Leary coolly confident as he tries to get inside the agent’s head. It is great to see the likes of Eastwood and Malkovich square off against each other, their different approaches to acting bouncing off each other.

Rene Russo does her best with an underwritten role and shares some nice scenes with Eastwood, including one early on where Frank and Lily casually flirt on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Unfortunately, a romantic subplot between the two agents is awkwardly shoehorned into the narrative and could have easily been removed as it is completely unnecessary. It seems only to serve Eastwood’s vanity. Thankfully, this subplot plays a small part and is dropped partway through when the pursuit of Leary intensifies.

Director Wolfgang Petersen does a nice job juggling all the thriller aspects with the more personal, character moments so that we care about what happens to Frank and understand what motivates Leary. As he demonstrated with Das Boot (1981), Petersen is adept at orchestrating action sequences as evident in the exciting rooftop chase between Frank and Al and Leary. I also like how the film shows Frank doing all kinds of investigative legwork. He follows up leads, interviews people and so on to track down Leary. Frank has to rely on his intelligence to piece together the clues that Leary has left scattered behind like a trail of bread crumbs.

Producer Jeff Apple first became fascinated by the Secret Service as a teenager. In 1983, he decided to develop his idea into a film. He raised enough money independently to hire fellow New York University classmate Ken Friedman to write the screenplay. This version featured a flawed older agent with a younger one involved with a television anchor. The Kennedy assassination was not included at this point. They were shopping it around Hollywood 18 months later. Two months after that, director Michael Apted showed some interest in the concept, but wanted a few script revisions.

Dustin Hoffman was the next person to show an interest in the script. He had a deal with Columbia Pictures and the project came close to getting the go-ahead. However, a week later the studio’s management team was replaced. The new chairman did not get along with Hoffman who left Columbia as a result. Two years later he had a new deal with Warner Bros., but had lost interest in the project. Apple spent two more years shopping the script around again.

A young executive at Disney’s Hollywood Pictures was interested and asked for a rewrite. After struggling for years, screenwriter Jeff Maguire met with Apple (the two were friends) and rewrote the script on spec. This version drew the attention of Robert Redford. After he moved on, it was then suggested that they go after Sean Connery. Maguire revised the script so that the older Secret Service agent was Irish-born and liked Kennedy. Connery was given the script, but decided to appear in Rising Sun (1993). Executives at another production company requested that Maguire rewrite the script for someone younger, like Tom Cruise, to play the agent. This involved jettisoning the Kennedy assassination element and the screenwriter refused, holding out for a better offer despite being broke.

A friend gave his script to a casting director who gave it to someone at United Talent Agency. Within a few days, Castle Rock Entertainment and Paramount Pictures were bidding for it. The former won in April 1992 and Eastwood got involved soon afterwards. Eastwood and Maguire met and discussed who should be cast as the villain with the likes of Robert Duvall and Jack Nicholson mentioned. Eastwood’s agent said that another of his clients, John Malkovich, was available. When Malkovich first read the script he didn’t think it was right for him because it was so mainstream and he was used to doing art house fare. However, he was a fan of Don DeLillo’s novel Libra, a fictionalized biography of Lee Harvey Oswald, and was interested in playing an assassin. He was also a fan of Eastwood’s work and thought it would be fun playing opposite him.

Eastwood had final approval of the film’s director and chose Petersen because he liked the man’s work on Das Boot. He felt that the European would have a different perspective on the American subject matter. “I didn’t want somebody who was brand new to the field. I wanted somebody with experience.” Years before, Petersen had actually written his own Secret Service script entitled, The Invisible Men. There were problems with it and he postponed the project, but remained interested in the subject matter. Petersen was a long-time fan of Eastwood’s spaghetti westerns and so when the actor brought him on board to make In the Line of Fire, the director called and got Ennio Morricone to score the film. Petersen encouraged Malkovich to improvise during principal photography and this included messing with Eastwood. For example, during one of the phone conversations between Frank and Leary, Malkovich unexpectedly yelled the line, “Show me some goddamned respect!” This actually made Eastwood break into a sweat.

In the Line of Fire enjoyed most positive reviews among critics. Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, “Eastwood is perfect for the role, as a man of long experience and deep feelings. He is set off by an inspired performance by Malkovich, who is quiet and methodical and very clever … Most thrillers these days are about stunts and action. In the Line of Fire has a mind.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “In the Line of Fire is so neatly constructed that even though Frank and Mitch confront each other quite early, the tension of the virtually movie-long chase does not let up until the end … In the Line of Fire is one of the few Hollywood suspense melodramas that don’t seem to ignore the realities of the world outside. It uses them.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “B” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “it’s hard to see how In the Line of Fire could be anything less than rock-solid entertainment-and indeed, it is. Yet it’s never more than that. Though the movie is engrossing, it lacks something: fire, weirdness, originality.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Carrie Rickey gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, “In his uniquely snaky way, Malkovich is terrific. He’s a particularly effective antagonist for Eastwood because Malkovich’s powers are verbal – he can twist a word like a pretzel – and Eastwood’s are physical.” In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan wrote, “Petersen brings many of the same qualities as Eastwood himself would to the project, including a lean, unadorned style, a concern with pace and an emphasis on keeping the audience intrigued.” The Washington Post’s Desson Howe called it, “watchable, great fun.” Finally, Gene Siskel gave it three out of four stars and wrote, “Eastwood gives a captivating performance as a flawed hero, the same sort of role he’s been playing for years, most recently in Unforgiven. Because of the praise he’s received lately as a director, people may forget he’s a classic, minimalist actor.”

In the Line of Fire is an expertly made political thriller with an enthralling cat-and-mouse game at its heart and two fascinating characters pitted against each other. Petersen orchestrates all the elements like a seasoned pro with no-nonsense direction that doesn’t draw attention to itself, instead letting us get caught up in the story and the struggle between Frank, the determined agent, and Leary, the equally committed assassin. The end result is an engaging popcorn movie with nothing on its mind other than to entertain, which it does admirably.

SOURCES

Cagle, Jess. “The Touch of Evil.” Entertainment Weekly. August 6, 1993.

Eller, Claudia. “In the Line of Fire: Whose Movie Is It Anyway?” Los Angeles Times. July 13, 1993.

Rea, Steven. “For Line of Fire Director, A Chance to Work with a Long-Ago Hero.” Philadelphia Inquirer. July 11, 1993.

Verniere, James. “Clint Eastwood Stepping Out.” Sight & Sound. September 1993.

Weinraub, Bernard. “With Line of Fire Writer Discovers Ending for Hollywood-Failure.” The New York Times. July 20, 1993.