Powerplay (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Power play |
| Original title | The Fourth War |
 | |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1990 |
| length | 86 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | John Frankenheimer |
| script |
Stephen Peters , Kenneth Ross |
| production | Wolf Schmidt |
| music | Bill Conti |
| camera | Gerry Fisher |
| cut | Robert F. Shugrue |
| occupation | |
| |
Powerplay (Original title: The Fourth War ) is an American drama from 1990 . Directed led John Frankenheimer , the writer wrote Stephen Peters and Kenneth Ross on a novel by Stephen Peters. The main roles were played by Roy Scheider and Jürgen Prochnow .
action
US Army Colonel Jack Knowles faces a military tribunal . A flashback tells how this came about.
In 1988, the highly decorated but hot-headed Vietnam War hero Knowles became the commander of a unit stationed on the border between the Federal Republic of Germany and Czechoslovakia . The Russian unit across the border is under the command of Colonel Valachev, a veteran of the Afghan war . Both start a game of cat and mouse during a border incident in which a man dies trying to escape. There are repeated provocations. Knowles raids a Russian border post and humiliates them by forcing the soldiers to sing Happy Birthday for him . Colonel Valachev blows up Colonel Knowles' off-road vehicle with a surface-to-surface missile, Knowles a border tower in revenge. His superior general tells him to stop the private war.
Valachev sets a trap for Knowles by sending a woman to him who asks him for help crossing the border illegally because she lives in Germany and her daughter is growing up in Czechoslovakia. Knowles crosses the border with her, but sees through the trap. He kidnaps Valachev, there is a scuffle in his jeep, which overturns. Valachev pursues Knowles to the border river, in the water there is close combat. The American and Russian soldiers advance in tanks and helicopters. Only when the two officers see the laser beams from the rifles' aiming devices on their bodies do they stop.
The film ends with a quote from Albert Einstein that he does not know what weapons the Third World War will be fought with, but that there would be slingshots (sticks and stones in the original) in the Fourth World War.
backgrounds
The shooting took place in Canada . The film premiered in January 1990 and was released in German cinemas on March 8, 1990. The box office in the cinemas of the United States was approximately 1.3 million US dollars .
Reviews
The industry journal Variety calls Powerplay a well-made thriller, also well cast in the supporting roles, against the backdrop of the Cold War ( “a well-made Cold War thriller” ). Tightly directed by Frankenheimer with a sense of humor and tension, the film shows how the feud between two men stirs up into an eye-to-eye confrontation that could get out of control at any time ( “Tightly directed by Frankenheimer with an eye for comic relief as well as tension maintenance, The Fourth War holds the fascination of eyeball-to-eyeball conflict " ). The lexicon of international films , on the other hand, is unimpressed: "In this annoying and boring film, cold warriors are the engine of a plot in which there is much talk of peace, but war is shown non-stop."
Washington Post reviewer Hal Hinson considers the basic idea of the film to be so surrealistically improbable that if implemented less seriously, it would even be suitable for humorous entertainment ( “The premise is so surrealistically improbable that if Frankenheimer's approach weren't so straight-faced it might be preposterously entertaining " ). However, the director fails to exploit the potential of crazy ideas that the script has in store ( "But the director [...] fails to exploit the loony potential in Stephen Peters and Kenneth Ross's script" ).
Roger Ebert writes in the Chicago Sun-Times that Powerplay will probably be the last Cold War film and at the same time the first of the successor era. Although the film is based on well-made action scenes and comes up with some surprises, it is basically a psychological study of a man ( "essentially a psychological study" ) who is reaching his limits ( "portrait of this soldier on the edge" ) and becomes a victim of one's own conditioning , with Roy Scheider in a role not unlike that of Laurence Harvey in Frankenheimer's masterpiece Ambassador of Fear . Harry Dean Stanton , as his superior, also impressively demonstrates his acting qualities in a monologue scene ( “we're reminded of what a powerful actor he is” ). Films like power play , Ebert concludes, are not least a warning that 45 years after the end of the Second World War and now that the Cold War is coming to an end and changes are becoming apparent even in South Africa , the bad guys are slowly running out ( “a reminder that Hollywood is running low on villains. The Nazis were always reliable, but World War II ended 45 years ago. Now the Cold War is winding down, and just when " Lethal Weapon 2 " introduced South African diplomats as bad guys, de Klerk came along to make that approach unpredictable " ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Film review of The Fourth War ( memento of the original from January 22, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Variety dated December 31, 1990
- ^ Powerplay in the Lexicon of International Films
- ↑ Hal Hinson film review , Washington Post, March 26, 1990
- ^ Film review by Roger Ebert , Chicago Sun-Times, March 23, 1990
Web links
- Powerplay in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Powerplay at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- Film on the Netzkino YouTube channel