REVIEW FILM
_ THE PLAYER
The clapperboard snaps, and we‘re thrown head first into scene one. A couple of industry hacks debate the longest continuous tracking shots in cinema history, while director Robert Altman outdoes them all with an eight-minute unedited opening shot that glides merrily around the offices and executive parking lot of a major Hollywood studio. Actors playing actors and actors playing themselves bump into each other on the steps. while truth and fantasy collide on screen. The beginnings of would-be projects are pitched to a studio head. while The Player sets its plot in motion before the audience‘s astonished eyes. At every point ofthis wonderful movie. whatever is being portrayed on screen either pokes fun at. exposes or criticises the very process that put the action up there.
Far too few American films have such thematic depth. but The Player is not a highbrow exercise in biting the hand that feeds. Nor is it merely a succession of cameo roles by famous faces that sends critics and cineastes into the realms of the trainspotter. The Player is. quite simply. the best film ofthe year so far. if not the decade.
Griffen Mill (Tim Robbins) is a top studio executive suffering from acute industry paranoia, convinced that his job is at stake in a post-yuppie shake-up. What makes matters worse is that he is receiving
increasingly explicit death threats from an anonymous writer whose project he turned down. From these two plotlines. interwoven so tightly that each feeds on the tension ofthe other, Altman constructs a film that will delight anyone with any sense of what really goes on in the moguls‘ backyards. but which remains. on a primary level, an accessible. edge-of—the-seat thriller. The Player is a piece ofexceptionally well-crafted entertainment that resonates with meaning.
Robbins has never been better. His babyish looks hide Mill’s menace, his height and build distract from the character‘s moral smallness. In Jacob's Ladder. he was a revelation; in The Player, he confirms his potential as one of the greatest actors ofhis generation; as actor-writer-director in the forthcoming political satire Bob Roberts, he will ensure that 1992 becomes the year ofTim Robbins. In the ego-inflated world of The Player, such a rise to fame would be more than a little frightening, but to his credit, Robbins chooses projects that take the gloss from American greed. Here. he and Altman play Hollywood at its own game. and the underdogs emerge as undisputed victors. (Alan Morrison)
The Player ( 15) (Robert Altman. US. 1991 ) Tim Robbins. Greta Scacchi. Peter Gallacher. Fred Ward. 124 mins. From Fri 3: Glasgow: Cannon The Forge. Odeon. Edinburgh: Odeon. All UCIs.
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