No Way Out (1987, Dir. Roger Donaldson)
Synopsis:
In a suburban house in Washington DC, Lieutenant Commander Tom Farrell (Kevin Costner) is being interrogated about his role in a series of events involving U.S. Secretary Of Defence, David Brice (Gene Hackman). In flashback, Farrell recounts the story of being introduced to Brice at a party by Brice’s assistant, Scott Pritchard, (Will Patton) who is an old friend of Farrell’s. At the same party, he meets and forms an intense infatuation with Susan Attwell, (Sean Young) who unbeknown to Farrell, is also Brice’s mistress.
After Farrell distinguishes himself at sea during a storm, Brice gets Pritchard to hire Farrell as part of his staff at the Pentagon. Upon his return, Farrell re-establishes his relationship with Susan and the two began spending more and more time together. Brice, sensing that she’s seeing another man, confronts Susan shortly after Tom leaves one evening, and, during the ensuing fight, accidentally kills her. Encouraged by the increasingly unhinged Pritchard, Brice tries to divert suspicion from himself by claiming that Susan was murdered by a Russian mole within the Pentagon.
With the entire might of the U.S. Defence dept. now trying to discover the identity of Susan’s lover, Tom, who is leading the investigation must try to stall it and protect his identity long enough to prove Brice’s involvement in Susan’s death.
Some films remain impressive, despite their obvious flaws and No Way Out is a great example of this for me. released during that brief period between 1987–1992 when Kevin Costner became a global megastar and could seemingly do no wrong, it’s always been in the second rank of his films of that era — not amongst the obvious movies: The Untouchables, Field Of Dreams, JFK, Dances with Wolves, Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, that people usually think of when his name is mentioned. Which is ironic, because he actually gives one of his more interesting performances here. His trademark, “nice guy” persona has a slight edge to it — one that viewers wouldn’t really see again until his fabulously dark turn in the very underrated Mr Brooks, 20 years later. I’d even go so far as to say that his performance here, along with those in Mr Brooks, JFK and The Untouchables are really his best work and yet, his performance is not even the best one here.
I’ve mentioned my love for Gene Hackman as an actor, in my post on Narrow Margin, his Secretary Of Defence, David Brice is the sort of wonderfully contradictory and complex character portrayal, that Hackman excels in. He is smug, superior and bullying at first — look at the great scene where he’s having breakfast and his aide Scott joins him: he tells Scott that he should order breakfast and then decides to leave before he has a chance to do so. He’s friendly to Senator Duvall, two seconds after telling Scott that he’s going to cut the funding on the Senator’ s pet project and appears spontaneously to order Scott to get Costner’s character, Tom, onto his staff but we know he was reading about Tom’s heroism in the newspaper, just seconds before Scott arrived. Brilliantly, however, when his life goes to pieces after he accidentally kills Susan, he dissolves into a crying insecure wreck of a man, all his bravado gone — it’s a superb, multi-layered performance, that few actors other than Hackman could pull off.
In her role as the tragic figure of Susan, we have, in my opinion, Sean Young’s greatest screen performance. Yes, I know she was Rachel in Blade Runner, but neither that role or her equally iconic one in David Lynch’s Dune asked as much of her, as an actress, as this does. Susan is a strong woman, who seems both paradoxically “in control” of her own fate and yet at the same time out of her depth. She is having an affair with Brice, a married man who she seemingly doesn’t love, but likes (or liked at one time) his money, power and influence; but says she loves Tom, a man she forms an intense infatuation with one night (principally to annoy Brice — or at least that’s how it seems) and which continues when Tom returns home to work under Brice. She knows that her relationship with Tom will cause problems, but does it anyway as if she doesn’t care. Yet, in the key scene, back at her house, that leads up to her death; she seems both nonchalant and frightened… it gives a sense of emotional instability that is incredibly brave and daring in a performance… assuming it is just the performance — it’s hard not to watch Young in that scene, the way she goes from mock angry at Costner, pulling up her skirt waving it at him like a child having a tantrum and then to full-on terrified that he won’t leave, now that Brice is at the door and pleading and crying in desperation, and not think about the tales of her harassing actor James Woods whilst filming The Boost or her increasingly bizarre attempts to land the role of Catwoman in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns a year or so later — behavior that effectively damaged her career and reputation in Hollywood to the extent that she landed far less high profile roles afterwards — and not wonder how much of Susan Attwell’s character is her own personality. All this is supposition, however, and the fact remains that, in the context of this film, it’s perfect and leads to a really memorable performance.
The film was the last to be shot by the great John Alcott, who was the cinematographer for Stanley Kubrick on Barry Lyndon and The Shining and you can see the influence of the latter film in this one’s use of both practical lighting and extensive use of Steadicam in the chase sequences.
I personally rather like Maurice Jarre’s pounding synth score even though it dates the film far more than many synth scores do. This was the period, after his electronic score for Peter Weir’s Witness, where Jarre used predominantly synths, with only a few (if any) acoustic instruments or soloists. This, along with Witness, is one of the more memorable and effective; even if the shock chord over the title graphics probably evokes giggles rather than tension these days…
I’ve never thought of Roger Donaldson as much more than a journeyman director, his films have very little overall sense of artistic style and like those of other journeyman directors like Roger Spotiswoode or Michael Apted, their success seems to depend a great deal on what collaborators he’s chosen to work with. For me, this film, Species and the Al Pacino-starring The Recruit are the stand out films on a cv that includes such diverse movies as The Bounty, Cocktail, Thirteen Days (featuring Costner again) and Dante’s Peak. Not bad films, but not particularly remarkable ones either and so stylistically varied, you’d have trouble believing that they were all made by the same director. His work here, however, is spot on: from the opening tracking shot away from Capitol Hill all the way back to the surburban safe house where Costner is being held, to the slow motion fall of Susan to her death and the many elaborate steadicam shots around the Pentagon.
I mentioned at the beginning of this post that I feel that the film has flaws, some more easier to forgive than others. Whilst I normally try to stay away from pointing out negative aspects of a film in these posts, I was so struck by some these when I re-watched the movie before writing this, that I feel I must mention them.
Firstly, there are certain holes in the plot’s logic: why do Pritchard’s goons chase Costner after he stops their car on the freeway — are they really so psychotic and robotic that they would seriously attempt to kill a uniformed Naval intelligence commander in broad daylight? The same goes for them chasing Costner through the Pentagon, would it really have been possible (even back then) that armed men in suits could chase a uniformed man through the halls of the Pentagon and nobody tries to stop them?…
Secondly, the scene where Costner risks his life to save another sailor during a storm looks horribly fake, and that’s not due to the passing of time/that they didn’t have the technology that we have now — it looked bad when I saw it for the first time on tv in the early 1990's, now it’s so bad, it’s almost funny..
Finally, did the film’s producers/screenwriter/director really need to make the character of Scott Prichard both psychotic AND gay? Ultimately, this for me is the film’s biggest flaw, when watching it today: one of the most unflattering and horribly over the top portrayals of a gay person on film, and he’s a complete psycho. Seriously, this is far worse than the controversial portrayals of gay men and women in Cruising and Basic Instinct and has far less relevance to the plot than it did in either of those films. Kudos to Will Patton, for having the guts to give such a bizarrely bonkers performance, but hard not to walk away from watching it with a bad taste in your mouth.
That the film is still watchable, still tense and still interesting despite this and being almost 30 years old, is a testament to it’s power and I urge you to try and ignore the flaws and re-discover this for the performances of the three leads and the handful of superb set pieces.
