Cinema: Rushes: May 3, 1982

THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY

Bob Hoskins is a galvanically repellent actor. Hoskins (seen on PBS in BBC's Pennies from Heaven and Othello) has a torpedo-shaped head attached to a bulldog's body. He moves, and barks out his dialogue, with the arrogant energy of Cagney and Robinson, but with precisely none of their charm. In The Long Good Friday, Hoskins gets to play a Little Hitler of the London underworld out to make a killing in real estate while some mysterious rivals make more spectacular killings of his henchmen. Director John Mackenzie's idea of subtle menace is to show a victim's hand nailed to the floor; and Hoskins, in moments of stress, is too quick to bare his lower teeth and gnar. Even then, he is oddly entertaining to watch—rather like a vole making a predatory lunge and landing in a coyote's open mouth.

WRONG IS RIGHT

What is it about TV news that makes otherwise cogent screenwriters go bananas? Paddy Chayefsky lost his grip on dramaturgy when he constructed his Network. Now Richard Brooks (Elmer Gantry, In Cold Blood) heaves a harangue about world politics and the media, and it is one desperate muddle. Sean Connery plays a superstar reporter who bears messages not only to millions of viewers but, Haiglike, from heads of state to thugs of war. The fate of the world hangs in the balance. What does not balance is Brooks' Strangelovian mix of comic terror and terrorist comedy. Give him points for honest outrage, and comfort him with polls showing that while most Americans get most of their news from TV, they pay blessed little attention to it.

A LITTLE SEX

You thought the notion of New York as Fun City died with the Lindsay administration? No such thing. In A Little Sex, Manhattan is still where a coupla crazy kids can get their Wasp jollies while jogging through Central Park, skateboarding past the Chrysler Building and making love in an apartment the size of the Metropolitan Museum's Egyptian wing. He (Tim Matheson) is a young Mad Ave. careerist. She (Kate Capshaw, whose resemblance to both Julie Christie and Diane Keaton makes her odds-on favorite as Warren Beatty's next costar) teaches at a girls' private school. They get married. His eye still wanders. Her eyes narrow. It has all been said before, most eloquently by Irwin Shaw in his 1939 story "The Girls in Their Summer Dresses." Writer Robert De Laurentis and Director Bruce Paltrow have no such ambitions; instead they have made an R-rated sitcom. Early on, our hero is advised that "even bad sex is good." Maybe, but A Little Sex isn't.