Synopsis
The one weekend of the year you won't want to miss.
The host of an investigative news show is convinced by the CIA that the friends he has invited to a weekend in the country are engaged in a conspiracy that threatens national security.
1983 Directed by Sam Peckinpah
The host of an investigative news show is convinced by the CIA that the friends he has invited to a weekend in the country are engaged in a conspiracy that threatens national security.
Rutger Hauer John Hurt Craig T. Nelson Dennis Hopper Chris Sarandon Meg Foster Helen Shaver Cassie Yates Sandy McPeak Christopher Starr Burt Lancaster Cheryl Carter John Bryson Anne Haney Kristen Peckinpah Marshall Ho'o Jan Tříska Hansford Rowe Merete Van Kamp Bruce A. Block Buddy Joe Hooker Tim Thomerson Deborah Chiaramonte Walter Kelley Brick Tilley Eddy Donno Den Surles Janeen Davis Bob Kensinger Show All…
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Starring: The Wicked, Charming, Dutch Icon Rutger Hauer
In this adaptation of Ludlum's novel, Hauer plays a heroic talk show host who becomes embroiled in a plot involving the Russians and the CIA.
Sam Peckinpah takes on the thriller genre of the 1970s while also satirizing the conspiracy and paranoia-fueled films of the time that focused on average joes and the government. And while I haven't read much of the author, I think the filmmaker does a nice job of capturing some of the author's essence in this film, which ultimately isn't sure if it wants to be a comedy or a serious thriller. John Hurt certainly seems to be in another film, especially towards the end when we see…
It's hard to tell if this is intentionally disjointed and hallucinatory, or if that's simply the result of the movie being taken away from its director. Either way it's completely weird, packed with goofy TV-level intrigue that wouldn't be out of place in an episode of "Hart to Hart", out-of-nowhere shock stuff (dog head in the fridge is a highlight), and Peckinpah's ecstatic editing, stretching split seconds of action into these disruptive, elongated scenes. Plus there's Craig T. Nelson's positively heroic mustache.
Honestly, this wasn't the shit show I was expecting when I put the DVD on. "The Osterman Weekend" is nowhere near as bad as I was led to believe, but it's obviously one of Sam Peckinpah's weaker efforts, which is mostly due to a schizophrenic plot that doesn't know who's on whose side.
The film stars Rutger Hauer as John Tanner a TV reporter and host of a political talk show. He is recruited by a CIA agent, Lawrence Fassett (John Hurt) to gather information on his three friends that are due to stay at his weekend retreat. After Tanner sees video footage of them engaging in treasonous behavior with KGB agents, he reluctantly agrees.
Firstly, the film has an…
came here for a minimalistic survival revenge thriller (the meg foster longbow advertisement poster) done by a late master of the craft - dozed away after getting turned off by the fragmented, hacked, incoherent mess of a spy flick this is.
some nice action sequences, but boy was this a drag.
Peckinpah's final film feels like the ideas of a mind full of ideas manifesting themselves in the fever dreams of a dying man.
The well-tread death of the old west theme transferred into the modern world. The postmodern landscape is one of surveillance, voyeurism, government overreach and obsessions with screens. Peckinpah plays it just as bleakly.
From horses to automobiles, modern civilisation to something approaching a postmodern authoritarian robot world. Violence, however, will always be eternal. The killing still done by the everyman, watched and orchestrated by the powers that be, only they can watch live in real time now. Government delegation to the media. There's only so much you can delegate before the scale of power tips.
Peckinpah's vitriol…
The Osterman Weekend successfully tricked me into believing that it was exactly that thing that it critiques, so for that at least I owe it some amount of begrudging respect. It's about a CIA operation to infiltrate a cell of KGB agents by turning a "clean but liberal" political talk show host who happens to be friends with the Russian spies against them. It's the kind of thing you'd see on a display shelf at the airport and buy for your father, crack open on your flight, fall asleep before finishing the first chapter, and forget to give to your dad after landing. It's formulaic right-wing conspiracy-theory paranoia-fantasy printed and sold for the sole purpose of re-affirming your conservative gun-nut…
Decent enough political thriller I was forced to watch over two nights. Not the ideal situation as It deserved my fuller attention but the cast was pretty dang great! Seems like an early indictment on Regan Era shenanigans. I could be wrong. I'm probably wrong. Still good for late stage Peckinpah.
a fascinating, albeit beguiling, case study of a filmmaker giving zero fucks about audience or critical reception and creating something impenetrable and defiant of genre classification; much of The Osterman Weekend’s narrative shortcomings and overall messiness would be easy to attribute to studio tinkering — it was notoriously taken from Peckinpah during editing — but in watching, the admittedly rather different, director’s cut, it’s clear that much of its abstractions and eccentricities are intentional and, if nothing else, only furthered in Peckinpah’s true unfiltered vision; at face value, the surveillance obsessions and espionage elements make this feel like Peckinpah’s The Conversation but this is actually Peckinpah’s The Big Chill — friendship rendered cold and trust weaponized, a vision of yuppies and their transgressions, hangups, fears and acts of violence from a filmmaker who couldn’t care less about the generation to succeed his own
Holding the Government to account for abuse of power, TV journalist John Tanner (Rutger Hauer) seems an unlikely man for the CIA to turn to for help. CIA chief Maxwell Danforth (Burt Lancaster) and agent Lawrence Fassett (John Hurt) convince Tanner to help them identify three of his old college friends (Craig T Nelson, Chris Sarandon and Dennis Hopper) as Soviet agents involved with a spy network named Omega, with a view to turning one of them so to infiltrate the organisation. Once a year the friends and their wives meet for a weekend, hosted by Tanner, this year Fassett sets up elaborate surveillance on the property and his men hidden away in the adjoining woodland. Tanner's marriage to Ali…
Peckinpah's most underappreciated film is a masterful display of tension building bound by an ever shifting sense of betrayal between and by nearly every character.
Every minute brings something new and powerful to the film.
One of the most striking things about it is that every primary character is broken in some fundamental way. Their motives become a kind of monstrosity of their own and we get to sit there while it happens.
There's plenty about this film that comes across as very different from most of Peckinpah's films, but hardly anything not to love. Everyone from Hauer to Nelson to Hopper put in fantastic performances. Even old Benjamin Horn does a fine job here and you end up wondering…
You can learn a lot about a person from their friends.
I’ve been on a Rutger Hauer kick for the past few months, but I had a very hard time identifying with his character’s plight. Peckinpah’s last stand is an adaptation of a Robert Ludlum novel. The premise sees a television personality (Hauer) hosting a weekend getaway for his friends (Nelson, Hopper & Sarandon), convinced by the CIA that they are Communist spies and he’s supposed to convince them to become double agents. It’s very convoluted. For these massive plot holes, in the hands of a master, the film still has layers upon layers of tension. It’s not lost on me that this is a solid thriller - it just didn’t…