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If English is your first language and you could translate my old Italian text, please contact me.
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Paul Verhoeven (Netherlands, 1938) debuted with Business Is Business (1971).
Turks Fruit/ Turkish Delight (1973) is an adaptation of Jan Wolkers' novel "Turks Fruit".
The big-budget (and rarely engaging) period drama
Keetje Tippel (1975) is based
on the memoirs of 19th-century Neel Doff.
Soldaat van Oranje/ Soldier of Orange (1977) is a moralistic war movie.
Spetters (1980) is a violent drama about juvenile delinquents.
De Vierde Man/ The Fourth Man (1983) is an effective thriller.
Flesh and Blood (1985) was his tedious and overlong
English-language debut.
The dystopian sci-fi movie
RoboCop (1987), written by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner,
is a little too long and predictable but certainly an influential
action movie.
The film is set at a future time when the city of Detroit is devastated by
organized crime, mainly Clarence Boddicker's mob.
The sergeant of a precint called "Metro West" has just lost one cop, who is
replaced by a new officer, Alex Murphy. The sergeant introduces Alex to his
new partner, a tough female cop called Anne Lewis.
Meanwhile in a high-rise office building a corporation called Omni Consumer Products (OCP) holds a meeting chaired by the chairman who is proud that the city
has offsourced police work to them and announces the construction of a brand
new city called Delta City.
A vicepresident, Dick Jones, demonstrates a mechanical cop that can work 24 hours a day. An executive is asked to threaten the mechanical cop. The mechanical
cop does not detect that the executive surrenders right away and shoots him dead.
The scientists quickly disable the mechanical cop. The videpresident tells the
chairman that it was only "a glight", but the chairman is furious.
Another executive, Bob Morton, takes advantage of the situation and asks the
chairman to check his own project, called "Robocop".
Meanwhile, Alex and Anne are summoned to stop Clarence and his gang after
they carried out a robbery.
Alex and Anne follow them to their hideout but Alex is captured.
Clarence doesn't kill him: he only blows up one of his arms.
The rest of the gang enjoys shooting various limbs and then finally
Clarence shoots him in the head.
Anne arrives too late to help him.
Alex is dying and sees memories of his son and his wife.
Then we see Bob's team working (from the viewpoint of the dead Alex).
They turn him into a cyborg, Robotop, another mechanical cop,
They demonstrate Robocop to the sergeant and his human cops.
The sergeant even gives him a car.
Bob asks Robocop what are his "prime directives" and Robocop mentions three,
adding that the fourth one is classified.
When a shop is attacked by a criminal, Robocop shows up and quickly
overcomes the thief.
When a woman is about to get raped, Robocop arrives in time to neutralize
the attackers.
When a
a former disgruntled employee of city hall takes the mayor and others hostage, Robocop kills quickly.
TV news programs start talking about the amazing cop.
Bob promises that crime will disappear within 40 days.
He is promoted to vicepresident. Bob mocks his rival vicepresident Dick as a loser, but Dick overhears him and promises revenge.
Robocop is not perfect though: he still has nightmares of Clarence killing him.
Anne stops him for a few seconds, guessing that he is Alex, but Robocop
doesn't remember her.
One evening Robocop stops a robbery at a gas station and it turns out that
the armed thief is one of Clarence's thugs, who recognized him as Alex,
a dead man. Robocop kills him but is puzzled.
Robocop enters the top-secret computer library of the police and identifies
the gangster and sees a picture of the cop that was killed by such gangster:
Alex.
Robocop visits Alex's old home, now abandoned, and finds pictures of Alex's family.
His memory is coming back.
Robocop sets out to find Clarence.
Meanwhile, the ambitious and ruthless vicepresident Bob is having fun with two sexy girls.
Suddenly Clarence walks in and shoots him in several body parts.
Then he plays a video in which Dick says goodbye.
Clarence kills him with a grenade: Dick paid Clarence to kill Bob.
Clarence is celebrating all the money he got when Robocop breaks into
his hideout.
RoboCop slaughters them and then captures Clarence alive.
Clarence shouts that he is protected by Dick in person but Robocop still
arrests him, charged of killing a cop.
Clarence immediately calls Dick who promises to have him released in 24 hours.
Robocop, however, is on his way to arrest Dick too after Clarence's confession.
Dick waits calmly: the fourth secret directive prevents Robocop from arresting
an executive of the corporation.
Robocop struggles to carry out his duty but can't and collapses
Dick presses a remote control and summons his own mechanical cop to kill Robocop.
However, Robocop can walk down stairs whereas Dick's mechanical robot slips
and falls.
Dick orders the cops to destroy Robocop: when he leaves the building he is
attacked by dozens of cops with machine guns.
Robocop is badly damaged but not dead.
Anne finds him before they can finish him and drives him away.
Clarence is released. Dick explains to him that Robocop memorizes everything,
so he also memorized Clarence's confession: Robocop must be destroyed.
To further motivate him, Dick
offers Clarence a cut on the criminal activities that will prosper in
Delta City. Dick arms Clarence with the most powerful military guns.
Anne hides RoboCop in an abandoned building where he uses construction tools
to repair his damaged body parts.
For the first time he removes his helmet and sees a reflection of his face in
a mirror.
Meanwhile, TV programs discuss the planned strike by the police force: the cops
have been protesting for a while and now they have decided to stop working.
Criminals can loot anything.
Clarence's gangsters enjoy blowing up cars with the military guns.
They find Robocop and Robocop kills them despite their super-weapons.
Clarence escapes. Anne chases him but Clarence woulds her.
Robocop kills Clarence. Then he drives to OCP headquarters where
Dick is chairing a meeting.
Robocop blows up Dick's mechanical robot and interrupts the meeting.
He then displays to the president and all other executives a video
in which Dick confesses that he called Bob.
Dick takes the president hostage. Robocop cannot kill an executive but the
president shouts that Dick is fired and then Robocop shoots him dead.
The president asks for Robocop's name and Robocop replies with Alex's last name, Murphy.
Total Recall (1990), written by the writers of Alien (Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett) and loosely based on Philip Dick's short story "We Can Remember it for you Wholesale" (1966), is another sci-fi movie,
a fast-paced suspense-filled mixture of Indiana Jones and Terminator,
with the spirit of cinema as an innocent dream and fairy tale, the spirit of
Spielberg's faux sci-fi cinema.
The ending is a pretext for a display of increasingly spectacular scenes.
Doug (Arnold Schwarzenegger)
has a nightmare of being an astronaut on Mars, walking around with
a female astronaut who is his lover, and falling to his death into a crater.
When he wakes up he tells his wife Lori (Sharon Stone).
It is a recurring nightmare and she is
jealous of the woman in his dreams.
TV programs talk about the terrorists who fight for Martian independence,
led by a mysterious Kuato,
and we see an interview with Mars' governor Cohaagen.
Lori tries in vain to distract Doug who is morbidly attracted to the events on Mars.
Doug heads to work like every day, entering a sefaty zone in which people are
Radio X-ed. On the subway train he watches a commercial offering vacations
on Mars. Doug is a humble construction worker. A coworker, Harry, warns him that
the company, Rekall, is dangerous, but Doug can't resist and visits their
offices.
Rekall implants false memories of interplanetary vacations in people's memories.
The salesman tries to sell him Saturn, but Doug insists on Mars.
The salesman suggests that Doug take a vacation from "himself", i.e. take
on a different persona. Doug chosen to be a secret agent.
He is taken to a laboratory where he is injected a drug and then asked to
select a female partner from a digital portfolio.
He falls asleep and his head inserted into a blinking machine.
But something goes wrong: Doug goes crazy shouting something about Mars and getting violent.
The salesman thinks that it is just the effect of the implanted memories but
his scientist Renata tells him that... they haven't implanted yet.
Doug has really been on Mars before, and someone has erased his memories of that trip from his memory.
The salesman orders scientist Renata to wipe out Doug's memory of his visit
to Rekall. Doug wakes up in a robot-driven taxi, confused how he got there.
The taxi takes him back to his workplace
His coworker Harry and three other men attack him out of the blue and only tell
him that's because he went to Rekall to get a trip to Mars, despite the fact
that Doug doesn't remember going to Rekall.
Doug suddenly turns into a killing machine and, surprising himself, kills them all.
Back home, he tells his wife Lori. When he mentions that he went to Rekall,
she makes a videophone call and then tries to kill him. First she shoots him,
then attacks him with professional kungfu moves, then cuts him with a knife,
another big surprise for Doug who knows her as a simple housewife.
Doug overcomes her and she tells him that their marriage has been implanted
in his memory: they have never fallen in love and never been married.
She claims to be there only to monitor that the program proceeds correctly.
Doug realizes that she has called for help, knocks her down and flees.
Moments later three angents arrive, led by the man video-called by Lori, Richter, who asks Lori what Doug remembers and she replies that Doug remembers nothing.
On the way out Richter kisses Lori passionately.
Doug is chased by armed agents including Richter, who are using a device
to track him down.
Doug uses a passer-by as a shield to avoid being machine-gunned and then
acrobatically jumps into a subway train.
Richter receives a videocall from Mars' governor that he wants Doug captured
alive to have his memories reimplanted as Lori's husband. Richter pretends
that the videocall is unclear and then hangs up. Clearly he is not excited at
the idea of reinstating Doug as Lori's husband.
Doug hides in a room that he finds open. The videophone turns itself on and a stranger tells him that the chasers will find him because a transmitter has implanted into his head. The stranger says he was his friend on Mars. He tells Doug that he, Doug, gave him a briefcase with the instructions of delivering it to him
if he ever disappeared.
Doug hijacks a taxi and drives to a secluded area where he opens the briefcase.
Inside his finds fake identity cards, a strange gun, money, a gadget that creates a
mirror image and a video recording of himself, calling himself Hauser.
The videorecording says that Hauser was an agent on Mars until a woman
showed converted him to the cause of the rebels,
and that he has the chance
to ruin the governor of Mars. The videorecording instructs Doug
to travel to Mars and pick up something in a hotel.
First Hauser teaches Doug how to use
the strange gun to remove the bug from his head through the nose.
Doug leaves the bug there, which gets swallowed by a rat, so that his chasers
chase the rat while he is flying to Mars.
Richter too flies to Mars.
When he arrives, he sees a fat woman shaken by convulsions, and realizes that
Doug is hiding inside the fake body.
Doug removes the head and the head explodes causing a tornado that helps
him escape.
Richter has to report to his superior, Mars' governor, who is furious because
Richter failed to capture Doug/Hauser.
The governor's plan is now to make sure that Kuato doesn't find Doug/Hauser.
Meanwhile, Doug is following the videorecording's instructions and finds a
message directing him to a woman named Melina
in the red-light district.
Doug recognizes that the message is written in his own handwriting.
Doug gets into the taxi of a black man called Benny and witnesses a terrorist attack.
The red-light district is full of beggars and prostitutes whose face is horribly disfigured because of radiation.
Doug finds Melina. It looks like several people there know him (Hauser) and hate him.
Melina, who is exactly like the girl of his recurring nightmares, is upset that he disappeared without a word. Doug tells her that Mars'
governor turned him into a regular man called Doug and sent him to Earth to
live a regular life with a wife. Melina gets even angrier hearing that he got
married. Melina thinks this is a trick, that he is still working for Mars' governor. Doug tries in vain to explain that he truly doesn't remember what happened.
Back in his hotel room he is visited by a man named Edgemar who claims to be
a doctor of Rekall, or, better, a projection of such doctor. Edgemar claims
that he entered his dream to convince him to wake up. Doug is still under
the effect of the implantation and refuses to return to normal life.
To convince him, Edgemar also shows him his wife Lori, back in the role of
the loving housewife.
Edgemar warns Doug that all reality will come crashing down if Doug kills him.
Edgemar almost convinces Doug to swallow a pill that
will bring back to reality but at the last second Doug shoots him and spits
the pill. Doug is attacked by men that were hiding in the room next to his
and by Lori herself (back in the role of vicious fighter), and finally captured.
Melina shows up with a machine gun and kills all the thugs and then engages
Lori in a sort of kungfu duel.
Lori is about to slash Melina's throat with a knife when Doug wakes up and
shoots Lori dead.
Richter could shoot Doug and Melina while they are fleeing but he is stopped
by another agent because it would cause the building to collapse.
Doug and Melina jump into Benny's taxi, still chased by Richter, but the
taxi crashes into a mall of the red-light district.
This time the mutants help Doug to hide. Richter arrives with several soldiers
but the mutants refuse to cooperate.
Richter orders his troops to kill everybody causing a massive shootout.
Informed by Richter, Mars' governor shuts down the ventilation of the entire red-light district, condemning everybody in the district to die asphyxiated.
Melina takes Doug to Kuato's hideout, where the rebels are planning to avenge
the atrocities committed by Mars' governor for his own profit.
They are convinced that the governor's secret is hidden inside Doug's brain.
Kuato turns out to be a small mutant who lives inside the body of an ordinary man named George.
Kuato is able to read Doug's suppressed memories. We see the governor inspecting
a nuclear reactor built by aliens. A scientist is afraid that activating it
would cause a planetary meltdown.
The memory recall is interrupted when the governor's troops burst into the
bunker and start shooting the rebels.
Someone must have betrayed them.
The traitor is taxi driver Benny who follows George/Kuato, Hauser/Doug
and Melina, and then kills George/Kuato and delivers the other two to Richter.
Before dying Kuato whispers to Doug to start the reactor.
Doug is finally taken to speak with the governor. The governor thanks him
and congratulates him: he has carried out the mission for which he had volunteered. According to the governor, Hauser volunteered to become Doug in order to
sneak into Kuato's bunker. Everything was set up by the governor: the briefcase,
the videorecorded message, all the way to taxi driver Benny. Doug doesn't believe him: Doug still believes that Hauser joined the rebels.
the governor then plays another videorecording by Hauser. Hauser thanks Doug
and tells him goodbye because he (Hauser) wants his body back.
Doug and Melina are dragged to a laboratory and stuck inside memory-implanting machines to be reprogrammed to become Hauser and his lover, but Doug manages
to free himself and free Melina.
Meanwhile the people of the red-light district are dying with no oxygen.
Benny, driving an excavation machine, corners Doug and Melina in a mine
but Doug outsmarts him and kills him.
On the other hand, the excavation machine makes a hole in the mine that
reveals the reactor built by the aliens.
Richter leads a group of soldiers into the reactor.
They ambush and massacre Doug but Doug rises up laughing:
it is just a mirror projection created by the device he found in the briefcase.
Doug kills them all and, after a fistfight inside an elevator, he kills Richter too.
The elevator takes Doug to the control room.
The governor arrived before him and, claiming that the reactor would obliterate
all of Mars, tries to shoot him but Melina shoots the
governor before the governor can finish Doug.
Despite being wounded, the governor detonates a bomb that almost kills Doug and Melina.
Doug ejects the governor outside where he dies asphyxiated.
Doug presses the button that activates the reactor.
Both Doug and Melina are ejected outside and begin to asphyxiate but the
reactor causes an explosion that releases a hurricane of breathable air.
Doug and Melina survive.
The mutants of the red-light district are saved.
All the glass windows of Mars are destroyed by the explosion but a blue sky
rises. People walk out to enjoy the new atmosphere.
Doug wonders whether this is a dream or not.
Melina tells him to kiss her quickly before he wakes up.
Un innocuo e bonario
construction worker, Doug,
e` affascinato da Marte e decide di comprare una vacanza
su Marte da un'agenzia che e` specializzata in viaggi virtuali.
Chiede di diventare un eroico agente segreto. Nel laboratorio
qualcosa va pero` storto perche' lui si risveglia isterico prima ancora che
l'abbiano potuto programmare. Il gestore dell'agenzia/laboratorio
ordina di cancellare la sua memoria e di dimetterlo frettolosamente.
Appena uscito, viene aggredito
da un gruppo di uomini che vogliono sapere della sua missione su Marte.
Li deve uccidere tutti. A casa non fa a tempo a raccontare alla moglie
l'accaduto che viene aggredito di nuovo, da lei stessa, trasformata da
belva di kung fu. Lui la disarma e la costringe a confessare: non e` sua moglie,
lui la ricorda come sua moglie perche' quella e` la memoria che gli hanno
piantato nel cervello. Da questo momento lui non sa piu` quali dei suoi
ricordi sono veri e quali sono artificiali. Altri uomini irrompono
nell'appartamento per dargli la caccia. Il capo (Viktor) e` l'amante della
ragazza, e forse e` anche geloso di Doug.
Lo inseguono nella metropolitana, facilitati da un bug installato
nel suo cervello.
Un uomo che si dichiara suo collega su Marte gli porta una valigetta, come
da suoi ordini se fosse scomparso. Ma Doug non ricorda. Dentro la valigetta
ci sono soldi, una pistola che costruisce un ologramma di lui e un video...
il video e` di se stesso che gli
spiega chi realmente e`: un agente segreto, convertito da una donna a
una causa piu` giusta. Gli spiega come usare un apparecchio che lo liberera`
del bug elettronico nel suo cervello e gli da` istruzioni su cosa fare:
prima tappa Marte.
A guidare i killer e` il feroce capo dei servizi segreti su Marte, impegnato
a combattere i ribelli.
Sempre inseguito dai killer, Doug Quaid vola su Marte e si reca all'hotel
indicatogli. Una nota scritta con la sua stessa calligrafia gli dice di
cercare Melina. Appena esce, esplode una bomba piantata dai ribelli.
Un cab driver di colore lo porta nella zona a luci rosse.
Nel club lo conoscono tutti, amici e nemici, ma lui non ricorda nessuno.
Melina era la sua ragazza, ma lo butta fuori quando lui le confessa di non
ricordarla.
Un uomo gli si presenta e gli rivela che nessuno dei due e` davvero li`,
sono entrambi soltanto nel sogno che gli e` stato trapiantato nel cervello.
Lui, in realta`, si trova legato alla sedia del laboratorio. Non possono
farlo tornare indietro perche' lui e` affetto da un trauma che gli fa
inventare tutte le peripezie che sta vivendo contro la volonta` degli
scienziati del laboratorio. E` soltanto una lunga illusione causata da una
sua malattia mentale. Gli fa vedere la ragazza bionda, anche quella costruita
come da contratto su sua richiesta per la sua vacanza su Marte.
Lo scienziato e la ragazza lo convincono a ingerire una pillola per guarire
dalla sua psicosi, in modo che il laboratorio possa farlo uscire dal sogno.
Ma all'ultimo momento lui non si fida: sputa la pillola e uccide l'uomo, per
dimostrare che non si tratta di un sogno. Irrompono alcuni sgherri che aiutano
la ragazza a catturarlo. Irrompe Melina che stermina tutti e Doug finisce
la bionda. Melina e Doug fuggono lasciando il corpo senza vita della bionda.
Il tassita li riporta al club, dopo un folle inseguimento dei killer, sempre
capitanati da Viktor. Si scatena una sparatoria fra i killer di Viktor
e gli uomini del club e i primi devono ripiegare.
Milena lo porta nel covo sotterraneo dei ribelli, dove finalmente Doug Quaid
incontra il capo dei ribelli, Quato, un mutante che compare nel ventre di uno
dei suoi uomini sotto forma di un feto. Il feto tenta di leggere la sua memoria,
la memoria che Doug non riesce piu` a leggere. In quella memoria i ribelli
pensano che sia nascosto il segreto del dittatore (da cui la ragione per
cui il dittatore lo vuole morto).
Mentre Quato sta leggendo la mente di Doug, il dittatore e Viktor esplorano
uno strumento costruito 500.000 anni prima da una civilta` aliena
(anche questo era nel contratto della vacanza) e la polizia irrompe nel
covo. Il tassista si scopre essere un loro agente e grazie a lui catturano
Milena e Doug, oltre a uccidere il feto, ovvero il capo della resistenza.
Il dittatore gli rivela che era tutto un piano fin dall'inizio, che lui
stesso, Doug, si era era offerto per questa missione per catturare e uccidere il
capo dei ribelli. L'unico modo per evitare il potere medianico dei mutanti
era di fargli il lavaggio del cervello, per far credere loro che lui fosse
sinceramente dalla loro parte, e poi lasciare che loro lo portassero
dal capo. Doug non ci crede, ma il dittatore gli fa ascoltare la fine del
video, in cui lui stesso, Doug, congratula Doug per la riuscita dell'impresa.
Doug e Milena vengono inseriti nelle macchine per il lavaggio del cervello:
Doug tornera` ad essere un perfido agente del dittatore e Milena diventera`
una donna mansueta e rispettosa.
Ma l'erculeo Doug riesce a liberarsi dalla macchina e a liberare lei.
Il dittatore ha fatto togliere l'aria alla sezione del club e la gente sta
morendo. Doug e Melina fuggono nelle cave costruite dagli alieni e scoprono
un passaggio segreto: e` una trappola. Viene circondato e massacrato dagli
uomini di Viktor. Si rialza sghignazzando e li massacra: stava usando un
sosia costruito con un ologramma. Doug e Viktor lottano in un ascensore
che sembra salire all'infinito. Viktor viene schiacciato, Doug si ritrova a
un piano misterioso... dove lo aspetta il dittatore. Il dittatore vuole
far saltare in aria l'intero apparato, ma viene fermato da Melina.
Doug mette in moto l'apparato, fidandosi degli alieni. Tutti e tre precipitano
in un imbuto e vengono espulsi nel deserto. Le loro facce si stanno disfacendo
per mancanza d'aria. Il pianeta esplode... ma alla fine dell'esplosione e`
diventato un pianeta abitabile. Tutti riprendono a respirare.
Rimane il dubbio che fosse semplicemente un sogno...
Basic Instinct (1992) is an erotic thriller.
Un rock star diventato rispettabile cittadino, nonche' amico personale del
sindaco, viene assassinato a casa sua mentre sta facendo l'amore con una
bionda. Della bionda si vedono soltanto le spalle. La bionda gli ha legato le
mani alle sbarre del letto e lo ha poi
trafitto decine di volte con un punteruolo.
Nick (Michael Douglas) e il suo partner "cowboy" vengono incaricati delle
indagini. Si recano dalla girlfriend del rock star, Katherine (Sharon Stone),
ma trovano soltanto una sua amica, Roxie, che li manda alla villa fuori citta`
di Katherine, sull'oceano. Katherine e` una donna molto avvenente (nonche'
molto simile a Roxie), che li tratta
con disprezzo ed esibisce il piu` freddo cinismo. Dice di essere stata l'amante
di quell'uomo soltanto perche' faceva bene l'amore. E` una scrittrice di gialli,
e il suo ultimo libro finisce proprio con l'omicidio di un ex rock star ucciso
precisamente in quel modo. Potrebbe essere un alibi che lei si e` costruita
(nessuna giuria crederebbe che lei sia stata tanto stupida da auto-accusarsi
in quel modo) oppure potrebbe essere veramente la prova che non e` stata lei
ma qualcuno che la vuole far incriminare.
Douglas e` appena stato prosciolto dall'accusa di aver ucciso due turisti.
La polizia gli ha pero` imposto di eliminare i suoi vizi (alcool, fumo e
cocaina). La persona che lo controlla e` una psichiatra, Beth, che e` anche
la sua ex ragazza.
Katherine, provocante e insinuante, gli rivela che sta scrivendo un nuovo libro,
in cui un detective come lui si innamora della donna sbagliata e viene ucciso
da lei. Estremamente attraente e provocante, freddamente calcolatrice, sicura
di se', spavalda, sincera fino alla amoralita', Katherine sostiene benissimo
l'interrogatorio al commissariato, comportandosi meglio di un avvocato
professionista. Durante tutto l'interrogatorio provoca Douglas, un po' facendo
insinuazioni riguardo il caso scabroso in cui e` rimasto coinvolto, un po'
mostrandogli le gambe e facendogli vedere che non ha niente sotto.
Passa il test della macchina della verita` con elegante disinvoltura e viene
lasciata libera; ma Douglas sa che e` possibile passare il test della macchina
della verita` pur essendo colpevoli: e` successo a lui. Se ne va divertita, come
se ridesse dell'ingenuita` della legge e dell'impotenza di Douglas. E sembra
sapere che Douglas menti` altrettanto bene, come se avesse studiato attentamente
il suo caso. Douglas e` sempre piu` convinto che sia lei l'assassina.
Beth gli rivela di conoscere Katherine dai tempi del liceo e che ai tempi
Katherine si era invaghita di lei. Katherine lo eccita talmente che quasi
violenta Beth e si rimette a bere e fumare, come d'altronde Katherine gli
aveva predetto che sarebbe successo. Katherine gli esibisce il suo corpo
stupendamente attraente, da cui lui e` sempre piu` irresistibilmente
ipnotizzato, ma continua a investigare. Scopre che lei va a trovare una signora
che venne incriminata per aver ammazzato tutta la sua famiglia senza alcuna
ragione. Scopre che Katherine ha messo insieme un file del suo caso: anche
lui ha ucciso senza che ci fosse una ragione precisa. Katherine continua a
sostenere che sta raccogliendo informazioni per il suo prossimo libro: usera'
lui come modello per il protagonista. Lo sfotte di continuo per quell'omicidio,
insinuando di continuo che lui fosse colpevole, rinfacciandogli subdolamente
i suoi vizi, facendolo innervosire sempre di piu'. E intanto lo seduce fino
alla follia. Gioca con lui come il gatto con il topo.
E` la sospetta che tortura il detective, non viceversa; e` lei che cerca di
incastrare lui, non viceversa. I ruoli canonici sono capovolti. Lei fa a lui
cio` che lui dovrebbe fare a lei per smascherarla. La
sicurezza della presunta assassina e il nervosismo dell'investigatore
capovolgono gli stereotipi del genere. Lo avvolge nella sua rete e lo distrugge.
Lei trionfa poco alla volta, e lui crolla poco alla volta.
Sa persino che sua moglie
si suicido', e insinua che forse lo fece per colpa sua. Poi gli rivela di
avere un'amante femmina, Roxy: e` una lesbica.
Douglas capisce che qualcuno della polizia le ha procurato il file segreto sul
suo passato e intima a Beth di rivelargli chi aveva accesso a quel file. L'unica
persona oltre a Beth era Nilsson, un capitano che lo odia. Con i soldi Katherine
puo` comprare tutto e tutti.
Douglas lo affronta
violentemente, ma viene fermato da Beth: e` ancora in prova e non puo'
permettersi scatti d'ira.
Douglas va a casa ad ubriacarsi. Lo chiamano perche' Nilsson e` stato
assassinato con un revolver e lui, in seguito al diverbio di prima, e'
sospettato dell'omicidio. Adesso e` lui a trovarsi nella stessa situazione di
Katherine: il diverbio potrebbe essere un astuto alibi per scagionarsi, oppure
l'ovvio movente, oppure qualcuno voleva farlo accusare. Douglas, appena
scagionato da Beth (che era stata a casa sua all'ora del delitto), propende
per quest'ultima ipotesi e sa chi sospettare.
Dimesso dal servizio in attesa
di chiarire il fatto, Douglas riceve la visita di Katherine. Katherine gli
rivela che i suoi genitori vennero uccisi quando lei era bambina, e gli
assassini non vennero mai scoperti, ne' il movente: uno dei suoi libri narra
di una bambina che uccide i genitori soltanto per vedere se riuscira` a farla
franca. Douglas, pedinandola, entra nel mondo della depravazione piu` amorale,
in cui regnano sesso e droga senza limiti. Lei continua ad eccitarlo finche'
fanno l'amore. E lui lo fa alla grande, esplode di potenza sessuale. Lei gli
lega le mani al letto, ma lui lascia fare e infatti non succede nulla.
Semmai e` l'amante, Roxy, a minacciarlo di morte. Douglas decide di stare al
suo gioco e si comporta come se fosse pazzo di lei.
Qualcuno sull'auto di Katherine tenta di metterlo sotto. Douglas si salva e
insegue l'auto, che finisce per precipitare in una scarpata. Dentro c'e` Roxy,
morta. Questo incidente aumenta pero` i guai di Douglas con gli psichiatri
della polizia. Beth lo mette in guardia che Katherine e` malvagia e astuta,
abilissima a manipolare le persone. Ma Katherine sembra distrutta dal dolore
di aver perso un'altra amicizia; e lui, convinto, la consola teneramente.
Katherine gli rivela anche che lei e una compagna del liceo fecero l'amore una
volta e che questa ragazza era ossessionata da lei. Che a 16 anni Roxy uccise
i fratellini con un rasoio senza alcuna ragione. Katherine giustifica in maniera
semplice e naturale quella catena di strane conoscenze: come scrittrice di
gialli si ispira alla vita reale e le capita di venire a contatto con molti
assassini.
Douglas indaga su quella compagna di liceo e scopre che era proprio Beth, sotto
un altro nome. Beth ammette di aver fatto l'amore con lei una volta, ma soltanto
per sperimentare e soltanto quella volta. Gli fa anche notare che ovviamente
Katherine immaginava che lui avrebbe indagato e avrebbe scoperto che era lei,
Beth, quella ragazza; e che pertanto tutto era congegnato fin dall'inizio.
Douglas scopre anche che il file della polizia su Beth venne prelevato da
Nilsson. Scopre anche che il marito di Beth venne ucciso in circostanze
misteriose, senza che si sia mai scoperto l'assassino; e che ai tempi si
mormoro` di un'amante femmina di Beth. E che Nilsson aveva fatto le stesse
indagini pochi giorni prima.
Adesso comincia ad avere il sospetto che l'assassina sia Beth, che
abbia ucciso Nilsson perche' lui aveva scoperto il suo passato.
Douglas crede sempre di piu` a
Katherine, che sta instillando in lui il dubbio riguardo a Beth.
Improvvisamente Katherine gli comunica che il suo libro e` terminato, il
detective e` morto e pertanto lui se ne puo` andare. E lo mette alla porta
senza tanti complimenti. Douglas, incredulo e sconvolto, fa soltanto in tempo a
leggere qualcuna delle ultime frasi in cui si parla di un ascensore che si ferma
al quarto piano.
Proprio quel giorno il suo partner e lui devono andare ad un appuntamento al
quarto piano di un palazzo. Il suo partner gli dice pero` di rimanere in auto
e si avvia. Qualche minuto dopo Douglas si ricorda del finale del libro e si
precipita nell'edificio, ma e` troppo tardi: qualcuno ha gia` copito e
il suo partner giace a terra massacrato di coltellate. Douglas sente dei passi
ed estrae la pistola: e` Beth, che sostiene di essere stata chiamata li` da
una misteriosa telefonata. Douglas le intima di alzare le mani, Beth le
porta invece in tasca e Douglas fa fuoco. Ma in tasca Beth aveva soltanto delle
chiavi, e prima di morire riesce a mormorare un "ti amo".
La polizia scopre pero` sulle scale un'uniforme della polizia e una
parrucca bionda, e assume che Beth si fosse travestita da Katherine per far
cadere su di lei la colpa, ma sia stata invece colta in flagrante da Douglas.
Per di piu` in casa di Beth si ritrovano sia la pistola che ha ucciso Nilsson,
sia un file su Katherine. Tutto sembra spiegato.
Douglas guadagna di nuovo il suo posto, anche se non e` del tutto convinto.
Torna da Katherine, che e` disperata perche' tutti quelli che le passano
vicino muoiono. Douglas la consola. Mentre fanno l'amore lei piange. A un
certo punto Katherine porta la mano sotto il letto, e Douglas si irrigidisce,
ma Katherine lo abbraccia.
Sotto il letto, pero', era pronto il punteruolo...
Il finale fa pensare che Katherine fosse veramente l'assassina e che abbia
risparmiato Douglas o per mero calcolo o perche' redenta da un improvviso
e reale bisogno di amore.
Ambientazione fra i ricchi decadenti della California, e in particolare fra
gli omosessuali.
Grande ritratto di una psicopatica e depravata che e` anche una delle menti
piu` malvage e acute della storia del cinema, una delle donne fatali e
corruttrici piu` enigmatiche e
una delle macchine del crimine piu` perfette. Katherine e` morbosamente
affascinata dall'omicidio senza ragione, dall'omicidio per il solo fine di
uccidere. Tutta la sua vita non e` altro che una partita di scacchi sempre piu'
difficile con la polizia e la societa', in cui lei si espone sempre di piu',
e riesce sempre a vincere.
Diabolica soprattutto la sceneggiatura, che non ha soltanto i colpi di scena
tipici dei gialli, ma anche tutta una serie di meta-situazioni e di
auto-riferimenti: Katherine vive
nella vita le storie che scrive;
Katherine vive alla rovescia l'indagine di Douglas; Douglas viene accusato
di un omicidio e vive la stessa situazione di Katherine.
E crudelissimo, amarissimo, il finale, con la sincera e onesta Beth che muore
mormorando "ti amo" mentre il suo uomo la credera` un'assassina e dara` il suo
amore proprio alla donna che ne ha causato la morte, e fatto eseguire quella
condanna a morte proprio da lui.
Given the dull dialogue, bad acting and implausible plot, the
horror/sci-fi movie
Hollow Man (2000) relies only on visual effects.
Since the Pentagon is in a hurry to see the results of the invisibility project
it has been funding, the lead scientist, Sebastian, decides to volunteer for
the final experiment. Assisted by his former girlfriend Linda, whose new boyfriend Matt is also a scientist, and frigid veterinarian Sarah, Sebastian successfully disappears.
The problem is that the reverse experiment fails: Sebastian can't return to be visible.
Linda and the other scientists design a mask that he can wear. But evil instincts
take over and soon Sebastian is roaming the streets of the city and raping
women who cannot see him.
He even enters Linda's apartment, possibly with the intention of raping her too,
but instead finds her in Matt's arms. This only infuriates him. Linda understands
that he is out of control and decides to alert their boss at the Pentagon.
But Sebastian is there with them, invisible, and kills the boss before he
can call his generals to start the manhunt.
The news reaches the lab and the scientists begin to realize the danger.
The only way to detect him is to use special sensors.
He goes on a rampage and kills the scientists one by one, even Sarah.
And he leaves Linda and Matt, mortally wounded, trapped inside the lab, condemned to die too. But Linda manages to get out, Matt resurrects and the lab is,
of course, about to explode, and they, of course, manage to beat Sebastian.
But, of course, Sebastian is still alive, and, of course, there is a final
dramatic confrontation, and, of course, and, of course, he dies but we are
not really sure that he died, and, of course, Matt and Linda kiss.
This plot is a catalogue of stupidity.
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Showgirls (1995) is a merciless portrait of the milieu of the casinos.
It fails as a character study of a wasted youth, but mostly succeeds as
a pulp-fiction fresco of the underworld.
A cute girl, Naomi, hitchhikes from her hometown in the mountains all the way
to Las Vegas. The Elvis Presley-lookalike who gives her a ride has a tough
time making her talk. She is tough like a punk and pulls out a knife the
moment he tries to make a pass at her.
In Vegas she tries the slot machines while he takes care of her luggage.
When she finishes losing her money, he's gone with her luggage.
Alone and angry, she kicks a car, and five minutes later she's best friend
with the owner of the car, a black girl who works in the casino.
Despite her bad-ass attitude (especially when asked details about her past),
the black girl, Molly, offers her a place to stay.
They become permanent housemates.
Naomi introduces her to a star, Crystal, who insults her.
Thanks to a bouncer, James, she met in a disco, Naomi finds a job as a
strip dancer in a night club.
On a date with her boyfriend Zack, Crystal spots her and offers
her money to have sex with both.
It turns out Molly works as Crystal's personal maid.
Thanks to Crystal, she gets an audition for a show, but the producer is only
interested in exploiting her body. She sends him and Crystal to hell.
Then spends the day with the former bouncer, who seems to really care for her.
The guy is actually trying to start his own club and show.
Naomi is perfect for the job, she is just waiting for a chance to show her
talent.
But she still has a temper and snaps when people want to know about her past,
and the bouncer has no better luck.
She is hired in a show and enthusiastically quits her job as a private dancer,
although the owner laughs at her and predicts she'll be back.
She runs to tell James, but finds him with another woman. He, in turns, is
disappointed that she forgot all about the show he was preparing for her.
At the casino she is embarrassed when she is asked for personal data and
whether she's ever been arrested. The show, however, goes well, and she gets
flowers from Crystal's boyfriends, Zack. James, who is waiting outside, tries in
vain to get her back: she hardly talks to him.
Crystal approaches Naomi as if she wanted to be a real friend, but next she
knows Naomi is sold as a cheap date to an important businessman. She refuses
and Zack pretends that they are sorry for what happened.
Naomi goes out on a date with Zack: basically, she prostitutes herself to
get a promotion and become Crystal's understudy. But now she's beginning
to threaten Crystal.
Naomi goes to see James' show. He is now engaged to his girlfriend and partner,
who is pregnant of him and whose mother employs him at her grocery store.
His show is not going well at all: despite all his efforts, the audience boos
him every night.
When she goes back to the casino, she finds out that Crystal has managed to
kill her career. During a rehearsal, Naomi pushes Crystal down the stairs and
Crystal breaks a few bones: Naomi gets the part of Crystal, but
Molly saw her push Crystal. Naomi begs her to attend the party they are throwing
for her: she's a star now. Molly walks out on her, but then, as the real friend
she is, she shows up at the party. Molly is ecstatic to be introduced to her
favorite star, but he beats her and rapes her during the party. They take her
to the hospital unconscious. Naomi is determined to call the police, but Zack
stops her: he knows her past. Her name is Polly, her father killed her mother
and then himself, she became a criminal and a prostitute, and was arrested
repeatedly for robberies and drugs. Zack threatens to turn her in if she
calls the police.
She decides to take her own revenge. She asks to see the star who raped
Molly, and kills him. Then she goes to the hospital to see Crystal, who,
suddenly indifferent, gives her a blessing of sorts.
But Naomi is no longer interested. She walks to the freeway and hitchhikes
a ride to Los Angeles. The very same guy picks her up: she pulls the knife
and asks him for her suitcase.
Starship Troopers (1997) is a science-fiction film that adapts to the
screen Robert Heinlein's sci-fi novel of 1959.
Unfortunately, it also leaves out the best of the book.
Violence and gore supplant phylosophical digression.
The director is interested in the spectacular battles between aliens and humans,
not in the finesse of metaphysics.
The love story is as predictable as implausible.
This is Hollywood (and soap opera) at its worst.
First and foremost, this is a catastrophic war movie in the vein of
Apocapylse Now, but with scenes and motives that reference
Fort Apache, King Kong, The Wild Bunch and Star Wars.
What saves the film from being simply tedious is the spectacular battle scenes.
In a distant future high school has not changed much.
Middle-class teenagers of Buenos Aires are taking the class of a fanatic patriotic teacher, Rasczak, who indoctrinates
them about serving in some sort of military entity.
Another teacher educates them on the anatomy of brutal giant bugs
known as "arachnids" that come from another planet and are savage killers.
On the last day of school, kids discuss their dreams:
Carmen is an ambitious and bold dreamer who wants to become a starship pilot;
her boyfriend Johnny, influenced by her and by their teacher, wants to enlist
in the army (or "mobile infantry");
and their psychic friend Carl wants to work for a military intelligence unit.
Carmen is pursued by another young man, Zander, who is already ahead in
pilot training,
and Johnny is pursued by the sexy Diz, who just doesn't give up despite knowing
that Johnny loves Carmen.
Johnny enlists against the will of his parents, who threaten to disinherit him.
When Carmen leaves for her training and Johnny for is, Diz enlists in the same
program as Johnny to be with him, while Zander finds a way to be assigned to
Carmen's spaceship and be her instructor.
Johnny mades a new friend, fellow cadet Ace. Johnny and Ace are among the recruits trained by a sadistic instructor, Zim. He breaks the arm of one of the
recruits who dare challenge him. However, Diz stands up to him and shows him
that she's as tough as him.
Zim recognizes that Johnny is a trusted leader and promotes him to
squad leader, but Johnny makes a mistake that costs the lives of one of his
men, and, after being punished with public flogging, decides to resign and return home.
He is just giving his parents the news when the communication dies. Minutes later he and everybody else learns that Earth has been attacked by the bugs and
millions of people have died, including the entire population of Buenos Aires.
Johnny asks to be reintegrated in the army and Zim simply tears up his letter
of resignation.
Meanwhile Carmen sent him a video-letter in which she told him that she decided
to devote her life to the spaceship and therefore their relationship is over.
The politicians decide to launch an invasion of Klendathu, the Arachnids' planet.
All four kids (starship pilots Carmen and Zander, foot soldiers Johnny and Diz)
are involved in the attack. The Earthly forces are destroyed by the bugs
which both outnumber them and outsmart them.
Johnny is wounded and Carmen sees his name in the list of the killed.
In reality, Johnny recovers quickly thanks to a subaquatic treatment.
Johnny, Ace, and Diz are assigned to a unit led by
Rasczak, Johnny's and Diz's fanatic high-school teacher.
Rasczak wants his men to give everything to the cause.
Their first mission is a success and Johnny shines when he destroys by himself
a giant bug.
Diz finally gets sex with Johnny. Meanwhile on the spaceship Carmen lives and works with Zander.
One day Rasczak's unit is sent to help the Earthly outpost on yet another planet. When they arrive, they find everybody dead except a general who locked himself in a closet. The general tells them that the bugs suck the brains of people to understand how humans think. The distress call is a trap: it was sent by the bugs to attract Rasczak's unit. The moment they realize this is too late: thousands of bugs are surrounding the fort.
Rasczak leads a heroic "last stand" but eventually his "men" (which include
Johnny, Ace and Diz) have to retreat.
Rasczak falls into a hole of bugs and asks Johnny to finish him, which Johnny does.
Diz finds a way just in time to
call for help before being savagely killed and dying in Johnny's arms.
The spaceship that comes to pick them up is the one piloted by
Carmen and Zander. So Carmen finds out that Johnny is still alive.
Johnny presides over Dizzy's funeral with Carmen and Zander in attendance: Diz's coffin is released in open space.
Carl too attends the funeral. He is now a powerful intelligence officer and
is responsible for sending them to a deadly mission. He doesn't apologize but
instead explains that the sacrifice of a few humans is a good investment if
it leads to the intelligence "brain bug" who leads the bugs.
Carl appoints Johnny the new leader of Rasczak's elite unit and assigns him
the mission to track down and capture the brain bug.
While advancing on the planet, Johnny hears the distress call from
Carmen and Zander that their ship has been hit and is crashing.
Carmen and Zander survive the crash but are captured by the bugs in a cave.
They are spared their lives. The brain bug appears and proceeds to suck
Zander's brain. Carmen is brave enough to use her knife to cut the brain bug's
proboscis which causes it to retreat. Just then Johnny enters the cave with
two volunteers. They free Carmen but are chased by thousands of bugs. One of Johnny's men, wounded, decides to stay behind and blow up the bugs with a nuclear device. Johnny, Ace and Carmen survive and finds the troops ecstatic:
Zim, who asked to be demoted in order to join the army, managed to capture
the brain bug by using a simple net.
Zim is hailed as a hero. Carl arrives to check out the brain bug and realizes
that the brain bug is shivering in fear. The brain bug is delivered to scientists who study it so that humans will be able to defeat the bugs.
The film ends with propaganda footage that publicizes Carmen, Ace, and Johnny and asks young people to enlist in the military.
Hollow Man (2000) is a mediocre horror movie.
Zwartboek/ Black Book (2006), co-written with Gerard Soeteman,
is notable for the sustained suspense and the historical reconstruction.
It is both a crime thriller and a war movie, as well as a personal and national odyssey. It also contains a Greek tragedy about human
brutality and endless betrayal.
The film opens in 1956 in the desert of Israel.
A bus takes tourists to visit a kibbutz. Among them are
Ronnie, a Dutch woman, and her Canadian husband George.
Ronnie recognizes the teacher, whom she calls
Ellis but whose real name is Rachel, an old friend from Holland.
A slashback shows us Rachel's memories of what happened during the Nazi
occupation of Holland.
Rachel is a Jewish singer hosted by a big religious Catholic family in their farmhouse.
One day while she is outside by the sea flirting with a young man who has a boat
a foreign bomber (presumably British) accidentally drops a bomb on the farmhouse and blows it up, presumably killing the entire family.
The young man, Rob, takes her to his own farmhouse. She doesn't seem too shocked
until a police officer comes incognito to warn them: the Germans found her
identity card in the farmhouse but didn't find her body, and the Germans know
that there was only one boat around, the boat of the young man.
The cop, who works for the resistance, warns them that she will be deported and he will be arrested.
He offers to smuggle them into "liberated" territory, territory held by the British and USA.
Before leaving, she visits a lawyer, Smaal, as instructed by her parents.
He gives her money and jewels to survive one year. He claims that he doesn't
know where her parents are hiding.
The cop takes Rachel and Rob to a dock where a boat is waiting. Other Jews are
waiting there and, among them, Rachel's brother and parents, who have learned
of her presence from the cop. On the boat the parents tell her that the lawyer
himself found them a hiding place.
In the middle of the night Rob realizes that the helmsman is taking them in
the wrong direction but it's too late: it was a trap. A German boat starts
firing on them and kills everybody except Rachel. Rachel hides in the river and sees the German soldiers, led by a sadistic commander,
dump the bodies and steal all the valuables from the dead, including all her money.
Next we see her in a coffin, smuggled back into German territory in a
hearse by fake undertakers, and we learn that a man found her and call them
She is taken to a factory, given a forged identity card as Ellis and employed as a cook.
She gladly volunteers when the resistance needs a woman to help retrieve
weapons, food and electronics dropped by the British.
The first mission is almost her last: German soldiers attack the cell after
they retrieve the dropped items.
Luckily, Gerben, a legendary shooter, kills them all.
Rachel/Ellis boards a train to transport the guns in two suitcases.
She avoids a search by sitting next to a German official, Ludwig, and
befriending him. It turns out that he is the head of the local Gestapo
although he behaves like an old-fashioned gentleman.
Gerben's son Tim and two other members of the cell are arrested
when their truck gets into an accident to avoid starving children. The truck
crashes into a wall, the children rush to steal the food that falls from the
truck, but under the food are guns, and the police that arrive to shoo
the children away see the guns and arrest the trio.
Gerben watches from a window
but can't do anything for his son. Aware that
Rachel/Ellis met the German commander Ludwig,
Gerben asks her to seduce Ludwig.
Rachel accepts but first she has sex with cell member Hans, who is a doctor.
First, Rachel/Ellis visits the lawyer Smaal and tells him that her family
was massacred. The lawyer writes down the name of the cop that took them
to the fateful boat. She picks up stamps from the lawyer and brings them
to Ludwig, an avid collector. Ludwig invites her to a party.
During the party she recognizes the sadistic commander who commanded
the German boat and ordered the killing of her family. Ironically, she has volunteered to sing and this sadistic commander, Gunther, is the one who plays the piano.
So she has to sing "Lola" for the German officials while the murderer of her
family plays the piano. It turns out this Gunther is Ludwig's deputy.
After the party she starts undressing for Ludwig and undressing him.
Ludwig suspects that she might be a Jew when he realizes that she
died her hair blond while in fact she's a brunette; but goes along with the sex.
He tells Rachel that he was married with two children but a British bomb hit
their bunker and they were killed.
He is more humane that the other officers and she honestly pities him.
Elsewhere in the building Gunther is torturing and interrogating Tim and the
others.
Gunther's lover Ronnie, also a Dutch woman, finds Rachel a job working for Gunther.
Therefore she sees the report of Tim's interrogation and even sees one of
Tim's buddies being dragged into a torture chamber.
The lawyer knows that she is there and brings her a gift: a transmitter that
Tim was supposed to install in Ludwig's office.
She and the other Dutch woman are preparing the party for Hitler's birthday
and Rachel finds an opportunity to hide the transmitter inside a painting.
Rachel hears that Gunther wants to shoot the three "terrorists" but Ludwig stops him.
When Rachel returns to Gerben's cell, they are listening to the transmitter
and laughing because Gunther and Ronnie are having sex in that office.
The lawyer is also with them. They hear that the erotic scene is interrupted
by a man who walks in. Gunther pays this man for corraling Jews and Rachel
realizes this is the Dutch cop who pretended to work for the resistance and took
them to the boat. She realizes that the German boat wasn't just a coincidence:
it was a trap. And that Gunther and the Dutch cop teamed up to offer an escape
route to wealthy Jews and to kill them and rob the corpses.
The cell members want to kill Gunther and the Dutch cop but Gerben reveals
that the lawyer has been negotiating a truce with Ludwig.
Now Rachel understands why Ludwig stopped Gunther from shooting Tim and the others.
Rachel gets angry at Gerben, accusing him of wanting to save his son Tim and being willing to let more Jews be killed by Gunther.
Rachel storms out of the meeting. The only one who agrees with Rachel is Hans, the doctor.
He has his own secret plan. He wants to kidnap the Dutch cop and make him confess who is the person who provides him with the names of the wealthy Jews.
The kidnapping fails: the Dutch cop almost escapes and they have to kill him
(the one who kills him is Theo the pacifist, who is opposed to violence but
gets really upset when the Dutch cop curses against God).
Gerben gets really angry at Hans for this unauthorized action: the result is
that Gunther has sanctioned the execution of 40 hostages in retaliation for the
killing of his top agent.
When Rachel shows up at Ludwig's home, Ludwig points a gun at her: he has guessed that she works for the resistance and wants her to confess.
Rachel tells Ludwig that Gunther is hiding the money and jewels stolen from killed Jews.
Ludwig reports the fact to his superior who orders Gunther to open his safe.
Inside the safe they only find files. Gunther retaliates by accusing Ludwig
of negotiating a truce with the resistance. That is high treason because Hitler
has ordered exactly the opposite. Ludwig admits it and tries to reason with
his superior, a fanatical general: the Russians are approaching Berlin and it makes no sense
to continue killing the partisans who almost certain of victory.
Nonetheless, Ludwig is arrested and sentenced to death.
Gerben has no choice but to authorize Hans to storm the prison.
Rachel demands that Ludwig be freed to: clearly she really loves him.
She then returns to the German headquarters for Hitler's party and
sings on stage with Gunther backing her.
Meanwhile, Hans and his men enter the underground prison wearing German
uniforms and free their buddies. But then they are attacked by German soldiers
who were hiding and waiting for them: someone had informed Gunther.
Hans' men are massacred. Only Hans and Theo manage to escape.
Gunther summons Rachel in Ludwig's old office and two soldiers grab her
and put hands on her mouth so she can't speak. Gunther has found the transmitter
in the painting and knows that Gerben is listening. Gunther pretends that
she is the one who betrayed Hans and smashes the transmitter. Now Gerben, Hans and Theo believe that she is a traitor. Gunther then informs Rachel that she will be shot in the morning with Ludwig.
Gerben swears to kill her, not knowing that in reality she is about to get shot by the Germans.
Rachel is locked in a cell where she can hear tortured prisoners scream.
Meanwhile Ronnie is entertaining the German officers like a cheap whore.
In reality she is keeping them busy while a soldier loyal to Ludwig walks
down to the prison and frees both Ludwig and Rachel.
They take refuge in a farmhouse. They hear from the radio that Germany is
defeated in Holland.
Gunther tries to escape by boat. The boat, however, has a stowaway who stops
the engine and then kills Gunther: it is Hans.
The liberating troops march in the center of the capital, welcomed by
an enthusiastic crowd. Ludwig and Rachel are walking in the street.
And suddenly Rachel hears someone calling her name: it's Ronnie who has
switched side and now has a new boyfriend, a Canadian soldier.
Ludwig and Rachel walk into the lawyer's office.
The lawyer and his wife are just about to leave the country.
Ludwig and Rachel have reached the conclusion that it was the lawyer who
betrayed Hans, and it was the lawyer who provided the Dutch cop with the
names of the wealthy Jews.
The lawyer however calmly replies that they are wrong and his "black book" can prove it. He is waiting for the police to explain everything.
Instead someone walks in and kills the lawyer. Ludwig rushes outside to catch
the killer but instead is arrested by men of the resistance who recognize him.
They then see Rachel at a window and arrest her too.
Ludwig is taken to his old office where he sees that his old superior, the fanatical general, is now collaborating with the Canadian liberators.
His superior now accuses Ludwig of having negotiated with a communist, Gerben.
The German general demands the right to execute Ludwig. The Canadian commander
accepts the request. Ludwig tries to strange his old superior but is stopped
by the Canadian soldiers. Ludwig is executed by German soldiers who are given
only one bullet for the execution.
Meanwhile, Rachel is kept in a prison with other traitors.
They are all being humiliated by the captors. When Rachel refuses to
sing topless for them, they beat her up and then unload all the shit collected
from the cells on her.
Luckily for her, Hans shows up. He is now a colonel in the restored army.
Hans obtains her release.
He takes her to his office, shows her the treasure that he rescued
from Gunther's boat and tells her that Ludwig has been executed.
She has a hysterical attack and Hans, a doctor, pretends to
administers a tranquilliser but then admits that he poisoned her with an
overdose of insulin. Hans is being hailed as a hero by the crowd in the streets
and leaves her to show up at the balcony.
She grabs a bar of chocolate and eats it to avoid dying.
Then she walks to the balcony and jumps into the street, surviving the jump
and disappearing in the crowd.
She somehow informs the Canadian military and asks to be taken to Gerben.
Gerben is at the mass grave where his son's body has just been found.
When Gerben sees Rachel, whom she still thinks is the cause of his son's death,
his reaction is furious, but they force him to listen to her. She shows Gerben
the "black book" that details all the Jews who, while in hiding, needed a doctor
and were secretly visited by Hans. Those Jews were all found by the Dutch cop
a few days later and "smuggled" out of the country never to reappear again: Hans was informing the Dutch cop, the Dutch cop was taking them to the boat, and Gunther was waiting for them with machine guns.
Hans has disappeared with Gunther's treasure.
Ellis and Gerben, reconciled, returned to their old hideout and find Hans' car.
The hearse is gone. They realize that Hans is using the old trick to smuggle
himself out.
They take Hans' car and, guessing the route he took out of the country, start chasing the hearse.
When they reach the hearse, the driver tries to grab a gun but Gerben kills him
and starts driving the hearse.
Hans is hiding inside the coffin with all the money and jewels and offers them
to Rachel. Instead, Rachel methodically tightens the screws of the coffin
to make him suffocate alive.
They stop the car and wait patiently for Hans to die.
They discuss what to do with the treasure.
When Hans stops moaning, they remark that there is finally quiet.
The flashback ends here.
Back to the first scene, in Israel in 1956 Rachel is happily married with two children.
The sign at the entrance of the kibbutz informs us that the kibbutz was built
with the that treasure.
But her "quiet" doesn't last: in the last scene we hear the sounds of explosions attack and we see military vehicles taking positions: the 1956 war between Israel and the Arabs just started.
Tricked (2012) is a trivial melodrama.
The French-language
Elle (2016) is an adaptation of Philippe Djian's short novel "Elle/ Oh" (2012)
and Verhoeven indulges in the moral ambiguity of the novel, in all the unexpected, and even exhausting, twists and turns of the plot.
There result is a breathless thriller, borderline a horror movie,
but also (frequently) a comedy with several comic moments.
The focus is on the damaged psyche of the protagonist.
She has become immune to betrayal, violence, revenge and morality.
She is always composed, no matter what happens to her.
Her family consists of a father who is a monster, a grotesquely vain and naive mother, a husband who is a pathetic failed writer, and a son who is even more naive and a failure too. If it expands, the family is likely to add a father-in-law who is younger than her and only interested in her mother's money and a daughter-in-law who is promiscuous and abusive.
She is torn between ignoring the madness of life, mocking the ridicule of life, and exploiting the perversion of life.
Apart from a disappointing ending, the film is a harrowing portrait of
the moral chaos, the perversions and the frustrations of the bourgeoisie,
like Luis Bunuel on steroids, coupled with a psychotic thriller a` la Brian DePalma.
Of course, much of the credit goes to Djian.
The film opens with a man wearing a black mask and suit raping a woman in her
living room. Then he leaves. Michele calmly takes a bath and goes about her chores.
Her son Vincent comes to visit her and notes the bruises on her head, but she
tells him that she fell from the bike. He found an entry-level job at a fast-food restaurant that cannot
pay for the rent of his new apartment. He got his girlfriend
Josie pregnant. Michele doesn't like her. Michele thinks Josie is
dysfunctional, raised in an art commune.
Michele gives him money to pay for three months of rent.
That night Michele keeps a hammer next to her bed. The following morning
she hires someone to change the locks of the house.
It's all business-like. She displays no emotion about the rape.
She then watches a scene in a videogame that is similar to the rape scene
but complains with the designers that it is not "orgasmic" enough.
We realize that she is the boss of a videogame company, cofounded with her
friend Anna.
One of her employees, Kurt, complains that the videogame is not "playable"
because her background is in literature, not games; Michele ignores his
argument and admonishes everybody (all men except for Anna) that they are behing schedule.
Anna tells Michele that all employees hate her except for Kevin, who loves her.
In between work, she visits a hospital to get tested for sexually-transmitted diseases.
During her lunch break,
her lover calls but Michele finds an excuse not to see him.
Then suddenly a woman comes by and drops her lunch tray on her lap and insults
both her and her father.
Again, she doesn't make a scene and returns to her normal life.
Michele then visits her mother and finds her with a sexy young man, Ralf.
Michele sarcastically asks how much she paid him.
Her mother asks what Michele would do if she remarried. Michele coldly replies that she'd kill her. Her mother retorts that Michele is selfish.
Her mother also mentions that her father is getting old and has a parole hearing coming up but Michele doesn't want to hear about him.
Back home she briefly remembers the rape (and we see in the flashback how it happened) but then brushes it off by scolding the cat for not attacking the intruder.
The rapist, however, texts her. Michele still doesn't call the police
but simply buys pepper spray and an axe.
Then she drives like a maniac, damaging a car while trying to park in a
narrow space. Indifferent to having destroyed the front of that car, she
walks into the restaurant where her ex-husband Richard is waiting for her.
Richard is a self-defined penniless novelist who has presented a project for
a videogame to Michele's company.
Anna and her husband Robert also join them.
During dinner she casually mentions that
she was raped. Richard guesses that she didn't call the police because she
wants to have nothing to do with the police. She talks more about his videogame
project (which has been denied funding) than about her rape.
When they walk out, we realize that the car damaged by Michele is Richard's car.
She not only refuses to help him with his project but even leaves him with
a broken fender.
Vincent takes Michele to see the apartment that he and Josie want to rent,
and for which Michele is supposed to pay rent.
It is twice bigger than what Michele imagined. Josie claims that they need
that much for the baby and gets hysterical, proving Michele's opinion that
the girl is not mentally stable.
Back at the office, Anna's husband casually walks into her office, lowers
the window blinds, lowers his his pants and asks that she masturbates it;
which she does, all business-like. So she's also betraying her best friend Anna.
Later, when it seems that everybody has already left and she's alone in the office, the rapist texts her implying that he can see what she is wearing. She searches the offices and finds only one person who is still at work: Kurt, the employee who hates her.
The following day Michele sees her mother and they discuss the hatred that
surrounds Michele's father: his parole hearing is generating news in the press
and a TV program is reminding people of the case.
It sounds like both women have been subjected to public hatred because of the crime that he committed
(like the woman who threw garbage on Michele),
a crime for which he is considered a monster.
Her mother wants Michele to forgive her father, who is now old and ill,
and help with the parole hearing, but Michele has not forgiven.
Later at home Michele daydreams that she would defend herself from the masked rapist and even kill him.
The merciless Michele is however moved when her cat catches a bird. She tries
to save the bird. Later she watches on TV a documentary about the crime
committed 39 years earlier by her father. Her father was a serial killer
and the documentary ends asking what role his daughter, Michele, played.
In the evening she sees a suspicious car parked under her house. She grabs
her axe and the pepper spray and walks outside.
She smashes the window of the car and sprays the man. It's Richard, who, worried about her, had decided to mount guard in front of her house.
She has to wash the eyes of poor Richard in pain. While he recovers, they
chat. He borrowed the car from a student, Helene, who is fond of one of his books.
Michele sounds jealous and, in fact, the following day she phones
Vincent to ask about this Helene.
The phone call is interrupted when Michele sees an obscene video pop up on
her computer: it's a videogame-style recreation of her rape. And then she
realizes that everybody in the office is seeing the same video pop up on their computers.
Anna tells her that it must come from someone who works there.
Michele again refuses to call the police.
Michele is so jealous of Vincent's student Helene that she searches the
Internet until she finds her photo and then
barges in on a yoga class that Helene is teaching in order to meet her in person and invite her to a Christmas dinner.
On the way out Michele gets a frantic call from her son Vincent that Josie
is at the hospital giving birth. Both Michele and Richard arrive to witness
the event but the newborn is... black. Clearly not Vincent's child.
Vincent's best friend Omar, who is black, is standing behind them. Josie doesn't feel embarrassed at all: she stares
at Michele with a defiant look.
When she returns home, she finds cops searching the streets: her
neighbor Patrick spotted a prowler wearing a mask and hiding in the bushes by her house and he called the police.
At work there is still tension between her and Kurt.
Michele asks her employee Kevin, who is known for owning gungs, to teach her how to shoot. She also asks Kevin to hack into the computers of the whole staff to find out who created the rape video. It's illegal to do so, but she promises
it will be a secret and offers him a significant bonus.
One day at home she watches on binoculars the neighbor Patrick and masturbates.
She then walks across the street to his house, where Patrick and his wife
are setting up a Nativity garden, and invites them to her Christmas dinner.
At the Christmas dinner Michele puts together
her mother and her lover Ralf, Anna and Robert,
Richard, Vincent and Helene, Josie with the baby
Patrick and his wife Rebecca (who asks to pray before starting dinner).
Michele starts touching Patrick erotically under the table and Patrick does not reject the attention. Robert notices that she is flirting with Patrick.
Michele's mother announces that she and the much younger Ralf got engaged, and Michele laughs out loud.
Patrick's wife Rebecca, clearly a devout Catholic, turns on the TV to watch the mass celebrated by the pope in Rome while Michele jokes about her father's
crime (he killed 27 humans, 6 dogs, 2 cats).
She tells him what she was doing when someone took the picture of her that
is shown in the documentary: she, a half-naked child, was helping her father burn the evidence. Patrick is embarrassed.
Insulted again by Michele, her mother
suffers a stroke and collapses. On the ambulance, she begs Michele to go and
see her ill father.
Michele suspects that her mother is faking the stroke until a doctor tells her
that there's even a chance her mother will not survive it.
Her best friend and business partner Anna sleeps over to keep her company,
while her husband Robert sleeps in another room.
As they fall asleep, Anna reminds Michele when they tried to have lesbian sex.
In the morning Anna leaves early and Robert, alone with Michele, demands
to know why she ignores him. She snaps and tells him that she doesn't want to
have sex with him anymore (but we know that it's not because of loyalty to Anna
but because she's obsessed with someone else).
Michelle visits her mother at the hospital. Her mother is in a coma but
Michele nonetheless argues with her, accusing her of treachery.
Whether a coincidence or a reaction, her mother suffers a heart attack and dies.
Michele returns home late at night, hardly upset, and finds that the stalker was in her home and masturbated on her bed.
Even that doesn't seem to upset her too much.
Her mother is cremated and she takes
Vincent, Josie, Richard, Anna and Robert to a park where she plans to spread
her ashes. The ceremony is ruined when Michele loses her patience seeing how
Josie treats Vincent and shouts in Vincent's face what everybody can see for
themselves: Vincent is not the father of the baby.
Michele casually drops the ashes and everybody goes home.
When a strong wind hits the city, Patrick rushes to help Michele secure
the numerous windows of her home. It's an excuse to have sex with her but
then at the last moment he runs away, leaving her frustrated.
At work she discovers the employee who created the rape video: Kevin himself,
who, infatuated, has a whole bunch of photos and videos about her.
She confronts him calmly, almost amused. She asks him to pull down his pants
so she can check his penis: the rapist was circumcised, and Kevin is not.
Michele loses interest in the episode and walks away. She doesn't even fire
Kevin.
However, when she gets home that evening, she is attacked by the masked rapist,
but this time she wounds him with a pair of scissors and unmasks him: it's
Patrick. She kicks him out. Again, she doesn't call the police. In the morning
she sees him walk out dressed for work and they merely exchange a cold look.
She heards on the news that her father has been denied parole.
She reacts with expletives against her father.
Finally, she drives to the prison to visit him.
She tells the warden she has come to spit on her father's face.
The warden tells her that her father hanged himself in the cell hours after
being informed that she was coming to visit.
On the way back, while driving through a forest, she crashes the car because
an animal jumps across the street.
She can't even get out of the car. She calls Anna and Richard but they don't
pick up. So she calls Patrick and he comes.
Patrick pulls her own of the car and drives her home.
Patrick bandages her wounded thigh.
She asks him why he raped her and he replies that it was necessary.
Walking on crutches,
Michele enters her mother's apartment, which now belongs to her, and finds
Ralf already in bed with another (much younger) woman. Ralf insults her
because of her father's crimes. Michele simply tells him that the apartment
is for sale and he has to move out.
Later she has sex with Anna's husband Robert at Anna's place.
Back home she finds Vincent: Josie kicked him out after Vincent quit his job.
Michele is shocked enough that he would quit his job, but on top of that he
has also stolen Josie's baby, whom he insists on calling his child.
Not surprisingly, Josie bangs at the door and demands the baby.
Vincent moves in with her. They meet Patrick at a supermarket.
He is alone after Rebecca left for a Catholic pilgrimage and invites them over
for dinner. Vincent gets drunk and falls asleep.
Patrick takes Michele to the basement and rapes her again, despite the fact
that she is now willing. He simply says that it has to feel like a rape.
At work Michele watches the final product and publicly congratulates Kurt,
healing their rift. Anna tells Michele that she suspects her husband Robert
has a lover. A stone-faced Michele doesn't confess that she is the lover.
At the launch party for the videogame Michele invites Patrick, Richard and Robert
Richard has broken up with Helene after they found out that the book she's fond of was written
not by Richard but by another writer with the same last name as Richard's.
Michele, feeling bad for him, introduces Richard to Kurt and ask that they
work together on Richard's project that was rejected.
In the middle of the party a stone-faced Michele confesses to Anna that she's the lover of her husband, but that it's over, and then leaves the
petrified Anna and asks Patrick to drive her home.
In the car she tells Patrick that she'll report the rape to the police.
She seems to have suddenly realized that she has a responsibility
towards Patrick's wife and towards possibly other victims of Patrick's perversion.
When she walks out of the car, Patrick is tempted to run her over.
She leaves the gate unlocked, which could be either an invitation or a provocation
Patrick gets his mask on, walks in and assaults her.
She resists and he beats her violently.
(We don't know whether this is part of their sadomaso game or a real
awakening of Michele).
Vincent arrives and hits him on the head with a heavy object and kills him.
This time they call the police. Michele denies knowing that the masked
aggressor was Patrick.
Some time later Michele sees Patrick's wife Rebecca moving out.
Rebecca is not angry at all with Michele. In fact, she thanks Michele for
satisfying Patrick's needs, which means that she knew something of their
love affair.
Michele has changed.
Vincent has moved back with Josie and
Michele even treats Josie like a daughter now.
Anna finds Michele at the cemetery, placing flowers on her mother's niche,
next to the niche of her father which is vandalized with graffitis.
Anna kicked out Robert. Michele confesses that she simply took advantage
of Robert when she wanted sex. Anna seems to accept this pathetic excuse
and remarks that now they are both alone and maybe they should move in together.
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