The Fury
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Movie Reviews of The Fury
Movie Review: could have been better
Summary: 3 Stars
let's face it, this movie is a flop by de palma's standards, or by any other standards. The story is nothing special, a mix with ingredients taken from Carrie, Hitchcock in general, spy movies, dario argento (in the focus style, here and there), cop movies and stephen king. unfortunately, de palma didn't know how to mix these ingredients and we get a bit stomach-heavy when the film ends.
the best thing here is amy irving as the young psychic. she has a couple of really powerful scenes. the music isn't the "superb classic" some call it. it does its job. the movie is not scary, let alone "terrifying" or "mesmerizing"... these film critics... the plot is somewhat stupid, shallow and predictable. a secret agency needs a psychic. well, i think that's cool. but what for? there aren't any explanations in the movie. on the contrary, there are several pointless excursions in the film, like the one when kirk douglas kidnaps the two cops, and then throws the car into a river. what for? when john cassavettes meets his fate, it seems a logical conclusion to a cardboard villain. no wonder cassavettes hated the film!
there are great moments, yes, but this is a disjointed mess. it's unbelievable how de palma directed the classics "carrie" before this, and "dressed to kill" afterwards.
Movie Review: 3.5. Not great, but worth a watch
Summary: 3 Stars
Not much to say about this one. Pretty typical De Palma. Fairly lame plot, though not as convoluted as normal, redeemed by some good set-pieces, camera movements and violence. Performances are adequate across the board, if not exactly great. (I particularly like Douglas.) It could use a bit less down time though, that's for sure. No reason why this movie should be a full 2 hours long. Still, the payoff is pretty good, even if De Palma's style is sometimes comically overwrought. Overall 'The Fury' is a pretty good counterpart to its now more remembered knockoff 'Scanners'. Nothing terribly remarkable about either of them, but they're fun action-horror-sci-fi drama things.
This movie is probably most famous for the exploding guy, and he definitely ain't bad. The best part about it is how overwhelmingly redundant the scene. Ya know how they like to show the same explosion multiple times from the different angles and whatnot in movies, slipping back a second in time again and again. Here they show the guy exploding [wait for for [NOW!!!]... THIRTEEN TIMES!!!!!!!! That has got to be a record. It's not as cool as the exploding head in 'Scanners' but it's still pretty cool.
Grade: B-
Movie Review: Grade "C" DePalma
Summary: 3 Stars
When DePalma has a great cinematographer and editor on board, he can turn out some very good movies. Unfortunately, he had neither for this mess. It runs two hours and five minutes - and that is 35 minutes too long. Many of the shots appear to be filmed on cheap film stock. The story gets schlocky at times. Some of the acting is high camp (the two off-duty police officers act like bad actors parodying urban cops). Still, there are moments of good movie-making here - but they are too few and far between. Think a movie with Kirk Douglas, John Cassavettes, and Amy Irving couldn't possible bomb? Think again.Movie Review: "Mediocre De Palma film"
Summary: 3 Stars
Kind of ridiculous, at times, but still makes for good viewing. The end result is quite laughable. A dumb plot, followed by, dumb acting, equals, entertainment.Movie Review: Amazingly Dull, Simplistic Supernatural "Thriller"
Summary: 2 Stars
There are spoilers throughout this review. The movie's 30 years old; I think the moratorium on spoilers has expired.
Brian DePalma has a reputation as a "style over substance" kind of director as well as an imitator of Alfred Hitchcock. This reputation is not wholly deserved; he sometimes transcends this image ("Carrie", "The Untouchables"). However, when he reverts back to full-blown Hitchcock on Acid mode, look out! That's exactly what DePalma does in "The Fury."
The story, called "convoluted" by many, is nothing of the kind! Here's the story, in its entirety: An ex-government agent (Douglas) has a teenage son (Stevens) who possesses extraordinary psychic powers. The government agency kidnaps the son and attempts (but fails) to kill the father. This all happens in the first 10 minutes, and the father spends the rest of the movie (two tedious hours) trying to find his son with the aid of a teenage girl (Irving) with psychic powers and a telepathic link to his son. In the last 10 minutes, they find his son, then both father and son die, then the girl kills the Bad Guy (Cassavetes) responsible for the kidnapping. The end.
Probably the reason so many viewers think this ridiculously simplistic story is "convoluted" is because of all the superfluous scenes we are treated to in the intervening two hours. Like:
Kirk Douglas breaking into the apartment of a bickering middle-aged couple and the little old lady who lives with them, the cutely-named "Mother Knuckles," painting his hair with white shoe polish, putting a pillow in his pants, flirting with Mother Knuckles, tying up the couple on their couch in front of the television (ham-fisted social commentary, anyone?), and then leaving, only to be immediately spotted by the Bad Guys in spite of his disguise. So why the heck was so much time spent on this ridiculous narrative detour?
Amy Irving at her new School For Teenage Psychics, twirling around her white wicker-and-flowered wallpaper bedroom, taking long walks in the park with Charles Durning, playing Frisbee with a dog (in slow motion, naturally), and making big gooey sundaes with the Mad Housewife herself, Carrie Snodgress (pay careful attention to this scene to take delight in Irving's nauseating habit of constantly digging into a bowl of toppings with her fingers, sprinkling the stuff on her sundae, licking her fingers, then digging the newly-moist fingers back into another bowl of toppings; she does this half a dozen times and makes it virtually impossible to pay any attention to the conversation, which doesn't contain any imperative dialogue, anyway). Again, what is the purpose of this long sequence, other than letting us know that for a brief while, Irving's character gets to be happy? Admittedly, you need SOME "down time" in a thriller, but two freakin' hours of it? Come on.
The superfluous scenes would be bad enough, but what makes them even worse is the fact that absolutely ESSENTIAL scenes are missing. For instance, after Stevens's character is kidnapped and taken to the compound, he apparently undergoes brainwashing techniques that turn him into a homicidal psychopath. But we aren't SHOWN his conversion; instead, to make up for this MAJOR deficiency, some obviously dubbed-in-at-a-later-date expository dialogue is played over scenes of him pole-vaulting. (???) Amazingly, even though they are specifically trying to fill story gaps, they don't say anything that actually accomplishes that purpose! We're given some gobbledygook about how he gets really upset whenever his physical prowess doesn't match his psychic powers. This is supposed to explain why he later makes a carnival ride go berserk, flinging riders 50 feet in the air, and why he turns his girlfriend into a whirling dervish!
Even when the scenes actually could serve a narrative purpose, DePalma drags them on WAY too long, then doesn't give us any pay-off. An example: We already know Irving's character is psychic when some folks from the Psychic School come to her high school to demonstrate that people's Alpha waves can actually run an electric train. Yes, I know you're all remembering the many, many times you witnessed such demonstrations at your high school. Right. Anyway, at this point anyone with an IQ over 80 who has actually ever seen a movie - any movie - knows where this scene is going. Amy Irving will get the electrodes strapped to her forehead and make the damn thing jump the tracks with the force of her Alpha-ness. What you might not be able to predict is just how excruciatingly l-o-n-g DePalma drags out the wholly inevitable denouement. It feels like HOURS as the train goes faster and faster, with a dubbed-in whining sound getting higher and higher (in case we didn't get it) and reaction shots of every single person in the room with the patented "WTF?!?" look on their faces before finally the train de-rails. Now, this scene, protracted as it was, might have actually served SOME purpose if an action had flowed directly from it, ie: the doctor from the school signing up Irving then and there. Incredibly, nothing of the sort happens! We have to wait a few scenes for Irving to tell her mother that she wants to go to a "special school" and it is only after she arrives that we know this is in fact the same school that did the train demonstration. HELLO, this is BAD storytelling, folks.
And then there's John Cassavetes. Holy cow. For those who aren't familiar with Cassavetes, he was essentially the first independent filmmaker, making his own movies on ultra-low budgets that didn't toe the studio line. The films were critically lauded but not seen by many people. Supposedly he only acted in studio pictures in order to make money to finance his own ventures, and while that may be nominally true, he DID at least seem to invest something in many of his roles, ie: his early television one-shots and "The Dirty Dozen." In "The Fury," however, the man sleep-walks through his role; at one point during a "suspenseful" chase scene in which he's in the backseat of a car, his head is clearly just lolling backwards as if it's Nap Time. You can hardly blame the guy - it's a Snidely Whiplash role with absolutely no nuance or shading, and fer crying out loud, he's blown up at the end - but the fact is that Cassavetes's zombified performance adds even more badness to the movie.
Wow, there is so much more to dislike about this movie. In the interest of wrapping things up, I'll go to bullet points:
*Every time a character outlives his or her usefulness (to the scenarist, to propel the plot along), he or she dies violently. Every. Time. Once again, bad writing.
*Right before psychics die, their eyes glow an unearthly blue and they transfer all their powers to the psychic who is cradling their head in their lap. Thank you, Brian DePalma, for this newfound knowledge.
*Cars do not, in fact, use safety glass (that spiderwebs), but rather plate glass (that shatters). This is because the latter looks so much cooler when photographed.
*You'd think it would be heaven to be married to Mr. Carlson, but no.
*When it's important to the plot that anybody who touches Amy Irving starts to bleed, they bleed. When it's important to the plot that people be allowed to touch her, they don't.
*All of the "comic relief" scenes are uniformly dire.
*Could we at least be given some hint of why the government thinks that having a teenage psychic is so important? "The Chinese don't have one, the Soviets don't have one..." maybe because they see limited military applications for making electric trains run off Alpha waves and accurately assessing that the guy behind them is looking at "three wavy lines."
Two stars instead of one, because on a technical level, the movie is competent (ie: there's some good photography, and Williams's score, while imitating Bernard Herrmann too slavishly, is not bad, if also not great). The bottom line: Not good enough to be fun, but not bad enough to be fun either. Don't waste your time.