‘No Way Out’ is a thriller without evil
By Charles Lieurance
Senior Editor
“No Way Out,” Stuart Theater,
15th & P streets.
The mid 1970s saw a spate of para
noid, nearly Kafka-esque, domestic
political thrillers released into the
American cinematic mainstream. Syd
ney Pollock’s "Three Days of the Con
dor,” John Schlesinger’s “Marathon
Man," trancis Ford Coppola’s early
technical masterpiece, "The Conversa
tion," and the underrated "Capricorn
One” all revealed a nation conducting
a secret war on itself, growing more and
more afraid of the politics at home.
Movie Review
To many, representative democracy
had come to mean that a representa
tive of the democracy would be with
you at every moment of the day, moni
toring your every breath.
It was a hysterical vision of America
in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate.
It was fear of media, surveillance, the
electoral process, the complexity of
checks and balances, intelligence (in
both a governmental and a personal
sense) and an awesome fear of the
power of the presidency that panicked
America to the point that it elected an
utter nonentity like Jimmy Carter to
the post of chief executive.
Only the ’80s, an age of blind confi
dence, could abate the fear.
As Hal Holbrook tells the hunted
CLA communications expert Robert
Redford in “Three Days of the Condor,’’
“Americans just want the gasoline to
run their cars; they don’t care how the
government gets it for them."
“No Way Out” is the first thriller so
far to depict a breakdown in the age of
confidence.
Considering the nation’s relative
apathy toward the Iran-contra affair
(except when it comes to knighting the
outlaws), "No Way Out" is an unlikely
film. It is encouraging that at least
Hollywood has seen fit to echo the
paranoid sentiments of the minority
over a governmental chain of command
run amok.
“No Way Out” is about the competi
tive chasms that have come to divide
the branches of our government. The
military competes with the legislative
branch, the legislative branch com
petes with the executive branch, and
within each branch there are further,
more elaborate divisions.
Kevin Costner (“Silverado,” “The
Untouchables”) plays a young naval
officer, Tom Farrell, neck-deep in one
of these chasma. He’s led there by a
Washington party-siren, Susan Atwell,
played by Sean Young.
Farrell becomes involved with Atwell
when he is invited to a Washington fete
by his longtime friend, Scott Pritchard
(Will Patton), now an aid to high
powered and high-strung senator David
Brice (Gene Hackman).
What Farrell doesn’t know is that
Atwell is Brice’s mistress. What Brice
doesn’t know when he hires Farrell to
work internal intelligence is that Far
rell is developing a sincere, although
obviously non-monogamous, relation
ship with Young.
Brice discovers that Atwell has taken
another love', although he is not aware
who the lover is, and accidentally kills
her in a jealous rage. Enter Pritchard
power-hungry and, alas, psychopathic
— to help Brice out of his little jam,
instead of letting him take his chances
with the Washington police.
Pritchard’s plan is to conduct an
interdepartmental super-secret inves
tigation of Atwell’s death in hopes of
turning up her lover and pinning the
murder on him.
Not only will the murder be pinned
on this man, but to keep things at least
marginally on the up and up, Pritchard
and Brice will tell everyone who asks
questions that has the right security
clearance that Atwell’s lover and mur
derer were none other than the appar
ently famous Soviet intelligence mole,
Yuri.
It’s the classic mid-’70s domestic
spy thriller. A man is unwittingly guided
into the system, discovers how the sys
tem works, tries to escape but finds
himself trapped. To overly generalize a
B
Photo courtesy of Orton Pictures
Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman and Will Patton in a scene from “No Way Out.”
Kafka theorum: Every efficient office
needs its sacrificial lamb.
Claustrophobia is the key to these
thrillers, and "No Way Out" has claus
trophobia to spare. Not only can’t Far
rell breathe as he attempts to level
headedly spearhead the investigation
that will crucify him, but his perfor
mance is so convincing that often the
audience is breathless. From the
moment Brice shows Farrell the pic
ture of the murdered girl whose killer
he must find, there is very little air in
this film.
Australian director Roger Donaldson
makes it worse by having the investiga
tion go on around the clock under tight
security. The main trio — Hackman,
Patton and Costner — ricochet off one
another like stray buljets in the tight
confines of the intelligence offices but
keep that even tone of voice that keeps
tension coiling around each excruciat
ing scene. Unnerving plot twists build
up at every moment, ready to explode
in Costner’s face.
For the performances of this trio
alone, this film is brilliant, acting at its
most tense and brittle with an under
current of histrionics that only surfa
ces in the audience’s reactions. Per
formances woven this tightly are rare.
What makes the film all the more
remarkable, however, is the absence of
evil. The mid-’70s thrillers all had
unusual images of bureaucratic evil.
Hal Holbrook was the model, donning
his black business suit and fatherly
smile as the demon sent by some
ambiguous authority in “Capricorn
One" and "Three Days of the Condor.”
Holbrook made an admirable demon,
but his essence was pure political evil.
There is no such evil present in "No
Way Out,” no nebulous authority to
whom no one seems to answer but
whom everyone obeys with silent rever
ance. In fact, the moral code of govern
ment is practically anarchic, working
off charisma and ferocious trouble
shooting.
Even the gratuitous and unfortu
nately mechanical climactic plot twist
does not provide us with a reason for all
the chaos and horror that has preceded
it. The whole affair seems merely “un
fortunate.” Something misfires in the
system, leaving everything hanging
open, the system swallows itself and
starts again, this time wrapped more
tightly arid more dangerously than
before.
Although “No Way Out" does not
flow with the moral ease of its mid-’70s
counterparts, its ambiguity concerning
responsibility is more timeless than
the reactionary paranoia of the older
films and, in the end, more terrifying.
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