It's a busy time for Washington DC Police Captian Frank Matthews (George Peppard), he's just been appointed as a "special consultant" for a Senate subcommittee on "Law and Order", though the conviction that got him the post (of a rape murderer played by Robert F. Lyons) has just been overturned by the Supreme Court; Also he thinks his wife (Jean Seberg) is having an affair. Turns out she is cheating on him, but when he goes to confront wife and lover in his bed they are already dead, now he is the prime suspect.
In short order Matthews has retained as counsel the man who got Lyons off, the suitably Gore Vidal looking Richard Kiley, playing a character named Woodrow Wilson King, you know because "Pendulum". This undercooked topical piece had an obvious irony right there for the taking, King's civil libertarian ways being what gets Matthew's off the hook, but the movie doesn't do that, Matthew's solves the murder himself (one guess who did it). He didn't really need King and he didn't learn anything. It's just not very good, Roger Ebert described the movie as Fascist. It was however nice to see Madeleine Sherwood in a small role, one of the great memorable faces of this era of American film making. *1/2
No comments:
Post a Comment