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Crosscuts: Brief Film ReviewsDead Man Walking; Contact; The Contender; Naked City: Prime of Life; Pickup on SouthStreetReview by: Grant TraceyThe North American Review, Vol. 289, No. 2, National Poetry Month (Mar. - Apr., 2004), p. 36Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25127151 .

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N A R

In honor of Women's History Month, I begin this Crosscuts with three films featuring strong female protagonists. ?GT

Dead Man Walking (1995), MGM/UA,

1999,122 mins., $19.98 Susan

Sarandon glows as Sister Helen Prejean, a nun

overcoming her own fears to

help a condemned man (Matthew

Poncelot) find dignity and grace. Director Tim Robbins brilliantly chose to shoot the seven key scenes between

Sarandon and Sean Penn (Poncelot) in

sequential order, allowing the actors to

grow with their roles. At first Sister

Helen is reserved with Poncelot who is

obscured in shadow and fishline mesh

ing of prison glass. She averts her eyes at his racial slurs, but in their third

meeting, her eyes expand, her chin rais

es and she attacks his prejudices, ask

ing, "Was your daddy always a racist?"

She forces Poncelot to look at himself and his lies. In this scene, Robbins cap tures the convictions of Helen as well as

the activist leanings of Sarandon. Never

before has a character role and actor's

persona so perfectly melded together.

Contact (1997), Warner Brothers, 1997,150 mins., $14.97 Jodie Foster's

Ellie Anne Arroway is a true pioneer. A

brilliant scientist who works with SETI

(Search for Extraterrestrial Intelli

gence), Ellie struggles to find her faith, and admirably navigates her place in a

male-dominated world. Several men

attempt to block her pursuit of truth:

David Drumlin (Tom Skerritt) ends

her SETI funding, takes credit for her

discovery (contact with aliens), and

attempts to travel where Ellie

should; Father Palmer Joss (Matthew

McConaughey) loves Ellie but under

mines her bid for space travel; Michael

Kitz (James Woods), an alarmist and an NSA agent, wants to involve the

military in the project and later

ridicules her before a senate committee.

But through all this Ellie remains

resilient and triumphs. Foster exudes

vulnerability, intelligence and dogged determination. And as she relives her

spiritual journey for the senate com

mittee, Foster's hushed intensity, her

voice wavering as she says, "Yes," has

us all believing.

Crosscuts BRIEF FILM REVIEWS

GRANT TRACE Y

The Contender (2000), Dreamworks, 2001, 127 mins., $9.99 Writer/direc tor Rod Lurie's political thriller

explores the gender divide as Laine

Hanson (Joan Allen) undergoes a

nasty confirmation process to become

vice-president of the United States. At

first we don't know much about

Hanson's record or what she values,

but, as senate chair Shelly Runyon (Gary Oldman) attacks her prior sexual history (she's accused of partic

ipating in a college-era "gang-bang"), Hanson earns our respect. She refuses

to clarify her past, refuses to give in to

the double standard, and stands on

principle (her sexual history has

nothing to do with the issues). Hanson asks Webster (Christian

Slater), a junior senator, What if

Louis Lamm, the first person to speak before HUAC, had refused to name

names? What if he had said, "Fuck

you"? McCarthyism wouldn't have

gained momentum, and for Hanson

it's time for the sexual witch hunts of women to end. Throughout the

ordeal, Allen remains quiet, firm and

strong willed. By refusing to

participate in Runyon's dialogue, she

refuses to legitimize his right to ask

the very questions that he pursues. And when she does state her beliefs: a woman's right to choose, the

separation of church and state, and a

ban on guns,

we applaud her.

Naked City: Prime of Life (1962-63; four episodes), Image, 2003, 203

mins., $14.99 This realistic cop show

is full of noir grit. Filmed on location

and set among the eight million or so

stories of New York, each episode

plays like a little film. The star of the

series, Paul Burke as Detective Adam

Flint, is wonderful in his restraint,

quiet humanity, idealism and

compassion. Along with Burke's sub

tle cool, each episode features strong

guest stars: Gene Hackman, Burgess

Meredith, and Diahann Carroll as a

teacher whose handicapped student has wandered off from a field trip. "The One Marked Hot Gives Cold" is the best of the four episodes. Here

Robert Duvall plays a thirty-one year old lost soul who befriends a twelve

year old girl, Agnes Padgett. Their

friendship is sincere, but when a woman hints at abuse, Flint has to

investigate and everything hinges upon innocence smeared. The final

image, Agnes running down a street

in long shot, her shoulders hurdling her forward as she flees from her

oblivious parents and her past ideal

ism, is haunting.

Pickup on South Street (1953), Criterion, 2004, 80 mins., $29.95 "You waving the flag at me," asks

Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark) to a cop and a federal agent in Samuel

Fuller's hard-hitting pulp film.

McCoy, with a kink in his mouth and a shrug of the shoulders, isn't

willing to cooperate. He had grifted microfilm from Candy (Susan Peters), an

unwitting accomplice in a commu

nist plot to steal state secrets, and after

Skip discovers the value of the film, he

plans to make a "big score." This is

our hero? Fuller, a decorated war vet

eran and a former crime reporter for

the Evening Graphic, fills his story with hard edges: Mo (Thelma Ritter), a street hustler, informs on her

friends; Candy, the love interest, uses

her body to try to get the film back;

Joey (Richard Kiley), an agent for the

communists, beats up and kills women. Fuller's visuals are

explosive:

tight, intense close ups echo shocking newspaper headlines; high-angle shots in a subway fist fight accentuate the

visceral violence; and rapid tracking shots convert tender love scenes into

punctuations of anger. Fuller's

aesthetics embody the constant swirl

of battle chaos. Discord rules. D

36 NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW March-April 2004

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