Bruce Dern and Marthe Keller |
German-Arab Dahlia (Marthe Keller) is a member of the terrorist group Black September. She has been able to manipulate her lover, a bitter Viet Nam vet named Lander (Bruce Dern), into helping her in a plot to kill thousands of Americans. She hopes to send a message to the U.S. to stop aiding Israel. A taped message that she had planned to release to the media after the event has been recovered following a raid so that now the government knows something deadly is planned but doesn't know what. (The fact that Lander is one of the pilots of the Goodyear blimp for the Superbowl should give you a clue.) Israeli agent Kabakov (Robert Shaw) and FBI man Sam Corley (Fritz Weaver) join forces with others to find this woman -- whom Kabakov should have killed during the raid but didn't -- and stop her plan before she can kill over 83,000 people -- and the President -- at the Superbowl in Miami.
Robert Shaw |
Marthe Keller |
This is based on a novel by Thomas Harris. I always thought it was far superior to his over-rated Silence of the Lambs and that this earlier film is far superior to the film version of Lambs. Back in 1977, terrorist plots like this were strictly the stuff of movies and books, not to mention James Bond, but 9/11 certainly changed that notion, as we soon realized, sadly, that now anything was possible ...
Verdict: Terrific thriller with a great plot and excellent performances. ***1/2.
2 comments:
This is indeed very good--my best friend turned me on to it a few years back, and it's solid. Marthe Keller was indeed talented...despite several big opportunities she never really broke through to American audiences to the extent that say, Genevieve Bujold did, in the 1970s and early 80s. But she was beautiful and very watchable.
Need to see this one again soon.
-C
It's a very entertaining and memorable flick. Keller was talented and attractive but with a few exceptions (this and "Marathon Man," for example), she did not appear in very many hit films, and her career eventually petered out, at least in high-profile terms. She is still working today!
Post a Comment