a5c7b9f00b David Brice, the Secretary of Defense is feuding with a powerful Senator over a project that Brice wants to discontinue which the Senator wants to push through and Brice knows that the Senator will the Director of the CIA whom he has in his pocket to get an edge on Brice. So Brice has Tom Farrell a Naval Intelligence officer assigned to him to help combat the Director. Farrell upon arriving in Washington hooks up with Susan Atwell a woman whom he had a brief liaison with when he was in Washington a few months ago. He doesn&#39;t know that Atwell is Brice&#39;s mistresswell. When Brice learns that she&#39;s been seeing someone else kills her. Now to find the man she&#39;s been seeing so that he could not tell anyone about her and Brice, Scott Pritchard, Brice&#39;s confidant suggests that they claim that Yuri, a Russian spy whom some people believe is an urban legend killed her. So the search commences, Farrell tries to find a way to get Brice to stop the search before they find him cause he knows Pritchard plans to kill the guy when they find him. A coverup and witchhunt occur after a politician accidentally kills his mistress. No Way Out is a thriller about a U.S. Naval officer investigating a Washington, D.C. murder. It stars Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman and Sean Young. It is a remake of The Big Clock; both films are based on the novel by Kenneth Fearing.The supporting cast includes Will Patton, Howard Duff, George Dzundza, Jason Bernard, Fred Thompson and Iman.It was written by Robert Garland and directed by Roger Donaldson.<br/><br/>While at a Washington party, Tom meets Susan Atwel, and they&#39;re soon sharing a steamy love scene in the back of a limo. Several months pass before Tom meets Susan again; he discovers she&#39;s the mistress of the US Secretary of Defense David Brice. When Susan is murdered by Brice, his loyal aide dutifully destroys the evidence and invents the fallacious theory that a KGB mole was responsible. Tom is assigned to locate that mole – a perilous situation, since Tom knows that no such mole exists, but must go along with the charade since he was the last person who was seen with Susan.<br/><br/>Farrell obtains the printout before the picture implicating him becomes visible and presents it to Brice, who then shifts the blame to Pritchard, arguing that Pritchard was jealous of his relationship with Susan. A devastated Pritchard commits suicide and is falsely exposed&quot;Yuri&quot; to the police by Brice, hoping to escape blame for Susan&#39;s death, and Farrell, who is finally able to leave the Pentagon free of suspicion.<br/><br/>As Farrell sits beside Susan&#39;s grave, two plainclothes men arrive and take him away for questioning. One of the interrogators is Farrell&#39;s landlord, who addresses Farrell in Russian. Farrell, who responds in kind is, in fact, the real &quot;Yuri&quot; and his landlord is his KGB supervisor. Yuri/Farrell was planted in the U.S.a teenager and became the KGB&#39;s &quot;mole&quot; in the Department of Defense. Aware of Brice&#39;s affair, the Russians assigned Farrell to seduce the Secretary of Defense&#39;s mistress and gather intelligence from her. Although his handlers demand that he return to the Soviet Union, Farrell refuses and leaveshis handler quips, &quot;He&#39;ll be back. Where else does he have to go?&quot;<br/><br/>Roger Donaldson&#39;s modern spin on No Way Out is dense and stylish.This suspense film has features of the 1940s thrillers but it was terrific and ingenious that a viewer who likes good movies would surely appreciate.In it,we get to see fine performances from stars Gene Hackman and Sean Young.Truly,it was a career-making performance for Kevin Costnerit catapulted him to stardomhe displays some charisma in a twisty, stylish espionage thriller.It was truly a masterpiece in its genrea film in which a simple situation grows more and more complex and neither of which is contrived nor manipulated. 20yrs ago Kiwi Director Roger Donaldson was already at the top of his game,were a young, lean and athletic Kevin Costner, and Mace Neufeld, future uber-producer of technothrillers. Costner is therefore perfectly cast in this political melodrama/ spy thriller by Ilene StargerCommander Tom Farrell of ONI (Office of &quot;Naval Int&quot;, not &quot;Navel lint&quot;). The movie is based primarily on Kenneth Fearing&#39;s book The Big Clock, NOT the 1947 Charles Laughton film,Leonard Maltin claims. Only the Pentagon net scene was remade from that.<br/><br/>Writer/Producer Robert Garland&#39;s screenplay straddles an amazing scope, moving from Washington intrigue to sexy melodrama-by-way-of naval adventure and technothriller(!). Unfortunately, it&#39;s bookended by a spy molehunt for a &quot;Yuri&quot; in the Pentagon, so its twist ending is a strain that the rest does little to support. It&#39;s unlikely that Garland botched his screenplay adaptation of his own story; he–or Donaldson–simply didn&#39;t seed enough inconsistencies. This resulted in a seemingly ludicrous ending.<br/><br/>A similar device was used far more successfully in The Sixth Sense(1999), where the reinterpretation was better-justified even emotionally, so audiences were intrigued and touched by their &quot;perspective shift&quot;, rather than annoyed.<br/><br/>Thankfully NWO features two overwhelmingly attractive leads. Neither Costner, dapper and athletic evenhe dramatically bleeds into his Navy whites, nor Sean Young, all busty-gold-lamea jaded chippy sleeping her way to the top, ever looked so good. Their scenes together ground (or is it &quot;grind&quot;?) the movie in considerable honesty under all the Washington decadence. They sizzle through NWO&#39;s infamous &quot;Washington monument&quot; scene.<br/><br/>Costner is arguably the best he&#39;s ever beenthe vulnerable naval hero perpetually embarrassed by his &quot;exotic&quot; lover. In fact, his character&#39;s charisma probably derails the ending. For her part, Sean Young (Blade Runner(1982)) is his matchSusan Atwell, the bitchy cynic who to her own surprise rediscovers her innocence by falling in love with him. Sadly, she&#39;s an object of lust for more than one man, and the other one kills her in a fit of jealousy.<br/><br/>Her killer is Defence Secretary David Brice (Gene Hackman, adhering to the Hollywood aphorism that there are only two kinds of movies: ones with Gene Hackman, and ones without). Brice just happens to be Farrell&#39;s new boss at the Pentagon.<br/><br/>The plot really takes off once it falls to Farrell,Pentagon liaison to the CIA, to pin the murder on &quot;Yuri&quot;, the supposed mole that Brice calls &quot;the CIA&#39;s wet dream&quot;. For Brice, the &quot;molehunt&quot; conveniently steers the murder investigation away from himself.<br/><br/>&quot;Yuri&quot; is a thinly-veiled reference to an actual 1960s molehunt initiated by the real-life Yuri Nosenko. Since the real mole was never found, many think that it really was just &quot;the CIA&#39;s wet dream&quot;. This deep background hints at why NWO goes so awry at the end; although Farrell&#39;s hurried call from the public phonebooths IS to his handler. This is the only seeding Garland granted us for the mole plot. The &quot;when you passed the bag of underwear, Moscow wasn&#39;t amused&quot; line near the end is already too late–we consider Farreell one of us, and no going back.<br/><br/>Brice and his searingly obsessed, corrupt lackey Pritchard(Patton) cook up this bogus manhunt, blithely forcing Farrell to seize control the investigation, officially conducted by the Pentagon&#39;s Criminal Investigations Division, evenevidence points increasingly to Farrell himself. The judiciously impartial-looking Jason Bernard is pitch-perfectthe CID&#39;s Major Donovan,he clues-in to the wild goose-chase.<br/><br/>The screenplay successfully paints Commander Farrellindependent, apolitical, and well-liked by everyone not trying to ingratiate themselves with his boss. Unfortunately, it&#39;s this very American likability that guarantees we&#39;ll deny his possible guilta plant. Farrell&#39;s friends include the Pentagon&#39;s chief computer programmer, Sam Hesselman (the avuncular, rotund George Dzundza stuck in a wheelchair), whose tragic demise here ismuch a viewer&#39;s bodyblowArt Evans&#39; was in Metro(1997). It&#39;s heartbreaking watching Sam draw the wrong conclusion about Farrell–or more accurately, about Pritchard.<br/><br/>As Pritchard, Will Patton looms oppressively. He made a strong impression on Costnerwell, who 10yrs later starred opposite him (even more confrontationally) in The Postman(1997).<br/><br/>There are a couple of real-life ironies, though. The two goons &quot;associated with Special Forces&quot; whom Farrell and the movie are so distrustful of are supposed to be &quot;Iran-Contra&quot; hit men. This Reaganite scandal plays nicely into NWO&#39;s revisionism about a supposed Communist mole. It just succeeds too well.<br/><br/>The other is the presence of Fred Dalton Thompson, who 20yrs later is running for President! Thompson (Hunt for Red October(1990)), past real-life Special Counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence(!) ventured into acting and became an instant hit, mostly in technothrillers. He&#39;s again wryly memorable herethe CIA Director to whom Farrell addresses his bloodied evidence.<br/><br/>While Garland took care of the storytelling CONsistencies (there&#39;s the flaw), the director&#39;s attention to the acting detail is staggering. He always uses the takes with the happiest accidents, and the most unmasked reaction-shot closeups, including when his actors blush (watch Patton fulminate), retch (Costner), and retort tetchily (his dimples virtually speak for him when Jason Bernard says &quot;I was about to send my men&quot;).<br/><br/>The only production element that for my money fails is the opening credits&#39; font design. It&#39;s what passed for 1980s computer &quot;wow&quot;, but it jarrs badly against Maurice Jarre&#39;s hauntingly eerie original score.<br/><br/>No Way Out(1987) found a smart, sassy yet cynical 1980s tone thanks to Roger Donaldson and a certain future Tom Clancy uber-producer. Neufeld&#39;s son also stintsco-Producer with the fabulous Laura Ziskin, having negotiated partial access for shooting inside the Pentagon.<br/><br/>It&#39;s a shame that the movie&#39;s poorly-seeded ending was allowed to throw us into denial. It forces the movie to bite off more than even this superpower plot could chew.(9/10) No Way Out emerges, paradoxically,a film that is better than it has to be and notgoodit ought to be, but there is skill here,wellan admirable willingness to try something new.
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