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Amazon.com: Sam Peckinpah's final film has a lot to recommend it, including a complicated story derived from a Robert Ludlum novel but laced with Peckinpah's hard questions about loyalty and the balance between civilization and basic instincts. Rutger Hauer stars as John Tanner, a television host with strong criticisms of America's cold-war conduct. Looking forward to a weekend of socializing with old friends (played by Craig T. Nelson, Dennis Hopper, and Chris Sarandon), Tanner is approached by a CIA agent (John Hurt) who tells him his friends may be Soviet agents. Tanner agrees to let the spy agency set up surveillance in his house; it turns out there is more to the agent's claims than meets the eye and Tanner's weekend eventually erupts into violence. Osterman is not Peckinpah at his best (though, typically, the director was under siege from production politics), but the maestro of montage certainly worked in some extraordinary action sequences. --Tom Keogh
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - "Just Because I Don't Care Doesn't Mean I Don't Understand"
While some critics attacked `The Osterman Weekend' as not making any sense and having an incoherent plot, I understood it just fine. I just didn't like it.
With an impressive cast and intriguing premise `The Osterman Weekend' seems like a sure hit. However I was unable to find a single redeeming element of the film.
The plot: Rutger Hauer stars as an expose' talk show journalist planning for annual college reunion with Berkeley alumni at his estate. Enter CIA agent John Hurt whom confronts Hauer with evidence that his three best friends, Craig T Nelson, Dennis Hopper, and Chris Sarandon are KGB agents planning to kill him.
Hauer is skeptical but after Hurt stages a kidnapping of Mrs. Hauer and son and blames it on the KGB, Hauer is compelled to allow Hurt to place elaborate surveillance video and armed guards at his weekend vacation. Hurt hopes through a series of mind games to expose the Hauer's "friends" as the traitors they are.
Hence the weekend vacation becomes a soap opera from hell with the four men each suspecting and accusing while their trophy spouses bicker.
Hurt's true motives are finally revealed on Hauer's TV show as an elaborate plot to destroy CIA director Burt Lancaster whom Hurt blames for his wife's death.
None of this is interesting and the good acting cannot save the fact the 25% of the film is voyeuristic characters watching spouses make love in surprisingly graphic sex scenes. No it's not sexy if it was at least that would be something.
The music score is also horrible as it sounds like bad lounge music. An odd score for a thriller.
The director even acknowledged embarrassment in the final product putting the blame on the studio's last minute edits. I put the blame on the novel's author Robert Ludlum. Whoever is to blame for making `The Osterman Weekend' you have only yourself to blame if you see it. You have been forewarned. It has no redeeming value.
Rating: - An underrated masterpiece
The Osterman Weekend is usually dismissed as a failed effort of Peckinpah's, as his last, drug-addled attempt to reclaim his fame. Many critics wave it off as uneven or even denounce it as incomprehensible. I take issue with such critics, and will here argue that not only is The Osterman Weekend a great film, but that it is in fact one of Peckinpah's greatest achievements as a filmmaker. In my book it ranks among The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs. Sam Peckinpah was dying by the time he made Osterman Weekend. He was drug-damaged, delusional, and yes, stark raving mad. What is sometimes overlooked is that his lunacy is in part what made him such a great director. He knew how to get under actors' skins, eliciting performances from them that were genuine psychological reactions to Peckinpah's bizarre on-set mind games. In Straw Dogs, during the infamous rape scene, Peckinpah was on the floor berating and insulting the actor who played the rapist. Throughout the whole scene the director tore the actor down, making him more and more angry and uncomfortable. Is this pointless torture? No, it shows in the scene. Peckinpah used very similar tricks throughout the filming of Osterman Weekend (like telling continuously Nelson his moustache was wrong, or pulling the water plug during a hot tub scene so the actress would have trouble concealing her breasts), and much to the same effect too. It shows.
The performances throughout this film are brilliant. Osterman Weekend is a unique film, to say the least. It builds scenes of extreme tension; one truly cannot call oneself an action connoisseur until one has seen Peckinpah's action scenes. The way they build, and are edited to layer component within component, is like a beautiful ballet of violence. John Woo, who is often praised for his action scenes, is simply mimicking Peckinpah. Many directors, in fact, have tried to mimic Peckinpah's awesome style. Most don't have the talent to even come close. His use of slow motion is absolutely unparalleled in cinema, and many directors seem to miss that Peckinpah's slow motion scenes were actually choreographed to be seen in slow motion, not simply filmed and then slowed down. Never before or since have I ever seen editing so intricate as in "Bloody Sam's" action scenes. The climaxes of Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, and Osterman Weekend would be on any respectful list of best action scenes of all time. The car chase in Osterman Weekend is more pulse pounding, visceral, and riveting than anything in the Matt Damon Bourne movies, Ronin, or any ... Read More
Rating: - Sam Peckinpah's last film gets the royal two disc Anchor Bay treatment!!!
Okey,this is far from Sam Peckinpah's greatest film (The Wild Bunch,Straw Dogs and "Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid" are my personal faves!),but still "The Osterman Weekend" is a fine work that's much better than most of the films churned out these days!!! The folks at Anchor Bay gave this film the royal two DVD treatment that includes the Feauture w/audio commentary on DVD one and DVD two has the extra goodies that are definately worth watching!!! So all in all,I'm still giving it five stars!!! A+
Rating: - Peckinpaw
I have to admit that what I liked about this movie was the fight scene in the kitchen. I am really into martial arts and I think that one reason is seeing Sam Peckinpaw's work back in the 1970s and 1980s, while I was growing up. He was the master of the slow-motion action shot, and we now see it in the films of John Woo and other directors. This is I think a pretty mediocre film, directed by one of the great directors, and like I said, that one scene really stuck in my mind over the years. It is a watchable film overall.
Rating: - Our Friendship is (Probably) OVER!
This one works only about half way. So 2.5 stars really. But I round it up to a 3.
There are signs of Pechinpah's filmaking throughout, but the story gets in the way, and that counts for a lot.
As to why these guys are friends, why they meet continually, why some of them are dealing with the KGB, why Burt Lancaster's character sets John Hurt up, why John Hurt follows through with the plan when he knows the truth, etc., etc., remain unanswered. This is the part of the story that doesn't work.
The acting is alright. Rutger Hauer is fine. Steely and equipped with essential hair. Pre-"Coach" Craig T. Nelson stands out, but not only for his stellar moustache and command of martial arts, but for his substantive presence as the eponymous friend. The other friends Dennis Hopper and Chris Sarandon must have had creative conflicts, or more established characters in the novel, because their parts end too neatly, Hopper never gets to shift beyond third, and Sarandon (one could claim here he IS Mark Ruffalo's father) is all venom and vitriol. John Hurt is too good an actor to be bad, and represents an English FBI agent (whose wife's brutal murder opens the movie) bent on torture well. His penchant for being cast as a talking-head-on-a-screen, like he did recently in V for Vendetta also works here. Perhaps it is his ability for seething unabashed cruelty. Burt Lancaster is fine as well, neither here nor there as the shadowy figure of power.
The film does have well paced and suspenseful action sequences, standard Peckinpah slow-motion violence, and an ultimately oppressive use of technology as communicator and omniscient weapon of mass destruction.
Not bad, a decent rental, certainly a dated technological piece, with illuminative hair and style for an actioner....
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