Timothy Hutton

  • The Killing Room (2009)

    The Killing Room (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, March 2021) It’s amazing how much a little perspective can put things in their place. Twelve years later, we’re barely starting to process the awfulness of the Bush administration and how America had to overcome the post-traumatic stress disorder of 9/11 (and then Afghanistan, and then Irak). Looking back at the socially conscious entertainment from this period at a slight distance can be revelatory — the paranoia against the government at the time was at an all-time high, and since then, the latest Republican president has done much to destroy any notion of an all-powerful, all-capable administration capable of doing anything more complex than not tripping over itself. This brings us to The Killing Room insofar as this is a psychological thriller that could only have been born in the post-Bush era. It starts with mystery, as strangers are assembled in a room and then quickly faced with a life-and-death situation as a doctor explains to them the parameters of the test they’re about to undergo… and then shoots one of them in the head. The rest is the kind of locked-room paranoid thriller that we’ve seen everywhere from Cube, Exam, The Belko Experiment and other examples of killer-psychological test horror movies. It’s mildly intriguing up until the time when it becomes ludicrous — specifically, by the time the film builds a preposterous narrative saying that these tests are being conducted en masse to find dedicated killers for the government. There are so many wrong things in that statement that it’s hard to know where to begin (and the film does itself no favours by referencing the MK-ULTRA program) — this is a clear case where the film should have avoided clearing up the mystery justifying what it really wanted to do: crank up a low-budget thriller exorcising that era’s paranoia. Narrative nonsense aside, the film is not badly executed: thanks to director Jonathan Liebesman (who did far higher-budget films afterwards) and a cast that somehow brings together players as familiar as Chloé Sevigny, Timothy Hutton, Clea DuVall and Peter Stormare, the film assumes its clinical griminess and delivers what it intends. A shame about the escalating stupidity of the justification, but so it goes. Nowadays, of course, the film is more interesting as a reflection of where America was at psychologically at the end of Bush’s second mandate — not in great shape, and terrified of what an ultra-competent government could do to them.

  • The Falcon and the Snowman (1985)

    The Falcon and the Snowman (1985)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2021) You can always watch The Falcon and the Snowman for being one of Sean Penn’s early performances, but I found something more interesting in director John Schlesinger’s depiction of a specific time and place—the mid-1970s Southern California defence tech industry, and how the political disillusionment of the time could drive otherwise normal young Americans to propose information to the Soviets thanks to some ill-defined ideal of détente. Or at least that’s what one of the two characters believes, because the dramatic linchpin of the movie is the duelling relationship between the two leads—an idealist competent (played by Timothy Hutton), and a far less reliable friend (Penn) who acts as the go-between with the Soviets. Taking up in spycraft and the complex relationship between source and case officer, except with the inverted perspective from what we usually see, The Falcon and the Snowman remains a mildly effective thriller in which we do root for the spies to be caught red-handed (and one of them more than the other). Perhaps delighting in inversion from spy movie clichés, it’s specifically about spies who end up vastly outclassed by the demands of the lifestyle, and soon seek to get out of it once it doesn’t live up to their romantic notions of it. It does all amount to an effective period piece, down-to-earth and somewhat merciless in puncturing the clichés of the genre while still being effective in its procedural details. No wonder it’s based on a true story.

  • Ordinary People (1980)

    Ordinary People (1980)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Kanopy Streaming, September 2019) I approached Ordinary People reluctantly for several reasons: Historically, I suppose I still have a grudge about it winning the Best Picture Oscar over Raging Bull. But then there’s the subject matter, taking a long look at a typical American family coming unglued after the death of the eldest son—grieving over a child’s death is high on my list of unbearable topics at the moment, and that’s only adding to the dreadful prospect of a two-hour-plus mimetic drama (adapted from a mainstream novel) that succeeded in its Oscar-baiting ambitions. But even with this baggage, I have to admit that Ordinary People worked better than I expected—I still don’t love it, but I did develop a grudging respect for it throughout its lengthy duration. It does a few things far better than expected: for one thing, it picks up months after the funeral of the family’s eldest son, sparing us many of the expected clichés about the immediate days after the death. For another, Ordinary People features one of the best and most likable cinematic portraits I can recall of the therapy process, featuring a clever but empathetic psychotherapist (Judd Hirsch, in a career-best role) helping the teenage protagonist work his way through the grieving process. Timothy Hutton is the star of the film, but Donald Sutherland is a good supporting player as a father who gets to grow out of his wife’s influence, while Mary Tyler Moore is cast against type as a sociopathic wife who acts as the film’s villain. It’s interesting mixture of elements, and one that still feels unusually against the grain of such family dramas even forty years later. Robert Redford’s direction isn’t flashy (visually, the film is … fine), but it gets the message across with a great deal of restraint and subtlety. I still think that the film is too long, occasionally very predictable (yes, like we couldn’t see that suicide coming…), unevenly interesting and perhaps lacking a further handful of hard-hitting scenes, but I still found it quite a bit better than expected. Ordinary People does remain in the lower tier of Oscar-Winning Pictures, though—there’s a limit to how pleasantly surprised I can be in this case.