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The titular vessel is an anchored stage full of unsteady surfaces, just the metaphysical canvas for Jerzy Skolimowski to paint a vision of occupation and resistance. The Coast Guard commander (Klaus Maria Brandauer) is haunted by wartime death, his alienated son (Michal Skolimowski) comes aboard for reluctant moral lessons. Underworld fugitives take over, a seasick greaser (Arliss Howard) and a sweet-toothed hothead (William Forsythe) and their dandified leader (Robert Duvall). A perilous nexus, a private game. "I will cheerfully have your men shot one by one until you understand the beauty of my logic." Floating allegories and flowing menace from the writer of Knife in the Water, a curious anagram of Key Largo and Conrad and The Desperate Hours. In the blanched void of the misty ocean, a battle of wills between stolid order and genial chaos, "as intimate as lovers." (You can't have two wild cards in poker, the henchmen observe from the sidelines.) The crew's revolt is discouraged by the skipper, still the cook's raven will be avenged. The German North Sea for the Virginia coast, the Eighties for the Fifties, rusting vistas and an electronic score. "An expensive freedom," a tension of bullets and ice cream. Duvall goes to town in one of his most inspired creations—Panama-hatted, bow-tied, flannel-mouthed, Tennessee Williams redivivus, a genius in his own mind. (Brandauer plays impassive straight man to this malevolent flake, who suddenly dances with accomplices and lisps out "What a Difference a Day Makes" on the deck.) "In a world of vagaries and inconstancy, captain, it amuses me to set a course and stick to it." The finale reflects Preminger's Rosebud. With Badja Djola, Robert Costanzo, Tom Bower, and Tim Phillips.
--- Fernando F. Croce |