The Osterman Weekend Reviews

Director Sam Peckinpah's final film is certainly not among his best, but it is interesting nonetheless. Based loosely on an espionage thriller by Robert Ludlum, the film stars Hauer as influential television talk-show host John Tanner, who is drafted by CIA agent Fassett (Hurt) to help expose his college buddies (Sarandon, Hopper, and Nelson) as Russian spies. The moment of truth will occur at an annual get-together dubbed the "Osterman Weekend" when Tanner's friend Bernard Osterman (Nelson) began the tradition. This year, the outing is at Tanner's house, and agent Fassett has outfitted the grounds with state-of-the-art video surveillance equipment so that he can monitor the ultra-paranoid weekend and take appropriate (i.e., violent) action. As it turns out, however, nothing is what it at first seemed. Fassett is merely using Tanner and his friends as part of a wild revenge scheme against his employer, the CIA. Although a single viewing of this film is bound to leave one dissatisfied, return viewings begin to reveal the complex visual puzzle Peckinpah presents. As he did in THE KILLER ELITE, Peckinpah warps genre expectations and turns what is supposed to be an espionage thriller into a savage satire on the "Video Age." As with nearly all his films, the producers refused Peckinpah final cut and removed several scenes the director thought essential to character and theme development.