THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND (1983) ** Last ride for Sam Peckinpaugh, you know there's going to be a showdown somewhere in CIA land. All of that is secondary though, he's trying to say something that he feels can't be said directly. Not so much metaphorical as peering through the smoke and distractions, looking for the hands. We're taught that we have to read situations without complete information and reach conclusions, so here's mine (never having read a word of Robert Ludlum for obvious reasons): the seedy soft-porn soap opera nature of much of the framework of the film reflects a novelist lacking confidence attempting to maintain interest and probably undeserved literary standing, as the lack of intelligence and decision making ability of the major characters reflect their inability to transcend their creator. The genuine insights are either Peckinpaugh developing a theme of Ludlum (the CIA is too willing to believe that any Berkeley graduate is a communist; the secret service is a breeding lab for psychotic pathologies and pettiness transformed by space age weaponry), Peckinpaugh merely using Ludlum as a step prior to a leap into hyperrelevatory space (the CIA is happy enough to deny culpability that it knows exists so long as plausible denial is to any extent possible-no special insight there, but does so principally in support not of government interests but rather in order to further vendettas of those in power against those who have the ability to show them as the anti-democratic forces that they are), or Peckinpaugh making a valedictory gesture with something stuck in his craw (only your wife can save you when the government is out to get you, which will happen soon enough if you're outspoken in favor of democratic ideals and honesty in the USA; don't trust anything the government tells you about your friends). It's not a great film but it's a provocative one, it's not a soothing closing statement but Peckinpaugh didn't select or ignore the era of his demise.
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