On F List of Movie Reviews
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The Fury (1978)
Rate:
4
Viewed:
7/17
7/17:
The Fury is basically Carrie meets
Scanners.
Let's be fair: it did come three years before Scanners, but think of the
former as a rough draft and the latter as a masterpiece. The plot meanders a lot, and the motives are never made
clear. Many times, the linked threads don't flow well together. More often gratuitous than necessary are the
violent scenes. Character development is rarely attempted. Serving as automatons to advance the action, people
come and go without much thought.
Obviously the star of the show, Kirk Douglas has good moments but disappears for long stretches of time. He was
61 years old and looked impressive for his age. Sometimes, I'm fooled thinking that it's his son Michael,
and I still can't get over how uncanny their resemblance is.
John Cassavetes turns in a one-note performance. I'm surprised at him for accepting something rubbish, being
better than this shit. Was John Cassavetes behind his payments for a vacation home he wanted built in Greece or
something? The ever-wooden Amy Irving can't go beyond her exquisite looks to be a multi-dimensional character.
Simply put, her acting abilities are hopeless. That's why she pulled the ejection handle by marrying Steven
Spielberg before being granted large sums of money and assets in a divorce settlement.
A shameless Hitchcock rip-off artist, Brian De Palma didn't let me down in the last ten minutes when he finally
found a way to steal the cliffhanger scene from To Catch a Thief. Worse
than that, Kirk Douglas' character decides to throw himself over the roof for a poor reason. Hearing the cops'
names when Spartacus held them as hostages, aren't they taken from Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese?
By the way, one of the cops may be familiar to you, and it's the newcomer Dennis Franz of NYPD Blue fame
albeit without his trademark mustache. Remember the scene when the schoolgirls were sitting on a table in the
cafeteria? The blonde girl on the right of the center is Darryl Hannah making her screen debut, too.
All in all, skip The Fury for Scanners.