This was directed by Peter Yates -- responsible for a number of true originals, such as "Bullitt" -- and all this time I thought Brian De Palma owned the franchise on imitations of Alfred Hitchcock.
I can't understand how Yates could simply thrown up his hands and given up. Everything about this story of Kelly McGillis and FBI agent Jeff Daniels uncovering a scheme to smuggle post-war Nazis into the US, disguised as dead Jews. Mandy Potinkin is the chief heavy but the sullen Nazis and their agents are all around, hulking in doorways, dressed in dark suits, following the innocent McGillis around the streets of New York, destroying furniture, smoking in public, and committing other unforgivable sins.
Hitchcock was fond of point-of-view shot and used them judiciously. They're notable here as well. McGillis slowly climbs the wooden stairway of a dangerous old house, just like Lila in "Psycho." She's also threatened while nude in the bathtub, just like Marion in "Psycho." And her name is Miss Crane, just like Janet Leigh's. A scene takes place aboard the Chicago Express, which bore Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint west. The couple tries to disappear in a theater crowd while being hunted by the bad guys. (Cf., "Saboteur", "Torn Curtain.") The final chase takes place through a kind of national monument -- not Mount Rushmore or the British Museum but rather Grand Central Station, whose Oyster Bar I highly recommend. Potinkin winds up hanging hundreds of feet above the floor of the station, holding on to a bank of chicken wire that slowly parts under his weight. He suffers the same fate as the villain whose jacket sleeve parts, strand by strand, until he falls from the Statue of Liberty in "Saboteur."
The plot I described briefly above is conjectural because it's never made entirely clear what's going on. Nobody sits down and explains carefully to McGillis exactly what the MacGuffin actually is.
Peter Yates seems to have surrendered his own unique style and given us a pale imitation of De Palma's paler imitations.
I can't understand how Yates could simply thrown up his hands and given up. Everything about this story of Kelly McGillis and FBI agent Jeff Daniels uncovering a scheme to smuggle post-war Nazis into the US, disguised as dead Jews. Mandy Potinkin is the chief heavy but the sullen Nazis and their agents are all around, hulking in doorways, dressed in dark suits, following the innocent McGillis around the streets of New York, destroying furniture, smoking in public, and committing other unforgivable sins.
Hitchcock was fond of point-of-view shot and used them judiciously. They're notable here as well. McGillis slowly climbs the wooden stairway of a dangerous old house, just like Lila in "Psycho." She's also threatened while nude in the bathtub, just like Marion in "Psycho." And her name is Miss Crane, just like Janet Leigh's. A scene takes place aboard the Chicago Express, which bore Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint west. The couple tries to disappear in a theater crowd while being hunted by the bad guys. (Cf., "Saboteur", "Torn Curtain.") The final chase takes place through a kind of national monument -- not Mount Rushmore or the British Museum but rather Grand Central Station, whose Oyster Bar I highly recommend. Potinkin winds up hanging hundreds of feet above the floor of the station, holding on to a bank of chicken wire that slowly parts under his weight. He suffers the same fate as the villain whose jacket sleeve parts, strand by strand, until he falls from the Statue of Liberty in "Saboteur."
The plot I described briefly above is conjectural because it's never made entirely clear what's going on. Nobody sits down and explains carefully to McGillis exactly what the MacGuffin actually is.
Peter Yates seems to have surrendered his own unique style and given us a pale imitation of De Palma's paler imitations.