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Review: 'Mad City' surrenders to media madness
November 18, 1997
Web posted at: 6:55 p.m. EST (2355 GMT)From Reviewer Paul Tatara
(CNN) -- "Mad City," a hostage drama starring Dustin Hoffman and John Travolta, is one of those movies that must seem terribly profound if you've never bothered to give its subject matter more than two seconds' thought. But if you've actually taken the time to consider that the national news media can sometimes make a major story out of next to nothing, you'll only be able to marvel at how manipulative the movie itself is. "Contrived" doesn't do it justice.
Hoffman, finally giving another thought-out performance after a lengthy dry spell, plays Max, a national TV reporter who's been shuffled out to the sticks for belittling a powerful network anchor (Alan Alda) during a live broadcast. Max is covering a nothing story about budget cuts at a local museum when Sam, a recently fired guard (Travolta, doing his real-stupid-guy routine, but doing it well), waltzes in and starts waving a shotgun around. He randomly shoots the weapon in order to get the attention of his snooty former-superior (Blythe Danner), but, wouldn't you know it, the blast winds up landing in the belly of another guard.
Panicked and not knowing what else to do, Sam locks the museum doors. Luckily, there's an entire elementary school class in the building, so he's got a lot of easy-to-control hostages. Also luckily, Hoffman is in the can when all of this starts happening, and is wearing a microphone so he's able to communicate with an intern who's sitting out in the news van. Also also luckily, Travolta is dumb as an ox. You can tell he's stupid because he has sideburns.
Hoffman, sensing a chance to return to network prominence, decides to orchestrate everything and make it into a big-time story. He starts coaching Travolta in what to say and how to act when the police and piles of TV cameras show up in front of the museum. Then Alan Alda flies in to try to take over the hot story, not because it's really all that interesting (Travolta repeatedly makes it clear that he has no intention of harming anyone) but because he wants to steal all the heat from his arch nemesis, Dustin Hoffman.
It's not just Travolta; the whole plot has sideburns.
I find it tremendously difficult to believe that a character as seemingly crafty as Hoffman's reporter would think that he could get away with these shenanigans. (Hunter S. Thompson is the only reporter I could think of who would try something this nuts, but Hunter S. Thompson is hardly a network correspondent. I'd sure as hell watch if he was, though!) If director Constantin Costa-Gavras wants to make a point about the manipulative media, great, but reporters emphasizing unimportant, heart-tugging elements of the breaking story (which is also covered in "Mad City") is the way that stuff usually happens.
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Any reporter who would sit there and actually tell the gunman what to say, how to say it, and when to release a hostage for maximum TV impact would simply wind up never working again when everything was over. You've only got 20 kids and a school teacher standing there watching the whole thing play itself out. It wouldn't be terribly difficult to ask them what went on in that museum while everyone stood outside with their cameras and guns drawn. We're supposed to be outraged as the national media jumps into gear and everything starts snowballing out of control, but the original snowball is hardly packed tight enough to pick up the extra flakes. It would have to fall apart eventually.
To say that Sidney Lumet did this better with "Dog Day Afternoon" is like saying Dylan had a little more on the ball than Barry McGuire. The thing that makes "Dog Day Afternoon" so memorable (if you forced me to name my 10 favorite films, it would be on the list) is that the characters grow in completely unexpected ways. By the end of the movie, Pacino is not at all who you thought he was when he first entered the bank and accidentally wound up with a bunch of hostages.
You learn a little more about Travolta's character as the "Mad City" story progresses, and Hoffman's reporter changes a bit, but the changes are not beyond the realm of your immediately available imagination. There's one or two obvious dramatic choices, and the choices are made. The characters themselves seem like modern archetypes rather than breathing human beings, and that doesn't help matters when you're dealing in hostages.
When Travolta looks over the children at one point and decides to release "the one with the glasses," you're with him all the way, but for all the wrong reasons. Who is this little kid? Does anybody actually care?
What the heck, let her go. You've still got 19 more.
"Mad City" is surprisingly tame when you consider the story. There's some bad language, and a little bit of violence. In one disturbing sequence, Travolta gleefully feeds the children fattening snack foods! PG-13. 114 minutes.
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