The Player (1992/Robert Altman/New Line/Warner Blu-ray)

 

Picture: B-     Sound: C+     Extras: B-     Film: B-

 

 

Though he kept directing films, it was 12 years since the late, great Robert Altman had made a film for a major studio, the atypically commercial Popeye.  That 1980 music al version of the all-time classic cartoon character with Robin Williams (before he was a movie star) was co-produced by Paramount and Disney, then only did so much business.  It has its following now, but M*A*S*H (1970) remained Altman’s one blockbuster and that was not the kind of mature hit Hollywood was backing anymore.

 

The Hollywood that abandoned such great filmmaking is the cold, isolating, nihilistic one he returns to literally and narratively in his 1992 ‘comeback’ film The Player.  In reality, he never left filmmaking, making seven feature films independently and after selling the studio he originally created: Lion’s Gate.  That company was not a big player when New Line released this film, but it was a big deal when he took on the new Hollywood in all of its new found ugliness after the infantilizing 1980s and the bubble everyone was now in by the business becoming too viciously and self-destructively about just business.

 

As talk goes on about nothingness, getting rid of writers, doing useless sequels and ruining the industry while conning everyone that it is indestructible, Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) is a fast-talking executive trying to stay at a studio that wants to get meaner and greener when he suddenly starts to get mysterious death threats from what turns out to be a rejected writer.  As this plays out, we get a look (with dozens of real actors playing themselves) a Hollywood that is about just money and not really making good films anymore.  You could argue that the script by Michael Tolkin (The Rapture) is about dual thrillers: a potential movie executive murder and murder of an entire industry.

 

The problem is with all the clever things that go on within the film, even some ironic distance, Altman and Tolkin cannot come up with additional ironic distance that separates this Hollywood (which never seems real for its time as the cameos, down to Cher wearing red when she never wears red, is somehow purposely surreal) from the Hollywood he wishes was, believes in, was or still could be is not represented and if only offering this version was supposed to subconsciously flush-out a better one, that is never clear in this film.

 

The result is a sense of name-dropping that anyone with much less talent could do (like so many do today) and it undermines an otherwise fine film that was reason to celebrate enough at a time when even those in Hollywood were sick of mall movies and other sillinesses.  It could also be said the title refers to the director, back to take on the system he rightly criticized throughout his career.   Even with its flaws, it has turned out to be too prophetic for its own good (and all before digital effects, franchise-mania and gimmicks became too much the norm) and a reminder that more than a few people saw the worst coming.

 

 

The 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image is a little softer than it should be and not representative of the 35mm cinematography Director of Photography Jean Lépine, which had a good look to it that offered a slight darkness, muted sense of color (sometimes battling brighter colors) and clever shooting angles he and Altman used to expound their points with.  They previous worked on Vincent & Theo (1990) and the great TV project Tanner ’88 (1988), finishing their collaborations with the underrated Prêt-A-Porter (1994).  Any future expanded edition deserves a new transfer.  The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) lossless 5.1 mix is the first time I can think of where a major film mixed in the always-distorted, cheap, analog Ultra Stereo noise reduction system received such an upgrade and it shows the kind of flaws all Ultra Stereo mixes had, which are even worse and more compressed than the oldest Dolby System films.  The result is trying and problematic.  Altman never used the system again.

 

Extras include the original theatrical trailer, additional scenes, One On One with Robert Altman featurette and feature length audio commentary track by Altman and Tolkin.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo