Sport is not a fairy tale

Yesterday, after finishing his third round in the Australian Masters Golf tournament in the lead, Robert Allenby told how his mother was dying of cancer. An emotional Allenby said:

"Mum is the best mum in the world and I really want to win for her". He told how the family had decided last Monday "to take her off any more treatment''.

Allenby, at Number 29 in the world, was the highest ranked player in the tournament, was the favourite, and, as a local from Melbourne, the fairy tale was all set - his mother was in attendance following him around in a golf cart, the crowd was on his side, and in the second round he had made an amazing albatross. All that was left was for the script writers to do their work, and the tears of joy could flow.

Alas, sport is not written by playwrights who know what the audience wants to see. Greg Norman doesn't win the US Masters, Ron Clarke doesn't win a Gold Medal at the Olympics, Pat Rafter doesn't win Wimbledon, and Robert Allenby doesn't win the Australian Masters for his Mum.

He was doing ok - holding the lead or one behind - when he approached the Par 3 15th. In the first two rounds he had pared the hole, in the third round he had made a birdie. As he stood on the tee he knew he needed to make at least one birdie over the last 5 holes. Marcus Fraser had finished his round on 12 under, and Rod Pampling a hole ahead was on 11 under (equal with Allenby). Pars from here on wouldn't be enough. But the wind was picking up, and Allenby, an emotional, fire-tempered player even when things are going well, had struggled to get anything going all day. He had made solid approach shots, but just couldn't buy a putt.

And so with the wind picking up, he hits his 6 iron tee shot into the front, green-side bunker. He catches his second shot fat - the ball just makes it out of the bunker but dribbles into the adjacent sand trap. His tournament is over. He knows the best he can do now is bogey, which will put him 2 shots behind with too few birdie-friendly holes to play.

He leaves his third shot in the bunker. This is sport being utterly indifferent to romance. His fourth shot flies past the hole, and leaves him with about a 20m putt for double bogey.

At this point, it is not hard to envisage that beneath his trademark sunglasses the tears are beginning to well. It is over.

And then he makes the putt. The camera watches his face as the ball falls into the cup - his expression is a mixture of frustration and despair - only now, when it is too late, does he make a putt. Only now, when it won't matter if makes every putt from here to the 18th, does he find the cup. He takes off his glasses and wipes his eyes: frustration mixed with despair mixed with sport.

And yet, sport doesn't care about this pain. He still has three holes to play. He can't walk off as though in some nice, tragically written film and let the screen fade to black. No, he must play out the round. He has to spend the next 30 minutes walking the fairways knowing he won't win this one for his mum.

After hitting his tee shot at the 16th, he goes to his mum sitting in her golf cart and they hug - her tears obvious; his hidden, as ever, behind his sunglasses. His face attempts to keep the expression of the inscrutable, professional golfer, but it is obvious it is that of a heartbroken son who wanted to give his mum one last present to say thanks for everything.

But sport is not scripted; any fairytale victory requires the same amount of hard work and skill and luck and luck and skill and hard work that any victory requires. And that is as it should be. Allenby would not let another player win just because it would be a nice story, so neither would he expect others to gift him a victory. Professional golf, like all professional sport, is played for keeps - it is a person's livelihood. For many in the field, a win in this tournament would be their career highlight; for almost all, it is a dream that will never be realised.

Allenby has won the tournament twice; it is not a tragedy he didn't win this week. It is a tragedy his mother is dying of cancer - and Allenby who is a patron for Challenge Cancer Support Network would know that tragedy on the sporting field is nothing to tragedy in life; but that wouldn't make the loss any easier to bear.

That Allenby failed to realise his perfect ending does not diminish sport - in fact it highlights why we who love sport and who hold it so dear will continue to love it, continue to watch it, and continue to play it.

Sport is not scripted, and thus when the fantastic occurs we know it is not through CGI, or because there were 22 takes before the perfect moment occurred. Sport is the ultimate reality show - done without editing, done without faked challenges. It is non-fiction, and yet incredibly at times it seemingly merges with fiction, and dreams do come true.

It's why we keep coming back to it. Those who love sport also know that while maybe the story we want to come true doesn't always do so, with every victory there is a tale, and with every tournament, or match, or game, another waits to be told.

Oscar is always wrong (except when it's right) Part II

And now (by request) for the second installment of me rectifying the mistakes of the Academy Awards.

2002

Best Picture: Chicago
Nominees: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Gangs of New York, The Hours, The Pianist
Should have won: The Pianist

Here's a trivia question for you: How many films have won the Oscar for Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Actor, and have not also won Best Picture?

One - The Pianist.

In a poor year for film, The Pianist did everything that mattered better than any other film, and yet the Academy in its wisdom decided to give the Best Picture to a musical that isn't even a great musical. Chicago was always more of a Golden Globes winner than an Oscar worthy one. I mean geez, Richard Geer as the lead?? But with the weight of the Mirimax publicity machine behind it, it won 6 Oscars.

Time however, has not been kind to Chicago. On imdb its score is only 7.3/10, which doesn't even put it in the Top 50 all-time musicals on that site. In 2006, Premiere magazine listed it in its Top 10 Worst Best Pictures, and it also made the London newspaper, The Independent's, list of Top 10 Worst Oscar Winners.

The Pianist, on the other hand, is considered one of the best ever films done by its director (Roman Polanski), and has probably rendered pointless any future attempts to do a film about the Holocaust.

Its story follows the true life tale of Polish-Jewish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, who, through luck, help and perseverance, makes it through WWII without ending up in a concentration camp, but who nonetheless is witness to the most obscene horrors imaginable.

Much was made at the time of Polanski's own experiences during WWII, and perhaps that enabled him to make the perfect non-documentary Holocaust film.

As with all such films, it's hard going - not one you pick for a Friday night when you want to kick back; but it is just so brilliantly done. Adrien Brody as Szpilman is amazing, (and unfortunately he hasn't gone on to do anything anywhere close to the quality of this), but the real star is Polanski. His camera doesn't flinch, even when we wish it would.

The comparison between this and Schindler's List will no doubt always be made, but for mine this is the better film. Spielberg just couldn't hold back his sentimentality, and to be honest, I think shooting the film in black and white is a crock - it makes you think, oh well it happened way back then, wouldn't happen now - Polanksi by contrast shoots it in colour and there's no ignoring the blood; there's no pretending this is something from the olden days.

I have to admit it's been a fair while since I saw The Pianist, whereas I watch Schindler's List (or at least the first 2/3rds) quite often. The Pianist is just too hard; too brutal. There is little to save you - you can't think, oh well the war brought the best out of Schindler, and he saved all these Jews, how wonderful. In The Pianist there are only meagre scraps of hope to hold on to, and they do not last - even the German officer who in the end protects Szpilmann ends up dying in a Soviet gulag after the war.

It's horrible to watch, but by God it's a great piece of film making, and it would have been a great selection as Best Picture.

Below is the scene when Szpilmann is discovered by the German officer:


One caveat to this selection is that I have not seen City of God, which many critics insist was the best film that year. Should I see it, I may come back and update this.
***
Best Actress: Nicole Kidman (The Hours)
Should have won: Anyone else.

My God what a terrible selection; but then the Best Actress category has put up a stack of shockers over the past decade - Julia Roberts, Gwyneth Paltrow, Halle Berry - but geez, Kidman has to be one of the worst actresses to ever win this award. And even worse was that in this film the were three "lead" performances by women - Kidman, Julianne Moore, and Meryl Streep - and Kidman's performance was a far distant third in quality. Moore was amazing (easily the only thing worth seeing in the turgid film), but she was only nominated for Best Supporting Actress - lost to Catherine Zeta-Jone for Chicago (yeah it was a year for crap choices). And as Moore missed out to Kidman in the Best Actress category for her performance in Far From Heaven, I'll give it to her, even though I haven't seen that film!

It's hard to believe that Cate Blanchette, Kate Winslet, Naomi Watts, Annette Bening, Kate Winslet, Judi Dench, Joan Allen, Julianne Moore and Kate Winslet don't have a Best Actress Award, but Kidman does (and Hilary Swank has 2!).

The best thing you can say about Kidman's performance in the role is that at least it was done when her forehead still moved.

There's an "I" in Minister

Back at the end of October, I wrote about the German doctor in Victoria who was being denied premant residency because his 11 year old son has Down Syndrome.

I said at the time:
I am sure this decision will be overturned – either on appeal or by the Minister. It’s such an obviously wrong decision.

And thankfully it has been. Not on appeal - that was rejected, but by the Minister, who in a fit of very speedy work, overturned the appeal in less than a day. Good work Chris Evans.

When you listen to the interview with Dr Moeller you can hear the stress in his voice, and the relief that it is over. So, yes it's great that the right decision was made, but here's hoping Minister Evans gets the Department doing a review of the process, so that he doesn't always have to step in and make the common sense decision.

Obviously there need to be rules to guide officials - but one would hope common sense is given a go as well.

On the QT: "Faux outrage Day"

Before Question Time today, Kevin Rudd made a Ministerial Statement on the Global Financial Crisis. He spoke for 22 minutes, but all that really mattered was the 30 odd seconds it took him to say the following:

"If Australian economic growth slows further because of a further deepening of the global crisis then it follows that Australian Government revenues will reduce further. Under those circumstances it would be responsible to draw further from the surplus and if necessary to use a temporary deficit to begin investing in our future infrastructure needs, including hospitals, schools, TAFEs, universities, ports, roads, urban rail and high speed broadband. Such action would support growth would support families and jobs and would be undertaken in the national interest."

The key phrase was "temporary deficit". When he uttered that line, the Opposition howled as though Rudd had said he intends to legislate against small puppies and kittens. It was actually a fake howl, because, as Malcolm Turnbull pointed out in his reply, the Government had given the opposition a copy of the speech 45 minutes before hand, so they knew it was coming.

Now I have to say the Government has handled the whole "deficit" prospect rather poorly. It's been obvious for a while that there is a strong likelihood that next year the budget may go into deficit. But instead of admitting as much, the Government has been dancing around saying everything except the word "deficit". It enabled journalists to start talking like it meant something, and using dopey phrases like "the D word". It also allowed Turnbull to go around laying the foundations that running a deficit is a bad thing, and proof of economic irresponsibility.

It is of course no such thing.

I don't give a damn whether the budget is in deficit or not, so long as being in deficit means Australia avoids going into a recession, and so long as being in deficit is not creating high inflation.
Now 10 months ago, running a deficit would have fuelled massive inflation. In fact, if in May Swan had put down a deficit budget he would have been the dumbest economic hick of all time.

When growth is strong, the Government doesn't need to step in and help increase demand. What it should do is spend the money on non-growth areas such as hospitals, education, roads etc and, most importantly (in an economic sense), long term infrastructure. But when demand disappears, the Government needs to step into the breech. Provided not all of this is just throwing money away (I don't think we need anymore increases in first home buyer grants...), there is nothing wrong with a deficit. Nothing. Zip. Zilch, Nada. (Heck even the 'great' Peter Costello ran a deficit in 2001-02 (he just didn't tell anyone about it until afterwards).

Saying we must stay in surplus is like telling someone they have to keep living in a house with a hole in their roof rather than extend their mortgage and repair the hole. If keeping a surplus means a recession and high unemployment, ask yourself if you still want it.

But don't tell the Liberal Party this; for every question today was focused on how the PM "has signalled he is driving the Australian budget into deficit". Oh geez! Run for the hills Ma Baker, the deficit's coming!!!

Joe Hockey, for one declared that today was "Deficit Day", which perhaps did not come out sounding as catchy a phrase as it sounded when he was practising it in his office beforehand... His confected indignation perhaps was due to the fact that Turnbull's wonderful tactic against the Government was now out of date. The deficit possibility had been acknowledged, now the debate was down to whether or not that was good or bad. And the Liberals are locked in to saying it's bad.

The big problem for the Libs is that virtually no one outside of the Liberal Party room thinks going into a deficit is bad. Let's take a vox pop of financial people around the traps:

Solomon Lew said on Tuesday "massive" government spending programs were needed to prevent a jump in unemployment. "The government will not survive if it doesn't go into deficit," Mr Lew told journalists. "There is no doubt they will not be able to manage the economy without going into deficit ... the government is kidding themselves if they let this go too long," he said.

Access Economics' Chris Richardson observes that it's not economists who draw the line between surpluses and deficits — "it's politicians". Richardson believes this is "a taboo we've got to break fast. The Government shouldn't be afraid of a deficit — we need one."

Ross Gittens: All economists believe that whether deficits or surpluses are good or bad depends on whether they're appropriate to the economy's circumstances at the time.
It's appropriate (and desirable) for budgets to fall into deficit when the economy is entering or leaving recession (or a serious downturn), whereas it's appropriate and desirable for the budget to move into surplus when the economy recovers from recession in the expansion phase of the business cycle.

Luckily for Rudd, despite having been too wimpy on suggesting the deficit might happen, he has been saved by Turnbull's need to always go over the top. His desire to make the deficit the big issue, rather than employment or growth means now he has to argue that the Government should stay in surplus. It gives Rudd the chance to say Turnbull is for caring about dumb economic numbers, and against real numbers - growth and employment.

Turnbull says that he won't give the Government "a leave pass to go into deficit", and that a deficit would be a sign of "lazy economic management".

Well given he thinks it fair enough to say former ALP governments are addicted to deficits, I say let's judge Rudd's economic management against that of the brilliant Howard and Costello. That should be fair - though probably a bit of a hard ask for such lightweights as Rudd and Swan. But oh well, let's ask Chris Richardson what he thinks of Howard's and Costello's budgets:

"We pissed the good years up against the wall in the usual ill-disciplined blowout of tax cuts and big spending during the boom.''

Ouch, ok, what about their economic policies:

With the days in which China was handing the federal government enough money to pay for any crappy piece of policy now receding fast..."

Hmmm. "pissing up against the wall"... "crappy piece of policy"... Maybe Turnbull would do best to forget referring to the past, he doesn't want to make it too easy for Rudd and Swan.

Newspoll: ALP 55- LNP 45

Today I dopely forgot to tape Question Time, so no 'On the QT' today.

Today another Newspoll came out, and as it was on the 12 month anniversary of last year's election, it is a good one for seeing how the Rudd Government is going.

The result? It's as popular now, if not more so, than it was when it won the election last year. Then the Two Party Preferred result was ALP 52.7% -LNP 47.3%, now it's 55-45. Is this a blip? Nope let's look at the ALP's two party preferred result this year:
58, 57, 63, 59, 59, 61, 57, 57, 57, 59, 55, 55, 57, 57, 56, 56, 55, 55, 54, 55, 55. (average of 57%).
Not much movement there (well apart from the unreal 63% - which no one believed).

How about wonder man, Malcolm Turnbull? How is he tracking? Well, when he came on board the ALP's 2PP was 56. It's now 55. I don't think we can say that is a significant inroad.

What about on the preferred PM stakes? I had a lot of friends who this year were saying "wait till Turnbull becomes leader, then Rudd will be in for a fight".

Well the latest Preferred PM is Rudd 63%-Turnbull 21%. Ouch.

Let's look at Rudd's Preferred PM rating this year:
61, 68, 70, 73, 70, 73, 71, 72, 70, 66, 68, 64, 65, 66, 68, 65, 62, 54, 54, 59, 62, 63. (average of 65%)

So Turnbull took over when Rudd was beating Nelson 62-16 (22 uncommitted). Now it's 63-21 (16 uncommitted). Hardly a ringing endorsement of Turnbull.

Now of course this has nothing to do with policies, and you can say Turnbull is taking the fight up to Rudd in a way that Nelson never did etc etc. But to be honest, leaders live and die by their preferred PM rating. Nelson got killed in the media because he was so far behind Rudd; Turnbull by contrast is being given a pretty cruisey ride in my opinion - plenty of ,"he's the man for the job", "he is starting to make inroads", "Rudd is clearly worried" blather.

So praise be to George Megolagenis for saying it like it is:

The Coalition's primary vote has been below 40 per cent throughout the first year of the Rudd Government.

This is the worst sequence on record for the Coalition, which even in the dog days of Opposition in the 1980s consistently polled in the mid-40s.

Last weekend, Mr Rudd stretched his lead over Malcolm Turnbull as preferred prime minister by two points, from 40 per cent to 42 per cent. This gap is in the same ballpark as the advantage Mr Rudd enjoyed over the previous Opposition leader, Brendan Nelson.

Back in one of my first posts, I wrote of another 55-45 Newspoll:

Nelson is still in the teens when it comes to preferred PM, and I don’t think any poll will matter until the opposition leader is within 15% of Rudd on preferred PM. If Rudd stays above 50%, and Nelson or Turnbull or whoever can’t get above 35%, then the election will be a rout.

My opinion hasn't changed.

Regardless of commentary, the public seem content with Rudd and co at the moment. Sure this might change, but all beliefs that Turnbull would be Rudd's undoing have been shown to be incorrect. If the ALP's and Rudd's popularity goes down, it won't be because of Turnbull, but because of Rudd.

Toxic blogs and tastless jokes

Last Friday Crikey released the results of its poll to name Obama's new puppy. Among the choices were such ones as "Karl Barx", "A Poodle called Kevin", and my favourite "Joe the Dog". One of the choices however made me feel sick. It was "A mongrel called Trig". Trig, as you may recall is the name of Sarah Palin's youngest son, who has Down Syndrome.

Now making fun of any politician's kid is pretty low, (unless like Chelsea Clinton, they've decided to enter the political fray themselves), but to infer that a person with DS was a mongrel is about as low as you can get, and as the Dad of a girl with DS, I was pretty angry.

Now I am not a subscriber to Crikey, but I am a frequent commenter on PollBludger, which is a Crikey Blog. So in a fit of indignation, I posted on PollBludger that I would boycott the blog for a while as I didn't feel like contributing to Crikey's hit count. It was a pretty dumb response, somewhat akin to boycotting The Australian because I found one of the opinion columns offensive. But still, I thought I'd register my protest and so I also fired off an angry email to the editor, Jonathon Green.

I was quite comforted to see that a number of bloggers on PollBludger from all ends of the political spectrum (bearing in mind most are lefties) expressed agreement with my condemnation of the Trig "joke", and many stated they too were writing emails to Green.

Interestingly, Andrew Bolt had been alerted to the puppy contest and saw it as ripe for his ripping into the left (and Crikey in particular). Now I agree with his point on the very poor taste of the contest, but after reading some of the comments left on his blog, I wondered just how much he really cared about the issue.

Here was a comment made by one of his readers:

Trig Palin should have been aborted. Down Syndrome victims are not human. Human Beings must be perfect, not genetically challenged in any way.
If you don’t know that then, crikey, what have been reading lately?

Now I read that trying to find some humour in it, for surely the writer couldn't be serious (one would hope). But to be honest I couldn't even see what point the writer was trying to make - was it that crikey readers think that, or that crikey don't think that? It made no sense; so I decided to leave the following comment:

I will assume that [the writer] here is trying to make an attempt at being funny, or perhaps using “satire”, but I have to say it’s not funny, not good satire, and not worth getting past the moderator.
This made me feel more sick than Green’s disgusting joke.

My point was that here was a blog full of righteous indignation about someone inferring a person with DS is a mongrel, and yet the line "Down Syndrome victims are not human" got through without even a cursory "I trust you're joking" from Bolt (or his "moderator").

Then again caring about feelings is not a strong point over at Bolt's blog, nor is moderation. In his blog on the puppy contest, Bolt unaccountably linked it to Maxine McKew's comment after the election where she said:

Well I think Paul Keating got it right, you know, this election has wiped away the toxicity. People are smiling, a sort of sense of, we can get on and do things.
And I think we all want to get on and do things in a certain way, in a civil way, in a sensible way, and get rid of perhaps I think that brutishness that has characterised our politics probably since 2001.

So suddenly the poor joke was an example of the entire left being hypocritical, and the McKew herself is the prime hypocrite (and as he then linked, she is also absent from her post because some people interviewed by The Daily Telegraph had not come across her in her seat of Bennelong).

So then the issue of treatment of people with DS by "the left" (in truth one blog, which I'm sorry to say does not speak for all lefties - though perhaps I missed the memo on that, and everything written in Crikey does now represent the beliefs of everyone who didn't vote Liberal at the last election...) morphed into a commentary on Maxine McKew, which contained such unmoderated, uncommented, and (I guess in Bolt's view) non-toxic comments as:

Maxine the smirk McKew. The most hated woman in politics is certainly nowhere to be seen or found for some reason. Anyone know why ? Will the Liberal Party be fielding a candidate for Benelong at the next election ?

or:
McWho’s smile doesn’t look very convincing; appears the champagne socialista was uncomfortable being snapped amongst the great unwashed of the electorate whilst strolling down sh*t street ...

or
I do not know a lot about “Crikey” but I do know this. Leading up to the 2010 election myself and many others will do everything we can(including spending our own money) to remove Ms McKew from Bennelong and thats a promise written in blood.

Gee talk about spreading the love...

But, such comments are not surprising given Bolt, the day after his indignant blog about the puppy contest, wrote this:

Maxine McKew, who has never had a child herself, spooks me a bit:

"As Professor Frank Oberklaid and Professor Fiona Stanley keep saying, babies come out of the womb ready to learn.
Our job as policymakers is to ensure young children have access to a calm, stimulating environment run by professionals..."

McKew, parliamentary secretary for early childhood education and child care, goes on to praise a school for three-year-olds. Don’t these little tackers just want - and deserve - their mums? Let’s not treat them too soon as government clients.

Excuse me?? Why is it important that McKew has not had children? How is that not offensive? I didn't realise you needed to be a parent before you could be a Minister of anything to do with children. I guess next he'll be having a go at Nicola Roxen for not being a doctor (she doesn't have kids either); or Kate Ellis for not being a professional sportsperson (actually no kids there either... or knowledge of sports trivia - which apparently Bolt thinks is imperative as the Sports Minister).

But look McKew really is at fault, how dare she have a career, and not shack up with some bloke at a young age and have a few kids? Why would she wait until she was 38 before falling in love with a guy. How dare she not put her career on hold at that point. I mean Lateline, 7:30 Report? Who needs them?

Oh well, at least Bolt ain't being toxic. Never mind that in his rant about her being anti-mother, he ignores what McKew wrote in the article that "spooked him":

The Wendouree West community has suffered for decades from a high level of disadvantage, intergenerational unemployment and children who have been disengaged from just about every level of education.

But a wondrous thing has happened. Through a dramatic change to the physical environment, Wendouree West has made a gigantic leap and created a school that functions for the entire community, and at all hours.

Mothers are enrolled in TAFE courses, their young children are on a different part of the site, either in playgroups or in pre-school, and primary school children are working away in beautifully designed learning hubs.

The change in the aesthetics and design has had a remarkable effect on behaviour. Parents now want to be involved with the school and, best of all, for the very young, pre-school participation has risen from a dismal low to more than 90 per cent.

Mothers learning new skills, with their children nearby. How horrible! But then I guess these mums shouldn't be going to TAFE, they should be home with the kids while the men do all the working and thinking for them...

But enough of Bolt. A few mates have told me I need to stop reading his blogs, as they only serve to make me annoyed. They're right. After all the reason I was annoyed in the first place was Crikey's utter insensitivity.

And so today I found this on Crikey, by the Jonathon Green :

There are moments as an editor - I’ve had a few - when you realise you’ve made a bad, bad call. This happens as often through the things you miss, or stumble over, or fail to give appropriate attention to, as it does thanks to the things you do resolutely, but wrongly, on purpose.

Crikey - and me personally - has copped a lot of blogosphere heat for running a poll to name the Obama puppy that included the candidate A Mongrel Called Trig. It was a reader suggestion, and it somehow made our shortlist, and then hopped onto the polling page. From there it was just a hop skip and a jump to the outraged comment strings of Andrew Bolt, Tim Blair and others.
There’s not a lot of love in those rooms.

We deserve our lumps here. There was no redeeming - or even comic - feature to what is just a dumb slur on an innocent child. The galling part of course, is giving ammunition to the billious rabble of the blogging far right. But what can you say when you’re so obviously in the wrong. Other than “I was wrong.” Which I was.

As I say, cop your lumps, learn your lesson and move on.

And with that I am back on PollBludger. We all make mistakes. What matters is how we act after making them. My concern was the Crikey folk were being purposefully vindictive - that they thought linking DS and mongrels was funny, but now I don't think they were - they were just being stupidly ignorant.

I believe Green's apology is sincere; and it is good to see. Some other blogs could benefit from doing the same thing occasionally. But then Bolt wrote a book called "Still Not Sorry", so I doubt we'll be seeing one from him.

Flick of the Week: "I know things about people, Lilly"

The week's Flick of the week takes us from a young Clint Eastwood in Where Eagles Dare, to an aging Clint in In the Line of Fire.

In the Line of Fire is about John Malkovich playing an ex-CIA assassin, Mitch Leary, who has taken a trip to nutsville and decided to kill the President. Clint Eastwood plays Frank Horrigan, an old Secret Service agent who was on JFK's protection detail when he was assassinated in Dallas, and who is now targeted by Leary in a bit of old pre-assassination cat'n'mouse. Along the way Frank is helped by fellow Secret Service agents Renee Russo and Dylan McDermott (with John Mahoney playing the boss).

It is a great action film/thriller. It has that indefinable thing that is lacking from similar types of films around these days. Oh wait, no it's not indefinable... it's called intelligence.

A couple months ago I was unfortunate enough to waste 2 hours of my life watching Eagle Eye. That film is also about a plot to kill the US President, only it's not a mastermind who is planning it, but a 'super computer' that can think for itself and has gone rogue (don't they all - surely someone would think to write in a "must not be allowed to plot to kill mankind" bit of computer code in the program). That film was all about car crashes, explosions and impossible coincidences. It was utter shite.

In the Line of Fire has no car chases, no explosions, and yet is edge of the set stuff all the way. Director Wolfgang Peterson was still coming off his success in Germany of Das Boot, and this signalled a strong future. And while he has not exactly gone on to auteur greatness, the run of films after this of Outbreak, Air Force One, The Perfect Storm, Troy and Poseidon shows that the guy is a pretty solid director - apart from the last one, he has been stinker-free.

But where ITLOF really shines is the cast. Clint is as good as it gets in these types of roles - the aged warrior. He plays it better than anyone, and it was the first film he did after Unforgiven, where he plays an aged gunfighter. Throughout this film he is all charm and effortlessness. One of the great things about Eastwood is virtually every role he plays has the ring of truth about it. Whether he's Blondie in The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Harry Callaghan in the Dirty Harry movies, or the old boxing manager in Million Dollar Baby, you think Eastwood could be those guys - in fact he doesn't seem to be acting - he just is the perfect no-name western outlaw, renegade plays-by-his-own-rules cop, or crusty old boxing manager. And in this film you believe he could have been an agent under JFK, and he most definitely could be the old single guy who goes home and listens to jazz.

The supporting cast is amazing for a film of this type - Malkovich in the role that truly made him. He was nominated for Best Supporting Oscar, but lost to Tommy Lee Jones for his "hen house, outhouse and doghouse" role in The Fugitive. It was a bad choice - Jones's role is pretty much limited to him swaggering around being a smart arse. Malkovich is much more intense and mannered (though he shouldn't have won the Oscar either. In just about the worst decision ever in Oscar history, Ralph Fiennes was overlooked for his role as Amon Geoth in Schindler's List - perhaps the best supporting actor performance ever.). In the following scene you see him first appear and interact with Eastwood; the two working off each other brilliantly.



As the female lead, Renee Russo brings about as much sexiness and intelligence to the role that is humanly possible. She is just fantastic to watch on the screen. And at 39 was proof against all those idiots in Hollywood who think women over 30 (25?) can't sizzle up the screen. For the rest of the 90s she was the go to woman for any role that demanded a woman with (to quote the great line from Bull Durham) "long legs and brains". She hasn't been in a film since 2005. A tragedy.

The other cast members of note were Dylan McDermoot in his pre-The Practice days, and John Mahoney in his pre-Frasier days (it started that year). They're both good and everyone else comes to the party as well - good cast, with a good script. What more can you ask? The script incidentally was written by Jeff Maguire. He was nominated for an Oscar (lost to Jane Campion for The Piano - no I didn't get it either), and then his next film came out 10 years later! It was called Timeline, and no I didn't see it, and I'm betting you didn't either.

The plot has enough twists to keep you guessing, but not so many that you start doubting everything. The story isn't so much about trying to trick the audience (as is so often the case in films nowadays), as it is about watching Leary toy with the secret service, and also watching how Horrigan tries to put the pieces of the puzzle together, while also facing his demons from JFK and, in a lovely old movie kind of way, falling in love with Renee Russo's agent, Lilly Raines. The dialogue between the two of them is witty and believable - they shadow box around their feelings, but the flirting is quite sweet really.

The climax is also well handled as Leary and Horrigan finally face off with a result far more deep than action thrillers are allowed to be now.

It's only 15 years old, and yet it seems to have come from some time long, long past. It doesn't try to be Citizen Kane, but it does expect the viewers are at least adults. An action film with brains, and a thriller that eschews violence in favour of thought. There's little wonder whenever this is repeated on TV, I feel perfectly happy to sit down and watch it again, because like all good thrillers, knowing the ending doesn't diminish the film at all.

Best line:
Lilly Raines: What makes you think he'll call again?
Frank Horrigan: Oh, he'll call again. He's got, uh, "panache."
Lilly Raines: Panache?
Frank Horrigan: Yeah, it means flamboyance.
Lilly Raines: Mm, I know what it means.
Frank Horrigan: Really? I had to look it up.