TUCKER: THE MAN AND HIS DREAM
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1988 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Francis Ford Coppola and Lucasfilm in top form bring to the screen the story of automotive legend Preston Tucker. The film is a tribute to American creativity and a lament about a system that wastes genius. Jeff Bridges refreshingly plays that increasingly rare hero of the screen, a man of genius. Rating: +3.
Okay, I admit it. I like stories about engineers and engineering feats. My favorite war film is probably DAM BUSTERS. I liked THE RIGHT STUFF a lot, even if it in some ways trivialized the space program. I like tributes to intelligence and ingenuity, particularly if the ingenuity is in something other than a better way to clout someone on the head or drive a car in a car chase. It is about time filmmakers recognized that some audiences respect and have interest in other talents than those--perhaps some skills that can't be tested in a video game. The problem is that videogame skills are easy to make exciting on a screen. Intelligence, drive, and vision really require a good script. Francis Ford Coppola's TUCKER: The Man and His Dream has a good script. It is the first film I have seen since THE RIGHT STUFF that has a hero I would call heroic. Part of the reason is that both films are about true pieces of history, but also that both portray a sort of American engineering optimism of the 1940s and 1950s that seems to be very rare today.
TUCKER is the biography of Preston Tucker (enthusiastically played by Jeff bridges), who had visions of creating a car of superior design but who was brought down by the system in a true story that could have come from an Ayn Rand novel. It shows the design and the building of the Tucker--a futuristic car that the entrepreneur wanted to build in the years following World War II. This film is the anecdotal story of how Tucker assembled a design team, financed the project, acquired a factory, and sold the idea of the car to the public, and finally of the events that led to Tucker's name *not* becoming a household word.
A film about creativity should be creative and TUCKER is, in a lot of different ways. The film starts out as a public relations film for the Tucker Motor Company and with no discernible boundaries, segues into the real story of the film. Particularly creative are the ways in which the film visualizes telephone conversations. And even with the creative photography, TUCKER creates a period feel.
And speaking of imaginative things never done before, Coppola manages to turn Martin Landau's character (Abe) into someone likable and sympathetic. With the exception of an abortive effect during the second season of SPACE: 1999, no one has ever tried, much less succeeded, at making this wooden actor seem likable. Landau even looks the part, or at least the type, something done by no one else major in this film, as Coppola seems intentionally to tell the audience. No matter--his characters embody a spirit that transcends physical resemblance. Also occasionally they say things that are intended more for 1988 ears, but always to make a point well-taken.
TUCKER: THE MAN AND HIS DREAM is the best new film of 1988. Rate it a +3 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
att!mtgzz!leeper
leeper%mtgzz@att.arpa
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews