THE GENERAL'S DAUGHTER A film review by David N. Butterworth Copyright 1999 David N. Butterworth
*** (out of ****)
Big marquee names--Travolta, Stowe, Cromwell, Hutton. Big Men Shouting. A big name director.
With me so far?
A highly-decorated general with political aspirations. His lovely daughter, a career officer, dead--brutalized, raped, and murdered on a backwoods Georgia army base. Possible corruption and cover-ups at the highest echelons of the military. A CID investigation led by a couple of warrant officers who, it transpires, were once an item. And James Woods.
With ingredients like these, you could be excused for writing off "The General's Daughter" as a foregone conclusion long before the first few feet of film pass through the projector. It's true: the latest film by "Con Air" director Simon West is very by the numbers, and there aren't a whole lot of outcomes you won't figure out ahead of time if you've seen this type of picture before.
What makes "The General's Daughter" work, however, is a combination of things which land the film in that eminently satisfying category of "better than expected."
First off, John Travolta and Madeleine Stowe, who play investigators Paul Brenner and Sarah Sunhill, are very good together. There's a nice equilibrium to their chemistry: they're both tough yet have a goofy, playful side to their natures, they can spar with the best of them, they're convincing and likable and very strong. Brenner's a military cop with the power to arrest anyone, no matter how high their rank, and Sunhill's a rape counselor who's thrust together with her former partner to investigate the brutal murder.
James Cromwell plays the general, Clarence Williams III is his chief advisor (spouting lines like "There are three ways of doing things: the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way"), and Leslie Stefanson ("Flubber") is the eponymous Elisabeth Campbell, an attractive Psychiatric Operations adviser who helps Brenner change a tire shortly before her untimely--and truly grisly--end. All three actors are uniformly solid.
The writing, too (by Christopher Bertolini and William Goldman, based on Nelson DeMille's novel), is very sharp. Brenner makes innumerable wisecracks throughout the picture but, surprisingly, many of them hit the target. Brenner's initial head-to-head with Liz's "mentor" Colonel Robert Moore (Woods), in which the two men try to outsmart each other, is almost charming.
The only miscalculation on the writers' part is having Sunhill chide Brenner for "not understanding women," but provide "insights" that are offensive and absurdly out of character.
Unlike his fellow Jerry Bruckheimer protégé Michael Bay ("Armageddon"), director West realizes that constant camera movement doesn't equal drama. "The General's Daughter" is a much subtler piece of filmmaking than "Con Air," for sure, and only once does West introduce a hail of the bullets into the proceedings. He seems to like his helicopters though...
Don't go with your instinct to avoid "The General's Daughter" because you'll miss out on a polished, professional production. You could almost call it an enjoyable experience were the central crime not so monstrous.
-- David N. Butterworth dnb@dca.net
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