SHADOW CONSPIRACY
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1997 Scott Renshaw
(Hollywood) Starring: Charlie Sheen, Donald Sutherland, Linda Hamilton, Stephen Lang. Screenplay: Adi Hasak and Ric Gibbs. Producer: Terry Collis. Director: George P. Cosmatos. MPAA Rating: R (violence, profanity) Running Time: 103 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
For the record, I don't tend to put much stock in conspiracy theories. I don't believe the CIA had Kennedy killed, I don't believe there is a flying saucer hidden somewhere near Roswell, New Mexico and I don't believe that polio vaccinations are part of a secret plot to place tracking devices in our bodies. Call me a starry-eyed optimist if you must, but I think people are capable of quite enough selfish nastiness on an individual basis, and that that very same selfishness makes cooperative nastiness an endeavor riddled with problems. When it comes to Hollywood, however, I might be willing to make an exception. Studios just may be conspiring to sap from our brains the ability to recognize clumsy stories which make only the faintest sense. By comparison to the crimes SHADOW CONSPIRACY perpetrates on an unsuspecting audience, the crimes in its so-called plot seem positively benign.
Charlie Sheen stars as Bobby Bishop, a Presidential speech writer and advisor on his way up the Washington power chain through his deft ability to doctor a spin. It is just another day in the capital when a former professor of Bobby's (Theodore Bikel) meets Bobby on the street to warn him of a secret government cabal called Shadow -- just before the professor is shot in the head by a brutal agent (Stephen Lang). Suddenly Bobby finds himself running for his life, able to trust only two people: Jake Conrad (Donald Sutherland), Bobby's mentor and the White House Chief-of-Staff, and Amanda Givens (Linda Hamilton), a reporter and Bobby's former girlfriend. Together, they must find out who is behind Shadow and what their diabolical plans are.
Sheen appears to be basing his film career on playing the dupe (he was also a patsy sniffing out dirty doings in TERMINAL VELOCITY and THE ARRIVAL), but if he could be suckered into taking on a script like this, perhaps he's not doing all that much acting. SHADOW CONSPIRACY, credited to the writing tandem of Adi Hasak and Ric Gibbs, appears to be the product of screenplay software, introducing hackneyed situations and characters without enough energy to make the cliches tolerable. The hero is established as a cocky smooth-talker, but instead of giving him chances to talk himself out of difficult situations the script keeps him perpetually running away from the Terminator-like Lang (Linda Hamilton must have been experiencing serious deja-vu). Hamilton acts as the obligatory romantic sparring partner, except that Bobby and Amanda grumble at each other only briefly before settling into a dreary camaraderie. The betrayal, the chase scene, the narrow escape...all the ingredients are there, but they sit there flatly without the benefit of a single moment of imagination
If the basic material is bad, then the execution is even worse. The direction (by RAMBO's George P. Cosmatos) and editing (by Robert A. Ferretti) in SHADOW CONSPIRACY are inept to a degree that seems almost (conspiratorially?) designed. One chase flashes from a luxury hotel to a homeless encampment to a sewer out of LES MISERABLES with a blissful disregard for continuity; scenes designed for tension become inconsequential blurs, and characters wander through the narrative for an hour before you have a clue what they are supposed to be doing. Cosmatos doesn't even understand basic principles of drama, making a point of showing us a tricky-to-unlatch seat-belt which then plays no further part in the story, an un-fired gun which probably sent Chekhov to spinning in his grave. SHADOW CONSPIRACY is the kind of incomprehensible mess where a highly trained agent is willing to run through a hotel and a city street firing a gun in full view of hundreds of witnesses, then decides to get secretive by building a remote-controlled toy helicopter to assassinate the President.
That climactic scene at least provides a moment of absurdist fun, the only one SHADOW CONSPIRACY has to offer unless you count the floppy hats Hamilton favors which are sure to gain a White House correspondent professional respect. Mostly, it is just a plodding and somber piece of nonsense which seems to expect brownie points for showing us all the ways the government can keep an eye on us, and ends with an ominous tracking shot to the perspective of a spy satellite. Personally, I feel more threatened by the prospect of lazy, pre-fabricated thrillers foisted off on the American viewing public as entertainment. If the people who brought us SHADOW CONSPIRACY are supposed to be the ones to shine the light on sinister conspiracies which threaten our freedoms, all I have to say is: who's watching the watchmen?
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 goon shadows: 2.
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