Vintage

No Way Out is a film about service, allegiances, loyalties, betrayals and sex – the hallmarks of any good Coolfilmz caper.   What elevates the genre is when acting and cinematic flair come together to present all the aforementioned in ways that make you knock over the popcorn bowl.  This movie does.

Farrell is given a job of spying on the CIA for David Brice, the power mad Secretary of Defense played on the money by everyman genius Gene Hackman. 

However, Farrell falls for a girl he meets at a highfalutin function in Washington.  He is dressed to the nines in his Navy whites and Susan Atwell (Young) is all but abandoned at the function, in her party dress, languorously inviting to any Navy man on the prowl.   A wink and a drink later, they head back to her friend’s place where he does his duty like any good midshipman home from the sea. 

As love makes us do many stupid things, it is soon clear he harbors (no pun intended) feelings for this call girl, who made no efforts to hide her profession at the ball in which they met.  However, one thing that really wasn’t made clear was her clientele. Turns out she was on the merry-go-round with Brice, the very Secretary of Defense that hired Farrell to spy on the CIA so to speak.   Brice is her top dog – literally and figuratively. 

However, like my aunt that had the lazy eye, Brice suspects she is seeing somebody on the side.  He shows up at her place right after Farrell had to sneak out the back door.  Farrell is waiting around the corner and sees the Secretary of Defense go in for his taste of the booty.  But that is not what happens. 

In a fit of rage Brice back-hands his woman.  She goes toppling over a banister, where she plunges to her slow-motion death - that is after crashing through the top of a glass coffee table.  Though he discovered her death later, Farrell was outside and knows it was Brice who made the last booty call.  Now what? 

In the middle of all this is Brice’s blindly loyal puppy dog Scott Pritchard (Patten), a secret gay man and right hand man to Brice, who says at one point he would give his life for Brice.  He seems at his best when the heat is the hottest.  He almost gets off on trying to figure out how to cover up the whole mess Brice had got himself into.    

At one point Brice accuses his devote follower of almost enjoying himself as he crafts an ever more intricate cover-up to protect Brice. 

Without spoiling the ending, I will say the stakes only escalate at this point.  I can also ad that No Way Out is a first rate cat-and-mouse chase for the killer of Susan Atwell.  The neat catch here is that Farrell is put in charge of the investigation where all clues lead to him being in her apartment prior to her death.  There are clever catches such as the countdown to when the computer will discover that it was Farrell in the incriminating photo found in Atwell’s place. 

Somehow a Russian spy is shoehorned into the plot, who can serve as a possible patsy for the murder of Atwell.  Pretty neat development but in my opinion the ending of the movie takes it a tad over the top.  I will simply say I didn’t find it added a whole lot.  It was another twist for the sake of having another twist. 

When we are faced with plot twisters of such nature, I only hold up the yard stick of asking if the film is improved because of it.  I think No Way Out was not improved, which really prevented me from giving it 4 UFOs.

Still, this is a classic cool film and if you haven’t seen it, what are you waiting for?  In fact, if you want to call yourself an aficionado of the cool film genre you literally have no way out (you knew I had to get that in there).  This one belongs on the top shelf next to the good liquor. 

The character acting is first rate and in my opinion represents the height of Costner before his downfall as a major heart throb and leading man.  Costner was a winner in Navy whites; a loser in gills (See the aquatic bomb Water World).

It must be noted that having watched this film for the first time in nearly 20 years, it is amusing to note this was a picture attempting to wow us with state-of-the-art technology at the time. 

Back then we probably marveled at the description of Sam Hesselman (George Dzundza) a wheel chair-confined computer expert, who takes a Polaroid film and attempts to explain to us “the pixel.” He describes it as “the atom of the picture.”  He says “we can expand on the pixels and recreate what the picture was trying to capture… It might take hours, days, even a week.”

It takes a microsecond to do in Photoshop.  This only goes to serve on point: technology changes, good drama doesn’t. 

Matthew J. DeReno is a writer living in Pittsburgh.