St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 73

FRIDAY, JANUARY 12, 1990 ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH 3F REVIEWS FILM The American Dream Turned Upside Down Brilliant Stage Play Shines On The Screen tion between the two sides was possible is never brought out, but Moore accuses GM of sending work out of the country, to sites where unions were unknown and wages were lower. Since it was a first film by an inexperienced crew, Moore and his friends didn't know what they couldn't do, and they weren't hampered by theory. If they wanted to shoot something, they did it, and if the exposure or the focus wasn't quite right, well, to heck with it and we'll do it better next time. That's the attitude that fills the film, and it's charming.

Moore didn't care much for Sari Francisco, and there's a scene with a coffee house waitress that spells out the difference between the West Coast and the Midwest. It's delightful. Back in Flint, Moore discovers that the hometown has fallen into tie clutches of the tourist board hordes, who think that hotels, convention centers; amusement parks and the Rouse Corp. are the road to prosperity. The idea of making Flint into a vacation or convention capital is ludicrous, and Moore points out just how ludicrous, in words and pictures.

A hotel, a mall, a theme park all fail badly. Visits from Pat Boone, Anita Bryant, evangelist Robert Schuller, Flint native Bob Eubanks of "The Newly-wed Game" and the soon-to-be Miss America, the quadruple-named Kaye Lani Rae Rafko, don't do much to help the unemployment or poverty. also tells some tasteless jokes. All these things didn't happen ex-See ROGER, Page 8 tween Daisy and Hoke is beautifully handled, in the writing, in the direction and in the performances. Daisy, who thinks herself liberal (and maybe she is by the standards of the time and place), doesn't want a chauffeur.

She's been a widow a long time, and she is as rigid as a monolith when it comes to change. Hoke is the man to change her, and gradually, in a process as slow as evolution, she changes. Tandy is miraculous. She's the right age, but she still shows the aging process with style and grace, and her sharp voice, brittle around the edges, is autocratic and stubborn. The actress owns three Tonys and an Emmy; this could be her first Oscar, and well-deserved.

Freeman brings absolutely perfect balance to the role of Hoke. He understands where he is, and why he is, and he understands the same things about Daisy. He is every bit as proud as she, and he knows not only when to stand up for his rights, but also that she is wise enough to yield. The slow growth to friendship is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in a movie. Aykroyd, putting aside his cloak of comedy, is wonderful as Boolie, laughing at and with his aging mother, loving her, being wise enough to point out to Hoke that "she can say anything she wants, but she can't fire He ages well, too.

The brief appearances by Rolle and LuPone add charm (and some inside jokes about the latter), but Uhry and Beresford wisely keep them in the background. This is Daisy's story, and Hoke's story. It's a beautiful story, filled with warmth and compassion. It was a glorious evening of theater when I saw it, and it's just as glorious on the screen. (Galleria.) 'ROGER AND ME" Rating: language, violence (to a rabbit).

Running time: 1:30. By Joe Pollack Of the Post-Dispatch Staff WATCHING your hometown in its death throes is not a pretty experience. Knowing that one industrial giant delivered a series of massive blows to its economy and to its people makes it even more painful. When you're out of work, too, it makes you angry, and you want some answers. "Roger and Me" is a search for answers, and a search for a man who may have some.

This first film by Michael Moore, a personal documentary with a message to deliver, is a brilliant, ironic, black-humored story that shows what happens when the American Dream becomes the American Nightmare. Moore, 32 years old in 1986 and just fired from a magazine editing job in San Francisco, returned to his home in Flint, and saw the industrial city staggered by the fact that General Motors was closing plants. The workers of Flint, always a GM town, had nothing to fall back on. Moore's family had long ties with GM. His uncle had been one of the original sit-down strikers of 1937, his father had worked the assembly line for more than 30 years.

Moore is most bitter about GM, but he's not completely pleased with the action more properly, the lack of it by the United Auto Workers in the final years at Flint. Whether coopera the mature, older, wiser man (Morgan Freeman); the angry activist, filled with hate (Denzel Washington); the well-educated sophisticate who never has known slavery (Andre Braugher); the stuttering semi-buffoon (Jihmi Kennedy). They're slightly stereotypical, but all of them perform splendidly, and they do represent different viewpoints of pre-Civil War blacks. Freeman had earned his freedom; Washington was still a runaway. The strong parts of the film are the broad sequences, where director Edward Zwick and production designer Norman Garwood have done splendid work.

The size and scope are outstanding, though the final scene certainly shows a group of well-dressed, well- Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman stop to enjoy the scenery on a ride in "Driving Miss Daisy." "DRIVING MISS DAISY" Rating: PG. Running time: 1 :50. By Joe Pollack "0f the Post-Dispatch Staff jpkPENING up a play adding characters, changing locales to i make it into a movie is a risky business. tWhen dealing with such a perfect gem of a play as Alfred Uhry's Prize-winning "Driving Miss Daisy," it's almost foolhardily so. But Uhry, who wrote the screen- play, and Bruce Beresford, who di-1 rected, accepted the challenge, and carried it off triumphantly.

rThere are Academy Awards in the offing here, perhaps for the film and for Beresford, possibly for Uhry, almost certainly for Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman. Casting the 80-year-old Tandy 64 years on stage, 58 in films as Daisy Werthan was a brilliant stroke, and it would have been criminal had Freeman not been cast to re-create the role of Hoke Colburn that he originated so brilliantly opposite Dana Ivey off ''Broadway. 4 The unexpected addition of Dan Aykroyd, cast completely against type as Daisy's much put-upon son Boolie, is another perfect move. The expan- sion added two characters only talked about on stage: Esther Rolle as Idella, the maid, and Patti LuPone as Fiorina, Boolie's wife, and they work, too, though the funeral of Idella is an necessary and extraneous scene. The play, extremely episodic, is the story of 25 years in the lives of Daisy and Hoke, from the time when he is hired (by Boolie) to drive the 72-year-" old Daisy, a definite risk behind the ''wheel.

Atlanta of the 1948-73 period is recreated perfectly for the film, and the changing, growing relationship be returned to The Tenderloin steak house. As thousands it meal is a lunches in St. ill ml nil 1 One Civil War Regiment's Costly Hi some importance is the story of the 54th Massachusetts, one of those forgotten edges of history. Shaw had fought at Antietam, and was horrified at what he saw. He returned to Boston on leave, and was asked to take command of the Union's first black regiment.

Shaw and his family were friends of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, were visitors to Brook Farm and staunch Abolitionists. It was the sort of task that a man like Shaw had been trained for and he took it. Matthew Broderick is first-rate as Shaw, a man of slightly less than heroic stature, but a man who grew to hero status as a soldier. His men, a group of superlative black actors, are much like World War II foxhole inhabitants Your Choice $199 DISTINCTIVE Glory pressed corpses in a common grave. There often is too much neatness; men whose shoes are wearing out have no such problem with their shirts.

Shaw battled for his men when the government paid them only $10 a month instead of the promised $13, and they rebel and tear up their pay chits, Shaw does the same. He makes sure they have shoes, and uniforms, and that they are treated as men. He fights for them, and with them, and he dies with them, in a gallant, if absurd, charge that, ironically, affected neither the war nor history. This is a sad and gallant chapter, and a first-rate movie. (Clarkson, Esquire, Halls Ferry, Northwest Plaza, Ronnie's, St.

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Running time: 2 hrs. By Joe Pollack Of the Post-Dispatch Staff THE CIVIL WAR boasts many records for stupidity, futility and needless slaughter. Some 500,000 Americans died, more than a third of the deaths recorded in all wars involving our country. At Antietam, in a five-hour period, there were 40,000 deaths; by contrast, about 50,000 died in Vietnam. Pickett's Charge, at Gettysburg, on July 3, 1863, sent 15,000 soldiers across a half mile of open field into the teeth of massed artillery and rifle fire.

And only two weeks later, on July 18, on Morris Island outside Charleston, S.C., the nation's first black fighting unit, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, attacked Fort Wagner, marching in tight columns along a narrow strip of sand while Confederate soldiers, well protected, poured rifle fire upon them. More than half of the regiment were killed or wounded. Fewer than ilOO Confederate soldiers died. The fort was not taken. "Glory" is based on the true story of the 54th Massachusetts and Col.

Robert Gould Shaw, its commanding officer. Shaw, a 26-year-old white aristocrat from Boston, marched at the head of the regiment, died in the attack and was buried, with his soldiers, in a mass grave on the island. Unlike the recent spate of Vietnam movies, "Glory" takes a rather old-fashioned approach to war, making it a glorious, manhood-affirming experience. But at the same time, it shows the absurdity and stupidity of war and violence. What makes "Glory" a movie of imtm fcJhA.Jfaih ft Dompierre has Room, St.

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