St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 75

FRIDAY, MARCH 23, 1990 SI.LUUIS MUbl-UlbPAIUH REVIEWS FILM Caine Flick Doesn't Live Up To Its Name Elvis Links 3 Stories In Memphis "MYSTERY TRAIN' Running time: Rating: language. 1:50. 'fit Vr 1 IX-Jj-, I I nlif I Will Patton, playing a detective, interviews Elizabeth McGovern in "A Shock to the System." Last Macho Display Of Spent Dinosaurs station. He is waiting for a train when he is accosted by a panhandler. The beggar will not take "no" for a quick answer, and there is the briefest of scuffles.

The panhandler htts the tracks, the train hits the panhandler. No one has noticed Caine, and as the days pass and a young woman (Elizabeth McGovern) begins to flirt with him, he is convinced the magic has returned, bigger and better than ever. Meanwhile, back in Connecticut, Kurtz keeps blowing fuses on her exercise machine, and when Caine visits the basement to check the fuse box, he finds a loose wire and a new hobby all at the same time. i He is in San Francisco when she dies, and no matter what subsequently transpires, he seems to have an ironclad alibi. Will Patton is the young detective who keeps questioning it.

But Caine, like many murderers of fiction, is too clever by half, and Andrew Klavan's screenplay isn't nearly clever enough. A clue to Caine's guilt (I'm not giving anything away because the film follows Caine through all his thought processes and actions) comes when he leaves a cigarette lighter in a rented car, and doesn't discover the loss for several days. This is nonsense, as any smoker who has a well-loved lighter will attest. One may put the lighter down and walk away from it, but its absence is always discovered the next time one reaches for a smoke, or by a man when he empties his pockets for the night. Regardless of whether the fault is Klavan's, or that of director Jan Egel-soh, making his big-screen debut, one never senses any real motivation for Caine's actions, nor for those of any of the other characters.

Everyone seems to exist in a vacuum. At the same time, Egelson's pacing il dull, his camera work unimaginative. A thriller should make an audience sit on the edge of its collective seat, waiting tensely for the next moment of action. "A Shock to the System" brings a reaction of "So what," far too early and far too often. (Esquire, Halls Ferry, Kenrick, Northwest Square, Ronnie's, St.

Charles.) "A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM" Rating: language. Running time: 1 1:30. By Joe Pollack Of the Post-Dispatch Staff TVTEVER TRUST an advertising ex-J 1 lecutive, especially if he has an English accent, and more especially if he looks like Michael Caine. "A Shock to the System," with an excellent cast and a good New York -location, is a surprisingly flat movie ttoi a tale of murder and deceit. Part of the problem is a surprisingly flat Michael Caine, who brings little of the charm and brightness he usually adds to a movie.

Casting Caine as a villain is' not against type; in his long career, the English-born star has portrayed just about every character type, and usually with skill and drive. Caine is the assistant chief of the marketing division of a big ad agency that has just been taken over by a conglomerate. He anticipates a pro- motion because the current chief is about to retire, or be retired, depend-, ing on one's point of view. Caine airways has had a sort of magic touch in of job promotions, the good luck of life (like finding parking spaces). He also has a mortgage on a Connecticut house, a nagging spendthrift of a wife (Swoosie Kurtz), a most unpleasant (Barbara Baxley) and two poodles.

All is in readiness for Caine's pro-, motion, including a not-so-secret sur-' prise party at his home, and a power with the good old boys from the 'office, featuring bad jokes and big -cigars. And then the corporation pulls the rug. Peter Riegert is hop-scotched "over Caine's head and into the corner office. Riegert leads the youth the let's-cut-the-payroll movement and the bring-on-the-computers 'movement, all of which give him enough guns to get the job and to bring on a properly condescending attitude toward Caine. So much for exposition In the throes of his job-caused depression, and convinced his magic has run out, Caine goes to the subway "THE FOURTH WAR' By Harper Barnes Post-Dispatch Critic at Large THERE ARE some wonderfully wry moments in "Mystery Train1," and hard-core Jim Jarmusch fans definitely should see his most recent film.

But overall, this tripartite tale Jbf losers and lost souls is so deadpan that it is sometimes just plain dead. Jarmusch's Memphis movie is simply not in the same class with his marvelously droll look at the characters of New Orleans and the bayou country in "Down by Law." "Mystery Train" might almost be'a minimalist parody of Robert Altman's jam-packed "Nashville." 7 Jarmusch tells three loosely intet-i twined Memphis stories a young Japanese couple is seeking Gracelahd and other shrines of rock 'n' roll; an Italian woman is stranded between planes and sees the ghost of Elvis; a drunk, depressed Englishman nicknamed Elvis is on the loose with a loaded gun. One way or another, Presley is everywhere, peering down from portraits in hotel rooms, singing on the radio but Elvis the omnipresent icon doesn't seem to have any more meaning than Samuel Beckett's invisible "Godot." Jarmusch begins the movie well with the Japanese couple, plugged into their mutual Walkman, arriving across the Mississippi by train as Elvis sings the title song. (By the way, that's Junior Parker, whose version predated Elvis', singing at the end.) In the course of the meandering tale, we meet sbme intriguing characters including Screaming Jay Hawkins as an unflappable desk clerk at a rundown Heartbreak Hotel. And there are some priceless little bits especially a tour of the one-room Sun Studio conducted by a woman (Jodie Markell) who speaks as rapidly and incomprehensibly as that guy in the Federal Express ad except with a Southern accent.

Unfortunately, there are also more draggy scenes than even a Jim Jarmusch movie ought to have. (Tivoli.) but when Prochnow guns a helicopter and sprays show on Scheider (the winter equivalent of kicking sand in the face of the 98-pound weakling), the American is hot for revenge. Throwing a snowball is not enough. Scheider invades Czechoslovakia and attacks a lookout station; Prochnow invades Germany and blows up Scheider's jeep. The struggle escalates.

Meanwhile, Harry Dean Stanton tries to intervene. He's Scheider's superior, stationed in another city, and he is excellent as a pragmatic general and longtime friend of Scheider's who knows exactly how dangerous the man is. He tries to convince Scheider that peace, and not war, is the goal, that war, in Stanton's words, would "turn us all into french fries." Tim Reid also is on hand as Scheider's executive officer, a stiff, sterntWest Pointer who also is working for Stanton. Reid is an actor with a lot of charm, but the West Point background gives him little room to roam. Dale Dye, a former Marine who was the adviser on "Platoon," has the same job hefe and also has an acting role as a perfect example of a sergeant-major.

Acting and technical values are excellent; Scheider is believable as a military man with no other life, and it's easy to assume Prochnow as the same. Eventually, however, they give up the modern military armament and get into hand-to-hand combat, boh of them in winter clothing and fighting almost in slow motion. It's rather ludicrous. (Chesterfield, Galleria, Halls Ferry, Kenrick, Northwest Square, Ronnie's, St. Charles, St.

Clair, Union Station.) Rating: language. Running time: 1 :31 By Joe Pollack Of the Post-Dispatch Staff THE LAST of the dinosaurs probably looked this way two elderly males, their passion and power ebbing with their lives, wasting their last breaths in a titanic struggle for land they could not live on or food they could not eat. So it is with "The Fourth War," as two military dinosaurs, Roy Scheider and Jurgen Prochnow, behave like ridiculous adolescents in an absurd and useless display of macho just before they are put out to pasture. Scheider is an American, Prochnow (the captain in "Das a Soviet, both veterans of recent, futile and un-honored wars. They are stationed across the German-Czech border from each other.

It is peacetime, but they are thinking war, and if they cannot lead armies into battle, they will pull foolish pranks on each other. Director John Frankenheimer, a master at good adventure stories, works diligently, and the cast is strong, but the story tends to be out of date, and no matter how many tricks Frankenheimer uses, the viewer cannot help but be aware of what is going on in the real world, which puts a psychological damper on the screen action. Scheider, a newcomer to the post, is leading a patrol when they see a civilian trying to escape to the West, only to be shot and killed by Soviet soldiers. The man is still on the other side of the border, and Scheider can do nothing, REVIEW ART I Abstraction In The '90s: Is It Looking Backward? We're Having An OffWeek. (30OffToBeExaa.) "Stripes, Bands and Bars: Abstraction Enters the '90s" Place: Schmidt-Markow Gallery Address: 1709 Washington Avenue, 4th Floor Duration: through April 7 Hours: Wednesday-Saturday, noon to 5 p.m.

and by appointment By John-Paul ABSTRACTION came back to life in a big way in the late 1980s but, course, it is different from previous -incarnations. For many, this is not necessarily the art of the future but a relic of the past. While abstraction is going great guns into the '90s, the most interesting work does not always seem to foster future-oriented aspirations. Rather, it is an almost retrospective spirit. The paintings in "Stripes, Bands and Bars" at the Schmidt-Markow Gallery are emotionally and abstractly spare, seductively crafted, subtly playful and perhaps tenderly nostalgic.

The images are rigorously simple, and, because it is a group show, the individual pieces bear distinctly different motifs, each of which generates its own family of images. Works by Michael Scott and Wolfgang Staehle create optical flip-flops between foregrounds and backgrounds using narrow vertical, bands. Staehle's work as a film maker gives him up-to-date raw material with which to create stripes on white grounds his videotapes of the soaps "The Guiding Light" and "As the World Turns." Steven Westfall's "Untitled" black-and-white cross-form construction is a stretch of anonymous sign language and symbol. The spirit of Sean Scherer's work is its sensuous beauty. His thick surfaces of oil and wax are built up and delicately invaded by random texture, incisions and stretches, which give us a sense of melancholy.

Stephen Ellis' orange-and-black "Untitled" canvas recalls the newness of the now-familiar computerized price tab. Gary Lang's "Plaid Painting" is, of course, more referential and brightly colored. Its weaving allusion is crudely painted. Bill Komaski's acrylic and modeling paste on canvas is large and more difficult to pigeonhole. It seems more lyrically inclined, drawing imagery perhaps from landscape or the figure.

The piece by Steven di Benedetto is wildly playful, and its lines appear to open and close like shutters raising a real shuffle and clatter, and the moire pattern is complex and everchanging. MARTHA CARR 1 Writer Needs Help Getting Into Print 1917 Northfield Drive Overland, Mo. 63114 Dear Martha: Can you tell me if there are any Scrabble clubs in the St. Louis area? J.M. Yes, I know of one: Club 198 meets at 7 p.m.

every second and fourth Monday at the Maplewood Community Center, 7550 Loh-meyer Road. If anyone knows of other groups on either side of the Mississippi, please let me know, and I shall be happy to pass the information on. About clogging: Childgrove Country Dancers will sponsor a clogging workshop for adults from 7o 8 p.m. Sunday at the Center of Contemporary Arts, 524 Trinity Avenue, University City. For more information, call 781-7363.

Clogging groups include one for the Crestwood Southwest St. Louis area (843-7891) and another in St. Charles County (281-5841). Write to Martha Carr in care of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 900 North Tucker Boulevard, St.

Louis, Mo. 63101. Dear Martha Carr: I have written a small children's story and would like some help in getting it put in book form. Any help you can give me would be appreciated. L.G.

You can get all kinds of help at the local library. There are many books available that will guide you, step by step, through the business of preparing a manuscript and submitting it to publishers. Should you consider selling your story to a magazine for children, information about how to do that is also available. The best source for magazines is "Writer's Market." You can also publish your own book, but you will pay all the makeup and printing costs. Friend Find: I am trying to find Laurie DeWitt.

She lived on Northfield Drive in Overland in 1977, She was 14 at the time. She had an older sister named Tammi and two brothers, Jamie and Kenny. The last I heard from her, she was living off St. Charles Rock Road in Breckenridge in 1980. She also had an uncle named Chip.

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