St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 85

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1993 3EV REVIEWS FILM Story Of Joy And Sorrow, Bad Luck And Good Running Into More Than Competitors At The Olympics "COOL RUNNINGS" "THE JOY LUCK CLUB" Rating: PG. Running time: 1:38. Rating: R. Running time: 2:15. Lisa Lu (left), Tsai Chin, director Wayne Wang and France Nuyen rehearsing a scene from "The Joy Luck Club." By Joe Pollack Of the Post-Dispatch Staff THE SWEEP and scope of the film give it epic proportions, and screenplay and direction weave a large number of stories into a cogent, understandable unit.

But "The Joy Luck Club" slips on an undercoating of soap suds and an overtone of villainous men, and while it's a great tear-jerker, it falls short of being a great movie. Based on Amy Tan's novel, with Tan and Ronald Bass collaborating on the screenplay, the movie looks at four generations, more or less, of Chinese women and their lives in that country and the United States. The group, all with daughters of similar ages, meets weekly to play mah-jongg, to gossip, to discuss the merits of their daughters. All are married, but the husbands are ciphers. The daughters are something else.

All are modern American women, but they lack the courage and the strength of their mothers. Maybe it's something in the San Francisco water, but the second generation has considerably less self-esteem and makes far worse choices when it comes to men. With a lot of voice-over narration and some beautifully handled flashbacks, director Wayne Wang leads us through the histories of the women on two continents. One leaves twin babies on the side of the road as she flees the' Japanese in the 1930s; another takes an ultimate act of revenge against a Chinese husband. These are tough women, determined to survive despite pain, poverty and persecution.

The acting is outstanding, and the casting directors have' done incredible work in finding women who could easily be grandmothers, mothers and daughters. June (Ming-Na Wen) is a centerpiece, asked to fill in at the-weekly game after the death of her mother. The Wang makes it work. The characters are always recognizable, their stories clearly defined. The acting is powerful, too, led by Wen and Kieu Chinh as her mother.

Tsai Chin is brilliant as Lindo, hard as nails and just as sharp, and Tamlyn Tomita delights as her daughter, Waverly. France Nuyen, one of the earlier Asian-Americans to earn regular movie roles (she was Liat in "South matures nicely into the off-center Ying Ying, with Lauren Tom as her daughter, Lena. Lisa Lu and Rosalind Chao are the final mother-daughter combination, and the eight women form a powerful ensemble. All in all, "The Joy Luck Club" is a fine movie. It just is not the movie it might have been.

(Clarkson, Esquire, Kenrick, Northwest Square, St. Charles.) crossing of generational lines might seem awkward, but it provides Wang with an opening to tell the stories, and Wen's voice-over is admirable. On both continents, the women are abused by men, and the unanimity of gender representation is a weakness, I think. Given eight women, perhaps one of them could be a less-than-wonderful person, deserving of the pain and heartache she feels. However, given the Asian-American heritage of both Wang and Tan, it's only natural for them to make the women as heroic as those from Pearl Buck's "The Good Earth." The movie lacks the crisp wit of the book, with the heroines more tragic on the screen than on the page.

Wang controls the large cast beautifully. Frames are posed in striking fashion, and despite the potential hazard in dealing with this many characters in this many places, By Deborah Peterson Of the Post-Dispatch Staff WHEN four members of a Jamaican bobsled team and their coach show up in Calgary to compete in the 1988 Winter Olympics, they look as out of place as a cockatoo in Aspen. Next to the finely oiled machines who make up -the European and Scandinavian teams, the Jamaicans are a randy bunch. First off, they are black. Second, they are more reggae rhythm than rhyme.

And third, they have never seen more ice than it takes to cool a tall drink. But ice they will see, and their determination to face the odds sets the moral tone for this feel-good family movie. Its message is clear: Personal pride and earning respect for one's homeland ultimately means more than winning a medal. In one particularly effective scene, Irv (John Candy), the Jamaicans' coach who has been stripped of his Olympic gold medals because of cheating, tells the rag-tag team what the medals- really mean. "A gold medal is a wonderful thing," Irv says.

"But if you're not enough without it, you won't be enough with it." What the bobsledders prove is that they are enough without it. Three of the team members start out as sprinters competing in a qualifying race for the Olympics. One of them falls and trips the other two, Derice Bannock (Leon), and Yul Brenner (Malik Yoba). The fall ends their hopes for an Olympic berth, which had been Derice's lifetime goal.He wanted to emulate his father's win as an Olympic sprinter in 1968. Derice appeals for another race but is turned down.

At the same time, he learns that his father had been approached 20 years earlier by an American bobsled champion who wanted to put together a team with Jamaica's renowned sprinters. With no new goals in mind, Derice decides he should become a bobsledder and that the former American champ, now a bookie living on the island, should coach him. The bookie, Irv, wants to leave all that behind him, but Derice is nothing if not persistent. Along with Irv, Derice persuades his best Sanka Coffie (comedian Doug E. Doug) to be on the team.

The three hold a meeting to organize and -wind up recruiting the only other potential Jamaican bobsledders Yul Brenner and Junior Bevil (Rawle D. Lewis), the sprinter who tripped both Derice and Yul. The four must learn how to work together to overcome their personal differences and their underdog status. They do this with humor, intelligence and inner strength and with true Jamaican style. (Clarkson, Halls Ferry, Kenrick, Ronnie's, St.

Charles, Union Station, Northwest Square, Mid Rivers, Esquire.) Ghost Of Hitchcock Can Be Seen In Becker's Dark Thriller twists to come, and "Malice" ends up as much more than just another serial-killer thriller. Producer-director Harold Becker, whose last outing was "Sea of Love," has a deft touch with this sort of dark material. His previous films include "Taps" and "The Onion Field," as well as the underrated high-school wrestling movie "Vision Quest." Here, he is working with a script by Aaron Sorkin Few Good and dark yet crisp cinematography by Gordon Willis Godfather" movies, It is a very professional effort, slick, fast-moving and fun to watch. (Alton, Chesterfield, Des Peres, Gal-leria, Halls Ferry, Kenrick, Northwest Square, Ronnie's, St. Charles, Union Station.) sexy and suspenseful, with good acting and one superb performance from Anne Bancroft as the alcoholic mother of one of the main characters.

Bill Pullman plays a college dean, Nicole Kidman his young wife and Alec Baldwin a hotshot surgeon. The setting is a Massachusetts college campus that is struck by a serial killer about the time the surgeon arrives in town. The young female victims all seem to have had some connection with the dean. Meanwhile, in what appears to be a subplot, the wife is suffering from severe abdominal pains. One day she collapses and is rushed to the hospital.

She is operated on by the surgeon, who asks the husband to make a critical life or death decision. That's as far as I'll go with the plot. Suffice it to say there are several nice "MALICE" Rating: violence, sex, language. Running time: ByHarper Barnes Post-Dispatch Critic at Large THIS MOVIE will fool you. Just when you've decided it's just another queasy thriller about a woman-hating serial killer, and! you're beginning to wonder if Hollywood isn't making too many of these nasty littlf things, "Malice" winds up and delivers a terrific curveball.

From then on, it's more Hitchcock than De iPalma, with a little David Mamet thrown in. There's nothing profound about central gimmick, a medical ridiculous. Btifrk' 'very skillful entertainment, spill Nicole Kidman and Bill Pullman in the suspenseful "Malice." I y- if "i -jj- lliill lo )iip Ml) Jffl- i Keep Your Cool: If you have a problem that your local store manager cannot solve call Boca Raton, Fl. headquarters Toll Free at: 1-800-631-4601 9124 Pershall Rd. Hazelwood Mo.

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