Philadelphia Daily News from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 45

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1994 THE PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS PAGE 45 Our movie rating guide Excellent Good Wait for the video Bad C33 rr rr r- a a a ill Is 'Velocity' up to 'Speed'? Thanks to Kinski, it's close by Gary Thompson tion for making too many risky Daily News Movie Critic parachute jumps. "Terminal Velocity" is an enjoy- As "Terminal Velocity" opens, ably ridiculous B-movie starring Ditch is cooling his heels for a Charlie Sheen as a parachuting few days, but changes his mind daredevil who becomes involved when an attractive blonde (Nas- in international intrigue. tassja Kinski) asks for an im- Sheen, with a pompadour, side- y-diving lesson, burns and squint that make him ThjS seemingly routine lesson look like a cave-dwelling Jack jcks off a series of manic plot Lord thrust suddenly into bright convolutions, drawing Ditch into sunlight, is "Ditch" Brodie, a tne kind of cliffhanger-filled od- maverick sky diver suspended by yssey we used to see in Alfred the Federal Aviation Administra- Hitchcock movies, with Sheen as the baffled but game American r-- thrust into a complicated, high- a-- stakes spy conspiracy. Terminal Velocity i OK, it not exactly like Hitch-Produced by Scott Kroopf and Tom Engel- cock. Where he used character man, directed by Deran Sarafian, music by development to build suspense Joel McNeely, written by David Twohy, dis- and excitement, "Terminal Veloc- tTino ity" takes a more visceral route, Running Time: 102 minutes Ditch Brodie Charlie Sheen le dropping a shiny red Cadillac Chris Morrow Nastassja Kinski out of an airplane whenever Ben Pinkwater James Gandolfini things get slow.

Ken- Christopher McDonald Noble Meivin Van Peebles Nothing that happens on screen Parents Guide: is wilder than the head-on casting Showing at: Area theaters collision that pairs studio player he bargained for from sky-diving student Nastassja Kinski power brought her to this action-comedy buddy movie with Charlie Sheen, but it's awfully nice to see Kinski pick up an automatic pistol and blast away at villains after being cooped up in obscure art pictures all those years. She does quite well, bringing to "Terminal Velocity" a little of the spunk and sexy chemistry that Sandra Bullock brought to "Speed," a surprise hit earlier this summer. "Terminal Velocity" is directed by Deran Serfian, another Roger Corman apprentice who showed some visual promise in "Gunmen," and employs an even more acrobatic camera here. He's working with a bigger budget, which he spends on great aerial stunts and rousing special effects. Not a nickel on dialogue, though.

Cover your ears. This prison movie lack conviction Charlie Sheen gets more than Sheen with the exotic Kinski, the European ingenue who became instantly famous for earing a strawberry for Roman Polanski in "Tess," then participated in a few offbeat Hollywood projects and bummed around making independent movies for people like Wim Wenders (most recently "Faraway, So while she raised three kids. I don't know what strange does not by Gary Thompson Daily News Movie Critic The name of the movie is "The Shawshank Redemption," and this raises some obvious issues. First, what the hell is a Shawshank? Is it like a veal shank? Is it the technical term for misquoting passages from No, Shawshank is a prison, and "The Shawshank Redemption" is an epic-length prison movie, a pretty good yarn about an innocent banker thrown into the slammer. Good yarn, bad title.

And I don't mean the unwieldy "Shawshank." For me, the real problem is "redemption." I'm no fortune-teller, but if I'm watching a movie called "The Shawshank Redemption," about a wrongly convicted man who fights to maintain his spirit and integrity in a brutal place, then I'm guessing that his travails bitter though they may be end with Redemption! So predictability is sort of an issue here, magnified by the movie's other flaw, which is its godawful length. At 135 minutes, the double hfe tenceerve by the -hr If v-f -Ot kJp 'p-" 1 A j( will sometimes feel like your own. Tim Robbins plays Andrew Du-fresne, a bank vice president who gets consecutive life terms for his conviction in the shooting death of his wife and her golf-pro lover. Dufresne is a brilliant man, a banker with a head for organization and for numbers. He's also a pencil-necked pencil-pusher and a misfit in prison, where vicious, burly men make the rules.

At first, things go badly for him, but he displays a steely inner strength that gradually wins the respect of some fellow cons and guards. The Shawshank Redemption Produced by Niki Marvin, written and directed by Frank Darabont, music by Tomas Newman, distributed by Castle Rock Entertainment. Running Time: 135 minutes Andy Dufresne Tim Robbins Red Morgan Freeman Warden Bob Gunton Heywood William Sadler Hadley Clancy Brown Tommy Gil Bellows Brooks Whitmore Parents Guide: Showing at Area theaters, The movie's substantial emotional content arises from the developing friendship between Dufresne and another convict, a fixer and lifer named Red, played by Morgan Freeman with the stately deportment and commanding gravity that has made him a perennial Oscar contender. Red teaches Dufresne how to survive in prison, while Dufresne tries to keep the increasingly withdrawn Red from abandoning hope. In sum, two of the sweetest convicted murderers you're likely to meet.

For this reason, "The Shawshank Redemption" is not likely to win raves among the three-strikes-and-you're-out set. Like many prison movies where the prison is an obvious metaphor for society, Shawshank is a penitentiary with no criminals in it. The only really bad people inside are the guards, and the most evil person is the warden. The prisoners are virtuous, warmly fraternal and noble. (Except for the rapists an unfortunate staple of the modern, realistic prison picture.) Yet even the most prosecutorial See PRISON Page AT 1 I Morgan Freeman left)r Tim -Robbin are pen pals-- -A5.