The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 88

a a Wl V'V'VV rvrvinri- nrrr n-n rr ry F6 FRIDAY FEBRUARY 1993 LOS ANGELES TIMES rmr 9 'i i MOVIE REVIEWS I Has Seen Future and It Work crazy and barmy crimes like fetal kidnaping are on the books The title itself comes dram a Frederick Douglass quote which compares people who favor freedom yet avoid confrontation with wanting solved in advance! a chaste case of to the Unlike the best cautionary science-fiction Pohl and Kom-bluth's Space most of Wells Harlan Ellison or Philip it lets its extrapolations take over the whole stay "Rain Without (rated PG-13) is being aimed all too obviously at us nowt the Scrooges of the 1990s being given our dose of nightmare For provoking thought' It deserves praise But what the film needs most is some rain with its thunder some crops with its plowing Ifota Without Thunder young black woman (Iona Morris) the main anti-feminist ideologue is Graham Greene as an American Indian pundit and Allison's craven treacherous boyfriend is specifically shown as humble in origin If his parents were rich would he have been a more sterling mate? Bennett probably intends this scheme as ironic He includes lower-class or minority women among the victims but somehow they don't catch the sympathy of the who looks like a Barnard flower or Beverly whose face is all but haloed even Crucifixion symbolism at the climax The arguments are stimulating and so are some of the performances especially Austin fervid anti-abortion priest spouting off theories from Apocalyptic angles and Linda Hunt as a pedantic ftiture feminist nit Without has all its moral issues DGA NOMINEE5 WINNER-Best Picture NEW YORK FILM CRITICS CIRCLE The Best Picture of the Year! Academy DGA Wj A Tour cSTtt a ill admit you and a quest to any pertormanci (Frederic Forrest) and assorted experts pro and the tone always suggests a liberal PBS documentary circa 1990 as if time had stood still in the media and as if the future viewers were somehbw ignorant of their own social history and might be enraged upon learning it Yet if we know anything about repressive societies that the firs thing they try to control is the media here presumably American society remains in every area but women's rights There's a second flawi A bizarre form of class prejudice in which heroines are mostly upper-class women besieged by a motley group of resentful lower classes and racial minorities The prosecutor is an An (Mon CMerira pwmHUon cf Ti Steam poduesn nsnmsuHmw sy bmiml noduc- en NnM 6 Gary Kara Edtan IMory Oottrieb Sum NMxn Camara Bartley MuMe RmM lynch asm lunch WcdutBonaMei Inn miaa Human 8ma I hcwascdncln MPMaMeri PS-18 (adatKfliftqiP crops without plowing rain with- out thunder Like Roberts" the movie is a fake documentary with an inquiring reporter (Carolyn McCormick) and a lot of talking heads cluing us in to the plight and the half-century of social evolution behind it the first problem Though the show is presumably and though writer-director Gary Bennett spreads his eloquence among the idealistic attorney (Jeff Daniels) their dour warden Cf ten Qipine iwiB CHICAGO SUN TIMfS "IHORHOW Ftltl Mimmm" "Very Very Funny Smart and Wise!" Gene SiskeL CBS IMS MORNING 'John Goodman is great Ik Janet Mosfin NEW YORK TIMES HT By MICHAEL WILMINGTON SPECIAL TO THE TIMES hen a movie fails on some dramaUc or cinematic level but still makes in foresting social points the easy way out is to call it yoking" That's what Without (selected theaters) does It provokes thought anger riles us up But on some crucial level it misses making its own alternate reality This ideological horror movie intends to shame any abortion-rights audience who wont go to the trenches Fifty years in the future during a time when anti-abortion activists have supposedly won the day and feminism is a dead political movement two women who go to Sweden few a Beverly Goldring and daughter Allison (Betty Buckley and All languish in jail on a newly enacted charge of If you act affirms this is what you facet a future where women who practice non-sanctioned birh control of any kind are imprisoned dissidents go Treads Violent Old Ground lased on a papular series of manga or graphic novels a new Japanese animated feature opening at the Nuart Theatre today for a five-tday run repeats all the fest- paced clicMs of the genre There are car crashes motorcycle wrecks machine gun battles helicopter attacks stabbings fist-fights martial arts duels explosions and gallons of blood-red paint But despite this litany of violence never seems or even interesting Part of the problem lies with the void at the center of the film The dubious hero Golgo 13 is a paid -assassin who no emotion other than his pride in his record that no target has ever escaped and the character is so stiffly animated easy to believe Grotesquely snisproportioned with a tiny head and outsized shoulders Golgo maintains the same stolid while shooting people driving through a barrage of gunfire and making love to an assortment of badly drawn women Director Osamu Deaald rapid cutting split-screen imagery computer graphics and siow pans over artwork from the arigi- nal comics to try to infuse some energy into the hokey material but a losing battle not a credible character or situation in tlut film even by the undemanding standards of action comic books Greg Snegoff English dialogue ranges from merely silly to unintentionally hilarious A social psychologist could prob- ably write a PhD thesis on the meaning of a story in which a long Japanese assassin triumphs over the combined resources of the FBI the CIA the Pentagon the Mafia and the most powerful oil billionaire in the Western World But only the most puerile viewer could describe (Times ratedi Mature for violence language and cartoon sex) as entertaining -CHARLES SOLOMON IMrVvVflMIMi A IMS pndudka ty MmM Mum Oncur Own OWL Musas Yutafca niUa ttcMo Yemmnsoo a Notuo knda edepterinn pm-Suwi and by Cal Mwfc EnQMi damea end auction by Wes Inojoty Sunning Umr I hour SSqkulH Thumbs On!" -SidnllEbsif rUUWBtSALITUOUttHOUyWMO ANGELES DAIL 0 M' in 0 IMNUflf A'vf HUM DOBS drama 0103223466 rtMMWSSM duiyanl 0103223486 nUMDMI MotaaBHMaM 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