Newsday (Suffolk Edition) from Melville, New York • 256

MOVIE REVIEWS Hold-the-Punches Battle for a Beanfield THE RHLAGRO BEANFIELD WAR (R) Chicano bean fanner diverts water from land-development corporation and Hie war begins Pleasantly entertaining Directed by Robert Redford Starring Chick Vennera Ruben Blades Sonia Braga Christopher Walken Melanie Griffith At area theaters The local sheriff Ruben Blades right tries to persuade Chick Vennera to give up the fight for his beanfield By Mike McGrady MEANS and the colorful residents of the fictitious New Mexican village of Milagro live their days in the dose company of miracles Angels in sombreros and scrapes dance through the moonlit hills at midnight ghosts of the recently departed materialize to offer counsel a bran farmer battles a huge land-development corporation to a standstill What director Robert Redford is after here is a larger miracle the kind of movie miracle that Frank Capra used to pull off with some regularity In truth Milagro Beanfield is so amiable so likable so good-natured that one hates to admit it falls short of the miraculous And possibly in these cold-hearted times a movie with this much warmth and charm should qualify as at least a minor miracle If so however this is one of those miracles one never quite believes in Despite highly ingratiating performances despite the worthiness of the various messages the contrivances show through too clearly The one thing certain to undermine any miracle is the exposure of its machinery The instant the small impoverished bean fanner (Chick Vennera) taps into the irrigation water owned by the Miracle Valley Recreation Area Largest Leisure Time Development in the History of New one can predict the outcome As author John Nichols put it in his original novel: irrigating that field was an act as irrevocable as invasion of Poland because it was certain to catalyze tensions which had been building for years certain to precipitate a All that is left then is the choosing up of sides Over here on one side call them the good guys we have kind and funny Ruben Blades as the local sheriff kind but tough Sonia Braga as the firebrand kind and modest John Heard as the local lawyer kind and well-meaning Daniel Stem as a visiting NYU student Over there on the other side: Richard Bradford as the mean and wealthy tycoon Christopher Walken as the mean and violent state trooper Melanie Griffith as the not-quite-so-mean and pretty wife of the tycoon and he still reveals a keen sense of pacing lingering long enough for the laughs and darting swiftly through the obligatory heavier stuff the fights the gunplay the chase Redford takes full advantage of the color not just the brilliant colors of the western skies and landscapes but the color of the local oddballs who seem far more interesting than anything they are asked to do The portraits by Blades Heard and Braga are outstanding Echoes of a Wonderful abound but they never become more than echoes The themes here Are less complicated and so are the people moreover the outcome is never in doubt All of this conspires to make more an incident than a war more an entertaining interlude than a miracle ill It comes down then to kind vs mean rich vs poor cold-blooded vs warm-hearted bulldozer vs plow businessman vs farmer developer vs environment Can there be any doubt as to the outcome of such a battle? No M''agro Beanfield has no more suspense than were we to reinvade Grenada Though handicapped by predictability script writer David Ward succeeds in diverting our attention with pleasantly eccentric characters with some not overly magical magic and with a steady Bow of low-keyed Saroyanesque humor posse find complains the big-city lawman) first directorial effort won the best-director and best-picture Oscars back in 1980 i Lessons in More Than Mathematics HAND AND DELIVER (PG) Inspiring tale based on a true story of an East A high school math teacher and the underprivileged unmotivated students he turns around Shining Edward James Olmos and Lou Diamond Philips At local theaters Edward James Olmos teaches Lou Diamond Phillips the use of calculus own character his motivations for taking on the job he does his tremendous energy and dedication are vividly portrayed The film also does a graceful job of illustrating the kind of odds the kids (played winningly by young actors most of whom have little or no experience) are up against at home without getting too preachy about it Lupe (Ingrid Oliu) -n comes home from school to pack a lunch for her father and take care of 5 her younger brothers and sisters before her exhausted mother arrives asking her to turn out the light by which doing her homework Angel (Lou Diamond Phillips who 5 played Ritchie Valens in takes care of his aged grandmother and cruises the streets at night as he walks across the littered teeming yard outside his apartment building the whole world threatens his desire to escape the future destined for him Even his newfound knowledge seems to prove to him how hopeless things are a friend talks about the stars and Angel tells him about light years: For all we know he Bays they burned out long ago are the true dreamers and dreams accomplish wonderful 3 Escalante tells his students I wish wri- ter director Ramon Menendez had given ub an idea of what happened to some of these kids after they graduated from Garfield but as a paean to the idea that one individual can still make a difference in this world and does just that ill By Lynn Darling IT take us long to get an idea of what Jaime Escalante (Edward James Olmos) is up against after he quits his high-salaried electronics job to teach math tQ the barrio kids of Garfield High School The camera follows him on his first day of work as he drives past the men trying to scrape together a buck by selling onions on the side of the road past the drunks and drug dealers and other testimony to the odds against making it in East A And things get much better when Escalante gets to the high school: assigned to teach computer science he finds out no money for computers He has to settle for introductory math instead But settling come easy to Escalante: Before long tossed out Math 1A moved on to algebra and decided to prepare his students for calculus over the objections of the head of his department who is convinced teach logarithms to Escalante will do anything it takes to get these kids to learn shifting gears from one moment to the next to keep their attention He carves up an apple with a meat cleaver to demonstrate fractions delivers startling little asides it true intelligent people make better to his students as he walks among them demanding answers and adopts his own slick homeboy accent to deal with the sullen hipsters who threaten the peace and is based on a true story: It has to be because the kind of results that Escalante motivates his students to achieve are so amazing that a purely fictional story along these lines would be hooted out of the theaters as pie-in-the-sky fantasy In 1982 18 of students took the Educational Testing Advanced Placement calculus examination and all of them passed The results were so impressive that ETS accused the students of cheating citing the uniformity of the wrong answers they gave In the movie the accusation raises troubling questions of racism The charge as Escalante tells the two investigators (Andy Garcia and Rif Hutton) would never have been raised if his students went to Beverly Hills High School And it forces the students to confront an even more difficult challenge to their fragile enough self-confidence Edward James Olmos (the laconic Lt Castillo of gives a tremendous performance as Escalante bullying sermonizing demanding humoring the students into doing the mind-boggling amount of work involved If film is a little vague on.