The director who gave us “The Exorcist” and “The French Connection” gave us one last film. (You can skip it.)
is two warring things at once: First and foremost, it is the last film by a justly acclaimed and beloved director, William Friedkin; it is also a terrible, terrible film. Nobody wants to insult the dead.
Friedkin’s film centers only on the court-martial trial for mutiny of the first officer, Stephen Maryk, meaning that the events are relayed to us exclusively via testimony. Lieutenant Barney Greenwald acts as lawyer for the defense, interrogating Maryk and gradually making a fool of the bumptious captain, Queeg .
Some of the drabness could have been mitigated by great performances, but Friedkin’s actors are all at sea—no pun intended, truly, since we never see any of these sailors at work, but only hear reported speech about their activities. Most lost of all is Kiefer Sutherland as Queeg, offering up a kind of B-movie Kevin Spacey characterization, complete with an affected old-style drawl.
Only one actor manages to say this rot with any conviction—a young scene-stealer by the name of Gabe Kessler , who, as the sweetly clueless Quartermaster, Junius Urban, manages to evince some humor, some humanity from his role. Only this actor, by adding pauses and imposing some expression on his character beyond the rigid, formal courtroom lines he has been given, succeeds in creating something like interest.
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