Conspiracy Theory Review
by Jun Yan (jyan AT hsc DOT usc DOT edu)August 13th, 1997
CONSPIRACY THEORY (1997)
A black helicopter flew in the middle of a busy street in New York and a bunch of armed soldiers dressed in black started landing through ropes. Need I explain why there is a rumor about black UN helicopters invading United States? Just watch "Conspiracy Theory."
The first half hour of this movie is absolutely intriguing and promising. Jerry Fletcher (Mel Gibson) is just a small-time New York cab driver minding his own little harmless business, which is printing a little harmless newsletter spreading rumors about government conspiracies. (I won't spoil them for you since they are the best part of the film) One day his seemingly wacky fantasy suddenly come true and he is kidnapped and tortured in a small house by a malicious Dr. Jonas (Patrick Stewart). Now I smell the chilling thriller "Vanishing" (the original version).
Unfortunately, the writer of the screenplay seems to run out of ideas from this point on. All they can ever do is to plagerize some really lousy B movies of such theme (brain washed assassins blah blah blah). As if they realize how idiotic their story is, any explanation is drowned in Jerry's feverish schizophrenic babbling. In the end, the whole story is buried under a stupid romance theme, which in itself was terribly developed.
Let's start with the romance. A lawyer of the Justice Department Alice (Julia Roberts) tolerates Jerry's open obsession for her because he saved her from being mugged once and even visited his heavily-guarded apartment (I mean *heavily* guarded). Although at first shrugging off Jerry's crazy ideas (like any sane person would), she starts getting suspicious after meeting Dr. Jonas, with the words "BAD GUY" written all over his face. The problem is, there is NO chemistry between Roberts and Gibson. Roberts often looks slightly embarrassed to be reading the awkward lines, while Gibson seems nearly breaking into laughter at his own cheesy, cheap love talk to her. It's embarrassingly juvenile and primitive, attempted in half-hearted playfulness that's all pretending and not an ounce of emotion to it.
Then the action sequences. As a veteran director with "Lethal Weapon" series in hand, I cannot believe how bland and wimpy the actions are in this movie. Some routine explosion and shoot-'em-up's. The connecting non-action elements are long and dull, extremely uninteresting, filled with stupid dialogues that make no sense. Again, he displays great pleasure in torturing and shooting up his buddy Mel Gibson, which is the more intense and dark part of the film.
Although appropriately wacky and weird, Gibson's Jerry remains unsympathetic throughout the film, never really stands up as an interesting character with real emotions and fears. I think he always watched to play a mental patient and here's the chance. As for why Roberts would keep taking meaningless and badly-written roles in cheesy thrillers is beyond me. She doesn't even seem like having fun!
Thus they've ruined some really promising surrealistic material. Too bad. I give it a D+.
jun
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