Eleni ** (1985, Kate Nelligan, John Malkovich, Linda Hunt) – Classic Movie Review 6502

Director Peter Yates’s third collaboration with screen-writer Steve Tesich is an awfully limp 1985 true-life drama film about New York journalist Nick (John Malkovich)’s trip back to Greece to investigate the death of his mother Eleni (Kate Nelligan) in the late-1940s civil war.

This ambitious revenge thriller goes for quality, but misses the target and ends up plain dull, lost in its flashback structure and unemotional dialogue so that even these posh actors are adrift.

Revenge should be savoured cold perhaps, but gosh this is a chilly film.

It is based on the autobiographical book of the same name by Nicholas Gage, first published in 1983.

Also in the cast are Linda Hunt, Oliver Cotton, Ronald Pickup, Rosalie Crutchley, Glenne Headly, Dimitra Arliss, Jon Rumney, Peter Woodthorpe and Alison King.

It is shot by Billy Williams, produced by Peter Yates, scored by Bruce Smeaton and designed by Roy Walker.

Yates’s other films with Tesich are Breaking Away (1979) and Eyewitness (1981).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6502

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