No Way Out **** (1987, Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman, Sean Young, Will Paton) – Classic Movie Review 2735

All the thriller genre’s classic ingredients — lies, secrets, passion, sex and murder — are all brought to the boil in director Roger Donaldson’s truly thrilling 1987 neo film noir distantly based on Charles Laughton’s The Big Clock (1947).

Forget Dances with Wolves and Robin Hood, this grippingly fast-paced, labyrinthine thriller is Kevin Costner’s finest hour. He plays Lieutenant Commander Tom Farrell, an upright Pentagon naval officer convinced that US Defence Secretary David Brice (Gene Hackman) and his over-zealous assistant Scott Pritchard (Will Patton) are guilty of murder, even though himself is the prime suspect. Costner sets out to try to find the KGB mole believed to have killed Hackman’s mistress.

There is superb playing as well as good looks from Costner and Sean Young as Susan Atwell, the lady in the case, though the admirable Hackman and Patton are far too wily to let them have it all their own way. Farrell starts an affair with Susan not knowing that she is Brice’s mistress, but Susan is found dead and a Polaroid of him is found at Susan’s place.

Robert Garland‘s story and screenplay adapts the novel The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing.

Costner and Patton re-teamed for 1997’s The Postman.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2735

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