The General's Daughter

It’s now official. John Travolta has worn out his welcome.

I don’t blame the guy for working so much. He’s getting choice roles at $20 million a pop. But if he doesn’t watch it, he’s going to wind up being Gene Hackman or, worse, Michael Caine. And it’s not as though he’s a bad actor, far from it. But let someone else take a role once in a while, please. Go spend time with your trophy wife (Kelly Preston) and your son.

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I really only went to see The General’s Daughter because Deb had already reviewed Austin Powers, and I needed to write something up. But it also had promise. The director, Simon West, showed with Con Air that he had great style, even when shooting a ridiculous movie. The supporting cast was strong as well, with Timothy Hutton and James Woods. The script was even cowritten by William Goldman, who will get a first class trip to heaven just for penning The Princess Bride. But it just didn’t deliver. The ads make it look like an action movie. It’s not.

Travolta is Paul Brenner, an undercover Army cop who’s using a ridiculous southern accent in the beginning (rivaling John Malkovich’s Russian brogue in Rounders in its badness). It’s in this character when he meets Elisabeth Campbell (Leslie Stefanson), daughter of General Joe Campbell (James Cromwell), who teaches psychological operations or, as she says to Brenner, "We fuck with people’s minds." Only a day later, she is found dead, naked and staked spread-eagled outside. Elisabeth, it seems, was not the quiet Army brat she seemed to be. The general asks Brenner if he can resolve the investigation quickly before the media gets a hold of the story, by doing things the army way. Mmm hmmm.

This movie played like a mix between The Accused and A Few Good Men. I’ve heard other people mention The Presidio, which I saw but when it first came out 11 years ago, so I don’t remember it enough to note any similarities. But the bottom line is, I felt like I’d already seen this movie before, and it was done better the first time. Simon West struts his stuff in the first ten minutes but after that it felt like someone else’s movie. The acting was fine, given the plot, and there was a killer scene between Travolta and Woods that had razor sharp dialogue. But the plot devices were just that, devices, the climax was anticlimactic, and I didn’t buy Madeleine Stowe as Travolta’s former love interest, now reluctant partner for a second. They make a joke about the age difference in the movie, but come on, Hollywood. Have you learned nothing from Six Days, Seven Nights?

Paramount marketed this movie as a Clancy-esque thriller, and I hear the book is quite good. But this had nothing on The Hunt For Red October, and I’m betting they changed the end of the script drastically from the book’s ending. The Army did not cooperate in the making of this film, and when I first heard that, I figured it was because they were telling an egdy story that could make the military look bad. Upon seeing the movie, my guess is the Army didn’t cooperate because it just wasn’t that good of a movie. Military thrillers are up there with legal thrillers on the most overdone genres in my book. Maybe this movie was about five years too late.