Mad City (1997)

Costa-Gravas' film 'Mad City' tells the story of an idiot who decides to turn around his life by taking hostages; needless to say, it doesn't end well. The film is also a satire on the media, happy to watch bad things happening (or even to make bad things happen) as long as there's a story: now Donald Trump is President-elect, this point certainly bears re-telling. But regarding the set-up, there's an obvious reference point, the brilliant Sidney Lumet film 'Dog Day Afternoon', and sadly, that movie puts this one well into the shade. The characters in 'Mad City' are unfortunately one-dimensional and the film's cards are unambiguously on the table throughout. For all their A-list status, stars Dustin Hoffman and John Travolta fail to bring the uninspiring script to life.

Costa-Gavras's Mad City has too many familiar elements ranging from Dog Day Afternoon to Falling Down to Ace in the Hole but something has gone awry in the screenplay as its neither sharp nor with grim humour.John Travolta is Sam Baily a museum security guard that has been laid off sue to budget cuts. He is so embarrassed that he has not told his wife of his joblessness. Seething with anger he goes to the museum and holds his boss (Blythe Danner) and a class of visiting school children hostage at gunpoint which recklessly goes off and wounds his form workmate.Also trapped in the museum is Max Brackett (Dustin Hoffman) who sees and opportunity to take advantage by broadcasting on the sly live on the local news. When Sam catches him, Max exploits Sam's naivety to bolster his own flagging career by promising Sam to spin the news to make him popular and allow him to air his grievances to the media.Mad City shows how a minor incident spirals out of control and becomes a national incident. Before long the FBI takeover from the local police, the major networks come down hard on both Brackett and Bailey and no one is quiet in control as they thought they were.The film is proficiently directed by Costa-Gavras but I expected more rather than a reminder of previous films dealing with a similar subject matter that did it better.Mad City has star power but low wattage.

All of his fantastic work gets thrown out of the window with this cliché driven film. Each and every character and every line of this film is a cliché. This continues another long line of John Travolta films that prove that 80 percent of his films and the portrayals in them are horrible. This might be one of his worst. He does the same acting tricks that he did in "Michael" and "Phenomenon." I watch this, and I cannot help but laugh at how bad he is. And if you believe for one second that this scenario could actually happen, then you are sorely mislead and misled. All of the other actors can't be criticized as badly as Travolta; they probably thought that working with Costa-Gavras was an honor and they are only as good (bad) as the script. Gavras must have been near the end of his career and the likely scenario is that an American Studio believed that having his name on the film was good business.

Mad City is almost a remake of Billy Wilder's Ace In The Hole with a bit of Network thrown in. The Kirk Douglas part has shifted to a television reporter and it's played with relish by Dustin Hoffman. By sheer chance Hoffman is in the Museum Of Natural History when a security guard who's been laid off due to budget cuts, pulls a shotgun out of canvas bag and holds museum director Blythe Danner, a school teacher and her class who were out on a field trip just as the museum is closing. Oh and he accidentally shoots his former co-worker security guard Bill Nunn as well. That kind of seals his fate.As good as Dustin Hoffman is the film really belongs to John Travolta as the desperate security guard, a slow witted kind of man who really hasn't thought through what he's doing. Hoffman realizing he's got an exclusive story becomes Travolta's media adviser, stringing it out for all it's worth. Travolta has to walk a fine line in this film, balancing his character's situation in his portrayal. We empathize with him, many of us who have ever been desperate and without a paycheck, but we can't sympathize with a man who's holding a whole bunch of grade school kids hostage. Sam Bailey ranks as one of the two or three best pieces of work John Travolta has ever done. In the meantime Hoffman who is also mentoring young reporter Mia Kirshner, too well as it turns out, has also got a rivalry with network anchor Alan Alda. One thing I've noticed about Alan Alda, since he's left MASH, he's gone out of his way to take roles that are the farthest thing from good guy Hawkeye Pierce. He and Hoffman hate each other and Alda's attempts to spin the story his way and Hoffman's countermoves are what really set up the inevitable climax.Mad City is not very nice look at the news business and what people will do to get a story. The film has its roots not only in Ace In The Hole and Network, but you could make a case going all the way back to Five Star Final and other films showing the darker side of reporting and the agenda driven people in that business.Sad to say is that the news is business, show business in fact. In the end poor Travolta had to get off the stage.