Rollover (1981)

It's impossible not to giggle every time Kristofferson opens his mouth in this movie. It's not like he's playing a cowboy turned banker - rather, he's playing a stereotypical New York banker and it's just ridiculous. It's like casting Miley Cyrus as a nun or Justin Bieber as a nuclear scientist.Jane Fonda looks stiff and bored. Their romance is also hilarious.The movie filled with clichés: the omniscient assassin, the busy trading floor, the tape Fonda finds at just the right time, etc.Overall, it's a very slow-moving, dull drama. The first two thirds of the movie are irrelevant. "The Arabs pull out their money out" is a single event at the end, following by a couple minutes of "the sky is falling" and that's it. The first 90 minutes of all the corporate maneuvering are a completely different plot that turns out to be irrelevant.The scenario, by the way, is silly. So what if the Arabs withdraw all their cash? Where would they put it? In a different bank in a different country. And what would that bank do with it? Lend it out. Who would borrow? US banks needing liquidity. So the money would move around but the idea that the entire global financial system would collapse is ridiculous.And of course, if it did collapse, the Arabs would have no one to buy their oil, so they zero motivation to do this. This is also not covered in the movie.Meh...it's a couple hours to put on the TV in your garage while you're working or something but I wouldn't sit down with your special someone for an evening of excitement.BTW, "Tarriq Afifi" - you're completely wrong. I'm offended by your comments that this movie is racist. It's not. It's about Arabs pulling their money out of US banks. Racism would be saying "all Arabs are (some negative stereotype)" not saying "in 1981, Arabs had a lot of financial power". There was no Arab bashing (or bashing of Islam - the asr prayer is shown accurately).

This was a 1981 movie Jane Fonda "got made" after her exploration of the dangers of nuclear power in the "China Syndrome" back in 1979. She was driving to tell the story of real money - gold and how OTHER parts of the world value gold as real money while the Americans don't understand it. (Note: And it's not about Jane. I don't even like Jane Fonda...her politics aren't supposed to be in the acting on the screen. At some point a movie - or any art - is not about the artist's personality, it's about what's on the page or the score or on the screen.)The plot line is about "outsiders" not rolling over their CDs in American banks and buying gold...and what the loss of those foreign investments means to the financial establishment in New York. I'll admit the acting and the romance are not top notch. So what? This movie was a "financial thriller" and there just ain't many of these movies made. Movies need bank financing, and banks usually won't finance anything that makes them look bad or stupid. (They show "I'ts a Wonderful Life" with Jimmy Stewart on TV only once a year now because it shows "run on the bank" at the Bailey Savings and Loan - not something the financial establishment wants Americans to even think about.) I'm a Certified Financial Planner and I recommend this movie in my classes along with Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" and "Boiler Room" as movies that shed light on the financial world in which we live today. In 2005, it's even more important for people to understand the relationships between gold and paper money as the cycle from the 1970's reasserts itself.And get over the Arab slights in the movie. They weren't the point back in 1981 and they aren't the point now. A lack of political correctness is not a reason to avoid this movie.

The short side of the story is that this has to be one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Rythme-wise, the movie is dead. It makes you feel like you are attending a lecture on economy at the university. And to think that I watched the movie because it was described as a "thriller!"The story portrays an Arab plot to shake the foundations of global economy using the simple concept that there is alot more "printed" paper money than there is actual value out there in the world.First of all, the movie is offensive to Arabs. If this movie was made now, civil rights groups and Muslim/Arab groups would be all over it, in one scene, Jane Fonda says (about taking a loan from those Arabs): "I feel like a beggar asking them for money, and I HATE it!" and Kristofferson comforts her by saying: "You and the rest of the world!" This is an out right racist statement that wouldn't slip so casually as it did in 1981. Aside from that, the movie protrays Arab customs rather poorly, on one side, the director of the movie is keen on showing Arab rich people sitting on the ground and eating with their hands from one big plate (to somehoe portray primitivity) and forcing Fonda and Kristofferson to do the same (which doesn't happen in real life, they give guests plates and spoons if they need them), but the director makes a bigger slip of showing them shaking hands with Fonda and sitting right next to her in the dinner. That would not take place in the same societies that eat with their hands from the plates.Other omissions are plenty as well, portraying Arab countries and cities as vast areas of desert lands and tents doesn't portray what the Arab world looked like in 1981.From an acting stand point, Fonda is not too bad, but Kristofferson is awful. His "cowboy" acting style really misses the target in this one. The image of a banker who talks like a cowboy, behaves like a cowboy and tells his boss in the bank that if he doesn't hang up the phone he would smash his head.. This image is just not real. The way every night fall in the movie almost always ends with Fonda and Kristofferson making love is also not real for two people well over fourty as the movie portrays. So, you feel like the roles were written in a naive way. Not much attention was put into seeing how the characters fit into their perspective roles.Overall, this movie is not worth renting on video even, I would suggest waiting till its out there on TNT or TBS or something, in fact, it's not worth such a long review. (:-)))

Possibly attempting to do for the world of finance what she'd done to nuclear power in "The China Syndrome"(1979), this Jane Fonda melodrama is a poor investment for any serious movie fan.The story is very hard to follow and poorly constructed with shallow characters. The story is not terribly easy to grasp for the average person in my opinion and not presented to the audience clearly enough-nor well enough to garner much interest and/or curiosity. Fonda appears bored, while still trying to appear smart and glamorous, in her role. Kris Kristofferson is simply a case of very bad casting. Despite some efforts to make him physically appear like a big-time banker, he comes off flat and stiff in his role. Whether talking down a bank president or talking Fonda into bed, all his lines are delivered in a blank monotone style that conveys nothing. We also are never given much background or motivation for the events and doings of the people wandering about this epic of high finance. Fonda and Kristofferson's first meeting isn't much of an icebreaker, yet the two are bedding down together by their second or third encounter.The film is directed by Alan J. Pakula and it looks much like other works for him. Secret meetings in parking lots and suspect late night boardroom conferences may appear to be the things that make up a good thriller, but here they are simply padding between the great nothingness that amounts to two-hours of dull slow paced cliche filled dialog from weak characters that you never grow to care much about. The movie's heavy-handed and overly-dramatic musical score makes many scenes nearly laughable.There's little to recommended beyond those morbidly curious to see a bad movie, which is why I obtained a copy of it. On that level, it does pay a modest dividend.