Eureka (1984)

If you're looking for a thriller or court drama , please go somewhere else . There is no murder mystery as the summary for the movie might suggest . "Eureka " is more of a soap opera . We have few stories here : about father who doesn't accept her daughters husband , about man from old generation that can't find his place in modern world , about wife and husband that can't communicate with each other . Unfortunately , the plot here is very muddled and it's hard to understand what this movie is all about .Gene Hackman and Rutger Hauer both give good performances . It was good to see Theresa Russell naked . The beginning of the movie at the Arctic and the death scene are possibly the best moments of the movie . After that I've lost interest in the movie . Still , it's not bad . I give it 3/10.

Jack McCann is a Klondike prospector who one day in 1925, after 15 years of searching, falls into a mountain of gold.He becomes one of the wealthiest men in the world.In 1945 he lives in luxury on a Caribbean island.He's married to Helen, who drinks a lot.His daughter Tracy is married to a man named Claude, who Jack doesn't trust.And there are some Miami mobsters who want his island to build a casino.It seems to him that everybody is after his money.Eureka (1983) is directed by Nicolas Roeg.The story is loosely based on the true murder of Sir Harry Oakes in the Bahamas in 1943.Gene Hackman does a solid job as Jack McCann.Without Hackman's performance this would be a much poorer film.Today this great, now retired actor turns 80, so congratulations.Theresa Russell is great as his daughter, Tracy McCann Maillot Van Horn.Rutger Hauer is terrific as Claude Maillot Van Horn.Jane Lapotaire does very good job as the wife Helen.Mickey Rourke is marvelous as Aurelio D'Amato.Ed Lauter is great as Charles Perkins.Joe Pesci is brilliant as Mayakofsky.The movie offers some decent drama, especially due to Jack McCann's character.Hackman's character seems like a rich man, but yet he's poor.His fear for his wealth and his soul make him that way, alienating him from those that are close to him.The scene where Jack is being murdered, is most brutal.His corpse is being partially incinerated and strewn with feathers.The movie could have been better, sure.I had the greatest time in the beginning, watching him searching for that gold.But nevertheless, quite fascinating movie.

I loved this movie. Often surrealist wackiness doesn't do it for me, especially if blended into more straightforward narrative, but this film did it, did it well, and made it work. The first act (the wackiest) is beautiful and no matter how strange totally fitting with the rest of the movie. A lot of the previous commentors or summarizers seem to have gotten the facts of the movie a bit skewed, the McCanns live in the Bahamas during World War II, the courtroom scene (which I think worked perfectly) switches the focus not to Claude Maillot van Horn but to Jack's daughter. The murder is truly nauseating and I have a pretty decent tolerance. The story is based on a true story, the odd life and unpleasant end of Sir Harry Oakes but Roeg goes with a more personal story than anything I've ever heard about Oakes. In real life he was the victim of a dispute between HRH the Duke of Windsor, governor of the Bahamas, and the Mafia..

Quite a cast isn't it? Gene Hackman, Rutger Hauer, Jane Lapotaire, Theresa Russell, Mickey Rorke, Ed Lauter and Joe Pecsi, all in one film. Directed by Nicholas Roeg, who masterminded the classic Walkabout and Don't Look Now. Based on a riveting true story about a mega-rich gold prospector, Harry Oakes, who was murdered in his plush Bahamian mansion. With credentials as mouth-watering as they are, Eureka is the closest thing you'd ever get to a surefire masterpiece. Yet somehow, the handling is so over stylized and so pre-occupied by meaningless artiness that the film emerges as a complete and utter failure. A mishap of a movie to rank alongside other "movies-that-couldn't-fail-but-did", like The Adventurers (1970) and Inchon (1981).After years of gold hunting in the frozen Arctic wilderness, Jack McCann (Hackman) hits upon a massive gold claim in 1925. Immense wealth is thrust upon him. The story moves on twenty years, and McCann now owns a sun-drenched Bahamian island and has every luxury-in-life at his fingertips. However, wealth brings him little happiness. His wife Helen (Jane Lapotaire) has become an alcoholic; his daughter Tracy (Theresa Russell) has grown distant from him since marrying an ambitious playboy (Rutger Hauer); and he is being leaned on rather heavily by murderous Florida mobsters who want to build a casino on his island.Featuring the most extreme and unwatchable murder scene from any film ever made, and a host of surreal sequences, Eureka is an ultimate example of The Emperor's New Clothes-Syndrome. You are asked to watch a long film about nothing, and tricked into believing that it is some kind of deep and meaningful masterpiece. Unfortunately, it is no such thing. Rather, it is a confused, cruel, over-sexed, violent and grossly self-indulgent bomb. The stunning cinematography merely adds to the sense of regret that such promising-sounding material has turned out so utterly, utterly awful.