Power Play (1978)

In this no doubt peculiar film that has a rather dated patina and production values that wouldn't bear scrutiny in today's world of slick multimillion endeavours however drove away at me and ended up surprising my, admittedly reduced expectations. There's a professional cast pulling out the stops to keep it going, and the way the story ended up left quite a visceral punch - even though the screenplay rather gives it away in the opening sequence in a chat show reminiscence by a witness, back in the real world, ie New York.I like odd movies like this for the curveballs they can throw like the really confusing setting imagined for this country in convulsions. Where somewhere in Eastern Europe do all the military speak in rich English accents or American drawl and the character names seem so anglo-saxon? Where are there big sea freighters unloading British rail rolling stock? The little bit of folk music might have Balkan origin but where in Yogoslavia do they have so many sand dunes for the tank sequences? The 'terrorists' look like the young German Red Brigade or even Irish lackeys. The bit the few reviews can't fail to pick up is the faintly absurd torture of a young woman with electrodes attached to her nipples dispassionately supervised by the Blofelt-type Donald Pleasance (who is good here).All the funny external elements are redeemed however I think by the seriousness of the whole thing and the repeated riff on home truths like perfectly understandable duplicity and cyclic violence that all such Coup-d'etat and by implication all revolutions can involve -despite best efforts from even good chaps. O'Tool's speech at the end about change and society is so deeply ironic and scary - be very scared of change old boy - a very British movie indeed.

Why is this movie not better known,on the very rare occasions it's on British TV it's tucked away in the middle of the night and is dismissed in a few indifferent clichés by TV reviewers.I admit it's not the easiest movie to follow,the characters' names come from a bewildering variety of cultures,it's far from clear what part of the world the fictitious country is located (the Canadian locations could,at a pinch,pass for the Balkans/Eastern Europe) and the pace drags a little at times.However,these minor flaws are of little importance when you consider the excellent line-up of A-list stars who form the cast,the tense and most unusual subject matter and the absolutely savage twist,the scene with Hemmings and O'Toole in the recently-vacated Presidential palace is,or certainly should be,an all-time classic.There is a lesson there for anyone who thinks they have a simple answer to an intolerable situation,and overall the movie is thought-provoking and challenging as well as being great viewing.

truly fantastic screen play about a putsch --- excellent acting all round --- donald pleasance as the cia/cid inteligence chief magnificient --- it only gets worse says the cleaning man , but who is he really who is anyone --- the good guys and bad guys are indistinguishable!

'Political thriller' mish-mash of the bargain-basement package-tour-for-the-cast variety, with enough intrigue, insurrection and military corruption to keep its small banana republic going for the next 25 revolutions, but none of it remotely interesting or even watchable. If it were a European co-production farrago then at least maybe there'd be a wry smile or two raised by incompetent dubbing, but it's impossible to mask the embarrassment of the English-speaking "stars" in their native tongue, or gloss over the unease of the 'international' cast members. On top of that, this TV print looks like it had been salvaged from a Third World sanitation ditch, and it seems the director must have been shot by terrorists before he had a chance to shoot any of his own movie.