The sore loser is a winner

Rating: Null/10 (21 April 2000)

* * * ½ (3½ out of 5)
The sore loser is a winner
>Concise, sober and interesting depiction of the famous NBC game show fraud ("21") in the 50s. Based on a true story and firmly directed by Robert Redford.
The backbone is entertainment in a historic perspective. Luckily, Redford and the superb cast allow for realistic tinges of despair and downright meanness to surface among some of the unfortunate Hollywood parading that somewhat bogs the movie.
David Paymer and Hank Azaria - as media piranhas Dan Enright and Albert Freedman - are particularly annoying in their hysteric characters. Redford goes for a touch of the Coen brothers here - Paymer and Azaria do a truly smashing job - it just doesn't work in this context.
There are exceptional and formidable performances all the way round. Most of them work. Lead by two major performances: Ralph Fiennes and John Turturro.
Fiennes seems to find the same venom deep in himself that made his performance the year before - as the sadistic German commandant in Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993) - a tentative stand out. He was both compelling, original and darkly seductive. This time he seems to turn that very same venom upon himself as he carefully embodies college professor Charles Van Doren. An educated man who is tempted and ultimately lured by the promise of money and fame on the game shows made for the revolutionary television.
Fiennes' Van Doren is intelligent and wise, but nervous and disillusioned when among his peers - those are namely his father and other intellectuals - and he has even adapted a slight stutter that plays ingeniously well with his facial expressions and quirkiness. His performance is scintillating brilliant.
Opposite him is John Turturro in what may be his finest performance to date. Turturro is Herb Stempel - the former game show winner who is found to be too geeky and greedy (and Jewish) for the network and therefore scheduled to "take a fall" - and he has never been better.
He gives the term "sore loser" a whole new meaning.
Turturro is always intriguing but has also become somewhat predictable. He is mainly used in eccentric and frenzied roles simply because of his onscreen magnetism (as in The Big Lebowski). Only Barton Fink (1991) hinted at the more shaded and jaded side of Turturro; one that showed us glimpses of emotional understanding from underneath that charismatic and provocative shield. That is visible here although Stempel basically whimpers and whines throughout the movie: Why must he take a step aside for Van Doren? Why? Why? It is hilarious all the same.
Yet it is with his wife and child at home that we glimpse the sensitive side of Herb Stempel as portrayed by John Turturro. A man who is to be respected for his intelligence, sure, but also for his commitment to family and honesty. After all.
Furthermore both Paul Scofield as the elder Van Doren ("Your name is my name!," he protests after learning that his son was aware of the scam: the father-and-son scene is simply mesmerizing) and Rob Morrow as investigator Dick Goodwin deliver high caliber performances.
Where do all these powerful performances leave the movie itself? On solid ground actually. The movie is taut and tight in form - interesting not only because of the morals at stake here - but because Redford treats the material like a murder mystery with Van Doren at center, caught in an emotional tight rope (to tell or not to tell?).
Redford peels layer after layer off of Van Doren and his slow psychological disintegration has you pinned to your seat.
The moral seems to be that amidst lost idealism we must rise again. Simple awareness of the gradual and ever-changing assessment of moral justification that resides in society today can help us make the many temptations - in what was already then considered a "consumer-land" - go away. Or can it?
Along the way we are treated to some unfortunate candy-coated moments though. When Van Doren caves in and issues an amendment at a hearing he is at first applauded. Only to be sucker-punched by sheer Hollywoodism. A senator adds: "An adult should simply not be commended for telling the truth".
As if the senator was expecting the audience - not at the hearing, but you dear viewer - to applaud him. These self-conscious John Wayne values do not fit the movie. Not when so bombastically dropped.
All in all Redford delivers no answers - this is entertainment based on reality - but he is knowledgeable about human nature. When he brings that out in the open - by way of Paul Attanasio`s razor sharp screenplay and the amazing cast with Fiennes and Turturro in front - Quiz Show is intelligent and alluring cinema.