Alas, it's a story that gets bogged down in predictability and pedantry. Brackett is a former network star now exiled to the backwater of Madeline, California, covering such chicken-dinner stories as the local museum's funding problems. Suddenly, Sam is holding hostage his boss, a field trip of schoolchildren, and Max. But soon other agendas come into play. National media swarms on Madeline like locusts.
Interest groups use the museum steps as a soapbox.
The biggest agenda at work in Mad City , though, is that of director Costa-Gavras. He uses broad strokes to heighten the carnival atmosphere of this media circus, and reduces most of the characters to stick-figure archetypes. The central performances are more shaded. Hoffman reveals a glimmer of nobility in Max, even as he bends the journalistic rules. Travolta, as only he can, expresses the stammering despair of the average guy unable to articulate his problems.