The Player (1992)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Player (1992) – R. Altman

Robert Altman’s “comeback” film (from Michael Tolkin’s script) seems to have lost a bit of its punch in the 25+ years since it was released, likely because the problems with the film industry that it satirized have not only gotten worse, they are simply taken for granted. Movies as a business product rather than an artform? Writers all but ignored? Yer shitting me.  Tim Robbins plays Griffin Mill, the production exec interested only in studio politics, as banal rather than evil -- although Burt Reynolds, among others, thinks he’s an asshole; which is why he begins receiving death-threat postcards from an unknown writer he once dissed.  Taking the bull by the horns, Mill seeks out the likely suspect (Vincent D'Onofrio) and accidentally kills him...and then courts his girlfriend (Greta Scacchi).  Not much human feeling here, nor really among any of the Hollywood camp (save perhaps Cynthia Stevenson as Robbins’ girlfriend/ex-girlfriend).  Soon the Pasadena police (Whoopi Goldberg & Lyle Lovett) are on his trail and slick Peter Gallagher is vying for his job.  But as always with Robert Altman, the loose plot is virtually secondary to the community and its eccentric members (many of whom speak at the same time).  Of course, the most awesome thing about The Player (apart from that long opening tracking shot) is just how many “real” members of the community (celebrities themselves) Altman was able to coax into playing themselves in cameos (or as bit characters). They are all in on the joke (or unfortunately, the joke may be on them, since they are treated simply like tools to boost a film’s commercial viability, as they did for The Player).  This culminates in a great finale – a look at the final cut of the film that a writer (Richard E. Grant) desperately wanted to keep pure (no stars, downbeat ending).  Cynical as hell but right on the money.