Well here's longtime spy Segue Zagnut with his look at THE GENERAL'S DAUGHTER. Now the film won't be hitting screens till sometime in June (allegedly) so you should know there is still a lot of time for this film to develop. As I always do with these advanced screenings you have to take into consideration that this is a work in progress... That the film is not... DONE. And as such, we should merely take not that as of several months prior to it's release... Segue here thought it was terrible... and here's Segue to tell ya why he thought so....
Hey Head Geek. This is Segue Zagnut and I'm just too shy to talk too much. But you must know what I saw. Friday night on the Paramount lot they screened The General's Daughter with John Travolta, James Woods, Madeline Stowe, James Cromwell and Timothy Hutton. Travolta plays an Army cop who must find out why and who killed the general's daughter in a bizarre middle of the night sort of public rape. Madeline Stowe is an Army rape specialist that helps him investigate. Cromwell plays the general.
The movie is horrible. I can't even image how they could save it. Not that it isn't well made, but it is at best, a Hollywood movie like Patch Adams or The Other Sister and not a film. It has no real depth. It thinks it does, but it doesn't. From the plot, to the subplots, down to the acting, it is either predictable, unbelievable or unexplained. The only exception is Woods who puts in a fine performance that is under used.
The following contains **SPOILERS**... Travolta plays it by the numbers Travolta. Jack Nicholson always plays Jack and it works because we all love Jack. Travolta is not Jack. Personally I'm tired of the same old shucks-its-me charisma and need him to stretch. Stowe's part is worthless. The subplot that she and Travolta used to date is awkward and irrelevant since they take it no where. As investigative helper, she seems only there to set up the inevitable woman in danger climax. Outside of Short Cuts and 12 Monkeys, Stowe doesn't impress me and there is not enough of a part here to change that. Cromwell walks through his part. And Hutton has little to do until the end. Then he gets to over act in a ridicules climax that involves an out of no where subplot (I loved her so I had to kill her) and explosions (he plants land mines to kill Stowe and Travolta). Neither are believable.
But the biggest problem with the movie is the story. The way the general's daughter dies is important. She's strangled while tied naked spread eagle to tent spikes in the middle of a military training field. So part of the question of who killed her and why, is also why like this. What we find out is that the tied to the ground naked part was her idea. We are to believe that her best friend tied her naked to the ground then left her and never came back to check on her. We are to believe that her father went to her, spoke to her for five minutes, then left with out helping her at all. Then we are to believe that Hutton happens by and kills her. Then we are to believe that the general's assistant comes by and after seeing her dead not only doesn't try to cover it up he also doesn't report it. And why did she want to be tied there? Was it to humiliate her father for covering up the time she was raped just like this in a boot camp training exercise? Or was it to have him save her now because he didn't before? Both? Neither? I couldn't buy any of it. We didn't know the daughter well enough to buy her mind set and I don't think anything could have made me believe the rest.
I could say a lot more but then again I've probably said too much.
