Saint, The

The Saint, starring Val Kilmer and Elizabeth Shue and directed by
Phillip Noyce is simply one more Hollywood wish-fulfilment fantasy for teenage
boys — full of gadgetry, secret identities, revenge against authority and
beautiful but compliant females — and therefore of negligible interest to
those with a more general interest in the art of cinema. The few cultural
implications that may be noted along the way — the strongly anti-Catholic
tinge to the early part of the film and the anti-Russian tinge to the rest of
it — will not be unfamiliar to attentive audiences. Nor will the laughable
scientific gobbledegook accompanying the discovery by an attractive young woman
in her 20s of the principle of cold fusion which has for so long eluded her
academic seniors. Nor will the treatment of art and poetry as nothing but a kind
of cultural brand name, a way of getting women into bed and secret formulae (and
other things) out of their underwear. Nor will the celebration of free-lance
thievery at the expense of governments and police, corrupt and otherwise, or the
value placed upon wealth as the object of existence. But with so much that is
familiar, you’ve got to wonder if it
isn’t possible for the youth of
America to be taught better fantasies?