Lights Out Movie Reviews
Copyright (c) 1994, Bruce Diamond
All rights reserved


        Ŀ
          BLOWN AWAY:  Stephen Hopkins, director.  Joe Batteer &   
          John Rice, screenplay.  John Rice, Joe Batteer & M. Jay  
          Roach, story.  Starring Jeff Bridges, Tommy Lee Jones,   
          Lloyd Bridges, Forest Whitaker, Suzy Amis, John Finn,    
          and Stephi Lineberg.  MGM.  Rated R.                     
        

          Another mad bomber stalks the streets of America, bent on
     revenge, in BLOWN AWAY, starring Jeff Bridges and Tommy Lee
     Jones.  Jones is Ryan Gaerity, an Irish terrorist who pulls an
     ingenious jailbreak at the very beginning of the film.  What's
     never clear, as we learn later that he's been in prison for 20
     years, is why he waited so long.  The screenplay is filled with
     these inconsistencies, over-intricate bombs, and a huge glaring
     coincidence that all overshadow Jeff Bridges' nicely-constructed
     character, Jimmy Dove, the hot-shot of a Boston Police bomb
     squad.  Gaerity turns up in Boston, out of all the places in
     America he could have gone, and discovers that Dove has also
     become a Boston resident.  The ham-handed coincidence places
     these men in the same city, sharing a shadowy past from Northern
     Ireland.  Once Gaerity makes this discovery, he embarks on a
     revenge plan against Dove: he methodically picks off members of
     the bomb squad in hopes of killing his former terrorist partner.

          Bridges is in fine form as an action hero, more believable,
     and better-developed as a character, than Keanu Reeves in the
     current blockbuster SPEED.  The similarities between the two
     films are striking, especially having been released so close
     together.  Unfortunately, BLOWN AWAY suffers by comparison.  Even
     though, as I've already pointed out, the characters in this
     picture are more well-defined, the underlying revenge plot is a
     little hard to swallow, as are the elaborate explosive devices.
     As an example, the first bomb, not even set by Gaerity, is rigged
     to a computer.  The computer operator has to keep typing or else
     the bomb goes off -- as it's rigged, however, once the hard drive
     fills up, the bomb also explodes.  I'll ignore the writing
     directly to the hard drive, byte-by-byte, and just deal with the
     unreality of such a detailed bomb.  Sure, we're in a movie and
     the filmmakers are allowed some license with their explosive
     devices, but let's face it, BLOWN AWAY is *not* a James Bond
     flick.  Nor is it a straight-ahead, no-holds-barred actioner like
     SPEED.  This picture takes time to develop its characters (Lloyd
     Bridges, Jeff's real-life father, has some great scenes as an Old
     World Irishman who advises Jimmy Dove), but the gadgets, imagina-
     tive as they are, rob the characters and the screenplay of any
     semblance to reality.  Even the internal reality within its own
     fictional events.

          Tommy Lee Jones always makes a captivating bad guy, and
     though he's as engaging here as he was in UNDER SIEGE (1992), he
     lacks depth and a believable motivation.  Revenge after 20 years
     wears thin, and if Gaerity spent that much time in prison, he
     makes an amazing adjustment to life in the '90s.  The only
     concession we get to his isolation is his ignorance of the Irish
     band U2, as though prisons don't have radios.  The Rube Goldberg
     device that caps the film's finale doesn't make sense for such a
     practical villain, and neither does the device that endangers one
     of Dove's closest confidantes about 2/3 of the way into the
     picture.  Suzy Amis has a nice turn as Bridges' wife, and Forest
     Whitaker is compelling as the cop who takes over Jimmy Dove's
     place on the bomb squad and later discovers the tie between
     Gaerity and Dove.  Overall, though, BLOWN AWAY is too muddled and
     gimmicky to really convince.

     RATING:  $$

