The Osterman Weekend
By Christopher Hyde
April 5, 2004
By the '80s, director Sam Peckinpah had trouble getting work in the movies -- with his legendary intransigence, reputation for volubility and appetite for drugs and booze combining to render him practically unemployable in Hollywood.
Following a long career of hellish production shoots, the man famous for films such as The Wild Bunch and Ride the High Country had fallen on hard times by the time the Me Decade came around. Having not made a movie since the odd 1977 CB radio project Convoy, Peckinpah was considered more or less kryptonite by Hollywood producers and found it near impossible to get a job. In a fair decline both physically and mentally, he then consented to make a creaky genre piece for a couple of hustling young production types who were willing to take a chance on the old man so that they might use his famous name as a means of selling their picture. And so thus was born The Osterman Weekend, a piece of pulp that somewhat sadly would ultimately end up as the director’s celluloid epitaph.
Now some 20 years after its release, The Osterman Weekend has been brought back in an excellent two-disc commemorative DVD edition by the top-notch outfit Anchor Bay. Given its nature as a ludicrous and stodgy potboiler, that may in fact seem like a bit of overkill. But as the film serves as the last cinematic testament by its esteemed helmsman, there’s a lot that’s worthwhile going on with this one, and with the company’s lavish attention to the product there ends up being much more
of interest here than you might think at first.
Building on the distrust spawned by the Nixon era, The Osterman Weekend’s story of CIA intrigue is adapted from an early Robert Ludlum novel. The plot centers on TV reporter John Tanner (Rutger Hauer) who finds himself drawn into a situation where he can’t even trust his oldest friends. The government, in the guise of agency director Maxwell Danforth (Burt Lancaster) and underling Lawrence Fassett (John Hurt) tells him outright that three of his best pals (Craig T. Nelson, Chris
Sarandon and Dennis Hopper) are in fact Russian spies that they’d like to watch over on the occasion of the group’s annual get together. They quickly outfit Tanner’s home with videocameras and surveillance equipment, much to the consternation of Tanner’s wife (Meg Foster) and then await the arrival of the three principals and their two female companions (Cassie Yates and Helen Shaver). But as the weekend quickly unravels with hidden tensions and behind the scenes string pulling, the true nature of events is revealed and leads to a final action packed conclusion where everyone’s mask comes off.
Personally, I think the biggest disappointment of The Osterman Weekend is that the director was not allowed to rewrite the hackneyed and brutally weak script. Peckinpah’s general working method involved taking a story and breaking it down completely before building it back up into something magnificent and vital. Here he was mostly forced to work with what he had, and unfortunately what there is ain’t much beyond third-rate spy hash. Other problems stem from limitations of budget and
the filmmaker’s flagging energies; while there are flashes of the old master here and there in the murk, it’s obvious that by this point in his career, Peckinpah no longer had the energy to fight for his vision with trademark aplomb. Some of that tendency may just stem from the fact that The Osterman Weekend was ostensibly his comeback film (and so perhaps he simply desired to deliver a film on time so that he might then move on to better things), but it’s hard to set aside the ravaged husk of a man that he had become by this time. Years of hard-edged drinking and cocaine abuse had reduced Peckinpah to a frail and paranoid shell of his former self, and the sense that he was just plain tired can be palpably felt throughout the proceedings.
Still, this movie is in no way a complete wash and is even in some manner a fairly fitting end to the director’s filmography, although its quality is wildly uneven. Peckinpah coaxes some excellent performances out of his cast (most notably John Hurt, Helen Shaver and Craig T. Nelson) and once he’s through with the required scene setting for the weekend itself, the film becomes a lot more vibrant and loose. The action of the climactic scene is classic Peckinpah, a bullet riddled nighttime scene that is highly inventive and remains eye catchingly exciting today. A last aspect of The Osterman Weekend that renders it eminently watchable is the filmmaker’s attempt to instill the cliché-ridden plot with a bit more juice, sliding in notions on the voyeurism inherent in our culture and the sociological implications of television technology. While it’s easy to characterize this bit as somewhat of a reach, its inclusion here at least helps to raise the philosophical ante of what is otherwise a more or less humdrum screenplay.
As released to theaters in 1983, The Osterman Weekend debuted in a final form over which Sam Peckinpah had lost ultimate control of the final cut -— a condition that was not at all uncommon throughout his career. Happily, this release gives us the opportunity to see the rough cut that the filmmaker initially submitted for the film, and though the quality of this material is shaky, the preview version is actually a more interesting film overall. The characters are given deeper shading, and the implied criticism (and embracing) of our voyeuristic tendencies is given freer reign in the different beginning and end sequences that this version supplies. But this is not the only valuable extra that Anchor Bay’s Special Edition provides us, as also included here is a solid
commentary track featuring three writers who have covered Peckinpah -- as well as a lengthy documentary on the making of the film itself. This historical narrative interviews many of the people involved with the motion picture, and it’s insightful enough to give a considered look at the final project of the filmmaker’s career. Accompanying these longer bonus materials are the seemingly requisite trailer, stills gallery and film bios that every Anchor Bay DVD appears to have, helping to round out yet another great digital entry from this exceptional outfit.
Though certainly not a good starting point for anyone previously unfamiliar with the art of its director, The Osterman Weekend still has some merit that peeks through its flawed machinations. Hampered by its poor screenplay, the film has long stretches of tepid exposition that don’t allow the filmmaker’s talents to shine at all. Operating in a weakened state of both mind and body, Peckinpah unfortunately was no longer capable of the sort of sustained cinematic brilliance that marks his earlier work. But here and there are small moments that show that even in this shattered state there lurked the heart of a true craftsman; and while there’s a silk purse/sow’s ear dynamic going on with the lame script, it’s a tribute to his skill that there’s anything entertaining or thought provoking here at all. Certainly it’s one of the lesser projects with which the esteemed filmmaker ever associated himself, but there’s enough of consequence to make it profitable viewing for those who have already seen his more substantial motion pictures. And though I’m sure there are those out there in the wide world who might insinuate that The Osterman Weekend is fairly undeserving of the two-disc special treatment that it has been afforded with this release, the rest of us remain quite satisfied that Anchor Bay so heartily disagrees with that notion.
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