Bamboozled

By J.C.

THE INTERNECINE PROJECT

Directed by KEN HUGHES Screenplay by BARRY LEVINSON and JONATHAN LYNN

Underneath this inelegant collection of cinematic scraps is a pretty fair notion for a thriller: how the smooth, ambitious organizer of a small cell of industrial and political informers programs each of the members to kill one another. The members take information from various fields of specialization and pass it along to a clever control, who uses it in turn to blackmail and barter for positions of power. He wants to liquidate them to consolidate his power and go on to bigger plots. His plan is carried out almost according to the letter, with just one hitch, stashed right at the end of the movie like a one-celled flashlight at the end of a long tunnel.

There are some talented people in the cast: James Coburn, Ian Hendry, Harry Andrews, and Lee Grant trying mightily to lend substance to someone's bad fantasy of a newspaper woman. Virtually the entire movie is taken up with the planning and negotiation of the internecine bloodbath, with a few allowances for subtleties like characterization. There is, however, a rather nice suggestion throughout the film that in the world of applied politics, the real villians--detached, manipulative, powerful--can engineer anything, including a succession of murders, and tally up the results like the box score of adoubleheader.

This theme remains dim, however. The viewer's thoughts are likely to wander to more pressing issues while battling to keep awake. In all such elaborately wrought plans, for instance, the main honcho always has an incredibly neat set of plans, immaculately typed on an electric typewriter. Who does this for him? Surely he is too busy with his villainy to take the time to sit down at the IBM himself. Does he have a private secretary? Does he phone up Office Temporaries? And what happens to these worthies once they set eyes on his secret plans and type them up? It hardly bears thinking on. . J.C.

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