Season's Bleedings in Tinseltown

By RICHARD CORLISS, R.C., R.S.

Three Christmas movies drip red in search of box-office green

CHRISTINE

The movies are a machine that makes art. But what are we to make of films in which the machine is the main attraction? Burt Reynolds may be at the wheel of his Trans Am, Harrison Ford can maneuver his Millennium Falcon in hyperspace, Roy Scheider may occupy the cockpit of the Blue Thunder helicopter, but the hardware is the hero. It knows neither fear nor fatigue; it does the job it is programmed to do and never complains; if it is destroyed, a comradely clone can take its place. For a nation that has cause to doubt that nobody does it better, the machine is something like the last American hero.

Not Christine, who has the body of a '58 Plymouth Fury but the mind of a Victorian murderess. At birth, on the Chrysler assembly line, she mysteriously killed a mechanic who dared to drop cigar ash on her upholstery. (Alfred Hitchcock once tried, unsuccessfully, to work a scene like this into a movie; now the trick has been solved.) Two decades later, Arnie Cunningham (Keith Gordon), nerd of high school nerds, owns Christine--and is possessed by her. In a trice this four-eyed Faust is transformed into a cool dude with clear skin, wrap-around shades, slick black hair and the sexy swagger of a Vegas lounge star. No wonder Leigh (Alexandra Paul), the prettiest girl on campus, is aswoon over Arnie. But she has tough competition in Christine. Such jealousy: when Leigh suggests that Arnie is too attached to his car, Christine forces the girl to choke, nearly to death, on some fast food. Such vindictiveness: three punk classmates of Arnie's push him around and Christine seeks them out and totals them. "Be careful what you call my car," Arnie warns his best friend (John Stock-well). "She's real sensitive."

Director John Carpenter and Screenwriter Bill Phillips have compacted and customized Stephen King's screaming jalopy of a novel until it moves with sleek '50s lines and a sassy tailfin flip at the end. Graceful tracking shots mime the killer car's gliding menace; the deserted nighttime streets are washed chrome-shiny by rain. The high-school scenes, which are neither coarse nor condescending, put every other current teenpic to shame. Carpenter's cast mixes vigorous old pros with young comers; Keith Gordon is a hilariously intense Jekyll-and-Snide. The movie--Carpenter's best since Halloween--is at heart a deadpan satire of the American male's love affair with his car. This Christine is one lean mean funny machine. --By Richard Corliss

SUDDEN IMPACT

When he plays Dirty Harry Callahan, Clint Eastwood acts with his pulsating blood vessels. Two veins run down his high forehead like stray hairs on a Gorgon. His jugular throbs with moral indignation over sadistic criminals, liberal judges and guys who put ketchup on hot dogs. For Sudden Impact-Dirty Harry IV, Clint has grown a new worry line: an asp of a blood vessel that snakes across his left temple. Heaven knows he needs it. San Francisco is overrun with thrill-juiced punks and Mafia goons. No sweat, though: Harry has more artillery than the Cubans ever dreamed of stocking on Grenada. Interrupting a stickup in a diner, he aims a Smith & Wesson the size of Mr. T's forearm at an armed robber and grimaces, "Make my day." Then Harry insults a Mob chieftain with such savagery that the old man suffers a fatal heart attack. "Hey," he later shrugs to his apoplectic chief of detectives, "how'd I know he was gonna vapor-lock?"

Such pleasantries occupy the film's first ten minutes; then Harry gets down to business. In the cozy village of San Paulo, a sextet of lowlifes, who make the Manson family look like the Cabbage Patch Kids, are being killed one by one by a method delicately described as "a .38-cal. vasecto-my." The vengeful dispatcher is an artist who had been raped by the San Paulo Six a decade before. Since she is played by Eastwood's frequent co-star Sondra Locke, you can guess what Harry's verdict will be when he catches up with her. Right: the hardhearted cop at long last has found the first criminal he wants to mollycoddle.

"You're a walkin', friggin' combat zone," Harry's boss tells him. "Your ideas don't fit any more." Alas, they do. Dirty Harry is the raging vigilante voice inside every put-upon urbanite. In the past, Eastwood has carried this contradiction within his own antihero character; now Harry has found a comely avatar. Joseph C. Stinson's script says it is O.K. to kill half a dozen people if you have soft blond hair and a righteous grudge. Agree who will. The rest of the audience will enjoy Director Eastwood's knowing cinematic jolts, the outsize hammery of the performances and Big Clint's return to form as a box-office powder keg. --R.C.

GORKY PARK

Novelist Martin Cruz Smith managed two entertaining tricks in Gorky Park: he believably evoked the ordinary life of Moscow as a background to a mystery story, and he created a detective hero, Arkady Renko, who was persuasively motivated by neuroses in his pursuit of the solution to an ugly murder. Dennis Potter's adaptation vitiates both these strengths.

Forced to use Helsinki as a double for Moscow, Director Michael Apted (who is usually good at suggesting atmosphere) never makes us believe we are anywhere but on a movie location. And William Hurt, accent all askew, his spirit turned to molasses by an excess of brooding, plays Arkady as if he were strictly from Chekov. It is a ludicrous exhibition--possibly the silliest piece of self-consciousness since movies added the Method to their madness. As a suspect who becomes his lover, Joanna Pacula is pallid; as the villain, Lee Marvin is livid. But at least they are acting, not posturing. It is not their fault that the film emphasizes its source's weakness: an overconvoluted plot, sluggishly developed. Gorky Park's dullness is so excruciating they could probably find a use for it in the Lu-bianka prison; the threat of having to see it more than once would make anyone confess to anything. --R.S. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.