The Osterman Weekend is the final film project for legendary director Sam Peckinpah. This is not among his best work, but is a better film and improvement over Convoy(a guilty pleasure and absolute cheesefest), the last film he made previous to this. This movie is not without its problems, most of which is the script, which is nothing special in the espionage/spy genre, but this is a Sam Peckinpah film and I think he tried to make something good here. There is a whole lot of subtext about surveillance and Big Brother that are relevant today as well as themes about TV,the media and how these are used to control the masses. This is mostly as satire with a cold war/thriller/action movie as the backdrop. The cast that was attracted to this project is another one of the film's strong points, but the film as a whole is mostly average for the genre. There are some exceptional performances here which steal some thunder from leading man Rutger Hauer and his wife Meg Foster, which both did a fine job here. However, John Hurt, Craig T Nelson and Burt Lancaster make this somewhat twisty and convoluted thriller watchable and interesting. The film looks pretty good and is a good quality production. The Osterman Weekend is by no means a masterpiece and as such is very flawed, but still very watchable production.
Review of The Osterman Weekend
