Rollover (1981) User Reviews

Pretty slow but wait for the ending...you'll recognize what Pakula and his screenwriters predicted

[nomoons11 · 6/10 · 16 July 2011]

This one could surely be considered one of Pakula's "paranoia" films but there are only 3 that are noteworthy. The reason for this is that this one is not in the same league as his Paranoia Trilogy.

This one suffers from slow pacing, miscasting and just not enough of the intrigue/thriller aspect. Don't get me wrong, this film is worth it's 2 hours but you won't be gripped like you would be if you watched Klute or Parralax View etc.

What saves this film is the ending. You'll notice how what happened at the ending of this looks pretty similar to what happened in late 2008 to the world economy. Be prepared to be spooked by the similarities almost 28 years after the fact.

rollover

[mossgrymk · 4/10 · 15 May 2023]

Obviously, director Alan J. Pakula either did not get or chose to ignore the memo about how, when this movie was made, Carter was out, Reagan was in and the whole post paranoid, Watergate sell by date was long past expired. And if you're gonna flout sell by dates in films then you'd better have a decent screenplay, not this dull mish mash of financial shenanigans from the typewriter of one of Hollywood's more journeymen scribes, David Shaber. And you would be well advised to cast a couple with at least a modicum of sexual chemistry as well as expect Giusppe Rotunno to provide cinematography that did not look like his camera lens has cataracts. C minus.

Boring soap opera

[MissSimonetta · 4/10 · 23 August 2023]

I have not brushed up on my financial lingo, so a lot of the Wall Street talk went over my head. It might be possible I'm too dumb to fully "get" this movie. That being said, can I at least have interesting characters to fear for and a good deal of suspense when I'm watching a thriller?

The two leads are like figures from a Sidney Sheldon potboiler: sexy and sassy, but otherwise little more than blow-up dolls. The love scenes are hilariously cheesy and the suspense is basically nil. The latter is a shock considering this was directed by Alan J. Pakula, who made some of the greatest thrillers of the 1970s: KLUTE, THE PARALLAX VIEW, and ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN. Those were phenomenal movies. Most importantly, you could follow them. ROLLOVER is way harder to follow if you aren't sure what the characters are talking about and to be honest, even after reading a synopsis to digest what was going on, I found I didn't really care.

Pop goes the Weasel

[tieman64 · 31 October 2011]

Alan J. Pakula directs "Rollover", a conspiracy thriller which anticipates Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" and subsequent real life financial crises. The plot: Maxwell Emery, Wall Street guru and chairman of First New York Bank, bails out the struggling Boro National Bank. He then installs Hub Smith (Kris Kristofferson), a "fixer" tasked with getting Boro back up and running. Hub studies Boro's figures and comes up with a plan to keep them solvent: broker a huge loan between a private investor and another business and use the broker's fee to keep Boro afloat for a couple more months. The business he sets his sights on is Winterchem, a company reeling from the recent murder of its chairman and founder, Charlie Winters. This murder has resulted in an internal struggle between Winterchem's current board and the newly widowed Lee Winters (Jane Fonda), who takes over the chairmanship of Winterchem and sets about acquiring the cash needed to buy a petrochemical plant in Spain. Hub helps Lee broker a deal with a group of Arabian money-men, but shortly afterwards discovers a mysterious bank account number which has begun showing up on various ledgers. Hub and Lee then uncover a conspiracy in which Arab money is trickled into a mysterious account and used to hedge against the engendered possibility of the dollar suffering quick drops in value. In a sense, the mystery account causes the dollar to drop and then profits off this drop. And as the account facilitates the slow removal of Arab deposits out of the American banking system, revealing the scam is an impossibility as this will result in economic and consumer confidence plummeting, causing a systemic collapse.

As it's about macroeconomics, "Rollover" is a rather unique film. Pakula paints a world in which value is created out of nothingness, speculation and market manipulation run rampant, and covered-up murders are routinely committed by faceless corporations. This a fragile, irrational and arbitrary economy, forever capable of collapsing at any moment. Inject too much panic, too much hysteria, and the dominoes begin to fall, shareholders pulling out their wealth, companies imploding and local economies with them. Today, money movers and banking cartels have the power to decimate nations. These same men, while making decisions that affect civilizations, are themselves wholly cut off or insulated from the rest of society.

So the film's title serves as a kind of unintentional quadruple allusion: money rolled over from one account to the next, a global market capable of being steam rolled at any moment, and a caste of men who roll over populaces who themselves roll over and take this abuse. Such a financial system is worse than unsustainable, its wholly precarious, the slightest inkling of eroded confidence capable of bringing things down. Indeed, today often all that separates a "good economy" from a "bad one" is the faith one has in the country's debt being repayable. And as our system's debt can never be paid back and always balloons, what bolsters a "good economy" is nothing but hope, faith, delusion and psychotic belief.

Capitalism is itself a religion with its own doctrines, beliefs, pundits, bishops, clergy and papal circle. It believes that Economics is a law abiding, quantifiable science, when today it's more akin to crystal ball gazing and gambling. Of course current beliefs – the economic philosophy that pure, open markets are entirely rational, all knowing, and as good as supernatural entities that cannot do wrong and will always rectify themselves to self-preserve rather than fail – and their impending shatterings are akin to the hubris-shattering post-enlightenment and postmodern trends which rocketed across the fields of science, philosophy, history and art. You might even say that the observer effect (of quantum physics) itself affects economics: watching the system continuously impacts the system. But still faith persists that the system acts rationally.

So at its best, "Rollover" highlights how strongly stock markets run on rumour, guesswork, manipulation, irrationality, gambling, hysteria, misinformation, disinformation, inside information, testosterone, mistakes and herd instinct. Today, the kind of trading seen in "Rollover" can be done by anyone with a credit card and modem. Consider something called ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds). They are basically mutual fund like entities that trade on the stock market, making them more liquid and more accessible to investors than mutual funds. For a while ETFs were the tickets to riches, and as the stock market crashed they erupted in value, making many instantly rich. But these ETFs are all designed such that they decay over time. Like crack cocaine these vehicles promise fast and stunning highs, but are doomed to collapse, each successive hit providing ever diminishing returns, lower lows that the addict believes can be escaped via yet more hits.

Aesthetically the film is typical of Pakula: quiet, solemn, filled with much paranoia and invisible menace. For Pakula, like Kubrick, power is unseen, omnipresent, conspiratorial and capable of silencing anyone. He does his best to invest architecture and spaces with a kind of silent horror. Money moves fast, but the film is eerily tranquil.

Much of the film revolves around a dull love affair between Fonda and Kristofferson. He's the archetypal cowboy, she's the wealthy princess/actress, Pakula intending them to be a satirical comment on American optimism, endurance and faith in heroic archetypes and upward mobility. Some of their dialogue neatly blurs the lines between modern finance lingo and the Old West ("You're gonna need a partner", much talk of "riding", "white horses" and "spirits of the West"), but Pakula can't handle satire. The film ends with our entire finance system collapsing and global turmoil racing across the planet. As a President's optimistic quote is read on a television, Fonda and Kirstofferson, now business partners, themselves adopt a stance of optimism. It's a happy ending which masks delusion and much madness; no lessons have been learnt. See "Demonlover", which further links such personal and institutional neuroses.

7.9/10 – Worth one viewing.

Lots of financial details

[HotToastyRag · 2/10 · 8 October 2017]

When Jane Fonda inherits her murdered husband's stock shares in his financial company, she gets entangled in a dangerous international scheme. She also falls for banker Kris Kristofferson, so that's a nice bonus.

I'll be honest: I had no idea what was going on during most of this movie. It's very heavy on the financial talk, so if you don't speak Wall Street, you'll probably be just as lost as I was. Kris, Jane, Hume Cronyn, Josef Sommer, and Bob Gunton—in his first film—are all involved in this financial thriller, and for those of you who can follow the plot, it'll be a nail-biter until the very end. For me, it was a snooze-fest until the very end, at which time I was very grateful. The only parts of the movie that stood out to me were some pretty outfits Jane Fonda wore and Macon McCalman's very convincing acting in a scene where he expresses his fear for his life.

Incredibly relevant

[Rodrigo_Amaro · 7/10 · 26 November 2011]

WOW! This is a case of a film that needs to be resurrected among publics right now because it's final message resonates truer than anything with the whole current financial world going to the drains. The script was saying some hard truths back in 1981, no one listened and in 2008, almost three decades later something happened almost exactly the same way Hume Cronyn's character described it was going to happen: riots, stagnation, panic. Well, not much like the one of 1929 but a little closer to that.

The context in which "Rollover" was presented was completely different however, Cold War was in it full course and Socialism was still surviving and fighting against the powers of Capitalism. The economical crisis that will happen in this film comes from an Arab oil organization (allied with some American bankers) who has a gigantic masterplan that is going to bring chaos in the world economy.

But until we get there, we follow the story of a former actress (Jane Fonda) who married the Chairman and primary stockholder of a chemical company, recently murdered, that not only investigates his strange murder but also tries to deal with his business by joining forces with a financier (Kris Kristofferson) who recently was appointed as new president of a large bank that seems to going under a lot of trouble. While their relationship goes from the economic level to more intimate levels, a huge operation is being made with their investments that could cause a financial collapse.

"Rollover" looks at too many directions but doesn't see enough, it doesn't have a complete view on anything as a film. It goes as a financial thriller, a political thriller with some cheesy romance and as a drama. Problem is that there's far too many things to make anyone uninterested of seeing this when it could be something remarkably brilliant if the writers or director Alan J. Pakula decided for just one route to follow through. While the affair between Fonda and Kristofferson has its good moments when it's not becoming distractive, the thrilling parts of this are so few and the economics jargon are so many that the ultimate thing for this is a film hard to follow.

But it gets worse before it gets better as some say. The greatest surprise is reserved for its final minutes with the inevitable crisis going ahead. I don't know if back in '81 something like this could happen but now, we know, it can happen and it did! It's realistic and shocking how this film managed (in a way, not completely though) to see how our world would become with all this lousy speculations. 30 years later and the impact of its crash is hitting us just now.

Well made, nicely presented and well acted, with some weak moments here and there but very good to watch. Extremely relevant! 7/10

Miscast + Clichés = Boredom

[survivalist-810-698711 · 2/10 · 24 January 2014]

It's impossible not to giggle every time Kristofferson opens his mouth in this movie. It's not like he's playing a cowboy turned banker - rather, he's playing a stereotypical New York banker and it's just ridiculous. It's like casting Miley Cyrus as a nun or Justin Bieber as a nuclear scientist.

Jane Fonda looks stiff and bored. Their romance is also hilarious.

The movie filled with clichés: the omniscient assassin, the busy trading floor, the tape Fonda finds at just the right time, etc.

Overall, it's a very slow-moving, dull drama. The first two thirds of the movie are irrelevant. "The Arabs pull out their money out" is a single event at the end, following by a couple minutes of "the sky is falling" and that's it. The first 90 minutes of all the corporate maneuvering are a completely different plot that turns out to be irrelevant.

The scenario, by the way, is silly. So what if the Arabs withdraw all their cash? Where would they put it? In a different bank in a different country. And what would that bank do with it? Lend it out. Who would borrow? US banks needing liquidity. So the money would move around but the idea that the entire global financial system would collapse is ridiculous.

And of course, if it did collapse, the Arabs would have no one to buy their oil, so they zero motivation to do this. This is also not covered in the movie.

Meh...it's a couple hours to put on the TV in your garage while you're working or something but I wouldn't sit down with your special someone for an evening of excitement.

BTW, "Tarriq Afifi" - you're completely wrong. I'm offended by your comments that this movie is racist. It's not. It's about Arabs pulling their money out of US banks. Racism would be saying "all Arabs are (some negative stereotype)" not saying "in 1981, Arabs had a lot of financial power". There was no Arab bashing (or bashing of Islam - the asr prayer is shown accurately).

Roll over Beethoven

[sol-kay · 7/10 · 30 November 2010]

***SPOILERS*** Corporate crime and manipulation of stocks bonds and currencies is the shocking story of the movie "Rollover" that's much more like what's happening today in 2010 that back in 1981 when the film as released.

In it we have a number of shadowy figures in the US and overseas who are trying to cover their behinds by siphoning off the cash accounts of the financially strapped Borough Savings Bank in order to convert their ill gotten gains into billions in gold bullion. It's when the banks CEO Charlie Winter, Garrison Lane, was found murdered in his office in the World Trade Center that it became very apparent that his murder had something to do with the banks cash flow troubles! That in the fact that Charlie uncovered in an account, #21214, that was secretly funneling millions of dollars out of it every month!

With the late Charlie Winters' wife Lee, Jane Fonda, becoming the banks new president she tries to save it from going under by brokering a half billion deal a deal for a petrochemical plant in Spain with the bank getting a 1% finders fee on it. That's just enough to pay off its shareholders next dividend in order to keep it was going bankrupt. As all this is happening 1st New York Bank President Maxwell Emery, Hume Cronyn, who's a silent partner in the distressed Borough Savings Bank hires financial whiz kid Hub Smih, played by a super clean shaven Kris Kristofferson, to get to the bottom of the Borough Bank's problems. That's before the final bell, on Wall Street, rings and it collapses like a house of cards!

***SPOILERS*** What Smith soon discovers is that it's non other then the man who hired him Maxwell Emery himself who's behind Borough Savings Bank's impending collapses. In Emery using account #21214 to secretly shift the banks money into it he's been bleeding the bank white and at the same timer waiting for the right moment for him as his Saudi Arabian banking partners to pull out all the money in that bank as well as some 1,200 to 1,500 other banks all across the US and Europe! That would end up making the dollar as well as any other national paper currency as worthless as the paper its printed on! As for Lee Winters, who had discovered the truth about her husbands murder, her trying to blackmail Emery and his Saudi partners in crime in having them agree on a sweetheart deal with her, to keep Lee and the Borough Bank from going bankrupt, has them put her on the hit list, like her late husband Charlie, for immediate termination!

A bit over the top at the time of its release "Rollover" is in fact a forerunner to movies like "Wall Street" in how those who control power ruthlessly use it to keep them in control. Smith is soon confronted with the truth, a possible collapse of world currencies, and is together with Lee Winters totally helpless to do anything about it.

***MORE SPOILERS*** As the Saudis go into panic mode in being caught with their pants down start to pull their money out of US and European banks the entire world economy goes straight to hell together with them and the person they put their trust in to keep their grandiose plan secret Maxwell Emery! As for Hub Smith and Lee Winters they like everyone else will have to start from ground zero in getting back on their feet financially after all the dust, in food monetary riots and runs on banks,clears!

"Rollover" and fall asleep...

[tnt videovisions · 3/10 · 20 March 2001]

Possibly attempting to do for the world of finance what she'd done to nuclear power in "The China Syndrome"(1979), this Jane Fonda melodrama is a poor investment for any serious movie fan.

The story is very hard to follow and poorly constructed with shallow characters. The story is not terribly easy to grasp for the average person in my opinion and not presented to the audience clearly enough-nor well enough to garner much interest and/or curiosity. Fonda appears bored, while still trying to appear smart and glamorous, in her role. Kris Kristofferson is simply a case of very bad casting. Despite some efforts to make him physically appear like a big-time banker, he comes off flat and stiff in his role. Whether talking down a bank president or talking Fonda into bed, all his lines are delivered in a blank monotone style that conveys nothing. We also are never given much background or motivation for the events and doings of the people wandering about this epic of high finance. Fonda and Kristofferson's first meeting isn't much of an icebreaker, yet the two are bedding down together by their second or third encounter.

The film is directed by Alan J. Pakula and it looks much like other works for him. Secret meetings in parking lots and suspect late night boardroom conferences may appear to be the things that make up a good thriller, but here they are simply padding between the great nothingness that amounts to two-hours of dull slow paced cliche filled dialog from weak characters that you never grow to care much about. The movie's heavy-handed and overly-dramatic musical score makes many scenes nearly laughable.

There's little to recommended beyond those morbidly curious to see a bad movie, which is why I obtained a copy of it. On that level, it does pay a modest dividend.

The Tide turns, and I do mean laundry detergent.

[mark.waltz · 7/10 · 13 February 2024]

Having done some work in the financial sector (during the dawning of the patriot act, pre and post 9/11, I had a gyst of what was going on here, 20 years prior to the tragedy and during the first days of the Reagan era. Money laundering is never mentioned in words, but the insinuations are there, particularly with the suicide of someone whom Jane Fonda believes will blow the whistle and give her evidence she needs to tie in with the murder of her husband, chairman of the board of a huge investment firm.

She doesn't seem too grief stricken over the death of her husband, beginning an affair with the handsome Kris Kristofferson right after. But she's no black widow either as it becomes clear of what is going on. Certainly, it's complex and I have to accept the fact that my ideas could be incorrect, but at any rate, I wasn't bored at all in this thriller that's irritating for certain convoluted details, but fascinating as it at least had me thinking.

Director Alan J. Paula, who's certainty had his share of classic thrillers, nearly strikes gold once again with this one. Hume Cronyn and Josef Sommer are powerful in supporting roles, and Fonda is fascinating to watch as she increases in her confidence and ultimately shock. But the best performance is Macon McCalman as the initially calm witness who suddenly is panic stricken as he is overcome by fear or guilt, possibly both. The ending is a rival to "The Manchurian Candidate" for its sudden twist, giving the viewer a glimpse into unimaginable possibilities and commenting on greed and panic and the terror that follows.

A complicated economic plot that falls way short in all aspects.

[Karlos-3 · 1/10 · 12 December 2001]

The short side of the story is that this has to be one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Rythme-wise, the movie is dead. It makes you feel like you are attending a lecture on economy at the university. And to think that I watched the movie because it was described as a "thriller!"

The story portrays an Arab plot to shake the foundations of global economy using the simple concept that there is alot more "printed" paper money than there is actual value out there in the world.

First of all, the movie is offensive to Arabs. If this movie was made now, civil rights groups and Muslim/Arab groups would be all over it, in one scene, Jane Fonda says (about taking a loan from those Arabs): "I feel like a beggar asking them for money, and I HATE it!" and Kristofferson comforts her by saying: "You and the rest of the world!" This is an out right racist statement that wouldn't slip so casually as it did in 1981. Aside from that, the movie protrays Arab customs rather poorly, on one side, the director of the movie is keen on showing Arab rich people sitting on the ground and eating with their hands from one big plate (to somehoe portray primitivity) and forcing Fonda and Kristofferson to do the same (which doesn't happen in real life, they give guests plates and spoons if they need them), but the director makes a bigger slip of showing them shaking hands with Fonda and sitting right next to her in the dinner. That would not take place in the same societies that eat with their hands from the plates.

Other omissions are plenty as well, portraying Arab countries and cities as vast areas of desert lands and tents doesn't portray what the Arab world looked like in 1981.

From an acting stand point, Fonda is not too bad, but Kristofferson is awful. His "cowboy" acting style really misses the target in this one. The image of a banker who talks like a cowboy, behaves like a cowboy and tells his boss in the bank that if he doesn't hang up the phone he would smash his head.. This image is just not real. The way every night fall in the movie almost always ends with Fonda and Kristofferson making love is also not real for two people well over fourty as the movie portrays. So, you feel like the roles were written in a naive way. Not much attention was put into seeing how the characters fit into their perspective roles.

Overall, this movie is not worth renting on video even, I would suggest waiting till its out there on TNT or TBS or something, in fact, it's not worth such a long review. (:-)))

Hey, Look at the Content

[investored · 8/10 · 23 December 2005]

This was a 1981 movie Jane Fonda "got made" after her exploration of the dangers of nuclear power in the "China Syndrome" back in 1979. She was driving to tell the story of real money - gold and how OTHER parts of the world value gold as real money while the Americans don't understand it. (Note: And it's not about Jane. I don't even like Jane Fonda...her politics aren't supposed to be in the acting on the screen. At some point a movie - or any art - is not about the artist's personality, it's about what's on the page or the score or on the screen.)

The plot line is about "outsiders" not rolling over their CDs in American banks and buying gold...and what the loss of those foreign investments means to the financial establishment in New York. I'll admit the acting and the romance are not top notch. So what? This movie was a "financial thriller" and there just ain't many of these movies made. Movies need bank financing, and banks usually won't finance anything that makes them look bad or stupid. (They show "I'ts a Wonderful Life" with Jimmy Stewart on TV only once a year now because it shows "run on the bank" at the Bailey Savings and Loan - not something the financial establishment wants Americans to even think about.) I'm a Certified Financial Planner and I recommend this movie in my classes along with Oliver Stone's "Wall Street" and "Boiler Room" as movies that shed light on the financial world in which we live today. In 2005, it's even more important for people to understand the relationships between gold and paper money as the cycle from the 1970's reasserts itself.

And get over the Arab slights in the movie. They weren't the point back in 1981 and they aren't the point now. A lack of political correctness is not a reason to avoid this movie.

Don't bother

[down_home_dreamer · 1/10 · 15 May 2006]

This is the only movie I've ever walked out on; I even held out through Caligula! Boring, made no sense to me at the time and I could see no hope of redemption, so I left and waited in the lobby with a magazine for my date to finish watching the film. He understood it and enjoyed, but I was lost from the opening credits. Perhaps the fact that he's in business & understands computers and accounting principles helped his level of enjoyment. I felt akin to a foreign-language speaking person thrown into the middle of some major conference where I was not only expected, but required, to understand and follow what was being said.

As previously stated, I'm an eternal optimist when it comes to movies; I fervently believe that they HAVE to get better. I knew this one was a lost cause early on. "Rollover" rolled over and played dead for this viewer. I wish I could have whacked it with a rolled up newspaper.

A Marxist interpretation.

[Sodie · 22 August 1999]

Maltin's summary of the film is idiotic. Clearly a case of 'saw the film, didn't understand it, decided to bash it.' That's his loss. Anyone who's ever read 'Das Kapital,' Marx's massive 3-volume (he died before completing the last volume, but it still got up to be around 1,000 pages) masterpiece would immediately recognize in 'Rollover' Marx's assertion that the capitalist system is doomed to self-destruct. That by its very nature it will bring about that thing which it despises most--the world socialist revolution. Marx said that we will see capitalism's boom-then-bust cycle grow increasingly more impossible to control, until it hits a 'low' so deep, so wide-reaching, that workers everywhere will unite and say, 'HEY! This isn't right.' The Great Depression is an example of one such 'deep low' in capitalism's cycle. 'Rollover' is a vision of the next such deep pit. Of how it comes about, in any case. Don't read the next bit if you don't want a spoiler, but the last scenes in the film are of the world proletariat rallying in public places, defying state authority...gearing up to rebel, in other words. That's about as Marxist as you can get! And you don't have to be a dork like me and read 'Das Kapital' to understand it. Maltin...didn't put the thought-effort into this one. And that's a shame, because I think it's a film that's very germane to American life. We think we have it good, and we'll always have it good, because this is the US of A. We have the FDIC now, we'll be all right. That's nonsense!! Maltin called 'Rollover' "financial science fiction." However imprecise that clumsy label might seem, there's a grain of truth to it. For what is sci fi but 'the thing that might someday be?'

Might Have Worked Then, Doesn't Now

[boblipton · 5/10 · 29 April 2023]

Jane Fonda was a movie star. She retired to marry an industrialist who has just been murdered. She takes over a Wall Street bank with the aid of Kris Kristofferson, who becomes her lover. Everything seems hunky-dory, until each discovers evidence of oil-money-rich Arabs are abandoning the international money system in favor of gold. This threatens the entire world.

Alan Pakula's movie is, as usual, impeccably directed, with a fine cast that includes Hume Cronyn and Bob Gunton as shadowy, threatening bankers. I found it curiously uninvolving, probably because this seems well-trod territory in terms of story telling, and the issues it covers, although pressing at the time, have receded I also thought the scenes in the bank, filled with then-current computers and draft printers, darkly lit to serve the paranoia, more curious than unsettling.

Some movie may serve to encapsulate a moment. This can offer a fascinating glimpse into a dead world. Here, it results in a movie which doesn't serve more than the moment.

tiresome finance talk

[SnoopyStyle · 3/10 · 2 May 2023]

The Chairman and main shareholder of Winterchem Enterprises is murdered presumably by a burglar. His widow Lee Winters (Jane Fonda) takes over his position. Bank chairman Maxwell Emery (Hume Cronyn) appoints troubleshooter Hubbell Smith (Kris Kristofferson) as the new President to uncover its true finances. The bank is in trouble and needs Winterchem to borrow a lot of cash so that it results in a giant commission.

The financial expositions are confounding. I barely understand it all. I get the main points, but all the financing talk is a drag. The movie can't gain any momentum if the audience is struggling to understand the plot. Mostly, this is very tiresome and the movie becomes very boring. The romance seem to come out of nowhere. I'm left wondering if it's there only to add spice to a very bland offering. I'm desperately waiting for more murders.

One of the worst movies I've even seen

[steiner-sam · 2/10 · 17 April 2024]

It's a high-finance secret-cabal conspiracy drama set mainly in New York City around 1980. It tries to combine two stories into one drama but fails miserably because of a fatally flawed script, which is surprising given some of Alan J. Pakula's other outstanding work.

Borough National Bank is in financial trouble, and requests help. The massive First New York Bank, chaired by Maxell Emery (Hume Cronyn), sends its fixit guy, Hubbell Smith (Kris Kristofferson), to look after the currency issues impacting the bank's health. Meanwhile, Charles Winters (Garrison Lane), the head of a big chemical company looking for financing, is murdered. His wife, Lee Winters (Jane Fonda), is a former film star who has become the company's head.

In 1980, the OPEC oil countries control much of the world's financial assets. Someone is fiddling with the American dollar. Hubbell and Lee get involved with each other and sort out the conspiracy--if they can trust each other.

"Rollover" is convoluted and does not adequately explain the conspiracy it's trying to sell to the audience. The actors seem unconvinced, except for Hume Cronyn. Kristofferson is miscast, and Fonda and Kristofferson have no chemistry, but the script doesn't help. This movie is one of the worst I've ever seen. I watched it because I like Jane Fonda and Hume Cronyn.

An uneven and unusual thriller worth watching.

[lwalsh · 8/10 · 30 January 2006]

This is an unusual film: an adult thriller about the danger of fiscal manipulation. It's also unusual in that it remains relevant, perhaps even more so than when it was released; no less a person than renowned investor Warren Buffet has recently been warning of the dangers of having so much U.S. debt held by countries whose political agendas may not always require a stable or strong U.S. economy.

But is it a good film? With some reservations, I would argue that it is. Director Alan Pakula and cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno have done a very good job of shadowing the action; rarely does anything take place in strong light, and then almost always when the action either involves the Saudis (the first meeting between the cartel and Lee Winters, played by Jane Fonda, for example) or serves their interests (e.g. the death of bank inspector Mr. Fewster). The locations, large and small, take on their own lives; the World Trade Center becomes a monolithic anthill, and there is a wonderfully ominous shot of the arrangement for Lee Winters's death being made by two men amid a crowd on a descending escalator which captures powerfully the essential isolation of the individual amid the crowds, and thus wordlessly encapsulates the underlying political concern of the film. The 720 degree pan just before the film's ambiguous coda is a marvel, one of those things which looks quite simple until one realizes the amount of work that must have gone into making it work smoothly.

The performances are solid if a bit uneven. Hume Cronyn as the amoral main banker is superb, and Macon McCalman does a fine job as Fewster, a man who has gone in far beyond his depth and knows it. Fonda and Kristofferson (playing Hub Smith) are at their respective bests when portraying the manipulative sides of the characters, and less convincing in the romantic scenes (which aren't very plausible to begin with). Fonda's bleak expression when she thinks she realizes that Hub is betraying her is striking, and her reaction to the attempt on her life is completely persuasive. Kris Kristofferson seems rather stolid at first, until we realize that he is portraying a man from whom virtually all emotional capability has been leached by his dedication to success in his career; significantly, the most passionate sex scene takes place immediately after the success of a fiscal gamble of enormous proportions.

The screenplay handles the difficult task of dramatizing monetary transactions well; it is less effective when portraying the love scenes, especially the initial motivation for the central affair. But the climactic confrontation between Hume Cronyn and Kris Kristofferson is spot on; rarely does a character reveal moral bankruptcy as starkly as does Cronyn's, yet his words and his delivery both demonstrate his utter unawareness of the truth about himself. Indeed, the script generally manages to be both clear (albeit complex, requiring attention) and straightforward without becoming preachy or overly didactic.

The music is easily the weakest part of the film (in fact, I almost gave this a 7 based on the music alone). The opening credits are backed by one of the most insipid things I've heard in a long time, a ditzy little number that recurs regularly to no good effect, and the love music (intentionally?) conveys little of passion or even intense feeling. The music for menacing scenes has more character, but appears only intermittently, and not always when it's most needed. This score has dated badly, and undercuts the film's impact considerably.

But all things considered, I still enjoyed this, and recommend it to those looking for something offbeat (and, like Pakula's "All the President's Men", somewhat deliberately paced, though I find this one slightly better overall). It's a rare film in that it almost always treats its viewers as adults capable of giving it a fair chance, yet it is structured, and often plays, like a traditional mystery thriller. But the plot is not all here; the film's unspoken message is worth hearing, and heeding, as well: that when we allow the possession and manipulation of things to take precedence over human needs, we run the risk of becoming nothing but things ourselves.

excellent movie for the right audience

[bhweller · 10/10 · 2 November 2005]

This is a "love it or hate it" movie, it just depends on your personal interests and background.

If you are looking for a love story or a typical Hollywood action movie you will hate it.

If you have an interest in the specific subject matter of this movie it will keep you glued to your seat.

This is a political/financial/conspires movie with some good plot twists.

If you have ever read an Ayn Rand novel you will appreciate the character types in this movie.

Not for the masses, but a gem for the right person.

Relevant to our times

[BombVark · 9/10 · 31 July 2002]

An over valued dollar, the system on the brink, the big bankers and their government stooges have gone too far. Sound familiar? The previous poster attributes the financial melt down in the movie to capitalism. Actually, the movie doesn't touched at all on the causes of the system breakdown. But it is not capitalism, but government interference in the market which would cause such a melt down. But it is fun to see central banking get its just reward, and to see gold emerge a winner.

Every one should see this movie about the collapse of the dollar

[Watchman801 · 10/10 · 16 November 2013]

Why didn't they show this movie to us in school? Why didn't we learn about the Federal Reserve banking system in school? Because they don't want us to understand what money really is and the dangers of fractional reserve banking and fiat currencies. They want us to be mindless consumers paying no attention to those that pull the strings of government and media to manipulate the minds of sheeple. This way it's easy for them to capitalize when the system they created collapses leaving the useless eaters fighting to survive. Wake up people!Become your own central bank. Invest in things you can own. Stay away from paper currencies.

A head of its time

[ManoaBoy · 23 March 2009]

Funny how art ultimately imitates life. This movie is like a Nostradomus vision of our current economic situation. Only difference is that the villains aren't Arabs, we just have to look in to the mirror to see who did it to us. Time to buy gold? Time to stock up on emergency provisions? Ebay's founder, PIERRE OMIDYAR, moved to Hawaii but has contingency plans in case of pandemic or economic collapse. See: The Honolulu Advertiser, article on front page of March, 22, 2009. It is a real hoot to see how a billionaire views the world!

So don't forget to stock up on food and water, and if you can't afford a security detail of ex-secret service agents, find yourself a good firearm to protect you and your loved ones.

A lot more truth than fiction

[pmelvoin · 8/10 · 13 January 2006]

Film is not the best intro to world finance, but is right on the money (so to speak) when it speaks to the need to convert oil revenues from the OPEC countries into US dollars. If this does not happen, the US is in serious trouble. And the US _is_ in serious financial trouble right now (2006), and will be more so if US dollars are diverted into precious metals.

As for the racist argument: rubbish, the Saudis do not like us in the least and I see no reason that we should be any more complimentary than they are. Eating with ones' hands is part of many societies including the US. Big deal!

24 years later and the Arabs are still rolling over

[ubercommando · 12 April 2005]

This is an economic conspiracy theory dragged out to feature film length where you have to accept the central premise and disregard all other factors such as reality. But hey, that's what a lot of conspiracy theory films are all about anyway. This film was a favourite of a nut job acquaintance of mine which probably explains why I don't like it. The ending is especially ludicrous: The world financial system melts down, the western nations are in chaos, there's rioting in the streets, millions will die, cities being destroyed all on TV screens behind Fonda and Kristofferson and what do they do? Shrug their shoulders, embrace, laugh a bit and all to soppy melodramatic music. You would think their response would be "world in ruins...oh holy crap!"

Uneven, but worth it for the fantastic ending....

[GrigoryGirl · 8/10 · 7 May 2023]

This is an uneven film, plodding at times, misused music score, but stay with it as the ending of this film is, honestly, shocking, spectacular, and completely uncompromising. I'm shocked that the studio allowed it to happen, but glad they did. The ending alone makes the film worth watching. Fonda is great in the lead role. Kristofferson is a bit miscast, though not too badly. Cronyn is great as the amoral banker who isn't really doing anything illegal, just very unethical but he gets his desserts at the end of the film. Considering we're having some bank trouble yet again in 2023, the film has hardly dated. Bankers still suck. So check out the film and stick with it. The last 20 minutes make it worth seeing.