Mad City

source: Mad City

Mad City (1997): Dir: Constantin Costa Gavras / Cast: John Travolta, Dustin Hoffman, Mia Kershner, Alan Alda, Ted Levine: Miserable little item that deserves to be tossed in a fireplace. It regards hysteria created by media about events that they know absolutely nothing about. Dustin Hoffman plays a news anchorman who is inside a museum when John Travolta holds several children and a few adults hostage. He was recently laid off as a security guard at the museum unable to provide for his family. Hoffman wishes to help and even arranges an interview where Travolta voices regrets with regards to an injured security guard. Typical setup travels formula before arriving at an ultra cheap ending. Director Constantin Costa Gavras throws in a lame rap song about the injured security guard, which plays as really bad mishandled humour. Why not throw in a few funny Jay Leno monologues while we're at it? Hoffman is a terrific actor but even he cannot bring dignity to this piece of sh*t. All he can do is wait until the idiot conclusion hits. Travolta falls into overacting as he expresses regret over a complete idiotic action on his part. Also features uninspiring work by Mia Kershner and Alan Alda who do their best to frig up Hoffman's story to their brand of corruption. It regards media meddling at its most annoying and its delivery could drive a person mad. Score: 1 / 10

This is a fairly enjoyable movie that does a good job getting you invested in the two leads and the situation in general. it came close to being an awesome movie, but was derailed by numerous unnecessary side plots that threw off the pacing and kept this thriller from fully thrilling. there were also conflicting messages and some unlikable characters. and it definitely crossed the line of disbelief more than once. i still had a decent time with it. (about 2 viewings, 6/26/2020)

Although I've wanted to see this movie since the day it came out, somehow I managed to see it only two days ago, and boy did I regret not seeing it before. Both John Travolta & Dustin Hoffman gave a great performance. Both characters had true depth. The story itself is quite realistic (especially now more than in 97), and can happen to any one of us. A guy is fired from work and is fed up with everything so he goes to talk to his boss. Things get ugly, he manages to take some hostages & gets himself in an even bigger rut. Being unlike most Hollywood cliches with its sad ending it certainly stands out. I'd give it 9/10

This is such a blatant and awful rip-off of The Big Carnival it's shocking that none of the writers for The Big Carnival got credit. A shame, actually. The Big Carnival is a fine film while this hackneyed attempt to address the same subject today doesn't come close. Travolta is unsympathetic and Hoffman is clumsy, as if he showed up half-asleep to the set each day and did whatever it took to get to the end of the day.

Every now and then there comes along a film where you think to yourself why did they bother? Why did Travolta and Hoffman bother , why did the director bother and why did the film company bother? This film is bordering on the awful , its unbelievable ,its boring and gonna go straight out of my mind after i do this review. I wont even go into what the film was about but needless to say it was so bad that even when they had the chance to make the viewer feel better at the end they went a blew it big time.

Having watched this mess without having payed too much attention to the synopsis on the jacket, I was amazed that it is a Costa-Gavras work. The story is way too blatant and extreme; Costa-Gavras apparently decided to make his point, if it can be said there is one, with the bludgeon, not the rapier. The film is technically well put together, but that does not save it or even capture one's interest. It is up to the performers to do that, and here again, the film fails. Travolta, who we know is capable of better, is neither engaging or believable (he comes off as almost retarded). The role was done much better by Denzel Washington in "John Q". Faring a bit better is Alan Alda, playing Hawkeye Pierce all grown up and jaded. Hoffman is masterful and is the only reason I rated this a 2 instead of a 1 (awful). He is smooth and professional and almost makes you want to try to like the movie. But, alas, he cannot do it alone. The casting of the featured players in roles we have seen them in before is just more evidence that Costa-Gavras slept through this one. You would do better to sleep through it, also. Don't but it, ... and rent it only if you desire to watch lots of familiar Hollywood faces embarrass themselves.

Costa-Gavras is known as a political director and the most part of his movies are intriguing and makes us thinking about our way of see/accept the political facts in world. Although this movie is not necessarily political, makes us thinking at this time, about the influence of the media in the facts and in our lives. In this movies, two different lives had being linked by a casual meeting in a museum: A reporter (Dustin Hoffman) whose career was marked by a mistake made in a network, is trying to "resurrect" his work making a report about a financial scandal when he's sent to make a report in a museum. At the same time, a guard of the museum (John Travolta), fired some days before because of cut of budget, goes there trying to have a conversation with the manager and convince her to give his job back. At the same time that the reporter realizes it can be a resurrection for him, the things run out of control when other media reporter challenges the guard and him... Besides the excellent performances of Hoffman and Travolta, Costa-Gavras makes once more, a very smart movie that can't be missed.

'Mad City' screws up the same way that 'John Q' and 'The Life Of David Gale' screw up. Each of these political hot potatoes start with a worthwhile cause, but ineptitude in writing and direction ruins all 3 pictures. Medical bureaucracy and the death penalty were the subjects of 'John Q' and 'The Life Of David Gale', respectively. Since the issues of the blood-thirsty media and the plight of the blue-collar workforce are not quite as pressing as saving lives OR taking lives, 'Mad City' starts out a notch below right out of the gate. Truly, the notion that television stations will crush anybody for ratings (including inflating an event into a circus) is old, old news. Less than an hour into this movie, my eyes were starting to roll. Director Costa-Gavras must be the chief culprit for this mess. I kept thinking that it would only take a gentle nudge to turn this into a parody. There's a real problem with tone, and that can only be blamed on the director. Why did he and John Travolta think it was a good idea to make Travolta's character such an idiot? The man is just a few IQ points above Forrest Gump. I would have preferred if he had played it the way he played George in 'Phenomenon'. Instead, he's too much of an unprepared fool to be capable of holding a museum full of kids hostage for days on end. He may be likable, but he's still a criminal. Dustin Hoffman plays the one-time superstar reporter who stumbles upon this story and proceeds to gain Travolta's confidence---even managing to leave the secured museum whenever he pleases. Even though he has several opportunities to end the siege (including 2 or 3 chances to grab the shotgun), he would rather keep the story going and pretend to be trying to help Travolta. Scenes like these come within an eyelash of a Marx Brothers routine, so how can anybody take the movie seriously? The two superstars work together about as well as they can, although Hoffman's manipulative monotone grows tiresome quickly. I always have a hard time excusing a character who victimizes innocent people and creates a dangerous mess just because he's lost his job or because he's hurting. The middle and lower classes ARE being creamed by the rich and thoughtless (and it's often the media who swoop in to profit from the misery), but these films I've mentioned make me want to root against the underdog. Blowing up buildings and taking hostages is a terrorist act. Cripes, 'Mad City' has probably got most viewers on its side right from the start. Most of us think the media are scumbags and many of us can relate to losing the only crummy job we could get. Squandering my good will with bad direction, weak writing, and insufficient performances is what's maddening about this dud called 'Mad City'.

Mad City is an absolute wreck. Betting on the proven track record of Dustin Hoffman and the hot revitalization of John Travolta's career, the script fails to provide any depth for either actor. There are absolutely no original characteristics to the film. It's a bad rendition of Dog Day Afternoon-Cadillac Man-Wag The Dog all rolled into one boring little package. Just throw a below average IQ working man and twenty innocent children into the mix, and Tom Matthews believes he can create a couple sympathetic characters the audience can relate too? Give me a break. Every filmviewer dreads this kind of movie, a complete waste of time.