Endings. Writers want them to be logical. Directors want them to be spectacular. Producers want them to be reshot. And the public does not want to hear about them -- not until it has been jolted by the hoped-for surprise it paid good money to enjoy.
In the long run, most of this fuss is for nothing. If we remember anything five years later about a movie's conclusion, it is usually an image, a scrap of dialogue or a performance, not how the plot unraveled, congealed or died. Unfortunately, most movies these days are made for the very short run; their futures are often determined by the opening weekend's box-office take. And the feeling is that nothing brings the kids in like rumors of big action along a plot line full of hairpin curves. A lot of movies with bliss-out potential are blitzed out by loud, dumb conclusions. Like Stakeout. Like No Way Out.
For Stakeout, Writer Jim Kauf devised a plausible, original and engaging premise. Detectives Lecce and Reimers (Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez) are a pair of laughing policemen assigned to keep watch on the home of Maria McGuire (the delicious Madeleine Stowe), former girlfriend of a psychopathic criminal (Aidan Quinn) who has lately, bloodily escaped from jail. Somehow Lecce is snookered into love with the lady he is snarking on. Disguised as a telephone repairman, he insinuates himself into her pad, her bed, her heart. Dreyfuss is terrific in the role, abrupt and vulnerable; Estevez is adroit as a man comically appalled to see his partner surrendering a cop's honor to human need. And Director John Badham (WarGames) shows an unsuspected gift for comedy, ranging from the raunchy to the romantic, with some nice pensive side glances in between.
But then it all goes blooey with an endless, irrelevant car chase and -- shades of Snidely Whiplash! -- a showdown in a sawmill. Was Badham's heart really in these contortions? Or did he, like us, leave it back at Maria's place, where a smart, sweet comedy was so rudely interrupted?
The final flaw in No Way Out is more easily explained and ignored. Indeed, viewers who arrive at the movie five minutes late and leave five minutes early will avoid the setup and payoff for the preposterous twist that spoils this lively, intelligent remake of 1948's The Big Clock. A naval officer (Kevin Costner) is assigned to investigate a murder committed by his boss, the Secretary of Defense (Gene Hackman, his honest face at odds with his twisted soul), but for which the officer is the prime suspect. Costner and the victim- to-be (gorgeous Sean Young) play a romping, stomping love scene in the backseat of a limousine as if no one had ever heard about sexually communicable diseases.
Director Roger Donaldson (Smash Palace) knows that action of all kinds intensifies when it is staged in tight spots, and there is no tighter one for a murder suspect than the Pentagon. Why Donaldson and Writer Robert Garland chose to sacrifice sympathy for Costner's character (and their well-made movie) by giving him a second, superfluous identity is a mystery infinitely more baffling than the one they have made.