My review was written in July 1987 after watching the movie at a Times Square screening room.
"Deadline" is a stilted topoical thriller about Middle East politics and violence. Told in the already overused format of a cynical journalist caught in a hotbed of conflicting factions ("Under Fire", "Salvador", Volker Schlondorff's "Circle of Deceit"), subject matter is intrinsically interesting but deadened by the lackluster direction of Israeli helmer Nathanil Gutman.
Christopher Walken has almost a one-man show as a cavalier correspondent for fictitious ABS news, dispatched to Beirut in 1983, fresh from covering a European fashion show. Though scoffed at by the longtime hnds on the scene, especially even more cynical Brit reporter Hywel Bennett, Walken quickly scores a coup by getting an exclusive interview with PLO moderate Yessin, who declares on auditotape that the PLO should have renounced terrorism as a policy long ago. Coming onthe eve of Arafat and other PLO leaders leaving Beirut, story is a worldwide bombshell.
Unfortunately, it is soon revealed that Walken has been duped, having interviewed an imposter. As he scurries to unravel the mess, both the imposter (Bassam) and Yessin are murdered. Walken becomes a reluctant hero, caught between warring parties and trying to warn everyone befoe the Christian Phalangists carry out the massacre of folks in the Palestinian refugee camps. Nobody trusts or believes this Cassandra and in a phony conclusion Walken walks away unscathed from the melee replete with exclusive footage of the massacre.
Walken tries to pep up the surprisingly bland proceedings with an exercise in method acting, an understandable solution to the problem of playing scenes with a monotone, sleepwalking supporting cas. His acting comes off merely as forced, with Hywel Bennett getting a few laughs as his foil. Local Israeli cast is dullsville.
Gutman directs limply, conjuuring up a couple of arresting imaes, such as an array of corpses laid out neatly when Walken goes to identify Bassam, but generally using bright, even lighting tha conveys no atmosphere at all. The concept of sudden violence breking out in an otherwise placid scene was done with far better effect in "Under Fire".
Tech credits are competent at a B-movie level. Picture was filmed under the title "Warf Zone", with British-based Yank Mark Forstater listed as producer, though his name has disappeared from the final screen credits.
