Trojan Eddie

With such a good cast, it is disconcerting to see the film not quite succeed. Part of the fault lies with the writing, that misses many chances for character development, and simply abandons any pretence of creating a female role. But more subtle is the failure of tone and timing; in both respects the flaws are inherited from TV work. Tarkovsky speaks of film being about time, and this piece is a study in how a casual and episodic realism that grapples with time neither in structure nor in scene can cause a work to drift away from its purpose, and art.

There is, again from television, an ambiguity of intent: the script writer sees a chance to draw a character of some violence; then glimpses the possibility of pathos. In the end we all suffer from a retreat, in which sitcom is next in line.