Golden Gate Movie Review
Okay, everybody, let's play movie producer! Here's the story: first, we need Matt Dillon in the lead, because at the age of 30, he can convincingly age from 22 to 38 without ever changing his suit or hair. Dillon starts out as eager beaver FBI agent Kevin Walker, who just wants to get laid and make a name for himself in the Bureau. So he tells this girl he wants to lay (Teri Polo as Cynthia) that justice means more to him than the law, and he deliberately frames a Chinese laundry worker for being part of a Communist conspiracy. Cynthia walks out on fledgling agent Walker. The Chinese laundry worker spends the years 1952 through 1962 in prison, during which time his motherless little girl grows up to be Joan Chen, 33, as Marilyn Song. Ordered by the FBI to continue surveillance on her newly released father, Walker stalks him into an early grave, courtesy of a suicide leap from the Golden Gate Bridge. Then, because Walker wants to lay Song, he tells her nice things about her father that he claims he learned as a public defender. They make out next to the Golden Gate Bridge where the proud agent can't help bragging about the original news coverage of her father's conviction. Sure enough, Song finds the original front page picture of Walker framing her father and splits. Six years later, Agent Walker is ordered by the FBI to begin surveillance on Song, now an instructor at the University of California at Berkeley. Since Walker framed her father for being part of a Communist conspiracy, why not frame Song too, complete with the help of a University official? But this creep we've been stuck with for 95 minutes, who's never shown even a sliver of a conscience, suddenly has a change of heart in the final reel. So, there will be a karmic finale for FBI Agent Kevin Walker at the Golden Gate Bridge and a happy ending for Marilyn Song, so she can narrate the movie. PLUS: They can even say these lines to each other, to be excerpted in the coming attractions trailer and ALL the posters: “Some loves are impossible.” “But they are loves just the same.” What do you think? Great, huh? And producer Michael Brandman did think that David Henry Hwang's idea was great, just great: “When a playwright as uniquely talented as David has an idea he wants to pursue, I am smart enough simply to say yes.” So now you know. The spirit of self-styled movie mogul Howard Hughes, who ran RKO into the ground with Red Menace flicks like I Married a Communist, is alive and well in 1994. We can't all be movie producers, but at least we can say some movies are stinkers. But they are made just the same. woof!
1993 (R) 95m/C Matt Dillon, Joan Chen, Bruno Kirby, Teri Polo, Tzi Ma, Stan Egi, Peter Murnik, Jack Shearer, George Giudall; D: John Madden; W: David Henry Hwang; C: Bobby Bukowski; M: Elliot Goldenthal. VHS, LV, Closed Caption