Arts/Review

The Package: new thinking in spy films

THE PACKAGE. Starring Gene Hack-
man, Joanna Cassidy and Tommy Lee
Jones. Directed by Andrew Davis. At
Cineplex Odeon theatres.

Hollywood's filmmakers have turned out
SO many spy thrillers over the years, with
such consistent technical mastery, that the
only real problem they now face is where to
find a new hook on which to hang an old
tale. Alfred Hitchock called it the “mac-
guffin” problem — where to find a new
theme to capture the attention of the
audience and keep them on the edge of their
Seats through all the familiar plot twists and
Chase scenes. Since the end of the Second

orld War, Spy movies have depended on
three major sources of inspiration leftover
Nazis, nuclear weapons, and the dangerous
Manoeuverings of Cold War.

The Package draws on all three sources
and wraps them in an up-to-date macguffin,
something to inspire genuine fear ina North
American audience — a conspiracy between

S. and Soviet generals to assassinate

Mikhail Gorbachev and ruin a comprehen-
sive disarmament treaty. Clearly the ground
has shifted under Hollywood, and the
grand hopes of the Reykjavik Summit have
survived the end of the Reagan administra-
tion.

Noteworthy is the fact that the film
received the “technical advice” of retired
Admiral Eugene Carroll of the Centre for
Defence Information and the U.S. chapter
of the Physicians for Social Responsibility.

In good old-fashioned style, The Package
plunges at once into the sinister and deadly
world of Cold War Berlin, with the myste-
rious and brutal arrest of an American ser-
viceman on the wrong side of the border,
followed by a murderous assault on the
U.S.-Soviet conference which is completing
the disarmament agreement. Gruff Army
Master Sergeant Gallagher (Gene Hack-
man) is made the goat for the security fail-
ure at the conference and is punished with
an unwelcome assignment, to escort a mil-
itary prisoner from West Berlin back home
to the U.S.

Canada’s role in Central
America is examined

NORTHERN SHADOWS: Canadians
and Central America. By Peter McFar-
lane. Between the Lines, 220pp, 1989.
$14.95 Paper, $35.95 cloth.

Did you know that Conservative MPs
once tried to annex British Honduras to
Canada? And that the Canadian Navy
helped a dictatorship (the headline in 1932
Was “Canadian destroyers from B.C. to the
fescue, El Salvador aflame with red
revolt”)? And. that Canadian companies
Supported former Nicaraguan dictator
Somoza, who “kept photographs of Hitler
and Mussolini prominently displayed on his
desk?”

In the 19th century, Canadian policy
SOmetimes supported Britain, sometimes
the U.S. and occasionally was independent.
In the 1980s, the Canadian government
Supported the Contadora peace process,
although near the end of 1987 a Canadian in
.. “atagua said that Canadian policy was

Spineless” and “lacking in moral courage.”
But President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua
pought that Canada could play a positive

Author Peter McFarlane describes the
Positive work of churches and groups such
as CUSO, Mission for Peace, Tools for

face, and Canadian Action for Nicaragua.
He describes the killing by death squads of

Canadian Raoul Leger in Guatemala and
Canadian Father Arsenault in Honduras
and how these savage murders affected pub-
lic opinion, in his book, Northern Shadows.

Canadian companies don’t fare too well
in this book. An Inco executive is quoted in
1973: “The military will continue to rule in
Guatemala... .it is the only basis of stability,
really.” And the French writer Regis
Debray said of a brutal military sweep
through the Inco mining area in 1966 that
“the mutilated bodiés of peasants were left
lying on their doorsteps. ..prisoners (were
forced to) torture other prisoners. . .before
themselves being killed by their masters.”

McFarlane covers the development of
Canadian trade union policy. In the 1950s
the Canadian Labour Congress “like most
other Western labour organizations was
eager to prove its anti-communism
.. hounding known communists from the
labour movement . . supporting the import-
ing of U.S. gangsters such as Hal Banks
....” The destruction of the liberal Arbenz
government of Guatemala in 1954 brought
little criticism. But in the 1980s “‘the Nicara-
guan revolution was... .firmly supported by
influential unions within the CLC.”

A very good book by Montreal writer

and broadcaster Peter McFarlane.
— Bill Roberts

Domestic workers play on stage

Too little is known about the plight —
and struggles — of domestic workers in
Canada, quite a few of whom are from The
Philippines, Setting the record right is a
Play, If My Mother Could See Me Now!
(Inay, Kung Alam Mo Lang!), set to play two
Nights in Vancouver and one performance
'n Port Alberni this week.

If My Mother Could See Me Now! tells
the stories of five Filipino domestics in

anada and in doing so, exposes how the
©orporate grip on their South Pacific home-
and forces many into lives of low-paid
Semi-slavery in foreign lands. It runs at the
ancouver East Cultural Centre on Monday,
Sept. 11 and Tuesday, Sept. 12, 8 p.m., and
'n Port Alberni at the Capital Theatre on
Ursday, Sept. 14, 8 p.m. Tickets for the
ancouver performances are at the People’s
°-op Bookstore and La Quena coffee-
Ouse; for Port Alberni it’s the International
©odworkers, Canadian Paperworkers
and NDP offices.

Fifty per cent of the proceeds for the

pening night in Vancouver go to medical

aid for Palestinians. The performances are
to assist the drive to build the Organization
of Domestics in Canada.

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The “package” himself, Corporal Hinke
(Tommy Lee Jones), court-martialed for
striking an officer, has a devilish charm to
match his roughhouse insubordination, but
seems willing to co-operate with a fellow
long-service veteran for this routine detail.
But Hinke escapes as soon as they arrive
stateside, forcing Gallagher to enlist the
help of his ex-wife (Joanna Cassidy), a lieut-
enant colonel in the Pentagon bureaucracy
with access to classified records. A few more
twists and turns and there is soon much
more at stake than Gallagher’s career in the
army. But enough said about the plot,
except that it proceeds in superb style, with
several intriguing parallels to the assassina-
tion of U.S. President John Kennedy.

The Package plays straight to the Ameri-
can heartland audience. Gallagher is cynical
about the army, but not about his own past
service in Vietnam, nor about the prospects
of future service in Latin America. He is
simply a professional soldier, ready to do
his duty without much reflection on its
meaning. His ex-wife is also a typical career

soldier in the modern army, a woman who
is perfectly comfortable with her authority
as an officer. In their desperate fight to stop
the malevolent conspiracy, they are joined
by other soldiers and ex-soldiers who are
similarly bound together by shared expe-
rience and mutual respect.

These people are by no means pacifist
saints, but they present a realistic human
decency to oppose the evils of an obsolete
Cold War militarism. The Package is based
ona simple and thoughtful assumption that
although there are many in the military who
are addicted to the lunacy of nuclear wea-
pons, there are also many decent people in
uniform who are ready to accept a new
political direction toward disarmament.

But the truly remarkable thing about The.
Package, which makes it worth the price of
a ticket, is the way in which the image of
Gorbachev as a peacemaker has been trans-
lated from the pages of America’s newspap-
ers to the big screen. New thinking has
arrived in Hollywood.

— Glenn Bullard

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Pacific Tribune, September 11, 1989 °7