The Imagemaker

Michael Nouri is a media consultant in partnership with Jerry Ohrbach. He has worked on many campaigns, been a White House correspondent. Nouri has written a movie script about the business and the people he has worked for. Some people are willing to produce it, but they want Nouri removed from the project. There are powerful people who want him... not around in Washington D.C., where it seems to be always night and the air is filled with a soundtrack of frantic strings.

It's certainly an interesting idea for a movie, but the script ignores the basic and potentially fascinating ins and outs of differences between the facades and the realities behind them to tell a typical 1980s version of one-man-fighting-the-shadowy-forces-of-corruption story, where the heroes are compromised, and the villains at the top are never seen. We've all whined about the tenor of politics, how politicians, like everyone else, spend their power seemingly solely to maintain and engross that power, never using it for anyone else. Nouri wants his movie. Anne Twomey, as an ambitious TV journalist, wants the anchor's chair. Ohrbach seems fairly straightforward in what he wants: get the movie made and take care of his partner, but is he so simple?

The production is certainly adequate to the task it sets itself, but it seems undemanding of itself. Of course, the purpose of a movie is first and foremost to put as many people in theater seats as it can, but the makers seem content to rely on standard 1980s movie tropes, reducing this to an unambitious 1980s programmer.