Incognito

Dom Robinson reviews Incognito Distributed by
Warner Bros.

Viewed at Manchester Showcase Cinemas.
Telephone 0161 220 8765 for programme information

• Cert: 15
• Running time: 110 minutes
• Year: 1997
• Released: 14th November 1997
• Widescreen Ratio : 2.35:1
• Rating: 7/10

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Director:

John Badham

(WarGames, The Assassin, The Hard Way)

Producer:

James G. Robinson

Original Score :

John Ottman

Cast :

Harry Donovan: Jason Patric (Speed 2, Sleepers, The Lost Boys)
Marieke: Irène Jacob (Three Colours Red, The Double Life of Veronique)
Harry’s father: Rod Steiger (Doctor Zhivago, The Specialist, Mars Attacks!)
John: Ian Holm (The Fifth Element, Naked Lunch)

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I ncognito stars Jason Patric as Harry Donovan, a highly-skilled artist who is asked by three businessmen, two English and one Chinese, who have heard of his reputation, to paint a Rembrandt for them. For his work they will pay him $50,000 now, and another $500,000 on delivery. So Harry sets off for Paris to do plenty of research on the artist, searching for the inspiration to pick one of the many paintings to base his latest work on. While there he misses his father, Rod Steiger, last seen in the sci-fi comedy Mars Attacks!, who tries to hide his heart condition from his son.

Later at a cafe, he literally bumps into Marieke (Irène Jacob), a young art student who offers to buy him a coffee after spilling one over his sketchings. He declines, but they meet again the next day while she discusses art with two male friends. Interupting the conversation by shoving in his opinions where they’re not wanted, he causes a scene and leaves, with Marieke following behind. After a day spent together, a brief passionate affair ensues in the hotel reception, but the next day she leaves just as he wakes up…never to be seen again ?

With the painting completed after a month’s hard work spent in Amsterdam, Harry takes it to London, back to his ’employers’, where they have arranged for some professional art critics to give their opinion. All are convinced it’s a Rembrandt apart from one – Marieke, clearly not a student as she first told him. After she leaves, the men refuse to pay the asking price and one produces a gun to persuade him to leave. Harry overpowers him, grabs hold of the gun and lets off a round without looking too closely at where the shot went, then swaps the gun for his painting and leaves, catching up with Marieke and now on the run for both the theft of an original painting – as claimed by those in the know – and, more importantly, murder, as the Chinese man got in the way of the bullet.

When the authorities eventually catch up with Harry, he’s put in the dock and has to prove that the painting he’s created is a fake in order to clear his name.

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The curious thing about this film is that the first hour plays like a foreign arthouse film – idyllic settings, gorgeous landscape shots, a slow but steady drama building in stature, and arthouse-film regular Irène Jacob. Even more curious as the film is directed by one of Hollywood’s well-known action-meisters, John Badham, who you wouldn’t normally associate with arthouse films apart from the Americanised scene-for-scene remake-with-alternative-cop-out-ending of Luc Besson’s Nikita known as The Assassin in the UK and Point of No Return in the US.

It then follows that while the first hour will appease the arthouse fans, the second half abandons that ideal and, for a while, heads American-style as Harry and Marieke go on the run with typical bad language here and there and MTV-style direction, before it slows down again in the final 20 minutes for the courtroom scene.

Jason Patric, recently seen on the big screen in the summer blockbuster Speed 2: Cruise Control, replacing Keanu Reeves, and the true-life drama Sleepers alongside Brad Pitt and Robert DeNiro, equips himself well coming across during the film’s length convincingly as an artist, but on reflection afterwards you do wonder whether any of the Hollywood brat-pack would take up such an occupation.

Irène Jacob is an excellent and attractive actress who won’t be too familiar to anyone more used to the sort of film John Badham usually turns out, coming to light in Krzysztof Kiewlowski‘s The Double Life of Veronique, one of the most captivating films I’ve seen in which she plays the roles of two women leading completely different lives in different parts of the world, but are identical in appearance. Each feels they are missing something in their lives until the film reaches a poignant moment when each catches a glimpse of the other, and again in Three Colours Red, the final part in his Three Colours Trilogy based on the colours and principals behind the French national flag.

Rod Steiger’s role in the film is small but important as you’ll see, and Ian Holm has a cameo as the man who introduces the businessmen to Harry’s talent.

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Overall, this is a film that is definitely worth a watch. Knowing of Badham’s take on Nikita, this film also feels like a remake of a foreign film but with a few slam-bang action points thrown in for the Americans, but if you go in expecting a gentle drama with a story you can forgive those parts, but do not go expecting anything action-packed from start to finish.

What is a shame about the film is that it makes you wonder just how much Warner Bros. are bothered about promoting it. Before I knew of the preview screening I had never heard of the film, a rarity for a film buff such as myself. Also, Warner had sent out no press packs for the film and there was no review in my favourite film magazine, Empire.

As such, this film may well end up with a limited release showing for a couple of weeks before disappearing, only to resurface on video in the cramped pan-and-scan format in an instant losing the impressive widescreen visuals. Hence, all the more reason that you should put to one side the film you would have seen from November 14th and watch this one instead.

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1997.

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