Asri-unix.228
net.movies
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Tue Dec 15 15:09:05 1981
Rollover
n095 1949 10 Dec 81
BC-REVIEW-''ROLLOVER''
(Newhouse 008)
Film review, for use when ''Rollover'' opens at local theaters
By RICHARD FREEDMAN
Newhouse News Service
(UNDATED) You may need a quick refresher course in advanced
economics before seeing ''Rollover.'' If you don't know the
difference between a Eurodollar and a petrodollar - if, indeed, there
IS a difference - this glossy Jane Fonda melodrama about high finance
might just roll over your head.
Yet, there's nothing sexier than money, and with Fonda as ex-movie
star Lee Winters and Kris Kristofferson as financial wiz Hub Smith
doling it out and raking it in, ''Rollover'' provides nearly as much
fun as a year's subscription to the Wall Street Journal.
When Lee's mogul husband is mysteriously murdered, she vows to carry
on with his petrochemical company as chairman of the board. For this
she needs a mere $500 million - not to make a movie but to buy a
plant in Spain. Enter lean, lanky Hub, who looks more like a
character in an Ayn Rand novel than any Gnome of Zurich you're likely
to see.
His own bank shivers a bit every time the dollar sneezes, and under
the sinister guidance of mastermind Max Emery (Hume Cronyn at his
delightful best), it has attracted the unwelcome attention of the
feds for a secret Arab oil account.
But Hub introduces Lee to some top Arabs right out there in the
desert, and they willingly supply the cash - for a price. Hub and Lee
promptly become partners both in boardroom and bed.
He expertly guides her through the intricate canyons of Wall Street
until she becomes suspicious of his motives and causes an
international panic that makes the Crash of '29 look like a Sunday
school picnic.
If, like me, you have trouble figuring out the tip in a restaurant,
the financial skullduggery in ''Rollover'' may prove somewhat elusive.
It seems to have eluded director Alan Pakula as well, who is less
interested in clarifying the abstractions of the money market than in
capturing the atmosphere of sterile menace at a boardroom meeting, or
giving the bank's trading room at crisis time the electric tension he
gave the Washington Post's newsroom in ''All the President's Men.''
Suffice it to say, the title comes from ''rolling over,'' or
redepositing, the vast sums the OPEC nations are storing as
short-term deposits in American banks. If the funds - for whatever
reason - are not automatically rolled over, even the mightiest banks
could find themselves in the position most of us are in the day
before payday.
During the Depression, which ''Rollover'' ominously calls to mind,
the International Ladies Garment Workers Union presented a musical
called ''Pins and Needles,'' the hit tune of which was ''Sing Me a
Song of Social Significance.'' This is the song Jane Fonda has been
steadily singing in such films as ''Coming Home'' (Vietnam veterans),
''The China Syndrome'' (nuclear power plants) and ''Nine to Five''
(women office workers) with great success.
But honorably as ''Rollover'' treats its economic theme, the social
significance formula doesn't work quite as well here. Clearly the
characters are only slightly fleshed-out abstractions, invented to
warn us that - as Hub notes - even big money only gives ''the
illusion of safety.''
Most odd for so fervent a feminist as Fonda, her character, by
doughtily invading the ''men's world'' of high finance, only succeeds
in creating a universal panic. One wonders if she even read the
script.
Yet, though its theme is a dubious one, and the Arabs' motivation in
giving Fonda - and the rest of us - such a hard time remains obscure,
''Rollover'' provides an intriguing escapist glimpse of the
privileged world of phone-equipped limos and dinner parties where the
guests all look as if they're posing for high-priced whiskey ads.
It's a movie any Monopoly player will want to ponder while awaiting
his turn to pass Go and bid on Baltic Avenue.
X X X
FILM CLIP:
''Rollover.'' High financial hi-jinks with Jane Fonda and Kris
Kristofferson embroiled in some Arabic skullduggery on Wall Street.
Good, rousing melodrama if you know enough economics to balance your
own checkbook. Rated R. Three stars.
BJ END FREEDMAN
nyt-12-10-81 2251est
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