William Hurt inauthentic
Anyone else find William Hurt inauthentic in this role — especially when he spoke?
shareAside from his half-butt attempt at an accent, he actually embodies the character of Arkady pretty damn well. His wit and cynicism and under-the-radar demeanor are perfectly in keeping with the character from the book.
shareI thought his acsent was dead on. It is just that you are not used to him with that acsent.
He does a reasonably good English accent (e.g.in "Jane Eyre") even though it sometimes sounds a little plummy. I think the accents in "Gorky Park" were down to the director who decided that the Russians should speak with "English" accents, presumably because with the exception of Hurt most of them were played by British actors. I believe he actually wanted to do "Russian".
shareI like Hurt and I liked his performance untill I read the book. I pictured Renko completely different. Purely lookswise, of course. Hurt is a fantastic actor.
shareI thought Hurt was remarkably bad in this one. I do generally find him to be pretty good in other stuff. And a big part of the problem was obviously the poor script. But he was definitely wooden and weird and not well-suited for this role. I wish I had not seen this. My impression of William Hurt as an actor will never be the same.
Not that he could've possibly saved the film no matter how well he acted. What an awful movie with a stupid plot, terrible script, and bad acting all around. Almost everything about this film was mediocre or poor. I was starting to think maybe, just possibly, he realized how bad it was going to be and just stopped trying halfway through the filming or something.
And that woman who is allegedly so hot that everyone is instantly falling in love with (and in Hurt's case I mean incredibly instantly)--but damn if she's not ugly.
And I've never seen such a lack of chemistry on the big screen by two characters who are allegedly in love. It made me feel dirty. Hurt did not seem even slightly in love with this woman. His "I love you" type lines were the worst.
This one left a really bad taste in my mouth. Ugh. This movie should've been shot and killed just like practically all of the other characters were.
Thank GOODNESS I am not the ONLY one who feels this way. THANK YOU!
Okay, first off, I'm honestly not a big complainer about films; I love thousands of different types of films from David Lynch to Woody Allen to really cheeeezy stuff. So, I'm not gonna just rip the film like I'm some kind of know-it-all. But, I've read about this film and the book for a long, long time and finally I thought okay I'll take a look at it. I gave it a good 1/2 hour and I truly was just sitting there in COMPLETE astonishment as to how absolutely HORRIBLE it was. Like I say, I'm really not a snob or anything. Hey, I even love the DIE HARD films, okay? But man... Just like you said in your post above mine, HORRIBLE script, acting, everything.
And yet, many people really love this film. I am genuinely mystified as to why... The thing that bothered me the most (with the accents a very close 2nd) is how EVERY single character acted like some kind of low brow smart@ss; I mean EVERYONE spoke with this kind of condescending pseudo-clever way like, what, they're all supposed to be these droll tongue-in-cheek phony dry-humor people. Weird as all hell, honestly! Maybe the film is not meant to be taken seriously; I mean, how could it be? And the pathology guy, GEEZ, where do I start? And the first General going on and on about how William Hurt should have shaved...??!!! It's enough to make you wanna bloody hang yourself.
Oh well, I guess I'm just completely missing the appeal here; I truly DO wish someone could in detail honestly explain to me exactly what it is that people like about it. All I can blindly guess is that it is supposed to be funny... To me it's like, okay, if you're gonna do this intense murder thriller with people's faces ripped off, fine. If you are gonna do a clever parody or something like this, then that's fine too.... BUT MAKE IT TRULY CLEVER!!! Not this moronic watered down, aren't we all suavely above this, smirking, incomprehensible WHATEVER the hell this is...!
Anyway, thank you above poster for helping me at least to see that I am not the ONLY bloody person who found this completely baffling, but in the wrong way...
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Afraid I have to agree.
I'm a hugh Hurt fan..
When I saw this back in early 80's.. like it..
Now, well there are moments when it's very good. but more and more saw just how bad it was...
1st third of movie was ok..last 2/3's it just falls apart.. and the love relationship was as real as donald duck having the hots for daisy. No chemistry.. none.. poor lee marvin.. great actor in his day, but like alot of aging actors just making a paycheck for groceries and rent.
Another film where i learned more than I would've wanted to..
Ditto your post, youaresqusihy, 100%. I thought Hurt incredible in Body Heat and some other works -- but he was just terrible in this, inauthentic is right! Of course, I also thought the dialogue horrible so I heard him mouthing stupid dialogue. Maybe he was too new/young to tell the director he was making changes to the dialogue. But just NOTHING rang true, nothing, nothing about it, not the story, not the actors (Lee was also horrible, I thought -- Brian was not horrible but just played the same role he always plays), the whole plot thing -- there was no reason to do what was done in Gorky Park given how things developed -- no big mystery, after all. I started wondering if it was the times -- like there were moments in Three Days of the Condor (which I loved) which were campy -- the whole Redford and Dunaway and how she takes photos of empty places, blah blah -- which really took away from that movie. Maybe early 80s was just a bad movie making time somehow (but then again, there was Body Heat).
shareyeah. he was good to me, too.
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