08/08/97
MOVIE REVIEW: Conspiracy Theory
'Conspiracy' isn't a plot

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal-Bulletin Arts Writer

* (out of five)
*** (out of five) Starring Mel Gibson, Julia Roberts, Patrick Stewart, Cylk Cozart. A Warner Bros. picture written by Brian Helgeland, directed by Richard Donner. Rated R, contains violence, profanity. Running time: 136 minutes.

It was nearly two-thirds of the way through the wildly exciting ride of the Mel Gibson-Julia Roberts thriller Conspiracy Theory when I realized that we still didn't know what it was really all about.

Who's the mysterious bald man who calls himself Dr. Jonas and who's so anxiously chasing down Gibson's conspiracy theorist, Jerry Fletcher? Why does Dr. Jonas seem to have an army of thugs skulking about everywhere? What does Jerry, a taxi driver who sees evil conspiracies in every facet of life, have on Dr. Jonas, who has Jerry kidnapped and drugged? And what's the connection between Jerry and Dr. Jonas and Roberts's Alice Sutton, a Justice Department investigator whose own federal judge father has been murdered under curious circumstances?

For the longest time, Conspiracy Theory keeps you guessing . . . enthusiastically. But when all those questions finally begin to be unraveled, Conspiracy Theory starts to unravel, too, into a complex yarn of lucky coincidences, farfetched plotting, nick-of-time rescues and bizarre characters.

Rather than the tightly exciting, albeit familiar, heroes-on-the-run movie it starts out to be, it turns into an exercise in silliness.

The real moment it began to sink for me (and the script is by former New Bedford commercial fisherman-turned-screenwriter Brian Helgeland, so the metaphor is fitting) came when Jerry and Alice, fleeing for their lives from a gang of pursuers across a busy bridge, dart across two lanes of traffic and manage to find a getaway car. Manage? It's sitting in front of them. The car is up on a jack for a flat-tire fix, but the replacement tire is already in place, the driver is nowhere to be seen and the keys are in the ignition. Yipes! Talk about movie luck.

Director Richard Donner, who guided Gibson so successfully through the three Lethal Weapon movies and Maverick and whose own Ladyhawke is puckishly seen in a revival during a hideout in a movie theater in Conspiracy Theory, has a good track record with this sort of thing. He directed episodes of The Fugitive, The F.B.I., The Wild Wild West, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Cannon for TV and the movies Superman, The Goonies and Assassins. And his luck holds for well over an hour of Conspiracy Theory.

Donner's penchant for nerve-jangling suspense dovetails with the "whom can you trust?" atmosphere of Conspiracy Theory as Jerry and Alice are on the run from a gang that even spies on them from helicopters. The thugs drop down from the sky, toss tear gas canisters into Jerry's apartment and generally make life hellish.

Especially well done is an eerie sequence in which Jerry is snatched off the streets by the gang employed by Patrick Stewart's scary Dr. Jonas, dragged to what looks like an abandoned factory, bound to a wheelchair and injected with mind-altering drugs. With Dr. Jonas ominously cooing threats into Jerry's ear in a silky voice, the scene seems patterned after the nightmarish sequence between Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier's menacing dentist in Marathon Man. The outcome is wild, if unlikely, and it sets the stage for the many hairbreadth escapades to follow.

Gibson zanily endearing

Gibson is zanily endearing as Jerry, a man so paranoid that he has a lock on his refrigerator door, then locks his coffee beans and tapioca pudding in steel containers inside.

He prints his own Conspiracy Theory newsletter culled from news items and mails copies furtively from various mailboxes to subscribers. It seems a little quaint. I thought all the conspiracy theory nuts had graduated to the Internet where they can babble on, but Jerry's from the old school.

It's Gibson's wacky, starry-eyed sincerity that wins us over to his side . . . and no-nonsense Alice, too, especially once his fears seem to be coming true. Jerry is so absolutely frightened that Alice begins to believe he really may be the target of a madman named Dr. Jonas for having accidentally hit upon some secret evil plot that Dr. Jonas has cooked up . . . a plot that may include her own father's murder.

Certainly the bullets and the tear gas and the near-miss death attempt on Jerry's life are real. But which of Jerry's many conspiracy theories is it?

The clever ploy for a lot of the movie is that no one is quite sure what that conspiracy entails. Once the muddled plot actually gets sorted out, it's more outlandish and ridiculous than all of Jerry's ramblings that have gone before.

The near-miss kid

Although people involved with Jerry are dropping like flies, Jerry himself is the near-miss kid. Even when the thugs have easy opportunities to kill him, he just winds up bound and tossed on the floor of some dank space, giving him ample time to escape again.

It's an unrealistic plot device -- used in umpteen movie serials from 1916 through the early '50s -- that merely serves the mechanics of the script. Only the good will of Gibson and Roberts -- and the surprisingly funny dialogue and goofy situations -- carries Conspiracy Theory to the finish line, where it falters in a too-corny Hollywood ending.

But Roberts shines, combining smartness with cleverness and a strong dose of warmth to make Alice a terrific heroine in a tension-filled pinch. Yet Roberts has played this woman-on-the-run role before in The Pelican Brief and I Love Trouble, something that gives Conspiracy Theory a rerun feel.

In a thriller, deja vu is not something you want to aim for.