Quote:
Originally Posted by innerSpaceman
No, just kidding. But I liked him better as an actor than as a director.
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I've been trying to decide what I feel about Pollack as a director. He was always good on screen but in that regard was just an occasional character actor. I hold an esteem for him that is too big for such a limited definition.
Three Days of the Condor is a fantastic political thriller. I love the fortitude it probably took to see
The Way We Were to its appropriate conclusion (though I'm not a big fan of the movie overall). I love the beginning of
The Electric Horseman. Tootsie is good but I've never thought it great. I like
Out of Africa more than I think is the average.
Then he kind of stopped. Over the last 23 years he directed six movies, one of which is a documentary. One is a surprisingly solid piece of boilerplace (
The Firm), three are outright mediocre or bad (
Havana, Sabrina, Random Hearts) and I still haven't seen
The Interpreter.
Looking over his resume I'm actually surprised to see how few films he directed over the years. But to me, even with the diminished output, I think he bridged a certain edginess from the '70s with '90s commercialism.
And if nothing else, even if he wasn't making it, he was a fantastic advocate and promoter of quality film.