Subject: REVIEW: POWDER

From: [email-masked] (Mark R. Leeper)
Date: Mon, 30 Oct 1995 18:51:16 GMT

POWDER
                      A film review by Mark R.  Leeper
                       Copyright 1995 Mark R.  Leeper

               Capsule: POWDER is the kind of story that
          could have been pretty sappy, and in fact it is
          sappy, but only in the final minutes of the film.
          Until then it is actually a fairly riveting story
          for the right audience.  A teenager with superhuman
          powers is faced with bigotry in his community.  But
          he changes the lives of people who come in contact
          with him.  Rating: low +2 (-4 to +4)

     Sometimes a film just clicks for reasons hard to determine.
POWDER should not work well as a film, but it does.  This is a story
about a self-effacing superman with a pained expression on his face who
finds himself in a world that largely does not appreciate him.  It
initially looks like a self-indulgent film searching for a cult
following from a narrow band of sentimentalists.  That may even be what
it was, but it did just enough that worked for me that I fell into that
narrow band.  In another ten years I may look at this film and wonder
what I saw in it, but for right now it had more than one scene that
paid off for me.  I would like to think I will always find the subplot
with the deputy to be powerful.

     Jeremy Reid, inexplicably called "Powder" (played by Sean Patrick
Flanery), has not had much of a life.  His mother died of a lightning
bolt before his birth.  The albino fetus salvaged from the dead woman
was rejected by the father.  The child was raised by his grandparents
and lived in a dark cellar for almost all of his life.  Powder, it
seems, was not entirely human, though what else he is is never clear.
He may be a mutation or maybe an implanted alien.  But he has an I.Q.
that goes beyond measurement, a photographic memory, telepathic and
empathic abilities, and voluntary and involuntary powers to affect
electromagnetic waves.  Due to his upbringing he is introverted and
maladjusted.  Wherever he goes he is hated and feared by most of his
Texas community.  Sent to a school for disturbed children, he finds
friends in the head of the school (Mary Steenburgen) and an energetic
science teacher (Jeff Goldblum).

     Actor Sean Patrick Flanery is hidden under an overly obvious
makeup job which looks like it was intended to justify the title of the
film.  Flanery is not a bad actor--some viewers may remember him as
TV's teenage Young Indiana Jones.  But in POWDER the white make-up
lacks contrast and seems to hide all of his facial expression but the
most pained looks, which he then uses all too often.  Also sprinkled in
are some good character actors like Lance Hendriksen as the town
sheriff.  Hendriksen is one of those familiar actors who never seem to
get the appreciation they deserve.  Mary Steenburgen is not well-used,
but Jeff Goldblum as the enthusiastic science teacher is a treat.  Two
more actors it is nice to see working are Ray Wise and camp film
actress Susan Tyrrell.

     The script has some problems.  Powder's powers seem to be revealed
only as he needs them and we are never sure what powers he has.  That
is not necessarily bad, though one might question if the writer and
director Victor Salva had a clear idea of what he wanted Powder to be.
For example, the teenager seems to be involuntarily magnetic in some
scenes and not others.  Some places the effects are not convincing.
Lightning plays a part in the story but never looks realistic.  An
animal head is also unreal-looking.  There are continuity errors witha
clock in one scene between Goldblum and Flanery.  None of these are
really bothersome.  What did need more care were the last three or four
minutes of the film, which just don't work.

     There is a great deal being said about writer/director Victor
Salva's background.  On this subject I will say just that I can respect
and enjoy Wagner's operatic cycle "The Ring of the Nibelungs" without
condoning everything that Wagner ever did in his personal life.  Salva
has had a bad chapter of his life which is now over.  His film POWDER
rises above some mediocre acting and make-up to have several touching
moments in a 1950s-style superman story.  For the people in the right
mood it gets a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.

					Mark R.  Leeper
					[email-masked]