Looker

Description

Looker (DVD)

Michael Crichton ("Disclosure," "Jurassic Park," TV s "ER") wrote and directed this smart, high-tech thriller that delves into just how profitable supermodels can be, once you re rid of the models. Plastic surgeon Albert Finney ("The Dresser," "Orphans") goes after big business execs (Oscar-winner James Coburn -- "Maverick," and Emmy Award-winner Leigh Taylor-Young -- "Picket Fences") when he realizes his glamorous young patient Susan Dey ("L.A. Law," "Love and War") is next in line for computerized cloning -- and murder.

]]>Someone is killing the supermodel clients of Hollywood plastic surgeon Albert Finney, and because this is a Michael Crichton movie, there has to be a pop-techno-scientific reason for it. Welcome to the daffy world of Looker, a 1981 film that manages to blend one or two interesting cultural ideas with a dismal storyline and a wonderfully cheesy early-Reagan-era look. The trail of murders leads to a corporation called Digital Matrix (Crichton always was prophetic about naming things), where head honcho James Coburn has launched a nonsensical plan involving TV commercials and mind control. Accused of the model deaths, Finney must track down the real culprit, aided by client Susan Dey (in her most appealing non-TV role). There s also a crazy "light gun" that causes victims to black out, a device that leads to some very strange shoot-outs. All of this might have been fun if the movie had any kind of suspense or distinctive characters. Albert Finney made this the same year he did Wolfen, after a hiatus from movie acting--a pair of eccentric choices, to be sure. Adding to the silliness is a truly wretched theme song, made the way they made em in the early 80s. --Robert Horton