The Edge 

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Director: Lee Tamahori
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Alec Baldwin, Elle Macpherson

Based on David Mamet's terse, tense thriller, "The Edge" stars Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin as two men marooned in Alaska when their small plane crashes. Baldwin has his eyes on Hopkins' wife (Elle Macpherson, naturally) and Hopkins has his own sad machinations to grind—the result is a fantastic journey that is too quick to be picaresque, too intelligent to be a mainstream hit.

I've seen lots of car crashes in my time, lots of down-to-the-wire bomb defusings and plenty of bad guys being shot in the forehead. But nothing really prepares you for the "bear fight" scene in "The Edge"—so well orchestrated, scary, breathless and redemptive, it may well be the scene you take away from 1997. Alec Baldwin is superb with Mamet's dialogue, as always (see his show-stopping "steak knives" speech in "Glengarry Glen Ross"), and Anthony Hopkins imbues so much sadness, so much pathos in his portrayal of the lonely billionaire Charles Morse that you desperately want him to survive. As the movie's moral center, he is the grown-up incarnation of the ostracized brainy kid from 4th grade, and his desire to be accepted by his companions is Mamet at his finest. See this one on the big screen—Alaska just doesn't fit on your Magnavox. With Harold Perrineau and L.Q. Jones.

—Ian Williams

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