Power Play
Power Play
| 01 November 1978 (USA)
Power Play Trailers

A thriller, released 1st November 1978, based on the non-fiction book Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook by Edward N. Luttwak.

Reviews
Karry Best movie of this year hands down!
Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.
SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.
Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.
Mike Beranek In this no doubt peculiar film that has a rather dated patina and production values that wouldn't bear scrutiny in today's world of slick multimillion endeavours however drove away at me and ended up surprising my, admittedly reduced expectations. There's a professional cast pulling out the stops to keep it going, and the way the story ended up left quite a visceral punch - even though the screenplay rather gives it away in the opening sequence in a chat show reminiscence by a witness, back in the real world, ie New York.I like odd movies like this for the curveballs they can throw like the really confusing setting imagined for this country in convulsions. Where somewhere in Eastern Europe do all the military speak in rich English accents or American drawl and the character names seem so anglo-saxon? Where are there big sea freighters unloading British rail rolling stock? The little bit of folk music might have Balkan origin but where in Yogoslavia do they have so many sand dunes for the tank sequences? The 'terrorists' look like the young German Red Brigade or even Irish lackeys. The bit the few reviews can't fail to pick up is the faintly absurd torture of a young woman with electrodes attached to her nipples dispassionately supervised by the Blofelt-type Donald Pleasance (who is good here).All the funny external elements are redeemed however I think by the seriousness of the whole thing and the repeated riff on home truths like perfectly understandable duplicity and cyclic violence that all such Coup-d'etat and by implication all revolutions can involve -despite best efforts from even good chaps. O'Tool's speech at the end about change and society is so deeply ironic and scary - be very scared of change old boy - a very British movie indeed.
Wolf Krakowski I am the uncredited (Secret Police) Sound Technician, Moritz Asch in the scene with Secret Policeman Blair (Donald Pleasance) trying to decipher the words on a reel of audiotape. I remember the set for this scene, way over-dressed with a ton of sound equipment. I appear bullet- ridden and quite dead at the end of a long shot; the camera moves from room to room, bodies everywhere. My mom did not care to see these stills . . My scenes were filmed at a local police station on College Street, near Spadina Avenue in the neighborhood I was living in (in Toronto) at the time. Donald Pleasance was very pleasant (forgive me). I recall that he introduced himself to me. Being the international and legendary star that he was, this impressed me very much at the time.Peace and Love,Wolf Krakowski www.kamea.com
ubercommando An unnamed country is suffering at the hands of a corrupt government so a group of idealistic army officers and intellectuals attempt to stage a coup with the idea of reforming their nation. But who can they trust, is there a Judas in their midst?A great idea, a great cast and great detail into how to stage a coup d'etat and yet the film just lacks that little bit to make it truly memorable. The production looks a little flat, the pace lags and it's narrative is a little fractured. It comes across as a vaguely interesting tv movie not helped by the fact that it should have been set in either Africa, South America or Eastern Europe because the locations just scream "Canada!" at you and why would they be staging a coup? Still, enjoy Peter O'Toole, David Hemmings, Donald Pleasance and Barry Morse together.
poc-1 Inside story of a military coup in a fictional South American country. A well written screenplay plus good performances from David Hemmings, Peter O'Toole and Donald Pleasance make this film believable. In a strange way the English language spoken by the characters and northern temperate scenery made the film more real to me because it felt closer to home. This film should be mandatory viewing for would be dictators, because it provides a virtual recipe for the process - and pitfalls - of staging a military coup. Fans of action and pretty cinematography will be disappointed.