Falling Through

Rating

Director

Colin Bucksey

Screenplay

Ian Corson, J.C. Thomas, Nick Villiers

Length

1h 36m

Starring

Gordon Currie, Roy Scheider, Yekaterina Rednikova, Judy Parfitt, R.J. Adams, Peter Weller, Nadia Cameron, Lee Danner, Steve Nicholson

MPAA Rating

R

Review

PREFACE:
In the early 2000s, I was writing reviews for an outfit called Apollo Guide Reviews. That website has since been closed down.

Attempting to reconstruct those reviews has been an exercise in frustration. Having sent them to Apollo Guide via email on a server I no longer have access to (and which probably doesn’t have records going back that far), my only option was to dig through The Wayback Machine to see if I could find them there. Unfortunately, while I found a number of reviews, a handful of them have disappeared into the ether. At this point, almost two decades later, it is rather unlikely that I will find them again.

Luckily, I was able to locate my original review of this particular film. Please note that I was not doing my own editing at the time, Apollo Guide was. As such, there may be more than your standard number of grammatical and spelling errors in this review. In an attempt to preserve what my style had been like back then, I am not re-editing these reviews, which are presented as-is.

REVIEW:
For well over a century, the United States has been the destination of choice for millions of people around the world looking to start their lives anew, and some will resort to any means to get there. Falling Through is a tale of Parisian counterfeiters who are making a profit by selling American visas.

Peter Connelly (Gordon Currie) is a security specialist hired by the American embassy in Paris. When two lovers are shot down at an amusement park, it becomes obvious that there’s more than love going on in the back streets of Paris. Roy Scheider plays Earl Miller, one of the chief security officers at the embassy and takes orders from Peter’s boss, Lou Fairchild ( Peter Weller).

When Peter meets a beautiful Russian émigré, Kateryna ( Ekaterina Rednikova), he takes on the difficult task of ensuring her safety as well as the safety of the embassy. To complicate matters, Kateryna’s brother Dmitri (Steve Nicolson) is a crude addition to Falling Through’s bizarre plot.

One of the film’s biggest assets is its star. Currie is a talented newcomer who’s still a little wet behind the ears. His earnest and caring attitude is often belied by his handsome visage. Rednikova, while a buxom beauty, hasn’t shown much in the way of acting talent. It seems as though her only qualification for the role is a generous body and a spirit to match.

Weller, whose big breakthrough came in RoboCop, has yet to find a niche that suits his gruff and stolid features. His performance here is neither original nor entertaining. There are times when his presence is so painful you can’t help but wish his character was dead. Not to be outdone, Nicolson brings nothing of interest as the Russian sibling. His performance is so contrived that you stop caring the instant his drunken lout tumbles onto the screen.

In this battle of weak acting and weaker characters, Scheider plays the worst of the lot. Scheider seems to be included only to provide star power and his character is there supposedly to get the storyline moving after it grinds to a halt early on. No such luck.

One of the major problems with the story is that it revolves around one situation and then strangely disconnects to another concurrent story that is not relevant or useful. What little originality the film has are lost amidst the overabundance of gratuitous sex and predictable verbal encounters. You can’t help but wonder how much better the movie would have been had it been re-written by someone like John Grisham.

Good action thrillers are difficult to come by and Falling Through is a well-meaning effort that’s held back by significant problems. It’s sure to entertain some audiences while others will find it a futile foray into filmmaking.

Review Written

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