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| One of the few posters for Nicolas Roeg's Eureka is this hideous concoction |
QUICK REVIEW:
Jack McCann's (Gene Hackman (The Royal Tenenbaums (2001))) passion is the hunt for gold. But when he in 1925, after a 15 years long search, finally hit a big ore, he metaphorically dies.
SPOILER He later dies literally: After getting beaten vehemently, his head is burned with a blow torch, he is covered in feathers and then decapitated in what may be one of cinema's ugliest death scenes.
Eureka, written by Paul Mayersberg (The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)), based on Marshall Houts' non-fiction book Who Killed Sir Harry Oakes?, and directed by Nicolas Roeg (Walkabout (1971)), is a film which is carried out in a demonstratively expressive, loud, Freudian palette with excessive use of zoom and a trite orgy scene. What Roeg tried to do here seems very old-fashioned today in the shadows of such much superior, related films as Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (2007).
Related review:
Nicolas Roeg: Don't Look Now (1973) or, Grief in Venice
In lieu of a trailer for the movie, which isn't on Youtube, here's an interview with Roeg about his David Bowie-starring The Man Who Fell to Earth
Cost: Unknown
Box office: 123k $ (North America only)
= Mega-flop
[Eureka was released May 20 (UK) and runs 130 minutes. It is loosely based on the life and death of Sir Harry Oakes, who was murdered in the Bahamas in 1943. The film was shot in England, Florida, Jamaica and Canada. As of 1986, it was only released theatrically in 4 countries. It was produced during troubled times for its American distributor MGM/UA, who "dumped it" in a few theaters in the fall of 1984. Millions of dollars were lost on Eureka, which, nevertheless, didn't end Roeg's career. 1,948 IMDb-users have given Eureka a 6/10 average rating.]
What do you think of Eureka?
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