MOVIE REVIEWS : Costa-Gavras’ ‘Betrayed’ Deceived by Unlikely Story

Director Costa-Gavras has always been drawn to incendiary political subjects, but in “Betrayed” (citywide), which is about the white supremacist movement in the American heartland, he has apparently trusted the instincts of his American screenwriter and co-producer Joe Eszterhas (“F.I.S.T.,” “Flashdance”). The result is a loosening of the trademark Costa-Gavras tension and the sogging of a relevant issue into overwrought pulp.

In “Betrayed,” none of its actors’ notable efforts can save the farm. The most diligent effort comes from Debra Winger, in a loose reprise of Ingrid Bergman’s character in “Notorious,” an FBI plant sent into dangerous territory. Here she is supposed to follow FBI agent John Heard’s hunch about the assassination of a left-leaning Chicago talk show host (a fine bit by Richard Libertini). The letters Z.O.G. at the scene of the killing make Heard believe that a specific supremacist group may be behind it.

Enter Winger, posing as a “combine girl” working the Midwestern harvests in town after town. In her first undercover job, she is ordered to infiltrate this friendly small-town scene and report on what she sees. In another “Notorious” echo, she’s had a personal relationship with one of her FBI higher-ups, Heard, who seems to be working from a personal agenda all his own as he sends her again and again into potential danger.

Winger is radiantly warm, smart and, against all odds, believable as a woman physically drawn to a man whose ideas are repugnant to her, but she is sunk by the growing improbabilities of the story.

Tom Berenger, as the forceful, widowered Vietnam War veteran she takes up with, does the best he can with an even harder role--the decent American with two young children to raise who has completely swallowed the line of the crackpot right. He has a less showy role than Winger, but he gives it care and thought. So does Betsy Blair, a welcome figure as his protective mother, although her role is underwritten. But for all their efforts, the film begins at the implausible and works its way quickly downhill.

It’s not that the idea of broad-based right-wing political conspiracies is ridiculous; a look at any documentary on these parties will dissuade you of that. It’s the speed and the broadness of the film makers’ approach that is jarring. Take that whirlwind meeting and love affair between Berenger and Winger--why would this cautious church-goer, of all people, hit on an itinerant combine driver he has met in a bar, taking her home and making her part of his family within days of their meeting?

(In case we weren’t paying attention, there at home is Blair’s staunch Mom, proudly still baking her cakes from scratch. “The best white cake in the whole white world,” in her son’s words.)

Scant weeks later, he takes Winger on his underground group’s most closely guarded and most murderous nighttime rites. And well-directed as Berenger’s two children are, when his 7-year-old daughter (Maria Valdez) prates her little nighttime litany of hate toward “niggers and rabbis” in Winger’s presence because “Daddy says no more secrets,” you know that subtlety as well as secrecy have given up the ghost.

Even though one of Berenger’s more unhinged cronies (Ted Levine) suspects her, Winger must still make dozens of reports to Heard et al. Yet even these potentially terror-filled moments are pokey and lethargic.

It’s still impossible for Costa-Gavras to make a film without one searing visual image--at least one. In “Z” it was that menacing car careening after Charles Denner. It was “Missing’s” spectral white horse or its slow camera pan upward to bodies on a glass roof. In addition to its horrifying nighttime hunt sequence, “Betrayed” has a surreal chiller: Levine, shrouded in clear plastic against a steel-gray rain, stumbling menacingly toward Winger . . . and us. (The film is rated R for its violence, racial epithets and brief nudity.) But beyond that indelible moment, Costa-Gavras himself can’t seem to get free of the enveloping caul of Eszterhas’ script.

(Did Costa-Gavras miss Eszterhas’ “Flashdance”? Or did it seem to him like a commonplace-enough story about a young American steelworker with an itch to express herself? If so, the Old Left ain’t what it used to be.)

In any case, the screenplay didn’t affect Costa-Gavras’ eye, nor that of his cameraman, Patrick Blossier, who recorded these vast, golden or pinky-gray horizons (Alberta, not Illinois) with awe and tenderness. In her production designs, Patrizia Von Brandenstein has created an isolated farmhouse that is warmly enveloping and, in other lights, separate and frightening. And of the large supporting cast, John Mahoney, as a quiet man who has joined the haters “after the bank took his farm and Vietnam took his son,” is, as always, unforgettable.

But lovers of “Sleeping Car Murders” or “Z” or “State of Siege” might wish that some filmic buzzer had gone off to warn this European director when “Betrayed” lurched from the outrageous to the outright ludicrous. Then, again, he may have been so busy sounding the alarm that he simply wouldn’t have cared.

‘BETRAYED’

An MGM/UA release of an Irwin Winkler production for United Artists. Producer Winkler. Executive producers, Joe Eszterhas, Hal W. Polaire. Director Costa-Gavras. Screenplay Eszterhas. Camera Patrick Blossier. Editor Joele Van Effenterre. Music Bill Conti. Production design Patrizia Von Brandenstein. Art direction Stephen Geaghan, set decoration Jim Erickson. Costumes Joe I. Tompkins. Sound Pierre Gamet. With Debra Winger, Tom Berenger, John Heard, Betsy Blair, John Mahoney, Ted Levine, Jeffrey DeMunn, Albert Hall, David Clennon, Richard Libertini, Maria Valdez, Brian Bosak.

Running time: 2 hours, 7 minutes.

MPAA-rated: R (younger than 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian).