TV Reviews : Laura Dern Plays a Gutsy Widow in ‘Afterburn’

In accepting the starring role in HBO’s crackling true-life drama “Afterburn” (premiering at 8 tonight), Laura Dern, fresh from her tender performance in the title role of “Rambling Rose,” made a smart career move.

Instead of worrying about the size of the screen for her next project, she took on a big, all-stops-out part that marks her first truly adult characterization, and she could just wind up with an Emmy nomination to go along with the Oscar nomination that “Rose” brought her.

Written by co-producer Elizabeth Chandler and directed by Robert Markowitz, this Steve Tisch production is a punchy, sure-fire expose drama in the tradition of Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People,” with Dern, as Air Force widow Janet Harduvel, playing David to General Dynamics’ Goliath.

When Harduvel’s husband, Ted (Vincent Spano), fatally crashes his F-16 into the side of a mountain in Korea while on a routine mission in 1982, she can’t buy the vague Air Force explanation of “pilot error.” Determined against formidable odds to clear his name, Harduvel soon suspects the Air Force and General Dynamics, the F-16’s manufacturer, of a cover-up of a design error that could cost the lives of other pilots.

The film boldly establishes Dern’s Harduvel as a smart, racy, uninhibited young woman who refuses to be the decorous traditional military wife, a blunt-talking type who infuses blatant sexual innuendo in her husband’s job at every opportunity. Her strong personality and the steamy chemistry between Dern and Spano pay off quickly, making Janet’s loss achingly palpable and defining Janet as a woman passionate and gutsy enough to attempt what everyone considers impossible, which is calling a huge corporation like General Dynamics to account.

“Afterburn” is terrifically entertaining--and dynamite muckraking.