CONFRONTED with daily clinkers, a critic finds it hard to work up the passion to call a movie mendacious, detestable, and revolting, but Fearless provokes just such enthusiasm. One senses, of course, that its protagonist, meant to be both offputting and sympathetic, must eventually die. But a two hours’ wait—not such a long time as movies go nowadays—seemed virtually interminable. And then to be cheated out of the well-earned death of the fatuous hero—horrible!
Fearless has a screenplay by Rafael Yglesias “based upon his novel.” Whenever the dreaded upon appears instead of the unpretentious on, I know I am in for trouble; the only even surer sign is any sort of accolade at the Sundance Film Festival. Peter Weir, the Australian director, has already given us two of the world’s most obnoxious films, The Last Wave and Dead Poets Society, and a couple of others not far behind. He is the sort of fellow for whom the German saying “dem soil man das Handwerk legen” was coined: this guy should be stripped of his trade. Moreover, the
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