Simply Perfect

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

A leftist Chicago radio shock jock is murdered. FBI agent Catherine Weaver (Debra Winger) goes undercover as combine operator Katie Phillips to get close to farmer Gary Simmons (Tom Berenger). He seems to be a regular family man disgruntled with the state of the world. However, his family connections and suspicions about several deaths led agent Michael Carnes (John Heard) to send his girlfriend Weaver on her first undercover investigation.I love this world of right wing racists. It's a world of families and regular folks. Gary is also angry at Nazis and right wing politicians. He's the regular folks type left behind by the society. In the present, they are Trump supporters. It has a couple of solid actors and an engrossing premise. It is a longer movie and there are a couple of missteps. The great premise keeps the story compelling.

Costa-Gavras directed this thriller that stars Debra Winger as an FBI agent who goes undercover in a Midwest community to infiltrate and expose a white supremacist group led by Gary Simmons(played by Tom Berenger) who is on first impression both charming and good-looking to her, and a family man, so of course she falls in love with him, despite there being no doubt that he is indeed a heartless racist and murderer. Just how can she betray the man she loves who does things she hates? Muddled and unconvincing film has good acting and direction but one seriously stupid lead character, who is clearly the wrong person for the job, despite the inevitable outcome.

"Betrayed" is top shelf entertainment, but it fails as great cinema. Director Costa-Gavras, writer Joe Eszterhas, and a fine cast create a meticulously shaped story with depth and multiple points-of-view. The film works on many levels. For example, contrasting romantic imagery of rural American against sterile bureaucratic offices is not subtle but it is effective. French cinematographer, Patrick Blossier, and editor Joële Van Effenterre bring subtly to the narration. For example, little side shots of a man lying in the bed of a pickup truck or umbrellas in rain define such icons as structural counterpoints to images of racial violence. Little touches give a sense of subtly to what is a heavy-handed story. This is pretend subtly. Mr. Eszterhas is an often-underrated screenwriter. With a great director, as in this film, the screenplay unfolds, as does his screenplay for "Basic Instinct" under Paul Verhoeven, but here it never quite feels authentic because it is not. How Costa-Gavras and Eszterhas create empathy for unappealing, bigoted people indicates the revolutionary material background for such violence. Not nihilistic but close to it, the film ends with a lovely affirmation of humanity. Alberta, Canada stands in for the Midwest of the United States as it did in the masterwork film "Days of Heaven." Playing that area in warm tone against Chicago in cold, blue tones is obvious but it works. The ability of the players, with casting by Mary Goldberg, deeply impresses me from child Rachel Valdez to John Heard, John Mahoney, and Betsy Blair in her last role and on to Debra Winger and Tom Berenger as the protagonists. Debra Winger as icon with relentless reaction shots feels the core of the film. Those reaction shots would work wonderfully in a more carefully constructed narrative. This political film feels like propaganda because it is. Deciding the point-of-view is easy on one level but the density of the narrative undermines one's sympathy. That works; but the heavy-handed and essentially unlikely story annihilates that strategy. Roger Ebert's intelligent review of this film makes sense. The storyline is not believable. Debra Winder's character somehow just does not make sense. The ambiguity is simply too fancifully conspiratorial. Yet, Ms. Winger's reaction shots carry the day. You sense something deeper underlying the tomfoolery. The ten is for Debra Winger and Tom Berenger who somehow redeem this work.

At a crucial moment in the movie, the racist militia group that is the focus of the movie robs a bank, and one of their own are killed by an FBI agent. When asked shortly thereafter how he felt about the killing, the agent says that it was no more than wiping dirt off of his shoe. We often like to think of those people who engage in hatred and violence as being completely "unhuman". We want to believe that they are without emotions, without humanity, without integrity and mostly without love. In short, we want to believe that those with monstrous attitudes are only monsters and nothing else. And it is not so, which is I think the point of "Betrayed". People who adhere to what mainstream society judges as dangerous prejudices are in fact much more complex and often have more of humanity than we would like to believe.The story centers around two characters: Gary Simmons, played with much tact and depth by Tom Berenger, a leader of a local white supremacist militia group, and Catherine Weaver, alias Katie Phillips (played with complete believability and subtleness by Debra Winger), the FBI Agent who infiltrates the group. Her goal: to link Simmons and his group with the slaying of a leftist shock-jock who is slain at the beginning of the film, an incident which closely resembles the real-life assassination of Denver radio talk show host Alan Berg, a leftist personality known for hanging up on callers and other on-the-air rudeness. (In real life he was the most popular and simultaneously the most hated radio host in his geographic area.) The FBI also wants to undercover any future plans the group may be concocting that might involve assassinating celebrities and/or politicians.At first, Phillips believes the FBI have targeted the wrong people since despite their use of the N-word and occasional racist jokes, they appear to be peaceful friendly and neighborly, they appear to respect women, and they often give a helping hand to those in need. Gary Simmons is a loyal father, a model citizen who speaks his mind, a hard-worker, and a straight-shooter. He always tries to do the right thing. He is low key and doesn't speak often about his political views. And Phillips also finds herself quite taken with his two beautiful children who are innocent while simultaneously being indoctrinated with prejudice that may manifest itself later as hate and violence. To add to the confusion, Phillips finds herself falling for Simmons, wanting to believe that he is the wrong man.But as Phillips sinks deeper into the family and friends of those around Simmons, she learns she is very wrong. After Simmons takes her "hunting", a deadly game in which a captured African-American is then hunted by a group of whites like a British Fox Hunt with automatic weapons, she realizes there is more to this group than her initial observations would indicate. Then a camping trip reveals that it is true, that Simmons and his close associates are members of a complex supremacist group with connections all over the country to people who believe that Jews, African-Americans, Gays, and Lesbians, and almost any other non-white ethnic group are intending to exterminate their livelihoods if not their lives. They have rationalized that they have to fight back. And these groups are their targets for not only hatred but for proposed violent engagements.Phillips' other world is her FBI associates that keep pushing her to stay the course and complete her mission by staying within the family. Unlike her mid-west "family", the FBI team are emotionless, less sympathetic to the traumatic toll the assignment is taking on Phillips, and rather cold about what they are really doing. The government agents have little understanding that despite racists' destructive attitudes, they are real people who love, who grieve, and want happiness. While the FBI wants to put the racists into a convenient stereotypical box, Phillips realizes there is much more to these people than their hate. But she does find that their flawed perception of reality lies within a complex myriad of rationalizations that serve to construct their world-view. They have convinced themselves that only their hate and violence can save them.The movie becomes a struggle between these two worlds, and at one point, Phillips begins to question which side is the "good" side, and ultimately she must make a choice between the two. The irony is that if we want to "fight" prejudice we can't "fight" the people, as it only fuels the next generation of racists and proves their point. Maybe we can't even fight the attitudes. Maybe we need to love them despite their attitudes and maybe that would foster more love as it appears that hate only breeds more hate regardless of which side we are on.