I guess I can't shut up as quickly as I wanted to, or didn't want to, but the choice of Mark Knopfler for soundtrack was inspired.
My favorite Kubrick-like moment from the movie is the helicopter bringing Happer to the beach at sunset. The music and sound is magical.
Burt Lancaster gives a fantastic performance. In fact, the whole film is filled with funny, touching, quirky, and big-hearted performances from a wonderful cast.
It gives you a vision of a place you want to be, and all the conflict underneath, even serious conflict, but without mean spiritedness. Such a hard line to tread. It's one of the incredibly rare good movies or even competent scripts without a true antagonist.
If you haven't seen The Coca-Cola Kid, I would highly recommend it as a film with similar mood and theme, although a little less subtle in its theme of progress in the face of (seemingly) blissful tradition.
Watching it in the 1980s, the scene that blew my mind was the Russians arriving. It beautifully skewed every xenophobic thing that Hollywood was pushing at the time: Firefox, Red Dawn, Rambo, etc.
I can't express how much I loved this movie, and when I was in Scotland years back, I wish I'd made the trek to NW Scotland (but like everyone else, I didn't). But, always a next time?
Such a profoundly enjoyable, well written, and deeply ironic movie. Reminds me of Coca-Cola Kid.
