Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

The General's Daughter (1999)

Director: Simon West

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

The general's daughter, a US Army instructor in psychological warfare, is found naked, strangled and staked to the ground at a Florida military base. Only hours before, she'd stopped by the road to help undercover army cop Travolta with a flat tyre. He'd been staking out an illicit arms sale operation, but his assignment soon switches to the murder investigation, on which he's teamed with fellow MP Stowe, specialist in sexually motivated cases, and Travolta's old flame. Pressure builds to clear it all up 'the army way', so the victim's war hero father (Cromwell) can proceed with his political ambitions - but the discovery that his daughter had been indulging in S&M with a string of male officers does little to shorten the list of suspects. This is intended, presumably, as a hardhitting exposé of sexual misconduct in the military; there's little room for sensitivity, however, in the context of a button pushing Hollywood thriller. The scenes of rape, and the salacious bondage asides, are as much part of the spectacle as the massed helicopters that the budget so indulges. Only when Travolta gets together with Woods (slick psy-ops boss with a secret to hide) does the movie's grasp on its characters kick in.

Author: TJ 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Simon West

Producer: Mace Neufeld

Cast: John Travolta, Madeleine Stowe, James Cromwell, Timothy Hutton, Clarence Williams III, James Woods, Leslie Stefanson full cast

Genre(s): Thrillers

Duration: 116 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.