‘For the most part, good behaviour goes unnoticed…’
Kurt Russell is great, isn’t he? He can do everything. Anyone who can play both Snake Plissken and Santa Claus is a serious actor. While his most beloved stuff is undoubtedly his genre work, Russell can also be a romantic lead or the protagonist in a serious thriller like The Mean Season. While the film as a whole is merely competent rather than spectacular, it would be a complete failure without Russell’s assured performance in the leading role. Also… Christ, is that guy handsome…
Malcolm Anderson (Russell) is a jaded and disillusioned reporter for a Miami newspaper who is persuaded to postpone his move to a small town paper when a serial killer (Richard Jordan) requests to speak to Anderson specifically. This causes conflict with his partner, Christine (Mariel Hemingway), who understandably wants to move on from the whole thing.
The Mean Season is well acted, well directed by Phillip Borsos and features an excellent Lalo Schifrin score. Its biggest issue is that despite being loosely based on a book (In the Heat of the Summer by John Katzenbach), The Mean Season feels derivative of other, better properties, most notably the Thomas Harris novel Red Dragon, which was released four years before The Mean Season and looms large over every frame here.
This is the kind of film that passes the time just fine when it’s on, particularly the interactions between Russell and Jordan, but as soon as the credits roll, I’ll forget this thing forever. The epitome of a three-star film.
