JasparLamarCrabb A movie that suffers from a real identity crisis. This is Nicolas Roeg's half mystic epic/half crime thriller with lots of dramatic soap opera nonsense thrown in. Gene Hackman is a prospector who strikes gold in the freezing Canadian wilderness and then lives a life with such a vengeful chip on his shoulder it leads to the destruction of everyone around him. He ends up living on a Caribbean plantation named EUREKA with an alcoholic wife and a a lot of trinkets made of gold. What points Roeg is trying to make around greed and ego are buried beneath far too many story lines and far too many characters popping in and out. Hackman is fine in a blustery role that suits him and the supporting cast includes Theresa Russell, Rutger Hauer, Ed Lauter, and Mickey Rourke. Joe Pesci is a Miami mobster looking to buy Hackman's island. Helena Kallianiotes has a great cameo as a psychic whore who sets Hackman on the road to riches and ruin. The whole film ends in the most apocalyptic ways. Completed in 1981, but barely released in the US until several years later.

Petri Pelkonen Jack McCann is a Klondike prospector who one day in 1925, after 15 years of searching, falls into a mountain of gold.He becomes one of the wealthiest men in the world.In 1945 he lives in luxury on a Caribbean island.He's married to Helen, who drinks a lot.His daughter Tracy is married to a man named Claude, who Jack doesn't trust.And there are some Miami mobsters who want his island to build a casino.It seems to him that everybody is after his money.Eureka (1983) is directed by Nicolas Roeg.The story is loosely based on the true murder of Sir Harry Oakes in the Bahamas in 1943.Gene Hackman does a solid job as Jack McCann.Without Hackman's performance this would be a much poorer film.Today this great, now retired actor turns 80, so congratulations.Theresa Russell is great as his daughter, Tracy McCann Maillot Van Horn.Rutger Hauer is terrific as Claude Maillot Van Horn.Jane Lapotaire does very good job as the wife Helen.Mickey Rourke is marvelous as Aurelio D'Amato.Ed Lauter is great as Charles Perkins.Joe Pesci is brilliant as Mayakofsky.The movie offers some decent drama, especially due to Jack McCann's character.Hackman's character seems like a rich man, but yet he's poor.His fear for his wealth and his soul make him that way, alienating him from those that are close to him.The scene where Jack is being murdered, is most brutal.His corpse is being partially incinerated and strewn with feathers.The movie could have been better, sure.I had the greatest time in the beginning, watching him searching for that gold.But nevertheless, quite fascinating movie.

Polaris_DiB This movie is an odd one, even for Roeg fans. In one sense, it's much more straight-forward, linear, and narrative than his other works. It's metaphysical attributes are also more directly stated, instead of the kaleidoscopic mix of character and occult you find in other Roeg works. On the other hand, that straightforwardness makes all of his subversive use of editing and narration even more effective, as this movie tends to cause a sense of security right before dealing a blow.The plot, as it exists in relatively straight-forward form, is about a man named Jack (played by Gene Hackman) who strikes it rich finding gold (a surreal moment made all the more effective by the water-like quality of the valuable substance). The movie then jumps forward over a decade later, where Jack's wealth and happiness on his own private island, surprise surprise, is filled with ennui and unhappiness, made all the more dramatic with his increasing selfishness, his constantly drunk wife, and his daughter's (Theresa Russell proving that her partnership with Roeg has a lot more power than mere outside-of-work relationship) romance to a womanizing French man (Rutger Hauer, in the best role I've seen him in since Blade Runner). Jack, since he's such an unlikable person AND rich, is a target to everyone else's priorities, so he gets killed. The husband of his daughter is framed, and suddenly the movie becomes a courtroom drama.The story is Roeg's most dramatic and poignant along the human level. But what seems incongruous to that aspect of the film is the Voudou, the religion, the Tarot, the Kabbalah, and all the other religious and occult symbols and dialog welded into the frame like some kind of scrapheap onto a statue. However, what all that symbolism reveals, along with the dialog (I think this is Mayerberg's best collaboration with Roeg), is the fact that this movie is neither a gold-searching adventure story, nor an idle-class ennui drama, nor a courtroom thriller... it's a meditation on life and success. But saying it like that doesn't really give credit to the type of meditation it is, for this is far from the typical art-house "let's deconstruct modern life" style meditation on an upper class it despises; it's much more a question onto the nature of what part of success is really important, and above all what part of life can actually be called life. Putting it into the context of a metaphysical/spiritual realm makes it all the more powerful, as in most cases the camera is set at a God's-eye-view. The trial is a different type of judgment than you think. The title "Eureka" isn't just about finding gold.Finally, a note about the cinematography: along with being a much more narrative work than Roeg's previous films, Eureka also is a lot less flashy. Despite that, the photography is still completely stunning, more so than ever in the lighting of the trial, which is probably one of the most reserved and subtle aspects of Roeg's film-making to date.--PolarisDiB

wilderfan Based loosely on an famous unsolved murder mystery (the multi-millionaire Sir Harry Oakes, who was brutally killed at his island retreat), Nicolas Roeg's "Eureka" takes this bare bones idea and transforms it into one of the most daring, ambitious and insightful films of all time. The film's screenwriter Paul Mayersberg packs each line of dialogue with thematic clues. The opening half hour is so stunning that it makes your head swim- the camera sweeps into the snowfields of British Colombia whilst Stanley Myers' hauntingly repetitive theme throbs on the soundtrack. Jack McCann (Gene Hackman) is prospecting for gold and ditches his partners. Surrounded by wolves, he gets a small talisman that he takes back to a brothel. The madam Frida fortells the future: "You'll find what you're looking for. But afterwards?" Jack sets off and discovers the gold (a genuinely amazing sequence). His ecstasy is short lived when he returns to his dying mistress. A burst of flame shoots forth and the film cuts to twenty years later when Jack is nostalgically telling the story to his daughter Tracy (Theresa Russell). Tracy is in love with an insubstantial dilettante Claude Mio Van Horne (Rutger Hauer), who Jack loathes. At that moment in time Tracy is looking forward, Jack is looking back. Jack is bored. He says "Once I had it all. Now I only have everything". He is aware that his daughter is his soul-clone. On the surface, they appear quite different- he's bitter, she's a hedonist. Yet small details (both admonish Jack's alcoholic wife Helen to "lay off the sauce" and they both have a stunning gift for mathematics) tell the truth. They understand each other perfectly. Jack is under siege from a pack of wolves who come in the shape of gangsters who want to develop Jack's island. Eventually the gangsters and Claude invade the house and Jack is brutally murdered. After this terrifying yet beautiful sequence, the film becomes more problematic. The courtroom scenes that follow contain dialogue that spells out the movie's themes and Russell's performance is hysterical. But the punchline as Tracy emasculates her husband is a doozy: "Claude...they despise you because you have me and I'm worth having. They despise me because I'm Jack's daughter and I have too much. And of course, they still despise Jack because he found what they're all still looking for". The movie atones for a lot with its gorgeous final moments as Claude paddles away. It's difficult to articulate the power this movie has. It has an extraordinary power to sweep you away- it's a crazy, violent, lovely, magical experience. It's about the human condition and it deals with issues that are almost never talked about- the price we pay for getting what we want, the moments in life where we find our purpose, the essence of people that is passed down through the generations, the difference between old and new souls. The film's main flaws (clumsy dialogue) are directly linked to the main virtue (the sheer overwhelming density of the material). Its a movie that will speak to you personally or leave you cold (there's no middle ground) and I find it almost an affront when somebody doesn't respond positively to it.