Pretty Prince and Everyman

Brief hope that Extreme Measures would have been a fresh confirmation of catastrophic cynicism, but the Wiki entry retraces the end of the movie, so tonight's viewing would be a rerun, a surgeon like Steel fairly interchangeable with Gene Hackman's zealous Napoleonic tyrant. Studio executives funnel these narratives for a reason, and that is to illustrate that those in an obsessive chase for veracity, as per Grant's progressive underdog, also make civilized society pay a price. The American meme insists upon illustrating a contest of diametric oppositions: Grant, with his modal privileges, engaging in noblesse oblige, convinced of intrinsic interpersonal dignity, contends against Hackman, who here commercializes Richard Nixon's Main Street authoritarianism imposed on the expendable losses in the world of commerce toward an ultimately utilitarian outcome. In the hands of the British, in the Pinewood tradition, the audience gets its toes curdled when conspiracy triumphs,as when the EMS driver steals medical credentials in The Great Pretender-- in the background, French tongues cluck with reminders that we're all complicit, tu merci tres bien!