MOVIE REVIEW : Chronicle of Chaos in Polish-Set ‘Eminent Domain’

“Eminent Domain” (citywide) was shot in Warsaw by a largely Polish crew and co-written by Polish emigre Andrzej Krakowski. But, somehow, watching the Cold War psycho-political thriller, I didn’t have the feeling that I was in Poland. I can’t account for such an anomaly. Do movies so precondition us to certain views of actual habitats--like the gray, harsh, stripped-down milieu of Polish films by Roman Polanski, Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Kieslowki or Jerzy Skolimowski--that we can’t adjust to something different?

John Irvin directed “Eminent Domain” from a script by Andrzej Krakowski and Richard Gregson. And Irvin is so versatile--sliding glibly from multileveled thrillers by John le Carre (“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”) to slick supernatural pap like “Ghost Story,” swinging from a big-budget Arnold Schwarzenegger revenge blast like “Raw Deal” to a Harold Pinter-scripted art film like “Turtle Diary”--that he begins to seem like a British chameleon.

It fits. There’s something chameleonic, and very British, about “Eminent Domain.” This movie has an international cast--French, Polish, Canadian, American. Its Poland has the look of those ‘60s-’70s Cold War thrillers set in Russia, but actually shot somewhere in Scandinavia mostly with British actors.

For a while I had the strange impression that it was actually a movie about incredibly wealthy delusional psychotics in London, elegant emigres and weirdos who had constructed an elaborate mass fantasy: that they were high Polish Communist Party officials involved in a mysterious power struggle. (I’d rather have seen that movie than this one.) It didn’t help when, at a social gathering, all the actors who had been speaking clipped English for about 10 minutes, suddenly broke out in a glazed-eyed Polish rendition of “Happy Birthday”--and then immediately went back to English again.

Krakowski’s story is a neatly plotted but obvious parable of authoritarian evil. He drew from personal experience: His father headed up the Polish film industry when Polanski and Skolimowski were starting their careers. It’s a tale of government terrorization, and how it effects even the highest officials, including Donald Sutherland’s Jozef Burski. Poland’s sixth most powerful bureaucrat, Burski is subjected here to a deranged set of persecutions. He’s locked out of his office, his security clearance is confiscated, his daughter is kidnaped, his wife (Anne Archer) is driven to a breakdown, he’s tailed by thugs and his invitations to ballets or state dinners are withdrawn.

Sutherland is “Domain’s” ace in the hole. The whole movie, under Irvin’s usual brisk, icy-fingered direction, has a paranoia-under-glass feel--too impeccable, too planned--but Sutherland breaks it open. He’s adept at violent emotions, severely repressed. His big rheumy eyes set in a gaunt, gaping face are like windows on a flayed, anguished or torrentially comic soul. Sutherland makes Burski’s predicament tactile and painful. We can feel the tightly masked bewilderment of this practiced bureaucratic infighter, attacked by invisible enemies, his defenses ravaged and his every maneuver checkmated.

But Sutherland’s virtuosity aside, can we sympathize that strongly with a man who’s participated all his life in an unjust and terror-ridden system--although with a measure of sophistication and non-sadistic intent--who suddenly finds himself a victim of the same apparatus? Doesn’t he, in some way, have it coming to him?

Perhaps the problem with “Eminent Domain” is that it takes too many cues from American left-wing anti-CIA thrillers of the ‘70s. It almost acts as if the audience should be surprised at the revelation that authoritarian states are unjust. We’re too firmly in movie-movie land here, instead of Poland, or London, or anywhere else.

The central idea in “Eminent Domain” (rated PG-13 for sex and language) is an interesting one: to chronicle Burski’s spiritual growth in direct contrast to his life’s inexorable collapse. But the movie is too malevolently efficient to bring that off. It may be chronicling chaos but, too often, it knows and shows exactly where it’s going.

‘Eminent Domain’

Donald Sutherland: Jozef Burski

Anne Archer: Mira Burski

Johdi May: Eva Burski

An Alan Neuman/SVS Inc./Arama Entertainment/Harlech Films presentation of a Shimon Arama production, released by Triumph Releasing Corp. Director John Irvin. Producer Shimon Arama. Screenplay by Andrzej Krakowski, Richard Gregson. Camera Witold Adamek. Editor Peter Tanner. Production design Allan Starski. Music Zbigniew Preisner. Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes.

MPAA-rated PG-13 (sex, language).