White Sands Review
White Sands manages to choke down just about all that it bites off. It's a movie with a complex plot rendered with uniform ease by ace suspense director Roger_Donaldson, who did great work with Kevin_Costner on No_Way_Out and Thirteen_Days. It turns former bad guy Willem_Dafoe into a capably conventional leading man, and it features Mickey_Rourke in what is for him a restrained performance. It does all that, and a good deal more, with a clever device: it has Dafoe assuming the identity of a dead man involved in sleazy arms dealings. With his shiny complexion and bad-guy past, Dafoe has the look of someone who could be doing dirty deeds, but he makes a curious choice. He plays his character, a sheriff, totally straight, with an amiability that totally breaks all the molds he set previously (he seems rather like Charlton_Heston). It works, too, lending the movie an unreal tension in the early scenes. Later, a CIA subplot, some Rourke eccentricities, and a too-neat plot twist at the denouement make it seem as if Donaldson and writer Daniel_Pyne are laying it on a bit thick, but that doesn't stop White Sands from being a fun ride. Nick Sambides, Jr., Rovi
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