Cinema: Trade-Off the Mean Season

The first victim, a teenage girl, is dispatched somewhere in the middle of the main titles. That leaves four to go, according to the killer who calls Newsman Malcolm Anderson (Kurt Russell) to confide his demented thoughts. He promises to keep the reporter, who works for the fictional Journal in a very real Miami, posted on his future plans.

At first it looks like a young journalist’s dream: exclusive access to a murderer’s mind while he is in the act of committing his crimes. After just a couple of stories, the city editor is whispering of Pulitzer Prizes. But the situation quickly turns into a nightmare: as the madman’s conduit to police and public, Anderson sacrifices objectivity for celebrity–the only person his colleagues can interview for news on a hot story. Worse, the killer resents the shift of media attention away from his acts and toward his messenger. After disposing of three more victims, he turns on Anderson’s live- in fiancee (Mariel Hemingway). Her life, he says, will be the price of Anderson’s fame.

The Mean Season is, at one level, a flavorsome thriller. As the newsman caught beyond his moral depths, Russell plays each scene as if he hadn’t read the next one, a man being pulled by an invisible string. As the lunatic reeling him in, Richard Jordan has the perverse charm that so often armors the psychopath. But what gives the film its dis tinction is Director Phillip Borsos’ mordant exploration of the strange symbiosis, at once innocent and cynical, that often develops between newsmen and the deranged criminals who help them sell their products.