Shining Through (1992)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

I kept on watching the movie over and over, from the movie-house till vcd till DVD. Brings you back in time. Gallantry was brought back to life. The determination, conviction and all other characteristics that make a man a man. Melanie and Michael make a perfect match in the movie. The chemistry was perfect which made me feel like a part of the movie each time I watch it.

As a late movie about World War II, "Shining Through" has the intrigue and action of a good mystery. It's an espionage film based on a fiction novel by Susan Isaacs. But the plot of this film is so incongruous that it's hard to believe to begin with. That's often okay with fiction, except that in this case the viewer can't shake the sense that the story is preposterous. The acting is okay, but there just is way too much in this movie to give it any sense of plausibility. After all, most of us watching a film of this nature like to think that it really happened or could have happened. With no special qualities in it, "Shining Through" is just a so-so film. Hollywood tried to sell this one with a considerable cast of three big male names – Michael Douglas, Liam Neeson, and John Gielgud, but such a cast could only raise a ponderous, disjointed, confusing plot to six stars. This movie is supposed to be a romance as well, however strange. That defies all the traditions and we can see why those make sense. As with so many modern films made about WW II, the settings and scenes seem phony and staged. This film has much glitz and glamour, and lots of action, but little coherence and substance.

This film was nicely staged, probably with a hefty budget, but in terms of wartime intrigue, it falls as flat as a Pfannkuchen. Melanie Griffith is inept in her role as a would-be spy in Nazi Germany. With her character's stupidity and embarrassingly unconvincing command of the German language, she would not have lasted a half-hour before being discovered by the Gestapo and sent back in a boxcar to Hollywood. Michael Douglas's performance was good during the first part of the film, but his "heroic" rescue of Linda Voss was implausible in the extreme, almost laughably so. It was a miscalculation to have Linda narrate the story in a long series of flashbacks, as we in the audience were consigned to feel no threat whatsoever to her survival. And why do the native Germans speak in (subtitled) German for much of the film but then revert to English in other parts? That strains our suspension of disbelief. Worst of all, a spy thriller should never be as boring as "Shining Through." I had trouble staying awake, which surely is not a good sign.

Shining Through (1992)Wow, this had sooooo much potential. A great story, epic and funny and dramatic and complex and romantic. And some excellent talent, not only the leading role played by Melanie Griffith and the somewhat leading male role played by Michael Douglas, but the smaller role by Liam Neeson and an even smaller but critical one by the great John Gielgud. Even Joely Richardson as a sidekick of sorts to Griffith in the Germany might have gone somewhere chilling and wonderful.But it doesn't work. The entire time you want it to take off, to cash in on the high stakes that are laid out in plain view. But the director single handedly drags this down into a disappointing, slow mess. So much potential.It's WWII in America, and we start by loving the sassy, highly intelligent Linda Voss (Griffith) as she gets a job in a respected office in New York. The unapproachable boss Ed Leland (Douglas) likes her sharp wit and her unwillingness to be a female object to him. She wants to prove her worth. Great. We're on board. It's edited too slowly by far but the characters makes sense, especially Voss. (Douglas never quite shines in the movie for some reason.)Eventually we end up in Germany where Voss, herself half-Jewish, goes undercover for a couple reasons, one of them to find some relatives in hiding. And this is where the movie should soar with every possible intrigue and emotion. Richardson is a charming ally we are slightly suspicious about, and Neeson is a Nazi we are not quite as suspicious of as we should be (he's a young handsome fellow here in a role one year before playing the leading German in "Shindler's List"). And there is Griffith's Voss, now suddenly a demure and downright stupid woman. She bumbles, she can't think on her feet, she is slow to move and slow to react. It makes no sense, and it's no fun to watch. We know it should be incredible high stakes fictional movie-making, but it isn't, which only makes it worse. The script is there, the actors are there. But director David Seltzer drags it down in every way, even making the worst of competent Dutch cinematographer Jan de Bont ("Die Hard"). He has a short resume and that's probably a good thing. If you watch it be warned, you may end up watching the whole thing, all two and half hours. And as one bad choice follows another you'll probably end up agreeing that you might have picked another movie.