Sam Peckinpah always seemed to remain at the level of a TV director who's simply working on a bigger screen. The inclusion of more violence, drugs and sex doesn't lift anything above TV of its era. Here he tends to prove it with a pathetic show of perverse overindulgence in an attempt to distance himself from his origins. Add to this an over-reliance on 70s type technology that even at its peak looked cheap - but by the mid eights looked even worse. With a mixed up story, average acting (except maybe John Hurt) poor music score, it all contributes to a lowly experience. This tends to be of little worth other than for the curiosity of diehard fans of an overblown filmmaker who specialized in nasty content.

The Osterman Weekend is the final film project for legendary director Sam Peckinpah. This is not among his best work, but is a better film and improvement over Convoy(a guilty pleasure and absolute cheesefest), the last film he made previous to this. This movie is not without its problems, most of which is the script, which is nothing special in the espionage/spy genre, but this is a Sam Peckinpah film and I think he tried to make something good here. There is a whole lot of subtext about surveillance and Big Brother that are relevant today as well as themes about TV,the media and how these are used to control the masses. This is mostly as satire with a cold war/thriller/action movie as the backdrop. The cast that was attracted to this project is another one of the film's strong points, but the film as a whole is mostly average for the genre. There are some exceptional performances here which steal some thunder from leading man Rutger Hauer and his wife Meg Foster, which both did a fine job here. However, John Hurt, Craig T Nelson and Burt Lancaster make this somewhat twisty and convoluted thriller watchable and interesting. The film looks pretty good and is a good quality production. The Osterman Weekend is by no means a masterpiece and as such is very flawed, but still very watchable production.

Peckinpah's swansong 'The Osterman Weekend' at first appears as a political thriller but gradually as the story gets more complex, the layers unfold as the surprise is gradually revealed. It may have a dated look mostly because of the technical props that are obsolete today. But, the main theme of the story is ahead of its time.The movie is shot in a voyeuristic fashion. The viewer is given intimate glimpses into the lives of the characters, even during their private moments such as when they're having sex. At the same time, the editing could have been tighter had it not focused a little too much on the sex and drugs themes. Peckinpah does an excellent job in building tension and catching the viewer by surprise. The film gets a tad confusing but once the major twist is revealed, it's easy to get back on track.All the actors, John Hurt, Rutger Hauer, Dennis Hopper, Helen Shaver, Cassie Yates and Chris Sarandon do a good job. Craig T. Nelson is adequate. His performance in the latter half suffers due to the poor lines he's given to deliver. Lalo Schifrin's score works. The action sequences may not look as sophisticated as they do in today's spy-thrillers but they're quite fun to watch.Even though 'The Osterman Weekend' is confusing at times, it does work as a suspense thriller. It has its flaws but in my opinion, it is not half as bad as many have made it out to be.

Nobody should claim too much for Sam Peckinpah's final movie, yet it's an intriguing work which communicates - in the midst of a lot of confusion, grandstanding and fustian - a real sense of unease about Western pseudo-democracies and their broadcast media.Rutger Hauer plays a David Frost-type chat show host who has made a career out of grilling powerful government and military big-wigs. He finds himself caught in the middle of a CIA action against three of his former college friends, who are alleged to be traitors. CIA operative John Hurt installs state-of-the-art surveillance equipment in Hauer's home and when the three friends come over for one of their regular reunion weekends all hell breaks loose, with accusations, counter-accusations, set-ups and assassinations the order of play. Eventually it becomes clear that Hauer and his friends have been entrammelled in Hurt's plot to revenge himself on his boss, Burt Lancaster, who green-lighted the murder of Hurt's wife some time in the past.All of this makes The Osterman Weekend your usual le Carré-type spy story. Yet the film has wider ambitions, as the surveillance and final showdown on TV are straining to say something about the way in which the media mediates every act we perform. The final showdown between Hauer, Hurt and Lancaster is enacted on a seemingly live talk show, a kind of untra-violent version of Frost/Nixon, and in the end Hauer does a Howard Beale and challenges his audience to turn him off with their last remaining ounce of free will. In a way, the film is a companion piece to Cronenberg's contemporaneous Videodrome, but sadly The Osterman Weekend's critique of the media-age lacks that film's formal precision, and the final shift from formula spy pic to media apocalypse is unearned. Perhaps if the producers had allowed Peckinpah's original cut to be released, the film would be more consistent - those who've seen the VHS of the preview edition might enlighten us.As a Peckinpah film, The Osterman Weekend gives us another portrait of an individual forced to take action against the forces threatening his family, a la Straw Dogs. It shows a corporate/military establishment corrupt and murderous, a la Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. It shows a group of friends torn apart when history and larger forces overtake them, a la The Wild Bunch. But it does so less convincingly than any of these previous films, and whilst its merits make it worth watching, it probably can't be thought of as anything but an intriguing coda to a remarkable career.