- ROLLOVER
- Film (1981). IPC Films/Orion. Dir Alan J. Pakula, starring Jane Fonda, Kris Kristofferson, Hume Cronyn. Screenplay David Shaber, from a story by Shaber, Howard Kohn, David Weir. 115 mins. Colour.R has a banker (Kristofferson) and an oil-company chairman (Fonda) uncovering a conspiracy in which the Saudi Arabians have, with the help of US banks, been secretly dumping dollars and buying gold. Threatened with exposure, the Saudis withdraw all funds from the banks and a world financial collapse ensues, with apocalyptic consequences. R is an ironic, diagrammatic thriller in which US individualists - innocent, greedy and emblematic - are helpless against a powerful establishment (much as in Pakula's best film, The Parallax View (1974), which has a marginally sf brain-washing theme). Cold, difficult, sophisticated, anti-capitalist, R was a commercial flop; it would have done better 8 years later. The doomsday scenarios of sf, unlike those of the real world, seldom feature ECONOMICS as the catalyst - probably because most people findmoney-manipulation too complex a topic - but R, rather like the financial thrillers of Paul E. ERDMAN, is a notable exception.PN
Science Fiction and Fantasy Encyclopedia. Academic. 2011.