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Customer Reviews of White Raven

it aint a bird
This film is remarkable for the way the strength of it's narrative manages to steamroll over the heavy handedness of the director Andrew Stevens. Based on the novel by Michael Blodgett this tale of the search for what is said to be the second biggest diamond in the world, taken from the Rothchilds by the SS in WW2, is written as a thriller, unveiling a piece of the puzzle at a time, and presented as an action adventure with Ron Silver as a journalist as the key to the truth. Although thankfully presented as fallible and reactive, Stevens and Silver's idea of an action hero is still locked into the stereotypical unshaven chain-smoking humourless man, his charm in direct ratio to the number of assassins pursuing him. Things aren't helped by making Ron Silver's stunt double obvious or Steven's attempt to portray the media as predatory by having a pack chase Silver through the street, with microphones and cameras in tow. Steven's lack of subtlety actually works in favour of Jan Rubes turn as a jailed SS war criminal, since it's the only one of the group of cameos that is entertaining, with Elizabeth Sheppard as the Rothschild owner of the diamond stumbling badly over a stream of consciousness speech. Otherwise Steven's direction draws attention to plot holes and faults in logic.These include an assassination attempt on Silver BEFORE he has the information from Rubes about the diamond everybody wants, a prison guard asking Silver for identification when he is attended at the gate by a mob and his visit has international media coverage, a laughable succession of assassins at Silver's hotel room post Rubes as if there is a turnstile at his door, and the idea that a car wanting to enter an embassy is not searched since someone may be hiding in it. The latter actually provides a nice red herring since the car is a volkswagen which seemingly makes the driver suspect, and because all that approach Silver seem to possess a hidden agenda. Stevens gives us a horrible pre-credit torture of a woman sequence, a gross demonstration of brain surgery with a kitchen utensil, and a badly staged nightclub scene with exploitive use of female dancers and a fistfight. As the editor of the Chicago Christian Science Monitor for whom Silver had worked for and won the Pulitzer Prize, Roy Scheider isn't around much and not integral to the plot, but his presence is welcome, and Joanna Pacula pops up now and again as Silver's romantic interest and she isn't as awful as she has been elsewhere. The Christian Science connection struck me as interesting, and I was kinda disappointed that they too weren't after the diamond, since we all know how dubious those people are.