Before big events happen in the real world, filmmakers like to write their own possible versions. These movies later serve as retro-alternate histories and become overlooked, maybe because of fiction-versus-reality confusion. An example is Hitchcock’s “Foreign Correspondent,” about a way World War II might end. A more recent example is the Gene Hackman-starrer “The Package” (1989), about the end of the Cold War, coming out a mere three months before its actual end.
This being Hollywood, “The Package” theorizes a rather hot end to the Cold War. For money and ideological reasons, villains like sniper Boyette (Tommy Lee Jones) and corrupt military official Whitacre (John Heard) like nuclear-weapons drama. For storytelling reasons, screenwriter John Bishop (in by far his biggest credit) likes it hot, too.
Maybe the reason Bishop didn’t get more jobs is that “The Package” – although not dumb — is incredibly complex in its specifics. Director Andrew Davis (“The Fugitive”) nonetheless makes a very good movie out of it. At least it’s clear Hackman’s Master Sergeant Johnny Gallagher is a good guy, and that he can count on Col. Eileen Gallagher (Joanna Cassidy). She his ex-wife, but they care about each other in the manner of the exes-still-in-love in “The Abyss.”
“The Package” (1989)
Director: Andrew Davis
Writer: John Bishop
Stars: Gene Hackman, Tommy Lee Jones, Joanna Cassidy
Other allies emerge, with Dennis Franz beefing things up in the exciting back half as Johnny’s Chicago cop friend. But mostly “The Package” is slathered with suspicious figures and outright enemies just as it’s slathered with snow and Christmas décor. If you’re digging deeper than “Die Hard” for alterna-Christmas movies, consider this one.
It definitely has a deeper plot, for better or worse. It might be best to go in accepting you won’t put everything together. Broadly, Johnny is being framed. I guess if he doesn’t know what’s going on (sample dialog: “These people can be anybody they want to be! It scares the piss out of me!”), then we shouldn’t feel bad about not understanding the ins and outs.
A welcome Christmas ‘Package’
“The Package” starts as a military movie, with what seems like too much unrelated set-up, but then switches to spy intrigue. Johnny is ordered to transport an unruly soldier, played by Jones, from Germany back to the U.S. for his disciplinary hearing. When the man escapes and turns out to not be who Johnny thought he was, the film hits its first moment that will have you furrowing your brow.
Johnny doesn’t report the escape to his bosses but instead immediately tries back channels, roping in his ex-wife (an Army desk jockey) and cop friend. The script gets a little ahead of the character there. However, it never lost me completely, and I found myself coming back around to it.
A summit where Bush and Gorbachev stand-ins will sign a nuclear disarmament treaty looms as the final set piece. It’s suitably grand, but as we go into gritty parts of wintry Chicago, we get shootouts, car chases and close-up fights that ground the action. “The Package” reels in its own unwieldiness.
Although the inside-job plotting still feels like the stuff of movies, a valid theme percolates about how the military-industrial complexes of the USA and the USSR make useful idiots out of patriotic flag-wavers. Johnny undergoes an internal shift, because although he doesn’t consider the big picture in the early going when Jones’ character suggests it, he ultimately acknowledges that he’s not “in the same army” as corrupt officials who refer to American policy makers as “we.”
“We? Who’s we? A bunch of nutcases?” Johnny asks. The Berlin Wall fell soon after this, and the real Bush and Gorbachev came to a real agreement, but “The Package” doesn’t deserve to be buried in the rubble. The details are now an alternate history, but the themes remain hyper-present.