Cindy Crawford in Fair Game (1995)

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One of the greatest problems in the former Soviet Union was the subjugation of science to political ideology. For many years, Stalin gave considerable latitude over many areas of Soviet science to an agronomist named Lysenko who was, more or less, an anti-geneticist. After World War II, in the fever of Stalinism, there arose a scandal in the world scientific community over Lysenko's reliance on Party authority in scientific discussions. To simplify a complex story, Lysenko's power within the society relegated genetics to second class scientific status in the USSR, during a time when the rest of the world was discovering its importance. Geneticists left the country if there was any way to do so. The word "Lysenkoism" is familiar to everyone who participated in the intellectual life of the Russian scientific community. It signifies "bureaucratic interference in intellectual life" or "ideological distortion of science". The influence of ideology, as well as the state's social engineering of which sciences held favor, could have worked out well if Lysenko and the other influential thinkers had guessed right about the scientific needs of the future. Unfortunately, they did not, so the net result of Lysenkoism was that the Soviet Union, despite the world's best programs in many sciences, found itself with no competency in two of the most important sciences of the late 20th century, genetics and computer science. (Lysenko was personally responsible only for genetics. Others decided computers were evil and unnecessary.) Closing down the free markets of ideas didn't work any better than closing the free markets of trade. The reason I mention this is that scriptwriters never seem to be aware of the fact that so many areas of Soviet technology were decades behind the west, including computers. Although real Russians have struggled mightily to achieve parity with the world in these fields, movie Russians seem to have conquered computers long before the West. In this film, in 1995, they type in the name of Cindy Crawford's character and soon have a map of her neighborhood on their screen, pinpointing her house. They press a button, and at the same time all this information is passed to their evil assassins, they have also passed on information about her shabby siding and roof to unscrupulous housing contractors who offer them generous commissions for this data. They even had all the operating system written in the Cyrillic alphabet, meaning that they essentially developed it all independent of the rest of the world. And those were the least impressive functions of their system. These guys are good. Makes you wonder why, if they are so smart, they speak English with Bullwinkle accents. They are also kind of inconsistent. After trying to kill Cindy for the entire movie, when the baddies finally capture her, their leader tells them not to harm her. Although you can forgive him for this because it is completely necessary at this point to do the movie cliché where they tie Cindy up and are about to kill her, so that the evil honcho can tell her the plot. Yawn. Although it is a common belief that supermodels are doomed to fail as actresses, the facts don't support that position. They run through the same full gamut of performance as anyone else. • Jessica Lange, after a poor start, worked hard to become one of the finest actresses in modern film. • Paulina Porizkova and Milla Jovovich haven't achieved at the Lange level, but have had their good moments. • Wandering to the other end of the scale, Kathy Ireland has probably shown less acting ability than anyone in the history of acting. • Others like Tyra Banks have managed to avoid complete embarrassment, but without any great successes. Cindy Crawford got some bad notices from her performance here, but I'd say she was about in the middle of the supermodel scale. She isn't Lange, but she is no worse than Lange was in King Kong. She showed less originality and flair for characterization than Porizkova and Jovovich, but she was light years beyond the Ireland level. I think James Berardinelli was quite accurate in his assessment that Cindy would have been a perfect mate for ex-hubby Richard Gere, if the only applicable criteria were looks and acting ability. She is a female Gere - very attractive and almost completely devoid of personality on camera. Gere is, of course, a more proficient performer, but Cindy has not had time to develop any skills. Nudity Report: Cindy Crawford shows her breasts in an extremely dark boxcar sex scene with William Baldwin. Crawford changes her shirt in another scene, but her face is not seen. Crawford is also seen in a wet white t-shirt with no bra. Critics Vote: Ebert 2/4. Berardinelli 0.5/4. IMDB Summary: IMDb voters score it 3.8/10. Box Office: It grossed $11 million. IMDb reports that the budget was $50 million. DVD Info: Full-screen format. No features. Written by: Scoopy …courtesy of Scoopy.net