MOVIE REVIEW : Soutendijk a Standout in Dual Role

Although it opened Friday citywide without benefit of press previews, “Eve of Destruction” may well be the wittiest, most original and provocative science-fiction thriller you will see in 1991.

No other film comes to mind, not even “Dr. Strangelove,” in which nuclear weaponry serves so specifically, so directly, as a metaphor for the irrational--indeed, sexual--aspect of the human psyche. As intellectually stimulating as it is visceral in its excitement, “Eve of Destruction” exemplifies the endless possibilities within the dictates of genre.

The best sci-fi flicks are often not those that rely heavily on hardware and stupendous production design but take place in the everyday world--e.g., Don Siegel’s “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”--and this is the case with “Eve of Destruction,” a handsome, beautifully crafted production that is nonetheless lots longer on imagination than budget.

Renee Soutendijk, the beautiful and talented Dutch actress who first came to notice in Paul Verhoeven’s “Spetters” and “The Fourth Man,” makes her American theatrical film debut in a dual role that is a gifted actress’ dream come true. She’s cast as Dr. Eve Simmons, brilliant government scientist who has created a state-of-the-art robot, named Eve VIII (also played by Soutendijk), who has invested much of her own psyche into her creation--and has also equipped her with a nuclear device, a combination more lethal than Simmons has imagined.

Working with such familiar genre elements as the not-quite-perfect, all-too-human robot, and the countdown to destruction, writers Duncan Gibbins and Yale Udoff deftly skewer the dangerous hubris of the military-scientific complex. How reckless it is to turn Eve VIII loose when all it takes is a shot received in a bank holdup to switch her into a “battlefield mode.” How reckless, too, it is to assign Gregory Hines’ McQuade, a crackerjack “counter-insurgent and anti-terrorist” agent, to pursue Eve VIII without telling him she’s really a “battlefield nuclear missile” without an off switch once she’s activated.

As the film’s director, Gibbins rightly plays “Eve of Destruction” straight and fast, but his and Udoff’s Pentagonese, as quoted above, reveals their satirical intentions. With a darkly amusing sense of prophecy they have the government planning to blame the Iraqis (or the Libyans) should Eve VIII actually detonate, flattening everything within a 20- to 30-block radius.

Eve VIII is, in fact, pure id who, shorn of inhibitions, is working her way through Eve Simmons’ troubled, largely repressed past. As Simmons joins McQuade in his breakneck pursuit of Eve VIII, she is really rushing headlong into a confrontation with herself; the attractive but crisply professional scientist who dresses with tasteful understatement is suppressing what proves to be an entirely understandable rage against men.

Soutendijk covers a full range of emotion and behavior with ease, making poignant the two Eves’ discovery of a common ground in mother love. Hines provides a dynamic foil for Soutendijk, and everything and everyone else in “Eve of Destruction” (rated R for standard action-film sex and violence) is up to its stars’ level, especially cinematographer Alan Hume’s burnished images of San Francisco, Northern California and New York City and composer Philippe’s Sarde’s taut, staccato score.

‘Eve of Destruction’

Renee Soutendijk: Eve Simmons/Eve VIII

Gregory Hines: Jim McQuade

Michael Greene: General Schneider

Kevin McCarthy: Bill Simmons

An Orion Pictures release of a Nelson Entertainment presentation of an Interscope Communications production. Director Duncan Gibbins. Producer David Madden. Executive producers Robert W. Cort, Melinda Jason, Rick Finkelstein. Screenplay by Gibbins & Yale Udoff. Cinematographer Alan Hume. Editor Caroline Biggerstaff. Costumes Deborah L. Scott. Music Philippe Sarde. Production design Peter Lamont. Art director Matthew Jacobs. Set decorator David Koneff. Sound design and supervising sound editing Emile Razpopov, Dessie Markovsky.

Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

MPAA-rated: R (for sex and violence).