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- VIEW POINTS, Page 76CINEMAA Fun Feminist Goes to War
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- Linda Voss (Melanie Griffith) is your typical late-model
- feminist heroine -- brave, bright, spirited, sassy and clearly
- overqualified for her secretarial job. She is also -- what else?
- -- hopelessly in love with her boss, Ed Leland (Michael
- Douglas). At once distracted and self-absorbed, he can't see why
- she wants a promotion, and he's a little too casual about their
- love affair. On the first score he has a point: the job she
- aspires to is spying. In Berlin. During World War II. Maybe she
- is a bit too spunky for her own good. But not for the good of
- SHINING THROUGH. She's a terrific character, and it's a terrific
- idea to project her anachronistically back into the kind of
- improbable melodrama that made home-front life during the war
- so entertaining. Indeed, Linda borrows some of her best
- espionage tricks from the Hollywood thrillers to which she's
- addicted. At a certain point, writer-director David Seltzer,
- finding himself with too many obligations to an overcomplicated
- plot, forgets to keep up Linda's perky, amusing spirits. But
- he's a basically lively and knowing guy, and, on balance,
- Shining Through is a cheerfully suspenseful entertainment.
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- By Richard Schickel.
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