The Uninvited

Author(s): Sergio
Location: Spain

“The Uninvited"

Directed by Clint Eastwood
Produced by Steven Soderbergh, George Clooney, Clint Eastwood
Written by Paul Attanasio
Music by Clint Eastwood

Principal Cast:

George Clooney (Stranger/Thomas Gordon)
Sean Penn (Mayor James Walken)
Judi Dench (Selma Gordon)
Christopher Plummer (Martin Gordon)
Demi Moore (Dr. Susan Hayes)
Don Cheadle (Dr. Hall)
Diane Venora (Mayor’s wife)
Robert Patrick (CIA Agent)
Scott Glenn (CIA Agent)
Daniel Craig (Dimitri)
Mads Mikkelsen (Mijail)

Tagline: "A man who doesn’t know where he comes from is a man with no future"

Synopsis: 1975, day dawns. Martin, an old fisherman, returns from the sea. Suddenly something hits his boat. It’s a small ship in which there is someone covered with a blanket. Martin gathers the man, who seems hurt and unconscious and takes him to his own house. At home, the fisherman and his wife Selma, observe a few strange marks and wounds in the man’s head. Selma was a nurse and she treats him the wounds. Martin wants to call the doctor but Selma does not allow him. She recognizes the mysterious wounds and she thinks she knows something about their origin.

When the stranger wakes up he cannot remember anything, not even his name. He doesn’t know who is he or where he comes from. He has headaches and sometimes he hears voices. Finally Martin convinces his wife to call the town’s doctor. Doctor Hall recommends them to take him to the Hospital of Mental Health. Selma doesn’t trust him and phones to Dr. Susan Hayes, a close friend she worked with in Montreal, but she doesn’t answers and Selma leaves her a help message. Meanwhile the stranger (whose they will call Thomas Gordon as a family member) does his normal life in the village with the distrustful look of the villagers, especially from James Walken, the Mayor, that doesn’t trust the visitor and will control all his movements. One night a few strangers appear in the village to talk to the Mayor. Selma receives a call from Susan Hayes (she had to flee after Selma's call). Now she is near the village and wants to meet Thomas urgently. Thomas decides to leave the house, because he doesn’t want to put them in danger. But that night Martin appears died in the coast and Selma decides to hide, when some strangers get into her house.

Susan Hayes tells Thomas that Selma worked with her in a hospital, in Montreal, where the CIA did mental-control experiments in a secret project called MKUltra, with radiations and brain implants. Hayes confesses him that now they do experiments in an island near to the coast where he appeared and tells him that Mayor Walken is involved in all this conspiracy. Thomas asks her if there is a way to know who is he, but someone has followed them and they are shot, but they can escape. Thomas wants to know who is he, and he decides to go to the Mayor house to interrogate him. When they arrive to Mayor’s house, he’s talking with two men, Dimitri and Mijail. Mayor gives them a portfolio and they deliver him a briefcase. When the two men leave, Thomas tries to enter the house but Susan stops him and whispers a strange phrase that he doesn’t understand. Suddenly something changes into his head and starts having strange flashes inside his head. His mind stays in target and she gives him a gun. A car approaches, she runs and gets inside. The car, with two CIA agents inside, goes away. Thomas enters the house and aims at the Mayor with the gun. Something inside his mind tells him to kill the Mayor, but he deeply knows that he is not an assassin. They both talk and they realized that all is a trap. The mayor has given secret military information to Russian spies and the CIA wants to kill him. Thomas is one of the experiments of the project MKUltra and he has been manipulated to do the dirty work. Thomas is going to kill him but Mayor’s wife shuts him in his shoulder, now they wants to kill Thomas. Selma appears in the scene and convinces them not to do it. She can carry him to the place where he can find is real identity. So she heals him again and they escape to Montreal to find Harry’s future. But things won’t be easy.

Selma drives to Montreal, Thomas has lost too much blood and his life is in danger. They will discover the cruel experiments with human beings. Selma knows the place and she remember where the secret files are. Dr. Susan Hayes and the CIA Agents won’t let him do it easily. Thomas dies in her arms but knowing who was he.

What the press would say:

In few occasions, a movie dares to tell something that always has been hidden. The Paul Atanasio's Script passed from hand to hand, but no study dared to produce it. It was when it comes to Clint Eastwood's hands and he decided to leave the project that he was preparing just to film "The Uninvited". Eastwood was captivated by the great potential of the script and he did not want this project to be commercial summer movie without any foundation. He didn’t want to lose the powerful message of the script and it was necessary to do it with mastery. Only a great director like Eastwood could dare to tell a history that extracts to the light the secret experiments of the CIA during the cold war. These projects, with different pseudonymous as Stargate or MKUltra, submitted people to radiations and cerebral implants to discover if it was possible to control them mentally.

Only an actor as George Clooney could play such a worrying character, we do not know anything about. We are discovering this man little by little as the personage does. A character, with a black cinema profile, that Clooney adapts to him as a glove. Helped by actors of great interpretive quality like Sean Penn or Judi Dench, that can support the weight of the plot in a magisterial form. Judi Dench plays a role totally different to the rest of her career. She is an English born nurse who behaves as a desperate mother and she fight to know the truth, because she has been quiet too much time. All the cast create the necessary climate and endowing to the characters the necessary dimension in order that the spectator gets wrapped in the thrill. All they do their best in this big puzzle in which no one is what it seems.

Distinction in all the formal and creative aspects and brave in its exposition, this is the story of a man with no past who wants to know who is he in order to have a future.

FYC:

Best Picture (Drama)
Best Director: Clint Eastwood
Best Original Screenplay: Paul Attanasio
Best Actor: George Clooney
Best Supporting Actor: Sean Penn
Best Supporting Actress: Judi Dench
Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer
Best Supporting Actress: Demi Moore
Creativity Awards