This film stars Michael Caine as a successful cartoonist who lives
in Vermont with his wife and daughter. He and his wife are not
getting along well, and she wants to move to New York with their
daughter and have him visit on weekends. He is not impressed with
the idea.
The highlight of the film is a brilliant scene in which the
husband and wife are arguing in their car, stuck behind a slow truck
on a curving road with an obnoxious tailgater behind them. She pulls
out to pass, only to see an oncoming car. He motions for the car
behind them to pull back, but is ignored, and then his drawing hand
is caught between the car and the truck, and is severed.
The search for the hand comes up mysteriously empty, even though
the ring is found. Caine ends up taking a teaching job and a new
girlfriend in California. He becomes aware of periods of
blackout, and the severed hand seems to be following him and
strangling anyone who makes him angry. His wife and daughter arrive
for Christmas as many things come to a head.
This film was an early effort from director Oliver Stone. For one
decade (1986-1995), Stone was one of filmdom's most controversial
and successful auteurs, churning out a steady stream of films which
were both engaging and provocative, often technically impressive,
almost always with a strong political slant. People may have loved
or hated his films, but they always talked about them. During that
era, Stone won two "Best Director" Oscars for Platoon and Born on
the Fourth of July, and was nominated a third time for JFK. (Nixon
also earned him a screenwriting nomination.)
As a director, 1986-1995
His efforts after that point seem to be missing the passions and
obsessions that made him so effective at his peak, despite the fact
that some of his more recent films have also been his most
technically accomplished.
Director, Post-1995
His efforts before his career peak include some screenwriting
successes, including his first Oscar for the screenplay of Midnight
Express.
Screenwriter, Pre-1986
But his early directorial efforts were simply routine genre
films, not completely without merit, but clearly the work of a young
man who had not yet found his mature voice, and not really
identifiable as characteristic "Oliver Stone films," as we currently
understand that term.
Director, Pre-1986
Those first two films chronologically are still Stone's
lowest-rated at IMDb. The Hand edges out the earlier effort as the
lowest-rated of Stone's career. It is a not but, but just a standard psychological
thriller. I loved the scene where the hand was lost, but got little
out of the rest of the film.
