The Dumb Waiter

If patience is a virtue, then it will take a saintly patron, indeed, to enjoy this lethargic adaptation of Harold Pinter's 1960 stage play. Director Robert Altman gets things off to a snail's pace by having the characters Gus (Tom Conti) and Ben (John Travolta) drive up to a house, enter, and look around the basement (all wordlessly). Pinter's play begins with the two characters already installed. Approximately halfway through the banal--and thickly accented--dialogue between Gus and Ben, viewers finally figure out that they are hit men, waiting for their mark to arrive. For the duration, the pair are constantly interrupted by the dumb waiter, which slowly creaks down bearing requests for food from the now-defunct basement kitchen. Pinter, an excellent playwright (Betrayal) and screenwriter (The French Lieutenant's Woman) cannot be faulted for his play. But in the hands of Altman, Conti, and Travolta, the source material is about as fluid as molasses. Not recommended. (R. Pitman)