'BETRAYED'.......TRUMPS 'GOOD PEOPLE' GET WINGER'D........

Betrayed (1988) was the first of two collaborations between incendiary, controversial screenwriter Joe Esterhas ("Basic Instinct", "Showgirls") and director Costa-Gavras, world-famous for his powerful take-downs of fascistic thugs, conspirators and dictators ("Z", "State Of Siege", "Missing")

               Their other film "Music Box" followed one year after this one.......and as much as we'd love to post on that one too, we're having one hell of time tracking down a copy or finding any streaming service that carries it.......

                 "Betrayed" was red hot stuff when released and we found it resonates even more today.......since the ghastly neo-Nazi slugs depicted here came crawling out of their holes like cockroaches in 2016, thinking their bigotry and hatred were at last legitimized by the election of Donald Trump........who famously referred to them as 'good people' after one of them murdered a woman in Charlottesville........

                 Joe Esterhas, more than any other screenwriter at the time, knew how to grab an audience by their collective balls in the very first scene......and he more than gets the job done here with the execution-style murder of a notorious 'shock-jock' radio gabber by right-wing cultists......(modeled off of the murder of radio rabble rouser Alan Berg)......

                 The Feds are itching to nail the assassins, a bunch of heartland farmer-terrorists led by a Vietnam vet (Tom Berenger).......and to do so, they've placed an woman agent (Debra Winger) among them, posing as a harvest season combine operator.

                 The story requires you to swallow the idea of Winger at first falling hard for Berenger's aw-shucks, country-guy charm (along with his two cute kids)......even though he drops plenty of clues along the way that deep down, when his mask comes off,  he's an angry,dangerous, hate fueled individual

                  Winger, bless her gifted little heart, somehow makes you believe this far-fetched love affair..........and when Berenger and his coterie of creeps reveal themselves to her as the lethal monsters they are (hunting and killing a black man for sport),she makes you feel her shock, revulsion and horror at the nest of vipers she stumbled into......

                  The film moves on to further jaw-dropping outrages, such as the unnerving sight of Berenger's little daughter mouthing her dad's foulest racist rhetoric......if nothing else, Esterhas and Costa-Gavras know how to raise your eyebrows......and goosebumps.

                   But in its final minute, the film badly fumbles its sendoff.........after the inevitable climactic moment between Winger and Berenger, the film literally and figuratively wanders about until finishing with a ludicrous, unbelievable last moment that we'd like to believe the writer and director had nothing to do with..........it smacks of a phony, studio mandated 'alternate ending'....utterly wrong, out of place and smells like nothing at all that Esterhas and Costa-Gavras would come up with. Ever.

                   So we'll give them the benefit of the doubt,  since 99% of the film remains compelling and impactful.......even more so today, since Trump's brutal damage to the nation includes letting alt-right, Nazi vermin to scurry around in broad daylight.without an exterminator in sight. Not till election day, anyway.......3 stars (***) Disturbing in '88......even worse in 2020.