FEARLESS (1993)

FEARLESS (R) In Peter Weir's emotionally eerie drama, Jeff Bridges plays Max Klein, a San Francisco architect who survives a plane crash. During the queasy descent (which is shown, at charged intervals, in flashbacks), he gazes out the window and confronts the prospect of his own death. And what he realizes is that he isn't afraid: He's willing to die. Now, Max is trapped in a state of numb transcendence, reliving that one fearless moment over and over. The strength of Fearless is that, through Bridges' extraordinary performance, the film dares to imagine Max's tormented delirium as a genuine religious state. As a fellow survivor, Rosie Perez gives a gentle, compelling performance, but her character remains underimagined. By the end, the plane's apocalyptic descent gets inflated into something both awesome and corny, a vision of blissed-out millennial yearning. B ( 192, Oct. 15) -OG

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