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THE OPERATOR Send This Review to a Friend
Gary Wheelan, a Dallas lawyer, is a louse. He cheats on his wife without a conscience. He thinks he's hot stuff. He treats people with nastiness and condescension. He spends more money than he can afford. As played by Michael Laurence, Gary is not a character to warm your heart.
When he insults one person too many, a telephone operator (Jacqueline Kim), she sets out to ruin his life, and with the computer-oriented, credit-card world we live in, the operator knows how to wreak havoc. Gary doesn't know what hits him, and he is beside himself trying to find out and change the pattern.
This is all very interesting, even amusing in a film noir way, but as written and directed by John Dichter and especially as acted by Laurence, it is impossible to have any sympathy for Gary, and one needs to care for him and pity what he goes through in some way. Otherwise, this is just an exercise in nastiness. The film doesn't afford the opportunity to feel anything for the guy, and without caring whether or not he can somehow change, there doesn't seem to be much point in it all. Screw him.
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