`Ruby Ridge' Mixes Tragedy And Drama

----------------------------------------------------------------- "Ruby Ridge: An American Tragedy," two-part CBS movie, 9 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday, KSTW-TV. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Tragedy hangs over this compelling movie like a dark cloud on a gloomy day. Almost from the beginning, the paranoid beliefs of Randy and Vicki Weaver seem designed to attract trouble, and there's an inevitability about the ensuing tragedy, a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy that is profoundly depressing.

But, like any tragedy, there's an overwhelming sense of drama that draws and hold your attention, whether you agree or disagree with the Weavers, or think the government was within its rights or behaved abominably. And the sad saga of the Weavers and Ruby Ridge has been told with care and attention in this film, written by Lionel Chetwynd, based on Jess Walter's book, "Every Knee Shall Bow," and brought to solid dramatic life under the direction of Roger Young.

Randy Quaid makes a believable Randy Weaver, with Laura Dern outstanding as his wife, Vicki. Also in the cast are Diane Ladd and G.W. Bailey as Vicki's parents, Darren Burrows as Kevin Harris, who lived with the Weavers, and in a small, showy part near the conclusion, Joe Don Baker as famous attorney Gerry Spence, who represented Weaver after his capture from Ruby Ridge, when a trial pertaining to the death of a U.S. marshalwas held.

The first two hours are the more interesting because that covers the period of the Weavers' marriage, their subsequent search for an isolated place to live and raise their family and the creation of their lifestyle in Northern Idaho. Dern is particularly good in creating a three-dimensional characterization of Vicki Weaver, who seems to have been a mixture of Christian love, hatred for government and much of contemporary life, suspicion of anyone who didn't share her beliefs and the tough-as-nails qualities of a pioneer woman. As Dern portrays her, Vicki Weaver was by far the stronger half of the marriage.

As the first episode ends, the first wave of U.S. marshals is trying to get Randy Weaver down off Ruby Ridge to stand trial on the charge of having illegally sold guns to an undercover federal agent.

The second episode covers more familiar territory, especially the stand-off at Ruby Ridge, but it's worth viewing because it dramatizes the government's view of what was happening, which seems, as this film tells it, little short of hysterical. The paranoia we saw in the first half was greatly of the Weavers' making; the tragedy in the second half pertains to the government's woefully incorrect information about the Weavers, the inability (or even an attempt) to communicate and their willingness to treat the capture of Randy Weaver like a minor war in a Third World country. (It's easy to see why the Freemen situation in Montana is being treated with kid gloves!)

The second half, with its hordes of troops and weapon systems, its crowds of incensed and angry local citizens, news-media involvement and its to-ing and fro-ing of high-level mucky-mucks, is less interesting because it's the sort of thing one sees on TV every time there is a crisis.

The real interest - and the real "American Tragedy" of this film and this story lies in the Weavers themselves, how they changed from people full of love and strong religious beliefs to becoming isolationists who hated the government.

Thus one of the weaknesses of "Ruby Ridge" is in telescoping the years between the time the Weavers arrived in Idaho and the time of the standoff. The movie, through Chetwynd's script, attempts to touch on isolationists like the Weavers, Aryan Nation groups, skinheads and the Klan, all of which have different agendas even though they may share a distrust of the government. But the movie mixes them all together as though they were one and the same.

Walter has said he sees the conflicts at Ruby Ridge, Waco and the Oklahoma City bombing as interconnected. "Ruby Ridge: An American Tragedy," when it focuses on the causes for the problem, makes that abundantly clear.

----------------------------------------------------------------- `MURDER, SHE WROTE' CONCLUDES LONG RUN "Murder, She Wrote," 8 p.m. Sunday, KSTW-TV. -----------------------------------------------------------------

Sunday night Angela Lansbury, as Jessica Beatrice Fletcher, widow and mystery novelist, will insert a piece of paper into a typewriter and type "Murder, She Wrote" for the 264th (and final) time (unless, of course, Lansbury does some two-hour versions of the show next season.)

"Murder, She Wrote" has been an 8 p.m. Sunday fixture on CBS since Sept. 30, 1984 (so long ago there wasn't even any competition from Fox) until this season when CBS foolishly moved the series to Thursday nights.

TV will miss the charming and civilizing presence of Lansbury, even though many of the episodes in recent years have been little more than familiar exercises to give a host of guest stars employment.

Nothing wrong with that, of course, and a sense of familiarity, of being able to know precisely what you'll see before you see it, has long been one of TV's comforting aspects.

The list of guest stars during the show's run would probably fill this entire page and Sunday night's episode doesn't differ - it includes Diana Canova, Robin Riker and David Ogden Stiers, the latter a delight as an old-school radio personality who plays classical records but is about to be replaced by a hotshot disc jockey who is supposed to communicate to younger audiences - but who seems marked for murder. The title: "Death by Demographics." Even in its finale, "Murder, She Wrote" writes its own epitaph.