The first time I saw this, some years ago, I thought it was a pretty good thriller but this time around I must have been more mature, more demanding, more suave and debonair. I thought it sucked.
Not the opening, which seems bursting with promise -- a dead man and a satchel full of half a million dollars found in the arid wasteland of New Mexico, the autopsy and the release of the intestinal gas. And not the cast either -- I mean, Mickey Rourke, Willem DaFoe, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Maura Tierney, Samuel L. Jackson, and M. Emmet Walsh? Not to mention the redoubtable Fred Dalton Thompson.
But they didn't bring it home, the films promise undercut by weaknesses in the script and the direction.
The script. I was frankly confused. Oh, I knew DaFoe was a rural police officer who was adopting the identity of the dead man and taking his half million bananas in order to find the killers. But then he is swept up in some insane gun-running scheme in Santa Fe involving greedy and corrupt federal officers. Mastrantonio is there to provide a curiously attractive face with a smile that stretches from ear to ear. She is instantly attracted to DaFoe when she meets him, and she tells him so. Ten minutes later she is assaulting him in the shower. After a night together, she is deeply in love with him. Only in the movies. I would happily outline the story for you but I can't. If I got into it any more deeply than those few suggestions above, you wouldn't follow it. Or maybe you would, and it's my fault for suffering a few too many periods of microsleep during this viewing.
The direction is pedestrian at best. Every other shot seems to be a close up, as if the production were designed for the television screen. And with the exception of the final scene that has Jackson running madly across the rolling, sugary dunes of White Sands National Monument with a suitcase full of sand, no effective use is made of the locations. The exterior of the La Fonda Hotel is real enough though, as is the hotel itself, one of the earliest in North America. It was established by the Statler chain in AD 495. Santa Fe is an artsy city with its own opera and other civilized amenities and deserves better display. I live in the poorest county in the state, but I can lie in the gutter and stare at the stars.
It's too bad really, because the performances are as good as they are. Rourke is the perfect slime ball. Mastrantonio signals emotion with barely perceptible winces -- she's really okay. Samuel L. Jackson is full of indignation, authority, and irony.
Yet here we are, with more than a million dollars worth of state-of-the-art arms destined for shipment to unidentified rebels, and it shows up for five minutes then disappears from the plot and the movie.
Not the opening, which seems bursting with promise -- a dead man and a satchel full of half a million dollars found in the arid wasteland of New Mexico, the autopsy and the release of the intestinal gas. And not the cast either -- I mean, Mickey Rourke, Willem DaFoe, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Maura Tierney, Samuel L. Jackson, and M. Emmet Walsh? Not to mention the redoubtable Fred Dalton Thompson.
But they didn't bring it home, the films promise undercut by weaknesses in the script and the direction.
The script. I was frankly confused. Oh, I knew DaFoe was a rural police officer who was adopting the identity of the dead man and taking his half million bananas in order to find the killers. But then he is swept up in some insane gun-running scheme in Santa Fe involving greedy and corrupt federal officers. Mastrantonio is there to provide a curiously attractive face with a smile that stretches from ear to ear. She is instantly attracted to DaFoe when she meets him, and she tells him so. Ten minutes later she is assaulting him in the shower. After a night together, she is deeply in love with him. Only in the movies. I would happily outline the story for you but I can't. If I got into it any more deeply than those few suggestions above, you wouldn't follow it. Or maybe you would, and it's my fault for suffering a few too many periods of microsleep during this viewing.
The direction is pedestrian at best. Every other shot seems to be a close up, as if the production were designed for the television screen. And with the exception of the final scene that has Jackson running madly across the rolling, sugary dunes of White Sands National Monument with a suitcase full of sand, no effective use is made of the locations. The exterior of the La Fonda Hotel is real enough though, as is the hotel itself, one of the earliest in North America. It was established by the Statler chain in AD 495. Santa Fe is an artsy city with its own opera and other civilized amenities and deserves better display. I live in the poorest county in the state, but I can lie in the gutter and stare at the stars.
It's too bad really, because the performances are as good as they are. Rourke is the perfect slime ball. Mastrantonio signals emotion with barely perceptible winces -- she's really okay. Samuel L. Jackson is full of indignation, authority, and irony.
Yet here we are, with more than a million dollars worth of state-of-the-art arms destined for shipment to unidentified rebels, and it shows up for five minutes then disappears from the plot and the movie.