Tag Archives: Mickey Rourke

EUREKA (1983) – Gene Hackman strikes gold and tries to strike Rutger Hauer with a meat cleaver in the same move!

Posted on by Bradley Crain

I’ve been thinking a lot about Gene Hackman as he recently celebrated his 95th birthday. He’s an incredible actor who has been a part of my life since I first really discovered my love of movies beginning in the mid-80’s. I’ve also been writing about Rutger Hauer every Sunday here on the Shattered Lens. Hackman and Hauer made a movie together back in 1983 called EUREKA, and to be honest, I almost forgot about it. It’s a movie I watched a long time ago and hadn’t watched again until today. It seemed like the perfect time for a revisit.

EUREKA opens with a stunning aerial shot that descends upon obsessed gold prospector Jack McCann (Gene Hackman) who’s fighting with a man on a snow-covered mountain in the Yukon territory. The man has asked Jack to partner with him in their search for gold, and Jack makes it clear that he will never “make a nickel on another man’s sweat.” Next, we see Jack as he’s walking through a nearly deserted town. In another unforgettable shot, Jack watches a man, who’s clearly gone mad, commit suicide just outside of the local “Claims office.” Before watching again today, that was the only scene that I could remember from my initial viewings of the film so many years ago. Next, we see Jack lying down below a tree at night, in windy, frigid temperatures, just about to freeze to death. Three hungry wolves have even approached ready for dinner. And this is where things get strange. Out of the blue, this clairvoyant madam (Helena Kallianiotes) from a local brothel sees him in her crystal ball, as a mysterious stone falls right next to him, starting a fire that warms him and drives away the wolves. He goes to see the madam at the brothel where she tells him that he will strike gold, but he “will be alone now.” Jack leaves the next morning and finds gold, rivers of gold. It’s another stunning sequence showing the obsessed man, who’s been searching for gold for 15 long and hard years, finally finding the object of his obsession. 

Cut to 20 years in the future, where Jack is now the richest man on earth, living on his own Caribbean island. It also appears he may also be the unhappiest man on earth. He has all the money in the world, but there is no peace in his heart or soul. His wife Helen (Jane Lapotaire), who he was once deeply in love with, is now detached and addicted to alcohol. His daughter Tracy (Theresa Russell) has fallen in love and married Claude Maillot Van Horn (Rutger Hauer). Jack cannot stand Claude as he suspects that he seduced and married Tracy so he could get to his money. His best friend Charles (Ed Lauter) has somehow gotten mixed in with Miami mobsters, led by a guy named Mayakofsky (Joe Pesci) and his lawyer Aurelio D’Amato (Mickey Rourke), who want to force Jack to sell them land on his island so they can build a casino. Jack feels like everybody just wants a piece of him and his money. He has lost the joy in his life. The rest of the film plays out against this backdrop as Jack tries to separate Tracy from Claude, and as the mobsters try to force Jack to sell to them by any means necessary.

EUREKA is not a film that everyone will love, but I enjoyed watching it again after so many years. Director Nicolas Roeg, who also directed PERFORMANCE (1970), DON’T LOOK NOW (1973) and FULL BODY MASSAGE (1995), creates some truly amazing and brutal images that once seen are not easily forgotten. The scene where Jack McCann finds his huge vein of gold is so beautiful, but there are alternatively horrific scenes of brutal violence that play out almost to the point of overkill. The movie also takes some surprising twists and turns in the third act that you may not see coming. I always like it when a movie surprises me. It’s a melodramatic film that doesn’t have a lot of likable characters, but with a cast this good, I’m willing to go along with the filmmakers. In addition to the excellent work of Gene Hackman and Rutger Hauer, Theresa Russell has the important role as the daughter stuck between the man she loves and the dad who adores her. Her acting style exemplifies the melodrama of Roeg’s vision, so it works well in the context of this film. Jane Lapotaire has a couple of strong moments as Hackman’s alcoholic wife who yearns for days long gone when they were so in love. We were quite spoiled in the early 80’s when a movie could round out its already impressive cast with actors like Joe Pesci, Mickey Rourke, Ed Lauter, Corin Redgrave and Joe Spinell.

Nicolas Roeg appears to be trying to make deep statements about the meaning of life in EUREKA. I’m not a person who generally consumes films for deep meaning, but I thought it might be fun to at least take a surface-level view of some of the items I noticed while watching the movie. Jack spouts a lot of profound things throughout the movie, things that he feels describe him as a person. I mentioned one earlier when Jack tells the competing prospector prior to finding gold that, “I’ll never make a nickel off of another man’s sweat.” He will continue to use this saying throughout the film, even after he’s a rich, jaded, older man. The truth is that he would not have found the gold without the help of the clairvoyant madam, with her even passing away right after he hits the jackpot. In another scene at an extremely awkward dinner party, Jack tells his guests that the only rule that matters is the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” While I agree with the importance of this rule, Jack does not seem to follow the Golden Rule in any way that helps others or gives him any sense of peace or connection. Jack does not seem to understand the contradictions in his use of these phrases as played out in his own life, but I also think that his lack of understanding helps to illustrate a truth that plays out at times in many of our own lives. So often we’ll claim certain beliefs and values, but our lives as lived will be much more complex and often hypocritical. We can see them in Jack, but can we always see them in ourselves?

EUREKA also seems to be a movie that’s open to different interpretations based on who’s viewing the movie and where they are in life at that specific time. In a moment of clarity with his wife, Jack seems to recognize the hypocrisy in his life when he tells her “I once had it all… now I just have everything.” Jack is finally reflecting on the important things in his life, rather than dwelling on his current distrust of everyone around him. This final quote got me to thinking about my own life and just how different I am as a man in my early 50’s compared that naïve 20-year-old who first watched this film. I didn’t know what it was like to chase my dreams, catch them, and then try to figure out how to keep striving with a purpose. I didn’t know what it was like to be married with the responsibility of loving my wife and genuinely caring about her needs, through both the good times and the bad times. I didn’t know what it was like to be a dad who wanted nothing but true happiness for his children. Jack has lived through these specific opportunities in life, and we can see how he’s dealt with them. Each of these things have now played out in my own life. There have been times that I’ve failed, and there have been times that I’ve succeeded. I just keep reminding myself to try to focus on the things that matter and not get distracted by the things that don’t. Even now, it’s not always easy to do.    

I’ve included the trailer for EUREKA below:

Film Review: Heaven’s Gate (dir by Michael Cimino)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1981 and then re-released in several different versions since then, Heaven’s Gate begins at Harvard University.

The year is 1870 and the graduates of Harvard have got their entire future ahead of them.  At the graduation ceremony, Joseph Cotten gives a speech about how, as men of cultivation, they have an obligation to help the uncultivated.  Student orator Billy Irvine (John Hurt) then gives a speech  in which he jokingly says the exact opposite.  Amongst the graduates, Billy’s friend, Jim Averill (Kris Kristofferson), laughs at Billy’s speech.  It’s a bit of a strange scene, if just because all of the graduates appear to be teenagers except for Hurt and Kristofferson, who are both clearly in their 30s.  The graduates of Harvard sing to their girlfriends and dance under a tree and, for a fleeting moment, all seems to be right with the world.

Twenty years later, all seems to be wrong with the world.  Averill is now the rugged and world-weary marshal of Johnson Country, Wyoming.  Cattle barons are trying to force immigrant settlers to give up their land.  Gunmen, like Nate Champion (Christopher Walken) and Nick Ray (Mickey Rourke), are accepting contracts to execute immigrants who are suspected of stealing cattle.  When Averill stands up for the people of Johnson Country, the head of the Wyoming Stock Grower Association, Frank Canton (Sam Waterston), hires a group of mercenaries to ride into Johnson County and execute 125 settlers.  Billy Irvine, who now is dissolute alcoholic who works with Canton, warns his old friend Averill.  Averill, who has fallen in love with Ella (Isabelle Huppert), the local madam, announces that he will defend the immigrants.  Nate, who is also in love with Ella, considers changing sides.

Heaven’s Gate is loosely based on an actual event.  I actually have three distant ancestors who traveled to Wyoming to take part in the Johnson County War.  All three of them survived, though one of them was shot and killed in an unrelated manner shortly after returning to Ft. Smith, Arkansas.  That said, director Michael Cimino is clearly not that interested in the historical reality of the Johnson County War or the issues that it raised.  Just as he did with Vietnam in The Deer Hunter, Cimino uses the Johnson County War as a way to signify a loss of national innocence.  Averill and Irvine start the film as hopeful “young” men with the future ahead of them.  By the end of the film, one is dead and the other is living on a yacht and dealing with what appears to be crippling ennui.

Heaven’s Gate is a bit of an infamous film.  Though the film was pretty much a standard western, Cimino still went far over-budget and turned in a first cut that was over six hours long.  A four hour version was briefly released in 1980 but withdrawn after a week, due to terrible reviews and audience indifference.  A studio-edited version that ran for two hours and 35 minutes got the widest release in 1981.  Since then, there have been several other versions released.  Cimino’s director’s cut, which was released as a part of the Criterion Collection in 2012, runs for 212-minutes and is considered to now be the “official” version of Heaven’s Gate.

For years, Heaven’s Gate had a terrible reputation.  It’s failure at the box office was blamed for bankrupting United Artists.  After the excesses of the Heaven’s Gate production, studios were far more reluctant to just give a director a bunch of money and let him run off to make his movie.  (They should have learned their lesson with Dennis Hopper and The Last Movie.)  Described by studio execs as being self-indulgent and even mentally unstable, Michael Cimino’s career never recovered and the director of The Deer Hunter went from being an Oscar-winner to being an industry pariah.  (Some who disliked The Deer Hunter’s perceived jingoistic subtext claimed that Heaven’s Gate proved The Deer Hunter was just an overrated fluke.)  However, the reputation of Heaven’s Gate has improved, especially with the release of Cimino’s director’s cut.  Many critics have praised Heaven’s Gate for its epic portrayal of the west and, ironically given the controversy over The Deer Hunter, its political subtext.  It’s anti-immigrant villains made the film popular amongst the Resistance-leaning film historians during the first Trump term.

So, is Heaven’s Gate a masterpiece or a disaster?  To be honest, it’s somewhere in between.  Whereas it was once over-criticized, it’s now over-praised.  Visually, it’s a beautiful film but those who complained that the film was too slow had a point.  As with The Deer Hunter, Cimino takes the time to introduce us to and immerse us in a tight-knit immigrant community.  Personally, I like the much-criticized scenes of the fiddler on skates and Averill and Ella dancing in the roller rink.  Overall though, as opposed to The Deer Hunter, the members of the film’s victimized community still feel less like individual characters and more like symbols.  As for the political subtext, I think that any subtext of that sort is accidental.  (I feel the same way about The Deer Hunter, which I like quite a bit more than Heaven’s Gate.)  Cimino is more interested in the loss of innocence than whether or not the Johnson County War can be fit into some sort of nonsense Marxist framework.

The main problem with the film is that there is no center to keep everything grounded.  Kris Kristofferson had a definite screen presence but, as an actor who was incapable of showing a great deal of emotion, he lacks the gravitas necessary to keep from being swallowed up by Cimino’s epic pretensions.  Isabelle Huppert, an otherwise great actress, also feels lost in the role of Ella and Sam Waterston is not necessarily the most-intimidating villain to ever show up in a western.  Christopher Walken, as the enigmatic and intriguing Nate Champion, gives the best performance in the film but his character still feels largely wasted.

There are some brilliant visual moments to be found in Heaven’s Gate.  I even like the Harvard prologue and the ending on the boat, both of which are not technically necessary to the narrative but still add an extra-dimension to both Averill and Irvine.  But, in the end, Heaven’s Gate is big when it should have been small and epic when its should have been intimate.  It’s a misfire but not a disaster.  Even great directors occasionally have a film that just doesn’t work.  Speilberg had his 1941.  Scorsese has had a handful.  Coppola’s career has been a mess but no one can take his successes away from him.  Michael Cimino, who passed away in 2016, deserved another chance.

Diner (1982, directed by Barry Levinson)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Which member of the Diner gang would you be?

I think that is the question that everyone, or at least every guy, asks themselves after watching Barry Levinson’s debut film.  Most would probably want to say that they’re Boogie (Mickey Rourke), because he’s cool, all the ladies love him, and he makes creative use of a popcorn box at the movies.  Some would probably say that they want to be Fenwick (Kevin Bacon) because he’s smart and sarcastic.  No one wants to be Billy (Tim Daly) or Eddie (Steve Guttenberg), even though we would all want to be their friend.

The truth is that most of us would probably be Shrevie (Daniel Stern), the just-married one who is discovering that being an adult means working an unglamorous job and discovering the rest of the world doesn’t care about your taste in music.  The luckiest of us might be Modell (Paul Reiser), the funny one who doesn’t get a story but who makes a lot of jokes.

Diner was one of the first great hang-out movies.  There is no plot, at least not in the traditional sense.  Instead, it’s about a group of long-time friends who live in Baltimore in 1959.  They grew up together.  They went to high school together.  They’ve been hanging out at the same diner for as long as they can all remember.  And now, they’re at the point in their lives where the world expects them to act like adults and accept all the responsibility that goes along with that.  It’s a film that celebrates their friendship while also acknowledging that some of them are using that friendship as an excuse to not grow up.  They escape into trivia and movies, with one minor character reciting Sweet Smell of Success by memory.  Fenwick drinks.  Boogie gambles.  Even Billy, who doesn’t even live in Baltimore anymore, reverts to his old ways as soon as he returns for Eddie’s wedding and ends up sucker punching someone because of an old high school incident.

The preparations for Eddie’s wedding gives the film what structure it has.  Eddie is marrying the unseen Elyse, assuming she can pass his demanding quiz about the Baltimore Colts.  (That may sound unfair but if you’re from Baltimore, you’ll understand.)  While Eddie gets ready for his wedding, Shrevie’s marriage to Beth (Ellen Barkin) seems to be falling apart and she finds herself tempted to cheat with Boogie, who has his own problems with a local bookie.  Meanwhile, Billy learns that his girlfriend (Kathryn Dowling) is pregnant.

The film is about friendship and the friendships between the men feel real.  Levinson held off on shooting the largely improvised diner scenes until the end of the film, by which time all of the actors had developed their own idiosyncratic relationships with each other.  The heart of Diner is to be found in scenes like the one where Modell tries to ask for someone else’s sandwich without actually coming out and asking for it.  The dialogue in that scene and so many others has the ring of age-old friendship.  Though the film makes it easy to see why Mickey Rourke and Kevin Bacon become movie stars while Tim Daly has spent most of his career on television, the entire cast is still perfect in their roles.  It’s about as strong as an ensemble as you could ever hope to see.  They become the characters and watching the movie, it’s impossible not to see yourself and your friends in their performances.

Barry Levinson has gone on to direct many more films but for me, Diner will always be the best.

 

Live Tweet Alert: Join #FridayNightFlix For Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on Twitter and Mastodon.  I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie!  Every week, we get together.  We watch a movie.  We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, at 10 pm et, #FridayNightFlix has got 1991’s Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, starring Mickey Rourke and Don Johnson!

If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag!  It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man is available on Prime!  See you there!

Horror Film Review: Angel Heart (dir by Alan Parker)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

First released in 1987 and set in 1955, Angel Heart tells the story of Harry Angel (Mickey Rourke).

With a name like Harry Angel, it’s perhaps not surprising that Harry is a private investigator.  Harry operates out of New York.  He’s got a shabby apartment.  He wears wrinkled clothes.  He rarely shaves.  He smokes almost constantly.  (In a rare moment of comedy, the camera catches Harry blithely emptying a full ashtray in the middle of the street.)  Harry looks like he reeks of tobacco, beer, sweat, and lost dreams.  And yet, it’s difficult not to like Harry.  He’s got a charming smile, even if his face is often bruised from his latest beating.  He speaks in a low whisper and it’s hard not to get the feeling that Harry is actually kind of shy.  He’s incredibly sleazy but there’s something about him that just makes the viewer want to take care of him.

Harry is hired by a mysterious man named Louis Cyphere (Robert De Niro, cheerfully overacting).  Louis wants Harry to track down a singer named Johnny Favor.  As Cyphere explains it, he did a favor for Johnny and Johnny has yet to pay Cyphere what he owes.  Johnny has been suffering from PTSD ever since he served in World War II.  When last seen, Johnny was receiving electroshock treatment in an upstate hospital.

Harry’s search for Johnny leads him into an increasingly complex and disturbing conspiracy.  He meets a doctor who is addicted to morphine and, when the doctor turns up dead, Harry coolly uses the dead man’s shoe to light his match.  Eventually, Harry’s investigation leads him to New Orleans, where he meets both Johnny’s wife (Charlotte Rampling) and Johnny’s unacknowledged daughter, Epiphany (Lisa Bonet).  As Harry searches for Johnny, he deals with strange visions of his own mysterious past.  He sees himself wandering around Times Square shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Harry also finds himself having to deal with the fact that almost everyone that he talks to ends up being brutally murdered.  Every time that Harry tries to quit the case, Cyphere offers him more money.  (Cyphere tends to show up whenever Harry finds himself on the verge of abandoning his search.)

Angel Heart moves at its own deliberate pace.  In fact, the first hour can feel a bit slow but that first hour definitely pays off during the second half of the film.  By the time that Harry starts to truly uncover what has happened to Johnny, the audience actually cares about Harry and is actually worried about what’s going to happen to him when he reaches the end of the case.  Mickey Rourke was (and is) an eccentric actor but he’s at his most effective in Angel Heart.  A lesser actor would have just played Harry as being a typical hardboiled detective.  Rourke plays Harry as being a lost soul, a vulnerable man who is often as confused and scared as the people that he’s looking for.  By the end of the film, Harry realizes that the answer to the mystery was right in front of them and his look of despair is surprisingly powerful.  If De Niro gives a good performance that is almost totally on the surface, Rourke gives the type of performance that allows the audience to explore what’s going on beneath the surface of a character who many would initially view as being a cliché.  Mickey Rourke’s Harry Angel is right up there with Bogart’s Sam Spade and Jack Nicholson’s Jake Gittes.  He’s a familiar character who also seems to be a human being.

Full of sex, violence, and increasingly disturbing imagery, Angel Heart is not for everyone.  Alan Parker’s direction emphasizes the darkness of Harry’s world and the bleakness of his situation.  The film ends with a twist that may not be totally unexpected but which is still undeniably disturbing.  The more you think about it, the most disturbing it gets.  Angel Heart is an atmospheric and intelligent chiller.  It’s existential horror at its most nightmarish.

The TSL’s Grindhouse: Dead in Tombstone (dir by Roel Reine)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In the 2013 film, Dead in Tombstone, Danny Trejo plays Guerrero De La Cruz, an old west outlaw who is loyal to his family, who has no problem robbing banks, but who also is not a fan of unnecessary bloodshed. Even though the film opens with Guerrero and his gang gunning down a posse of men, that’s just because they were saving the life of Red (Anthony Michael Hall), who just happens to be Guerrero’s half-brother. No sooner than you can say, “In what world could Danny Trejo and Anthony Michael Hall possibly be related?,” Red is asking Guerrero to help him pull off a daring robbery.

Guerrero helps Red because Guerrero is all about family. Unfortunately, Red is all about money and, not wanting to share the loot after the robbery, he promptly guns Guerrero down. Not only does Red shoot Guerrero but he insists that each member of the gang shoot him as well, implicating all of them in the crime.

Guerrero dies and promptly goes to Hell, where he’s met by Lucifer (Mickey Rourke). Guerrero doesn’t want to go to to Hell. He wants to get revenge. He offers to send a lot more souls down to Hell if Lucifer gives him a chance to return to the world of the living so that he can kill Red and the former members of his gang. Amused, Lucifer agrees but with a condition: Guerrero only has 24 hours to kill all six of his killers and Guerrero has to do all of the killing himself. He can’t hire someone else to do it or ask anyone for help. Guerrero agrees.

Unfortunately, as Guerrero soon discovers, he’s not the only one who wants Red dead. He’s going to have to move quickly if he’s going to kill all the members of the gang before Calathea (Dina Meyer), the wife of a sheriff killed by Red, gets a chance to do it herself!

Dead In Tombstone is one of those films that sounds a lot more interesting than it is. The concept behind the film is actually a pretty neat one and I like the idea of Guerrero actually having competition. This isn’t one of those westerns where everyone patiently waits their turn to go after the bad guys. The entire world wants these guys dead! Plus, who wouldn’t be excited about the idea of watching Danny Trejo and Mickey Rouke act opposite each other? With his weathered features and stoic demeanor, Danny Trejo is the perfect choice to play an outlaw and, for that matter, Rourke’s gravelly whisper and permanent smirk are put to good use in the role of the Devil. And while Anthony Michael Hall might seem like an odd choice to play Danny Trejo’s half-brother, he’s still properly villainous and loathsome in the role of Red.

And yet, the overall film itself is a bit uneven. The film looks good (especially for a straight-to-video project) but it never really seems to develop any sort of narrative momentum and there’s more than a few slow spots. At times, the film seems to be unsure of just how seiously it wants to take itself and, as a result, the story exists in a kind of limbo between being a straight western with supernatural elements and send-up of the whole genre. The end result is pretty uneven but the dream combination of Rourke and Trejo still makes it worth watching.

Spring Breakdown: Eureka (dir by Nicolas Roeg)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

 

In this 1983 film, Gene Hackman plays Jack McCann, a prospector who is determined to either get rich or freeze to death as he wanders around Alaska in the 1920s.  When he’s not having sex and philosophical discussions with the local witch, Freida (Helena Kallianiotes), Jack desperately searches for gold.  Jack is convinced that gold is all that he needs to be happy, though Freida counsels him that it’s also important to pursue more Earthly delights.  Everywhere Jack looks, he sees people dying in the snow.  In fact, Jack nearly dies himself until he stumbles across a mountain full of gold.  As gold dust pours down on him, he celebrates while having flashbacks to Freida writhing in ecstasy.  It’s just that type of film.  When Jack tells Freida about his claim, he asks what’s going to happen next.  Freida tells him that it’s both the end and the beginning.  Once again, it’s just that type of film.

At this point, Eureka jumps ahead 20 years.  The year is 1945.  World War II is coming to an end.  Jack is no longer freezing and starving to death in Alaska.  Now, he is one of the world’s richest men.  He even owns his own island in the Caribbean.  Jack has a huge house, a beautiful view of the ocean, and all the money in the world.  One could even say that his life has become an exclusive beach vacation, an eternal Spring Break, if you will.  And yet, even with all of his money, Jack has fallen victim to ennui.  He was happier when he was poor and starving and seeking warmth from Freida.  Now, he’s got an alcoholic wife (Jane LaPotaire) and his daughter, Tracy (Theresa Russell), is in love with a dissolute aristocrat named Claude (Rutger Hauer), to whom Jack takes an instant dislike.  Claude claims that Jack has stolen his wealth from the Earth.  Claude is the type who eats gold and then promises to return it to Jack as soon as he can.  That’s something that actually happens.  It’s kind of silly but Rutger Hauer is such a charmer that he nearly pulls it off.

Claude and Tracy aren’t the only thing that Jack has to worry about.  An American gangster named Mayakofsky (Joe Pesci) wants to take over Jack’s island so that he can build a casino on it.  However, despite the best efforts of Mayakofsky’s attorney (Mickey Rourke), Jack is still not willing to sell.  When hitman Joe Spinell shows up outside the estate, are Jack’s days of ennui numbered?

Of course, they are!  That’s not really a spoiler.  Eureka is (loosely) based on the real-life murder of Sir Harry Oakes, an American-born prospector who was thought to be one of the world’s richest men when he was brutally murdered in the 40s.  Jack is, of course, a stand-in for Oakes while Mayakofsky is based on Meyer Lansky, the mobster who many people suspect ordered Oakes’s murder.  Lansky was never charged with the crime.  Instead, Oakes’s son-in-law, Count Alfred de Marigny, was arrested and charged with the crime.  After a trial that made international news and was described as being “the trial of the century,” de Marigny was acquitted and the murder of Harry Oakes remains officially unsolved.

It’s an interesting story and it seems like one that should perfectly translate to film.  Surprisingly though, Eureka doesn’t really do it justice.  The film was directed by one of the masters of cinematic surrealism, Nicolas Roeg.  Roeg, of course, is probably best remembered for films like Performance, Don’t Look Now, Walkabout, and The Man Who Fell To Earth.  As one might expect from a Roeg film, Eureka is visually stunning but, as a director, Roeg can’t seem to decide whether he’s more interested in Jack’s ennui or in all the soapy melodrama surrounding Jack’s murder.  As such, neither element of the film gets explored with any particular depth and the resulting film, while always watchable, still feels rather shallow and disjointed.  (After taking forever to reach the end of Jack’s story, Eureka then turns into a rather conventional courtroom drama.  Theresa Russell does get to utter the immortal line, “Did you cut off my father’s head?” but otherwise, it’s kind of dry.)  The film is at its strongest when Jack is just a prospector in Alaska.  The harsh landscape and the crazed dialogue is perfect for Roeg’s dream-like style.  Once the film moves to the Caribbean, it suffers the same fate that befell Jack when he become rich.  It loses its spark.

That said, Eureka has its moments.  Any film that features Gene Hackman, Mickey Rourke, Joe Pesci, Rutger Hauer, and Joe Spinell all acting opposite of each other is going to have at least a few scenes worth watching.  I particularly liked Pesci’s surprisingly subdued performance as Mayakofsky.  With everyone else in the film chewing every piece of scenery on the island, Pesci wisely underplays and is all the more menacing for it.  While Eureka ultimately doesn’t add up too much, it’s worth watching at least once for the cast.

Finally, my personal theory is that Harry Oakes’s murder had more to do with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (formerly King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson) than it did with Meyer Lansky.  (The Duke was the governor of the Bahamas at the time of Oakes’s murder.)  But that’s just my opinion.

Cinemax Friday: Wild Orchid (1989, directed by Zalman King)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Emily (played by blank-faced model Carrie Otis) is a lawyer who can speak French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and Italian but who has never spoken the language of love.  A high-powered New York firm hires her away from her former employer in Chicago on the requirement that she immediately head down to Rio de Janeiro.  Claudia Dennis (Jacqueline Bisset) is trying to close the deal on buying a luxury hotel and she needs a lawyer now!

Claudia, however, has plans for Emily that go beyond real estate.  As soon as Emily arrives, Claudia arranges for her to go on a date with the wealthy and mysterious James Wheeler (Mikey Rourke).  Wheeler is single but he’s so far refused all of Claudia’s advances.  She wants to know if he’s adverse to all women or just her.  Wheeler is very taken with Emily but he’s been hurt so many times in the past that he can’t stand to be touched.  Instead, he gets his thrills by being a voyeur.

It leads to a trip through Rio, where everyone but Emily is comfortable with their sexuality.  When Wheeler isn’t encouraging her to watch a married couple have sex in the back seat of a limo, Claudia is encouraging Emily to disguise herself as a man and enjoy the nonstop carnival of life in Rio.  There’s a lot of business double-dealing, many shots of Mickey Rourke riding on his motorcycle, and a final sex scene between Rourke and Otis that is one of the most rumored about in history.  For all of the scenes of Wheeler explaining his philosophy of life, Wild Orchid doesn’t add up too much, though it certainly tries to.

Wild Orchid was a mainstay on late night Cinemax through most of the 90s.  This was Carrie Otis’s first film and to say that she gives a bad performance does a disservice to hard-working bad actors everywhere.  There’s bad and then there’s Carrie Otis in Wild Orchid bad.  She walks through the film with the same blank expression her face, playing a genius who can speak several languages but often seeming as if she’s struggling to handle speaking in just one language.  She looks good, though, and all the movie really requires her to do is to look awkward while Rourke and Bisset chew up the scenery.

On the one hand, Wild Orchid is the type of bad movie that squanders the talents of actors like Mickey Rourke, Jacqueline Bisset, and Bruce Greenwod (who has a small role as a sleazy lawyer) but, on the other hand, it’s a Zalman King film so it may be insanely pretentious but it’s also rarely boring.  Visually, King goes all out to portray Rio as being the world’s ultimate erotic city and the dialogue tries so hard to be profound that you’ll have to listen twice just to make sure you heard it correctly.  My favorite line?  “We all have to lose ourselves sometimes to find ourselves, don’t you think?”  Mickey Rourke says that and he delivers it as only he could.

Wild Orchid may have been a box office bust but it was popular on cable and on the rental market, largely because of that final scene between Rourke and Otis.  Mikey Rourke later married Carrie Otis.  Neither returned for Wild Orchid II: Two Shades of Blue.

The Pledge (2001, directed by Sean Penn)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Jerry Black (Jack Nicholson) is a detective who, on the verge of retirement, goes to one final crime scene.  The victim is a child named Ginny Larsen and when Ginny’s mother (Patricia Clarkson) demands that Jerry not only promise to find the murderer but that he pledge of his immortal soul that he’ll do it, it’s a pledge that Jerry takes seriously.  Jerry’s partner, Stan (Aaron Eckhart), manages to get a confession from a developmentally disabled man named Jay Wadenah (Benicio del Toro) but Jerry doesn’t believe that the confession is authentic.  When Wadenah commits suicide in his cell, the police are ready to close the case but Jerry remembers his pledge.  He remains determined to find the real killer.

Even though he’s retired, the case continues to obsess Jerry.  He becomes convinced that Ginny was the latest victim of a serial killer and he even buys a gas station because it’s located in the center of where most of the murders were committed.  Jerry befriend a local waitress named Lori (Robin Wright) and, when Lori tells him about her abusive ex, he invites Lori and her daughter to stay with him.  Lori’s daughter, Chrissy (Pauline Roberts), is around Ginny’s age and when she tells Jerry about a “wizard” who gives her toys, Jerry becomes convinced that she’s being targeted by the same man who killed Ginny.  Even as Jerry and Lori fall in love, the increasingly unhinged Jerry makes plans to use Chrissy as bait to bring the killer out of hiding.

The Pledge was Sean Penn’s third film as a director.  As with all of Penn’s directorial efforts, with the notable exception of Into The Wild, The Pledge is relentlessly grim.  Freed, by virtue of his celebrity, from worrying about whether or not anyone would actually want to sit through a depressing two-hour film about murdered children, Penn tells a story with no definite resolution and no real hope for the future.  The Pledge is a cop film without action and a mystery without a real solution and a character study of a man whose mind you don’t want to enter.  It’s well-made and it will keep you guess but it’s also slow-paced and not for the easily depressed.

The cast is made up of familiar character actors, most of whom probably took their roles as a favor to Penn.  Harry Dean Stanton, Tom Noonan, Patricia Clarkson, Sam Shephard, Vanessa Redgrave, Helen Mirren, and Mickey Rourke have all got small roles and they all give good performances, even if it’s sometimes distracting to have even the smallest, most inconsequential of roles played by someone familiar.  Most importantly, The Pledge actually gives Jack Nicholson a real role to play.  Jerry Black is actually an interesting and complex human being and Nicholson dials back his usual shtick and instead actually makes the effort to explore what makes Jerry tick and what lays at the root of his obsession.

Though definitely not for everyone, The Pledge sticks with you and shows what Jack Nicholson, who now appears to be retired from acting, was capable of when given the right role.

A Movie A Day #67: Animal Factory (2000, directed by Steve Buscemi)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Edward Furlong is Ron Decker, a spoiled 18 year-old from a rich family who is arrested and sent to prison when he’s caught with a small amount of marijuana.  Being younger and smaller than the other prisoners, Ron is soon being targeted by everyone from the prison’s Puerto Rican gang to the sadistic Buck Rowan (Tom Arnold).  Fortunately, for Ron, prison veteran Earl Copen (Williem DaFoe) takes him under his wing and provides him with protection.  Earl is the philosopher-king of the prison.  As he likes to put it, “This is my prison, after all.”  If he can stay out of trouble, Ron has a chance to get out early but, with Buck stalking him, that’s not going to be easy.

Based on a novel by ex-con Edward Bunker, Animal Factory was the second film to be directed by Bunker’s Reservoir Dogs co-stars, Steve Buscemi.  Though it was overlooked at the time, Animal Factory is a minor masterpiece.  Taking a low key approach, Buscemi emphasizes the monotony of prison life just as much as the sudden bursts of violence and shows why someone like Ron Decker can go into prison as an innocent and come out as an animal.  DaFoe and Furlong give two of their best performances as Earl and Ron while a cast of familiar faces — Danny Trejo, Mickey Rourke, Chris Bauer, Mark Boone Junior — make up the prison’s population.  Most surprising of all is Tom Arnold, giving Animal Factory‘s best performance as the prison’s most dangerous predator.