TRAUMA CENTER (US - 2019) Directed by Matt Eskandari. Written by Paul Da Silva. Cast: Nicky Whelan, Bruce Willis, Tito Ortiz, Texas Battle, Catherine Davis, Lala Kent, Sergio Rizzuto, Tyler Jon Olson, Steve Guttenberg, Roman Mitichyan, Jonathan Galanis, Katira Maria, Jaime Irizarry, Leslee Emmett. (R, 87 mins)
A little over two months after the awful 10 MINUTES GONE, here's TRAUMA CENTER, the latest installment in Lionsgate's landmark "Bruce Willis Phones In His Performance From His Hotel Room" series. To be fair, and likely much to his chagrin, Willis is noticeably more present in this one, and he's actually in scenes that take place outdoors and, except for one hilarious bit near the end, interacting with other cast members. He's doing that weird "slow talk" routine that he used in half of REPRISAL (until he apparently got bored with it), and the tone of his dialogue sometimes doesn't match that of the actor with whom he's sharing the scene. Sometimes he yells for no reason and his facial expressions of sympathy and concern look more like he's trying to hold in a fart. Hell, maybe he wasn't there and was composited in by a digital effects team, who knows? Since 2011's SET-UP, he's done well over a dozen of these straight-to-VOD walkthroughs--maybe his entire contribution to them is one epic, ongoing deepfake.
Set and shot in Puerto Rico, TRAUMA CENTER "stars" Willis as San Juan cop Lt. Wakes, whose partner Martin (Tyler Jon Olson) is killed after stumbling on a protection racket being run by Pierce (MMA legend Tito Ortiz) and Tull (Texas Battle), a pair of corrupt vice cops. Things get complicated for the dirty cops when the murder is witnessed by Madison (Nicky Whelan of INCONCEIVABLE), a server at a diner who's closing up and taking out the trash. She takes a bullet in the leg during the shootout and is rushed to the hospital, where Wakes correctly assumes the mystery killer or killers will come after her. That they do--not just to kill her, but to extract the bullet from her left leg which was fired from Pierce's service weapon and will be traced back to him after she undergoes surgery the next morning. Wakes manages to stash Madison on the hospital's vacant seventh floor, an infectious disease ward and bacterial research facility that's currently not in use. While Wakes goes off to investigate Martin's murder on his own (translation: Willis in own separate movie for the next hour), Pierce and Tull make their way to the seventh floor where they engage in a game of cat-and-mouse with a surprisingly resourceful Madison, who's learned to take care of herself after losing her mom and raising her depressed, asthmatic teenage sister Emily (Catherine Davis), who was admitted to the hospital earlier in the day after an asthma attack. Gee, is there any chance Pierce and Tull will threaten Emily's life to get to Madison? And is there any doubt that she'll have an asthma attack at the least opportune time?
If TRAUMA CENTER had any imagination at all, it would've done something with the infectious disease angle. Instead, it's just a generally uninspired DIE HARD IN A HOSPITAL scenario, with Bruce Willis as Argyle. Director Matt Eskandari (12 FEET DEEP) does pull off one unexpectedly effective set piece where Madison sets off a fire alarm and is pursued through the seventh floor corridors with only flashing emergency lights intermittently breaking up the darkness, while a pan to a dome mirror shows that Pierce and Tull are almost right behind her facing the opposite direction and neither party realizes the other is right there. The script by Paul Da Silva is rudimentary at best, with barely-there exposition about Madison's deteriorating relationship with her sister, or Battle's Tull grunting "It's time to take it up a notch" when Madison outwits them for the tenth time. There's a bizarre attempt at making some statement about why people move to San Juan that sounds like bad improv from Willis as Madison asks Wakes why he lives in Puerto Rico, to which he wistfully mutters "the same reason everyone comes to the island...runnin' from ghosts." That constitutes character development here, though it sounds less like added layers to the enigma that is Lt. Wakes, and more like Willis using a heavy-handed metaphor to explain his continued coasting in movies like TRAUMA CENTER.
All things considered, TRAUMA CENTER, while not very good, is inoffensively generic and slightly better than what's come to be expected from these Willis paycheck gigs in his day player years. He's in it quite a bit, even when he's off on his own and not interacting with anyone, which probably means he worked as many as 3-4 days instead of his customary 1-2. He somehow seems more invested in this than he was in MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN. Only during a climactic showdown between Wakes and Tull does Willis engage in some of his signature contempt for his craft and his colleagues, forcing Eskandari to assemble a fight scene where it's painfully obvious that he and Battle weren't there at the same time. Willis' extended participation here otherwise is noted, but the real story with TRAUMA CENTER is the presence of Steve Guttenberg--yes, that Steve Guttenberg--in a thankless, two-scene supporting role as the hospital's on-duty ER doc. Now 61 and looking a little schlubbier than in his heyday, Guttenberg's commercial viability was a thing of the past long before he joined the SHARKNADO extended universe with a pair of LAVALANTULA movies for Syfy. But the guy was in some of the biggest hits of the 1980s and held his own in scenes with Laurence Olivier in 1978's THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL. TRAUMA CENTER offers him a nothing role that anyone could've played, and required even less time on the set than Willis (Bruce: "Whoa, Stevie, you sure you want that ER doc role, why don't we switch?"), but what's with giving him ninth billing, sandwiching him between Tyler Jon Olson and Roman Mitichyan in the credits? A forgettable VOD action thriller and Steve Guttenberg (POLICE ACADEMY, COCOON, SHORT CIRCUIT, THREE MEN AND A BABY) doesn't even warrant a special "with" or an "and" credit? What the fuck, TRAUMA CENTER?
The hardest-working man in TRAUMA CENTER,
seen here on the set with Bruce Willis.
Does "Skunk" sound like a man with a plan? If you're already involved in some seriously illegal shit and you're presented with a risky deal by your loudmouth, sketchy best buddy who calls himself "Skunk," the only guarantee is that it's doomed from the start. And despite his misgivings, slick NYC money launderer Moe Diamond (Liam Hemsworth) goes along anyway in the dreadful KILLERMAN, an amateurish pastiche of Michael Mann's THIEF and the Safdie Brothers' GOOD TIME if everyone in it acted like Buddy Duress. The first few minutes actually fool you into thinking KILLERMAN might be an unsung gem--the NYC skyline, shady characters forever looking for a big score, the old-school '70s grittiness of the diamond district, the persistent throb of its synth score--but it falls apart in near-record time. Moe and Skunk (Emory Cohen) make deliveries and launder money for Skunk's Russian mobster uncle Perico (Zlatko Buric). Perico's got a lucrative deal set up with a corrupt congressman who tells him to hold off because there's too much heat. Ordered by Perico to sit on the money until further notice, Skunk talks Moe into going with him on a can't-miss deal where they use Perico's money for a clandestine drug deal that will net a huge profit for them when they unload the drugs, with his uncle none the wiser after getting his money back. Of course, the can't-miss deal completely misses (because "Skunk"), as a squad of dirty cops raid the drug buy and Moe and Skunk barely manage to escape with the goods and the money. The ensuing car chase ends in a wreck where Moe suffers an amnesia-inducing head injury and has no idea why he's got a huge shipment of drugs and duffel bags full of cash.
There's some promise here, especially with the obvious affection for '70s crime thrillers on the part of writer/director Malik Bader. But it's all smoke and mirrors, and all Bader does is riff on other movies without bringing anything new to the table en route to a dumb twist ending. He's particularly enamored of GOOD TIME, from the setting, to the cinematography, to the music, and even going so far as to include an improbable hospital escape. Cliches abound--Moe's girlfriend Lola (Diane Guerrero) asks "When is this going to end?" when he has to back out of date night plans for the umpteenth time because of "work"--and stupidity takes center stage. There's no possible explanation for the scene where amnesia-stricken Moe insists on going to his apartment despite Skunk's warning that the whole area is probably under surveillance and crawling with cops, followed immediately by Moe in his apartment talking to Lola while Skunk stands in the middle of the busy street outside honking the horn and yelling "Moe, let's go!" right before the cops swarm in. If Bader wanted his own Robert Pattinson-styled GOOD TIME, he needed a more magnetic leading man than Hemsworth, who once again demonstrates why nobody cares about anything he's in if it doesn't have "HUNGER GAMES" in the title, and not even letting him go on an out-of-nowhere, late-film rampage of machete beheadings and dismemberments is enough to salvage it. As a director, Malik Bader also does nothing to rein in the histrionics of the one of the two main dirty cops, a constantly shouting rage case brought to headache-inducing life in a grating, attention-hogging performance by...(checks notes)...Malik Bader. (R, 112 mins)
SEMPER FI (US/UK/Italy - 2019)
Until it completely goes on leave from plausibility in its second half, SEMPER FI is a reasonably engrossing drama that unexpectedly offers career-best work from Jai Courtney and Nat Wolff, two actors who have been thoroughly mediocre to this point in everything they've done, and yet Hollywood still seems hellbent on making them happen. I'd all but given up on Courtney (A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD, TERMINATOR: GENISYS) after watching him embarrass himself in scenes opposite Christopher Plummer in THE EXCEPTION, but props where they're due: he's absolutely terrific here as Chris "Cal" Callahan, a cop in a small town in upstate New York. He and his buddies--firefighter and family man Milk (Beau Knapp), auto body mechanic and player Jaeger (Finn Wittrock), and construction worker Snowball (Arturo Castro)--are all Marine reservists, along with Cal's fuck-up younger half-brother Oyster (Wolff). Cal managed to pull some strings to get Oyster in the reserves despite a pair of felonies in his past, and even then Oyster still can't get his shit together, though he has talent for cooking and a pipe dream of opening a food truck business. All of that comes to an abrupt end when Oyster gets into a bar fight and winds up accidentally killing the guy who jumped him in self-defense, right after joking to another bar patron "I'm gonna kill that guy," when he sees him talking to a girl he had his eye on. Oyster tries to run with a half-assed plan of going to Canada and it's Cal who ends up bringing him in.
Cut to eight months later. Cal and the guys have been deployed to Iraq while Oyster got a 25-year sentence for attempting to flee as well as the damning testimony of that bar patron that was enough to make it premeditated murder. Once home, Cal suffers from PTSD over losing his temper and killing a man in Mosul and Oyster, still furious that his own brother arrested him, denies his visitation requests and refuses have anything to do with him. So far, so good, as director/co-writer Henry-Alex Rubin (best known for the 2005 wheelchair rugby documentary MURDERBALL, whose scene-stealing Mark Zupan can be spotted here as a patient at a VA hospital) gets strong, gut-wrenching performances from Courtney and Wolff, the latter convincingly portraying someone unable to articulate his rage and letting it boil inside of him, especially once we learn more about their complicated family history. But what starts as a solid--if occasionally melodramatic--character-driven tragedy takes an abrupt turn toward the ridiculous when Cal, getting word that Oyster is being abused by some sadistic guards, decides to bust his little brother out during a prison transfer and get him to Canada with help from the other guys. They all keep telling Cal what a stupid idea it is, yet they go along with it, and that includes Jaeger's ex-girlfriend (Leighton Meester), who's now an attorney. The film tries to explain away Cal's sudden lack of level-headed decision-making by blaming it on the PTSD, but it seems more like a plot convenience than anything, especially when he shows up at the bar witness' house and tries to threaten him into recanting his testimony. The whole prison break plot turn seems to be some kind of compromise Rubin reached with some of the two dozen credited producers, and while it doesn't cause SEMPER FI to completely implode on itself, it does result in the film working at cross purposes in terms of exactly what it wants to be. And the unfortunate casualties of this indecisiveness are the two fine performances by Courtney and Wolff, because if SEMPER FI accomplishes nothing else, it proves that these two are capable of delivering very good performances. (R, 100 mins)
ASSIGNMENT TERROR aka LOS MONSTRUOS DEL TERROR aka DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN (Spain/West Germany/Italy - 1970; US release 1973) Directed by Tulio Demicheli. Written by Jacinto Molina. Cast: Michael Rennie, Karin Dor, Craig Hill, Patty Shepard, Angel del Pozo, Paul Naschy (Jacinto Molina), Ella Gessler, Manuel de Blas, Peter Damon, Diana Sorel, Ferdinando Murolo, Luciano Tacconi, Gene Reyes. (Unrated, 87 mins) The second film in Spanish horror star Paul Naschy's loosely-connected, long-running "El Hombre Lobo" werewolf series, ASSIGNMENT TERROR is largely an homage to the classic Universal horrors that Naschy loved, particularly the all-star monster mash-ups like 1944's HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN and 1945's HOUSE OF DRACULA. At least that was Naschy's intention when he wrote the script. The end result is an uneven hodgepodge of monster rally and sci-fi alien invasion in the style of a Eurospy 007 knockoff, the schizophrenic tone probably inevitable given the troubled and financially-strapped shoot. Money ran out and production shut down more than once, prompting the original director, Argentina-born Hugo Fregonese (who spent some time in Hollywood in the 1950s with MY SIX CONVICTS, MAN IN THE ATTIC, and BLACK TUESDAY before settling in Europe in the 1960s) to walk off the film with about 70% of it completed. Spanish-based Argentine director Tulio Demicheli (best known for the ludicrously over-the-top, acid-bathed 1973 gangster outing RICCO THE MEAN MACHINE) was brought in as a replacement, and Antonio Isasi (THEY CAME TO ROB LAS VEGAS) was also involved at some point near the end of the shoot and supervised the post-production, though only Demicheli receives directing credit (to add to the confusion, German prints name one Eberhard Meichsner as director, though he had nothing to do with any of it and was likely credited for German co-production quota purposes). Given its chaotic production with multiple directors cycled through, it's a wonder ASSIGNMENT TERROR was completed at all.
Unlike his other "El Hombre Lobo" vehicles as the tormented nobleman-turned-werewolf Waldemar Daninsky, Naschy relegates himself to a sixth-billed supporting role in ASSIGNMENT TERROR. The star is Michael Rennie, best known for his iconic turn as alien visitor Klaatu in the 1951 classic THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. Naschy never relied on fading Hollywood stars for export value, so Rennie was an unusually big name for an "El Hombre Lobo" outing. The veteran British actor was in declining health and in a serious career slump by 1970, and like the 1966 sci-fi cheapie CYBORG 2087, his very presence here is a nod to his being in THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL in much better days. ASSIGNMENT TERROR proved to be Rennie's last film (he's dubbed by someone else), and in it, he plays Dr. Odo Varnoff, an alien from the planet Ummo. Varnoff has arrived on Earth with nefarious plans of Ummo domination, with the help of two other alien entities inhabiting the recently deceased bodies of Dr. Maleva Kerstein (German krimi fixture Karin Dor), a biochemist who was killed in a car accident, and Dr. Kerian Berner (Angel del Pozo), a surgeon killed in combat. Varnoff's diabolical plot includes abducting beautiful women to torture and brainwash to do his bidding, but the key to his plan is--for some reason--to find, reanimate, and assemble the world's most famous monsters, or the closest proximity of that which Naschy's apparent fear of copyright infringement will allow. First, in true HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN fashion, he finds the skeletal remains of vampire "Count Jaros" (Manuel de Blas) at a traveling circus and resurrects him by removing the stake from his rib cage. He exhumes the corpse of Daninsky and revives him by extracting a silver bullet lodged in his heart (cue graphic heart surgery stock footage). Next is a trip to Egypt where Varnoff finds and awakens "The Living Mummy" (Gene Reyes), and finally a journey to a long-vacant German monastery once owned by Dr. Ulrich von Farancksalan, where Varnoff revives the feared "Farancksalan Monster" (Ferdinando Murolo).
Those Universal monster rallies are remembered with great affection by fans, but they blundered badly in the way they very rarely had the monsters interacting with one another. For example, in HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, John Carradine's Dracula is killed off before Lon Chaney's Wolf Man and Glenn Strange's Frankenstein Monster even appear, and both HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN and HOUSE OF DRACULA keep the Monster on the lab table until literally the last two minutes of the movie. Only ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN got it right by throwing them all together, something ASSIGNMENT TERROR, for the most part, doesn't do. Naschy's werewolf briefly throws down with "The Living Mummy" and the "Farancksalan Monster" but he never deals with "Count Jaros," who spends most of his screen time trying to cast a spell on Maleva. There's also some Austin Powers dance cutaways and a scene where Rennie attends a mod freakout, plus an inconsequential police investigation headed by Inspector Tobermann (American expat Craig Hill, who spent most of his career in Europe), who's trying to get to the bottom of all the disappearing blondes in the area. ASSIGNMENT TERROR's patchwork assembly allows time for romantic subplots for both Tobermann and the mayor's daughter (Patty Shepard, another American expat who married de Blas and spent her entire career working in the Spanish film industry), as well as Maleva and Dr. Berner, which incurs the wrath of the jealous Varnoff, who commands the "Farancksalan Monster" to kill Berner.
Just out on in a pristine Blu-ray edition from Scorpion and being sold exclusively through Ronin Flix (because physical media is dead), ASSIGNMENT TERROR is amusingly goofy and entertaining, usually for the wrong reasons. De Blas doesn't get much to do as "Count Jaros," Naschy has a couple of good transformations sequences but is sidelined or dispatched for Varnoff henchman duty for much of the film, and Reyes makes a peculiar but occasionally creepy "Living Mummy." Murolo's monster is hilariously bad, sporting the classic flat head but also with trendy sideburns, Groucho Marx eyebrows, and a squint that makes him look somewhere between near-sighted and high AF. According to film historian Troy Howarth on the Blu-ray commentary, Naschy later complained that ASSIGNMENT TERROR's makeup artist Francisco R. Ferrer was the worst he'd ever worked with, and after one look at Murolo, who resembles a younger Larry David going to a Halloween party in a hastily-assembled Frankenstein costume, you'll be inclined to agree. It's no fault of the actor, who also doesn't get any help from his initial appearances showing him walking around in regular shoes, and the guy is 5' 9" tops, which doesn't make for an imposing monster, regardless of whether it's created by Frankenstein or Farancksalan. Fortunately, someone found Murolo some large, heavy boots for later in the film, which also helps him with the lumbering, staggering gait associated with the monster. It was soon after ASSIGNMENT TERROR that Naschy would cement his place in horror history, eventually making at least another half dozen official "El Hombre Lobo" movies and going on to play his own versions of classic monsters in films like HUNCHBACK OF THE MORGUE, DR. JEKYLL AND THE WEREWOLF (where he was both El Hombre Lobo and Mr. Hyde, with Jack Taylor pulling half-duty as just Dr. Jekyll), and THE MUMMY'S REVENGE, with a standout being 1973's surreal and atmospheric COUNT DRACULA'S GREAT LOVE, one of the all-time great Spanish horror films.
Originally titled LOS MONSTRUOS DEL TERROR, ASSIGNMENT TERROR was shown in parts of Europe as DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN and, in a face-off of sheer pointlessness the likes of which we wouldn't see again until Bonnie Tyler, Molly Hatchet, Kiss, Ace Frehley, and Robin Beck all recorded versions of "Hide Your Heart" over 1988-89 or Cannon and the ousted Menahem Golan squared off in the Great LAMBADA vs. THE FORBIDDEN DANCE War of 1990, it became one of three competing DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEINs to be released at roughly the same time, along with Al Adamson's DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN (1971) and Jess Franco's DRACULA CONTRA FRANKENSTEIN (1972). Adamson emerged victorious, as the Franco film became DRACULA, PRISONER OF FRANKENSTEIN, while the Naschy project was ultimately rechristened with its most widely-used title ASSIGNMENT TERROR. It skipped theaters stateside and made its belated American debut on late-night TV in 1973 as part of an AIP syndication package called "Ghoul-O-Rama," two years after star Rennie died in June 1971. His official cause of death was emphysema, though we shouldn't rule out embarrassment.
OFFICIAL SECRETS (Canada/UK/China/US/Switzerland - 2019)
The saga of British whistleblower Katherine Gun is, at least stateside, one of the least-remembered chapters of the misguided journey to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In a way, it's oddly fitting that OFFICIAL SECRETS, which stars Keira Knightley as Gun, was barely released in theaters by IFC Films. That's a shame, because it's a well-done political thriller as well as a solid investigative journalism drama from director/co-writer Gavin Hood, who most recently helmed 2016's riveting drone strike nailbiter EYE IN THE SKY. As the film opens in January 2003, Katherine, who was raised in Taiwan by British parents, works as a Mandarin translator for GCHQ, the signals intelligence division of the British government. It's a largely uneventful job until her entire department is sent a mysterious e-mail from the NSA that goes into detail about an intelligence plot between the US and UK governments to essentially bully and blackmail the less powerful members of the UN Security Council into going to war with Iraq under the guise of Saddam Hussein having WMDs. As everyone has signed an agreement that every aspect of their work falls under the 1989 "Official Secrets" Act, none of Katherine's co-workers give the e-mail much thought and refrain from discussing it. But she's troubled enough by its implications that she passes it on to a trusted government employee friend (MyAnna Buring), who in turn passes it to a controversial activist (Hattie Morahan) who then forwards it to Observer staff writer Martin Bright (Matt Smith). The Observer is fully onboard with the coming war, much to the chagrin of their bad-tempered US politics columnist Ed Vulliamy (Rhys Ifans), who berates managing editor Roger Alton (Conleth Hill) with frequent tirades that they should be doing their jobs as reporters instead of regurgitating Prime Minister Tony Blair's press releases. Alton reluctantly lets Bright run with the story, which eventually blows up in Katherine's face, as she never thought anything would come of it, and now the intelligence higher-ups are calling in the interrogators and breaking out the lie detectors because they know the leak had to come from the GCHQ department.
The resulting shitstorm offers Katherine the usual Alan J. Pakula-esque paranoia of bugged phones, surveillance, and being followed everywhere she goes, and it very nearly gets Katherine's Muslim husband Yasar (Adam Bakri) deported to Iraq. She eventually retains the services of civil liberties attorney Ben Emmerson (Ralph Fiennes) when it becomes clear that the British government intends to prosecute her and send her to prison, with the added threat that even discussing any aspects of the case with a lawyer is itself cause for more charges of violating the Official Secrets Act. OFFICIAL SECRETS is a compelling drama that hits the ground running (it's not even 20 minutes in before we get a clandestine meeting in a dimly-lit parking garage), with a credible and restrained performance by Knightley that wisely avoids all the big awards-bait moments to keep her depiction of Katherine Gun as grounded as possible. The back end does suffer from a bit of some fawning Gun hagiography, and it may seem a little fashionably late as far as Iraq War-related movies go, but for the most part, OFFICIAL SECRETS is a fine film that deserved more attention than it got and probably could've been a decent word-of-mouth hit on the arthouse circuit (other familiar faces in the solid ensemble cast include Matthew Goode, Jeremy Northam, Indira Varma, and Kenneth Cranham). The closing scene, and particularly Fiennes' final line, would've been a real crowd-pleaser. (R, 112 mins)
MARY (US/Canada - 2019)
Remember when Gary Oldman won an Oscar for 2017's DARKEST HOUR? By any chance, does Gary Oldman remember? Just a few months ago, he appeared in the unwatchable support-group-for-assassins "comedy" KILLERS ANONYMOUS and he currently stars in the straight-to-VOD actioner THE COURIER (don't worry, I'm sure I'll get to it soon enough), where he's second-billed to Olga Kurylenko, currently third on the action heroine depth chart behind Milla Jovovich and Noomi Rapace. These aren't the kind of projects you tackle when you've just been awarded an actor's highest honor. They're the kind of jobs Nicolas Cage accepts to pay his bills for another month. And in the case with the moronic "possessed yacht" horror movie MARY, it's even worse as Oldman reportedly stepped in to replace--wait for it--Nicolas Cage. Dude, you're less than two years out from an Academy Award and you're taking Nicolas Cage's 2019 turndowns? To damn with faint praise, MARY is slightly better than KILLERS ANONYMOUS, but then, so are most new Nic Cage movies. MARY is a weak hodgepodge of at least a half-dozen underdeveloped ideas that are mostly abandoned amidst the incoherent mayhem that develops. Oldman phones it in as Dave, a Florida fisherman who impulsively buys a ramshackle old yacht called Mary in an attempt to set up his own boat charter business. It's also his way of trying to bring his family back together after his wife Sarah (Emily Mortimer) had a brief fling that put a strain on both their marriage and her relationship with their oldest daughter Lindsey (Stefanie Scott), while younger daughter Mary (Chloe Perrin) remains blissfully unaware of all the tension. I don't know...if Dave thinks buying a shitty old boat is gonna save his marriage, then I can see why Sarah stepped out on him.
They set sail on the Mary for a journey to the waters of Bermuda (uh oh), along with Dave's friend and business partner Mike (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) and Lindsey crush Tommy (Owen Teague), and it isn't long before strange shit starts happening: Mary has a new imaginary friend and is drawing creepy pictures and smashes a glass in Lindsey's face (the only genuinely shocking moment); Tommy carves a symbol into his chest and attacks Dave; a ghostly figure pulls some INSIDIOUS jump scare moves on Sarah; and Mike loses it and tries to throw the family overboard. The entire film is told in flashback by Sarah to Jacksonville detective Clarkson (Jennifer Esposito), who's been brought in by the Coast Guard after Sarah and her daughters appeared to be the only survivors of a shipwreck. Clarkson quickly recommends a padded cell and a psych eval after listening to Sarah's story of a possessed boat and that "Evil needs a body to exist...the body was that boat." Written by Anthony Jaswinski (THE SHALLOWS) and directed by Michael Goi (who's helmed several episodes of AMERICAN HORROR STORY), MARY revels in every hackneyed horror cliche in the book, like Sarah conveniently finding a scrapbook of old-timey news clippings--that look like they were quickly generated on a production assistant's laptop that morning--detailing all the crews that set sail on the Mary going back to 1883 and were never seen again, and that the ghost haunting the ship is that of the drowned daughter of the very first Mary captain. Who left the scrapbook there for her? The ghost? That was awfully helpful of her. And how powerful is this malevolent spirit when Sarah can incapacitate it with a flare gun? The closing credits roll at 77 minutes after a twist ending you'll absolutely see coming, and the only mystery is why Oldman (and Mortimer, for that matter) is wasting his time with junk like this. The guy pretty much swept the Best Actor category throughout the 2018 awards season. I'd like to think he could parlay that into something more substantive than "Gary Oldman's MOON IN SCORPIO." (R, 84 mins)
Directed by Martin Scorsese. Written by Steven Zaillian. Cast: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel, Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, Anna Paquin, Stephen Graham, Stephanie Kurtzuba, Kathrine Narducci, Welker White, Jesse Plemons, Jack Huston, Domenick Lombardozzi, Paul Herman, Louis Cancelmi, Gary Basaraba, Marin Ireland, Sebastian Maniscalco, Steven Van Zandt, Lucy Gallina, Bo Dietl, Aleksa Palladino, Jim Norton, Daniel Jenkins, Paul Ben-Victor, Patrick Gallo, Jake Hoffman, Barry Primus, Vinny Vella, John Cenatiempo, Action Bronson, Danny A. Abeckaser, India Ennenga, Kate Arrington, John Scurti, Louis Vanaria. (R, 208 mins) A few years ago, it would've been ludicrous to imagine that the most eagerly anticipated film of the year would be a Netflix Original, but here's THE IRISHMAN, Martin Scorsese's long-in-the-works return to his gangster movie glory days of GOODFELLAS, and his first collaboration with Robert De Niro since 1995's CASINO. It's the most ambitious undertaking of Scorsese's career, a story that spans nearly 60 years, with a budget said to be $160 million but possibly as much as $200 million, and a year-and-a-half of post-production that utilized extensive CGI technology to "de-age" the film's stars, allowing them to play their characters as younger men. In various stages of development since 2007, THE IRISHMAN is based on Charles Brandt's 2004 book I Heard You Paint Houses, which chronicled mid-level, Philly-based Irish mobster and labor union figure Frank Sheeran's post-WWII rise from truck driver to right-hand-man and trusted muscle of Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. Years later, an elderly Sheeran (1920-2003) would claim to be directly involved as the reluctant trigger man in Hoffa's still-unsolved 1975 disappearance and certain murder. Sheeran's story remains speculative and with no body ever found, it isn't any more or less plausible than Hoffa being buried in the end zone of Giants Stadium, but THE IRISHMAN takes the Sheeran-Hoffa story and turns it into an often profoundly moving examination of friendship, regret, betrayal, guilt, and mortality. It's a film that Scorsese only could've made at this point in his life. THE IRISHMAN is the gangster genre seen through the eyes of life experience, a stark contrast with the brash cockiness of 1973's MEAN STREETS or 1990's mob-glorifying GOODFELLAS, arguably the most influential gangster movie ever made. In hindsight, CASINO's third act, where Ace Rothstein's Vegas dream collapses and everything goes to shit, definitely hints at things to come in THE IRISHMAN, but this latest film largely serves as Scorsese's UNFORGIVEN by way of that devastating deathbed monologue Jason Robards gives at the end of Paul Thomas Anderson's MAGNOLIA. The characters in the world of THE IRISHMAN aren't rich guys with a luxurious lifestyle. There's no glitz or glamour here. And whether they're whacked or somehow make it to old age, they all die alone.
Running just two minutes shy of three-and-a-half hours, THE IRISHMAN opens with an 83-year-old, wheelchair-bound Sheeran (De Niro) in an assisted living facility, breaking the fourth wall to tell his story. He uses the framing device of a flashback to a 1975 weekend where he and his wife Irene (Stephanie Kurtzuba) are traveling with Sheeran's longtime friend Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) and his wife Carrie (Kathrine Narducci) to a wedding in Detroit. The trip--mapped out in great detail by Sheeran and prolonged by the wives' frequent smoke breaks since Russell doesn't allow smoking in his car--takes them across Pennsylvania to Toledo and north to Detroit, and along the way, Sheeran spots the very location where he first met Russell 30 years earlier, when his truck broke down and Russell was a good samaritan stranger who helped him fix it (this means THE IRISHMAN is set up as flashbacks-within-flashbacks, and at one point, by my count, Scorsese goes four flashbacks deep as Sheeran recalls an incident killing some German officers in Italy during WWII). After the war, Sheeran found employment as a truck driver and got involved in some minor skimming and side deals involving some steaks with mob bosses on his route, including Frank "Skinny Razor" DiTullio (Bobby Cannavale), an underboss with powerful Philly capo Angelo Bruno (Harvey Keitel). When Frank gets busted by a supplier for a missing shipment, he's successfully defended by lawyer Bill Bufalino (Ray Romano), who introduces him to his mob boss cousin Russell--small world--the very man who helped him out a couple of months earlier. Sheeran starts working for Russell as a bagman and hit man, which eventually brings him into the orbit of Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), the controversial head of the Teamsters, who has connections with Bufalino crime family and likes that Sheeran is one of his own in the Teamsters brotherhood.
What follows is a labyrinthine saga involving labor unions, the FBI, the CIA, Castro, JFK, Richard Nixon, E. Howard Hunt, Watergate, and everything in between. Hoffa becomes a target of JFK's brother and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (Jack Huston) and refuses to lower the Teamsters' building's flag to half-staff following JFK's assassination. Hoffa is eventually convicted of jury tampering and goes on a scorched earth campaign against Teamsters rivals Frank Fitzsimmons (Gary Basaraba) and Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano (Stephen Graham). Once he's released and given a Presidential pardon by Nixon in 1971, Hoffa, with Sheeran at his side, attempts to regain control of the Teamsters, which seals his fate with both the union and their mob partners. By 1975, it's decided by the powers that be that Hoffa, who confidently boasts to Sheeran that he's untouchable ("I know things they don't know I know!"), is a problem that needs to go away.
For its first hour or so before the Hoffa plot kicks into gear, THE IRISHMAN feels like a Scorsese victory lap of sorts, a greatest hits package with a "Hey, the band's back together!" vibe with a familiarity that's predictable yet welcome. There's the rapid-fire editing (Thelma Schoonmaker still the best in the business), the voiceovers, the music (drink every time you hear The Five Satins' "In the Still of the Night" and you'll be unconscious before Pacino even appears) and everything else that says "vintage Scorsese." He also includes shout-outs and callbacks not just to his earlier films but those of his stars. You'll spot the overwhelming remorse inherent to both Pacino's Michael Corleone, haunted throughout THE GODFATHER PART III after ordering his brother Fredo's death at the end of THE GODFATHER PART II, and De Niro's aging Noodles and the guilt over ratting on his friends in Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. Hoffa's false sense of invincibility recalls Pacino's Tony Montana in Brian De Palma's SCARFACE and his doomed Carlito Brigante in De Palma's CARLITO'S WAY. There's even a fleeting appearance by Dave Ferrie (Louis Vanaria), the terribly-toupeed Lee Harvey Oswald acquaintance that Pesci played in Oliver Stone's JFK. It's also this stretch of the film where the CGI de-aging is most obvious, and while it plays better in motion on the screen than individual still shots would initially indicate, it doesn't always work (and even with all the digital trickery, there is nothing more distracting in THE IRISHMAN than Scorsese's inexplicable casting of rapper/chef Action Bronson as a casket salesman). Fortunately, the scenes with 76-year-old De Niro playing a 25-year-old Sheeran (with Pesci calling him "kid") are brief, and no matter how much the lines on his digitally-tweaked face are smoothed, he's still walking like a guy in his mid 70s. But once Sheeran hits his 40s and 50s, the effect is much less jarring and your eyes make the necessary adjustments, even if De Niro's eyes too often look like Johnny Depp's Whitey Bulger contact lenses from BLACK MASS. The de-aging of Pesci and Pacino is significantly less drastic since they aren't at any point required to portray themselves 50 years younger: 79-year-old Pacino plays Hoffa from his 40s to his death at 62, and 76-year-old Pesci plays Bufalino from his 40s to his death at 91.
THE IRISHMAN probably doesn't need to run 208 minutes, but with Scorsese and this cast, it's not exactly wasted time (one wishes Keitel had more to do, though he does get one great scene reminding a young Sheeran that he fucked up and Bufalino basically saved his life). It's such pure cinematic joy seeing De Niro, Pacino (his first time working with Scorsese), and Pesci inspired and doing their best work in years that they're instantly forgiven for the likes of DIRTY GRANDPA, HANGMAN, and 8 HEADS IN A DUFFEL BAG. De Niro carries the emotional weight and is in nearly every scene, and Pacino does his shouty Pacino thing but keeps it in check and accurate to the character (and he's a more credible Hoffa than the prosthetic nose attached to the face of Jack Nicholson in 1992's HOFFA). Another complex performance comes from an unexpected source: as the soft-spoken Bufalino, the semi-retired Pesci, in just his third film appearance in 20 years, plays it subdued and totally against type, often as the voice of calm even when he's being ruthless and manipulative. It's a smart approach for a film that already has a bloviating Pacino, but by dialing down the "Funny how?" routine that defined his volatile performances in GOODFELLAS and CASINO, Pesci makes Bufalino even more subtly intimidating. That feeling is never more apparent than in his interactions with Sheeran's daughter Peggy (Lucy Gallina as a child, Anna Paquin as an adult), who is never receptive to "Uncle Russell"'s affections no matter how hard he tries. She knows what he and her father do for a living and lets them know it with her silence, and in his reactions, Bufalino is both angry and hurt. There's been some criticism leveled at Scorsese and screenwriter Steven Zaillian (SCHINDLER'S LIST, GANGS OF NEW YORK) for giving Peggy almost no dialogue, but that ends up being another example of film writers and bloggers missing the point to score woke cred--Peggy's silence and her withering glares are reminders of their criminal misdeeds. Bufalino is a cold, calculating, powerful mob boss who desperately wants Peggy's approval and will never have it, much like Sheeran will never be granted forgiveness after an adult Peggy can instantly see in her father's demeanor and his nervous drinking that he had something to do with Hoffa's disappearance. She can see it when the news breaks on TV, registering her disgust that it's been several days and he has yet to even call Hoffa's wife Jo (Welker White, so memorable as Lois in GOODFELLAS, refusing to go on Henry Hill's drug run without her lucky hat). When she finally spits out a terse "Why haven't you called her?," it cuts right through Sheeran.
THE IRISHMAN is always compelling, but it's a slower and more meditative piece than GOODFELLAS or CASINO. In many ways, it can be seen as a spiritual relative to De Niro's own 2006 directing effort THE GOOD SHEPHERD, though it's not somber and serious all the time (there's a great running gag where each new gangster character is introduced with a caption detailing when and how he was eventually killed). It really becomes something special in the last half hour when age, time and guilt take their toll on Sheeran. This home stretch packs an emotional wallop and helps put a lot of what's happened over the preceding three hours into perspective. And it's that perspective that a younger Scorsese wouldn't have had the life experience to create circa MEAN STREETS or GOODFELLAS. Ranging in age from 76 to 80, Scorsese, De Niro, Pacino, Pesci, and Keitel all appear to be well and with hopefully much more to give (even though this feels like the perfect career capper for all the major players), but at the same time, there's the inevitable. They're still here but these are their autumnal years. They could've done a convincing job of acting that in their younger days, but their advancing ages and their own sense of mortality give THE IRISHMAN a poignancy and an added resonance--for them and for the fans who have followed them over the decades--that just isn't there in any of their past gangster films.
KNIVES OUT (US - 2019) Written and directed by Rian Johnson. Cast: Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Lakeith Stanfield, Christopher Plummer, Margaret Langford, Jaeden Martell, Riki Lindhome, Frank Oz, Edi Patterson, K Callan, Noah Segan, M. Emmet Walsh, Marlene Forte. (PG-13, 130 mins) Pop culture artifacts have always served as accurate reflections of the era in which they were produced, and when the dust settles, the wildly and wickedly entertaining KNIVES OUT will go down as one of the most razor-sharp critiques of the Age of Trump. It may draw from the mysteries of Agatha Christie and play like an elaborate redux of CLUE, but with its cast of greedy, deplorable heirs content to live off Daddy's wealth and fame, and the daughter of an illegal immigrant who ends up the target of their white privilege wrath, KNIVES OUT isn't exactly subtle. It's ultimately a perfect metaphor for the whole idea of the 2019-2020 now of this moment, not just in the political and social divide but also the rage and the malignant narcissism that have become commonplace, and it's best thing writer/director Rian Johnson has done since his 2006 debut BRICK. That's certainly not to slight 2012's LOOPER in any way, but perhaps after dealing with everything that came with making something as huge as STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI, KNIVES OUT almost seems like a back-to-basics breather of sorts, even with its labyrinthine plot, endless twists and turns, and a large cast of characters with ever-shifting alliances and an eagerness to talk shit and throw everyone else under the bus.
It's best going into this sly whodunit as cold as possible, since the surprises start fairly early never stop (NO SPOILERS). World-famous mystery novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) is found dead by his housekeeper Fran (Edi Patterson) in his hidden study on the third floor of his mansion the morning after his 85th birthday party. The cause of death is assumed to be suicide as he appears to have slashed his own throat. Detective Elliott (Lakeith Stanfield) and doofus-y state trooper/Thrombey superfan Wagner (Noah Segan) are conducting a routine investigation of what looks like an open-and-shut case. But it quickly reveals almost the entire Thrombey clan to be a pit of vipers who, at best, are shamelessly salivating over their inheritance and, at worst, displaying no shortage of reasons to be glad the old man is gone. There's Thrombey's eldest child, daughter Linda Drysdale (Jamie Lee Curtis), who constantly crows about building her successful business on her own from the ground up even though everyone knows she started it with a $1 million loan from her dad; her husband Richard (Don Johnson), who had a testy private conversation with his father-in-law the afternoon of the party; Thrombey's son Walt (Michael Shannon), who manages his father's publishing house and is frustrated by his dad's refusal to allow movie and TV adaptations of his work despite being offered a ton of money by Netflix; Joni Thrombey (Toni Collette) is a new age-y Instagram influencer and the widow of Thrombey's late son, and lives a cushy, carefree life on an annual allowance from her father-in-law, who also covers the college tuition of her daughter Meg (Katherine Langford); Ransom Drysdale (Chris Evans) is the son of Linda and Richard, the black sheep of the family and a lifelong problem child (as if the name "Ransom Drysdale" doesn't already render him pre-ordained to be a complete prick), who stormed out of the party after a verbal spat with his grandfather and then skips the funeral while making sure to show up for the reading of the will; and Walt's wife Donna (Riki Lindhome), and teenage son Jacob (Jaeden Martell), a Ben Shapiro-like alt-right troll who spends all of his time owning the libs on social media and calling his cousin Meg a "snowflake." Finally, there's Great Nana (K Callan), Harlan's mother ("His mother? How old is she?" Elliott asks Linda, who replies "No one knows"), who says almost nothing but sees everything.
The lone outsider is Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas, in what should be a star-making performance), Thrombey's caregiver who was hired after a recent back injury but who came to be a trusted friend and confidante to the old man. Everyone considers her "part of the family" even though they aren't entirely sure where she's from, alternately calling her Brazilian, Uruguayan, Paraguayan, or Ecuadorian because they really don't know the difference. It isn't long before Elliott is deferring the investigation to one Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), a wily Southern gentleman of a private eye and a bit of a celebrity in his field (a star-struck Joni gushes "I read a tweet about a New Yorker article about you!") who's been hired by an anonymous client to get to the bottom of an alleged suicide that's starting to look more and more like foul play. Blanc presses more than the ineffective cops when he rightly suspects that old Harlan went on a scorched earth bridge-burning with some his family on the day of his birthday and more than one family member's life would be a lot easier if he was no longer around. Blanc finds an unexpected Watson to his Holmes in Marta, who he deduces is the most trustworthy ally in the house because everyone in the Thrombey family knows she has a rare condition where she vomits if she tells a lie (and yes, that's mined for laughs on numerous occasions).
Almost everyone in the ensemble gets a chance to claim the spotlight, with de Armas (who's really the star of the movie) making a charming and resourceful heroine and Craig getting to show some comedic chops in a role that falls somewhere between Hercule Poirot and Jason Sudeikis' "Maine Justice" judge on SNL (Ransom: "What is this? CSI: KFC?"). KNIVES OUT masterfully balances suspense, blistering laughs at the expense of the 1% (multiple characters refer to Jacob as "the little Nazi," and watch Johnson's Trump-supporting Richard blast immigrants while thoughtlessly handing Marta his empty plate, proof that even when she's an invited guest at Thrombey's birthday party, they still only see her as "the help") and frequently self-aware humor, as when Elliott describes the Thrombey estate as "living in a Clue board" or when he reacts to an obligatory, out-of-nowhere car chase by declaring "That was the dumbest car chase ever." Johnson errs slightly by sidelining too many of the film's more vigorous supporting actors in the second half (Curtis, in particular, is on fire here, and we're long overdue for the Don Johnsonssaince that COLD IN JULY would've started in a perfect world), but the richly-textured and intricately-constructed KNIVES OUT is an absolute blast from beginning to end, culminating in a beautifully cathartic final shot that ends it on a perfect note.
THE FAN (US - 1981) Directed by Edward Bianchi. Written by Priscilla Chapman and John Hartwell. Cast: Lauren Bacall, James Garner, Maureen Stapleton, Hector Elizondo, Michael Biehn, Anna Maria Horsford, Kurt Johnson, Feiga Martinez, Dwight Schultz, Reed Jones, Charles Blackwell, Dana Delany, Griffin Dunne, Terence Marinan, Lesley Rogers, Robert Weil. (R, 95 mins) "Can there be more than one 'worst-picture-I-ever-made?'" - James Garner on 1981's THE FAN in his memoir The Garner Files, two pages after declaring 1966's MISTER BUDDWING the worst picture he ever made. It's a pretty safe bet that during the glory days of the Golden Age of Hollywood, Lauren Bacall never envisioned herself decades later starring in a trashy slasher movie where the killer says "How would you like to be fucked with a meat cleaver?" That line is one of the more memorable elements of THE FAN, which opened in the spring of 1981 to almost unanimous pans from critics before making a quick exit from theaters. It didn't help that Bacall openly trashed it during the press junket, saying that the end result bore little resemblance to the original script she was given, but it was also plagued by bad timing, with its story of a legendary movie star being stalked by a crazed fan maybe not sounding like a fun night at the movies and coming off as a little too queasily exploitative just six months after the December 1980 murder of John Lennon by deranged fan Mark David Chapman. History would repeat itself to a certain extent in 1982 when both THE SEDUCTION (news anchor Morgan Fairchild is stalked by psycho fan Andrew Stevens) and VISITING HOURS (news anchor Lee Grant is stalked by psycho fan Michael Ironside) both underperformed at the box office around the same time that RAGING BULL co-star Theresa Saldana miraculously survived being stabbed nearly a dozen times in broad daylight by an obsessed fan. THE FAN does allow Bacall to indulge her passion at the time--she was only sporadically acting on the big screen by this point, with her primary focus being Broadway and live theater, which earned her a Tony for APPLAUSE in 1970 and would win her another for WOMAN OF THE YEAR later in 1981--but it's also a product of its era. And with the success of slasher films like HALLOWEEN and FRIDAY THE 13TH, and the controversial buzz around Brian De Palma's DRESSED TO KILL (the latter two hitting theaters while THE FAN was in production), concessions had to made to the trends of the day. Producer Robert Stigwood, then riding high on SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER and GREASE, wasn't seeing eye-to-eye with director Waris Hussein (THE POSSESSION OF JOEL DELANEY), the latter wanting the more traditional psychological thriller approach that drew Bacall to the project.
After clashing with Stigwood and Paramount execs over their demand for more shock value, violence and gore, Hussein exited during pre-production (he either quit or was fired, depending on who's telling the story), and Stigwood brought in an unlikely replacement in rookie Edward Bianchi, who was already developing a sequel to SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, a gig he landed because Stigwood was impressed with some Dr. Pepper commercials that he directed. Bianchi was pulled off of the SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER sequel (which was eventually made in 1983 by Sylvester Stallone as STAYING ALIVE) and handed THE FAN, a production that was already troubled long before its star, tough as nails and not one to suffer fools gladly, became increasingly surly when she realized the movie that was being made wasn't going to be the one for which she signed on.
Based on a 1978 novel by Bob Randall, THE FAN, just out in an extras-packed Blu-ray from Scream Factory because physical media is dead, stars a perfectly-cast Bacall as Sally Ross, an aging Hollywood actress who's in NYC to begin rehearsals for a high-profile Broadway musical. She's also trying to patch things up with her ex-husband Jake Berman (James Garner), a director who's in town working on his latest movie and has already hooked up with a much-younger ingenue. She's got enough going on that her loyal assistant Belle (Maureen Stapleton) hasn't alerted her to the disturbing and increasingly threatening and sexually explicit letters being sent by an obsessed fan named Douglas. The fan is Douglas Breen (Michael Biehn, three years before THE TERMINATOR), a weirdo who alienates his co-workers (including a young Dana Delany in her first movie) in a record store and spends his free time having imaginary candlelit dinners with Sally in his apartment, which has become a shrine to the star. He makes it very clear in his letters that he is the perfect lover for Sally ("I have all the necessary equipment to make you very, very happy"), that no one loves her as much as he does, and that nothing will stop them from being together. Belle writes back and basically tells him to get lost, and an offended Douglas follows Belle from the rehearsal studio to the subway, where he attacks her with a straight razor. Belle survives but can't give much useful information to Andrews (Hector Elizondo), the detective on the case. Enraged that Sally is ignoring him, Douglas breaks into her apartment while she's at rehearsal and kills her maid, prompting Sally to take a leave of absence from the show and hole up at her secluded beach house. Douglas then fakes his own death after cruising in a gay bar, killing his similarly-built hookup, leaving a suicide note, and burning the body beyond recognition to make the police close the case and to give Sally a false sense of security to return to the production, where he is determined to be with her the night of the show's triumphant debut.
Buoyed by one of Pino Donaggio's most Pino Donaggio-esque scores, THE FAN is really busting its ass to be DRESSED TO KILL II, but Edward Bianchi is no Brian De Palma. He does alright for a first-time director dealing with a diva who was unhappy throughout the shoot, but THE FAN simply doesn't have the stylized verve and panache to compete with anything De Palma was doing at the time. Two big suspense set pieces are pulled off in bland fashion by Bianchi, and one wonders what De Palma could've done with the subway stalking and razor-slashing of Belle, or the YMCA swimming pool murder where Douglas kills Sally's co-star (Kurt Johnson), by swimming underneath him and holding up a knife that slices him open as he passes above. Bianchi, now 77 and looking at least a decade younger in an interview on the Blu-ray, toiled in relative anonymity until the 2000s (his only other feature film to date is the 1991 straight-to-video Cyndi Lauper comedy OFF AND RUNNING), when he became one of cable TV's busiest directors on shows like THE WIRE, DEADWOOD, and BOARDWALK EMPIRE. He's still active, most recently helming episodes of GET SHORTY, CITY ON A HILL, and YELLOWSTONE. Biehn, then largely unknown with a couple of movie credits (the comedies COACH and HOG WILD), acquits himself as well as he can in a role that doesn't give him much to do other than look and act like a total creep, while Garner, fresh off a six-season run on THE ROCKFORD FILES, seems to be coasting through in a minor supporting role just to hang out with good friend Bacall. He's so inconsequential to anything that happens that he seems to actually show himself out of the movie along with Stapleton and Elizondo after Sally's performance and is never seen again. This was Garner and Bacall's third project together in as many years, after she guest-starred on a two-part ROCKFORD FILES in 1979 and they co-starred in Robert Altman's little-seen 1980 comedy HEALTH. The pair were rumored to be an item over 1979 and 1980 while Garner was separated from his wife Lois, with whom he eventually reconciled and remained with until his death at 86 in July 2014, a month before Bacall passed at 89.
But for better or worse and whether she liked it or not, THE FAN is Bacall's movie, and a good chunk of the third act devoted to the premiere of the elaborate stage production, complete with her singing the Razzie-nominated Marvin Hamlisch/Tim Rice composition "Hearts, Not Diamonds," seems to be a move to placate her to some degree. The end result is a compromise that satisfied no one--it's too trashy and sleazy to appeal to older moviegoers who followed Bacall since her days with Bogie in the 1940s, those who liked Garner on TV, or those who wanted an old-fashioned Hitchcockian thriller, but it wasn't over-the-top enough to appease the young gorehounds looking for the next FRIDAY THE 13TH. THE FAN was eventually embraced as a cult movie by the gay community for its camp value, particularly all the time devoted to the truly bizarre Broadway production, which at times makes it feel like what might've happened if Bob Fosse made a slasher movie.
