Clay Pigeons

Legendary movie producer Joel Silver (the man Saul Rubinek was making fun of as Lee Donowitz in True Romance) was once accused of casting movies like you would cast a TV commercial. As long as the look was right, it didn't matter how the performance was (the movie in question when that accusation was made, for the record, was Fair Game, starring Cindy Crawford). The same could be said for Clay Pigeons, a pitch black comedy-thriller that was clearly cast for the fringe fans of the indie scene. Vince Vaughn, Joaquin Phoenix, and Janeane Garofalo, in a movie that makes fun of killing people. It's an easy home run. The big difference between this and a Joel Silver movie is that this one worked.

As the movie opens, Clay (Phoenix) and his buddy Earl (I can never remember this guy's name, but he was the bad general in The Rock that looks a little like Crispin Glover) are shooting empty beer bottles, when Earl turns the gun on himself, distraught over the fact that Clay has been sleeping with his wife Amanda (Georgina Cates). Earl was smart about once thing: he made it look like Clay did him in. Clay can't exactly bring this straight to the police, since he already looks guilty, and to top things off they'll find out he was sleeping with Amanda, so he makes Earl's death look like a one car accident. Furious over the way Amanda has been treating him since her husband's death (which is to say, poorly), he gets drunk at a local watering hole and winds up shooting pool with Lester Long (Vaughn), who has a laugh that could kill a rattlesnake at fifty yards, and also happens to be a serial killer.

I won't spoil any more of the plot twists, and there are several left.

Clay Pigeons was directed by David Dobkin and written by Matt Healy, two men who, I must confess, I've never heard of before. But I'll give them props for this movie, which takes the most somber of scenes and in two seconds turns them hysterically funny (Earl's funeral gave me the biggest laugh of the movie). Two people involved with this movie I do know, however, are Ridley and Tony Scott, veteran action movie directors, who were executive producers to this movie. Imagine the coincidence, then, that a plot development revolves around a videotape copy of Ridley's directing debut, Alien.

If Dobkin has one visible talent, it's that he's really good with actors.  Vaughn relishes playing Lester (and perhaps warming up for Norman Bates), a smooth talking, easy going truck driver who clearly works by a different moral code. Georgina Cates' Amanda is deliciously damaged goods, who seems to have a cloud of cigarette smoke envelop her like Pig Pen. Garafalo, playing Agent Shelby for the FBI, has as the most fun playing detective since Frances McDormand in Fargo, shooting crushing one liners and occasionally having fun with evidence. Phoenix, (one of the few bright spots in last year's U-Turn) despite having the lead role, also has the most thankless role, the straight guy. But he does it well. The actor who damn near steals the movie, however, is Vince Vieluf, who played the local sherrif's Deputy, Barney. Perhaps it's a stereotype to play him as a doofus, but it worked for me.

The movie's biggest drawback is that it has no distinct look of its own. The shots of this cowpoke Montana town looked a lot like Oliver Stone's U-Turn, without the time lapse photography and crude edits. The clever angles, like Phoenix's head hitting his pillow, shot sideways so it looks like he's still standing up, was straight from Danny Boyle's Shallow Grave, and he took a few other tricks from Boyle as well. And the black comedy aspect of the movie lasts until about the halfway mark, where it accidentally turns into a straight thriller. There are still funny moments throughout, but nothing like the first thirty minutes. Nonetheless, I enjoyed this movie and would recommend it for fans of Vaughn and Garofalo.