Three and Half Stars out of Five
I expected to hate this movie (that's why I haven't seen it until now). But I was pleasantly surprised.
I'll spare you the plot details. Random thoughts:
TARRANTINO'S WRITING is frequently annoying. He has a remarkable facility with black dialogue-- he makes blacks sound remarkably like white film geeks writing black dialogue. I wonder if Sam Jackson was paid according to the number of times he said "Nigger"? If so, he made out like a bandit.
Sample Sam Jackson Dialogue:
JACKSON: Hand me that, there.
DeNIRO: What, this spoon.
JACKSON: Yeah, that nigger. I'm gonna use that nigger to eat this nigger.
DeNIRO: You mean your pudding?
JACKSON: Yeah, this nigger right here. mmmmm, MMM! This nigger is choco-licious, Nigger. Hey nigger, give me that nigger.
DeNIRO: The remote control?
JACKSON: Yeah, that motherfuckin' nigger. I'm gonna change the nigger and see if any good nigger's is on cable.
When Tarrantino isn't writing like a fucking retard, however, the dialoge is just fine.
CUTESY FLOURISHES: Tarrantino continues with cutesy flourishes. "Funny" captions, silly graphics. He opens the movie with a title-sequence that looks like it was used on an old episode of Columbo-- you know, how seventies TV shoes always used the same lame yellow titles. The whole opening is an attempt to convince you you're watching a seventies Movie of the Week. Why? I don't know. Just being cute.
THE ACTING is very good. I never comment on acting, but this Robert Forster cat is real re-discovery; his face, his voice, his mannerisms, his sad-sack eyes-- they tell you everything you need to know about his character. Tarrantino again saves a good actor from premature obscurity. Pam Grier's good, if nothing special, and Bridget Fonda's okay, which is special in itself. Sam Jackson is, I hate to say it, just Sam Jackson. This guy's good, but he's been in so many damn movies (the most for any non-porn actor this decade) he's just getting... repetitive.
One problem. Robert DeNiro. It's not that DeNiro is bad; it's just that Tarrantion casts him against type. DeNiro plays a low-energy sack of potatoes who barely says or does anything. He doesn't even give those great DeNiro mugs. He just sits there, doing nothing, not making funny faces.
I mean, why cast Robert DeNiro in this role? You must let DeNiro be DeNiro. The low-octane character here could have been played by Robert Wuhl on Thorazine.
THE MIDDLE: Tarrantino resorts to his well-worn Bag O Tricks and fractures the linearity of the timeline in the middle, to no good effect. Perhaps he just wanted to make a rather dull exchange seem interesting. But he failed. He just annoyed me. The "Big Exchange" was a simple nothing of plotting, and goofy nonlinear editing cannot turn it into The Sting.
THE END: Okay. Now, this isn't the sort of movie where you expect a big powerful ending. But...
(SPOILERS)
Sam Jackson brings Forster to his office, where Pam Grier waits in the dark with a gun. Now, it's obvious that Jackson is going to die. There's no suspense; you're not worried about Grier or Forster, since they have every advantage you can have. Jackson is just dead meat from the get-go.
Nor is it a "surprise" that the cops are there. You see Grier dial the cops; it's hardly a surprise that Keaton's in the back.
So I don't know here. What was the point? I don't expect a surprise, but a little suspense would have been nice.
Finally, then, Grier and Forster kiss, and then Grier drives away. Nothing bad here, except the ending is conspicuously, calculatedly, non-"Hollywood." Which is precisely what I expected.
(END SPOILER)
Overall, a reasonably entertaining movie. Sort of low-octane; often quiet and meandering. Likeable actors carry the thin story and slightness of the drama.
Oh, one more thing that annoyed me:
You can't say you've "Written" a movie unless you wrote both the story and screenplay. If different people handled the different tasks, there is no "written by" credit; there's a "Story by" credit, and a "Screenplay by" credit.
So, well, Tarrantino didn't write the story; it's from an Elmore Leonard novel (Rum Punch). So he can't say "Written and Directed by Quentin Tarrantino" like he always does.
So, does he say "Written for the Screen and Directed by Quentin Tarrantino," which is the right way to do it?
No, his credit is:
Written and Directed
for the screen
by Quentin Tarrantino
This annoys me. The "Written and Directed" is not a proper credit; it's credit-grabbing. The "for the screen" does not save it, because that applies to both writing and directing; and of course "Directed for the Screen" makes no fucking sense.
But Tarrantino NEEDED to say "Written and Directed." So he just did anyway.
