I was reading through Phil's "Buying BluRays/DVDs You Don't Like" thread and this movie seemed to win the award for "Movie owned by the most people that is liked by no one." But it still didn't win Phil's thread because, for the most part, no one remembers buying it. Copies of it are... obtained. Given as a gift, packaged with a better movie, Christopher Walken for $3.99 is hard to pass up, old gypsy woman slipped it in your bag...
Whatever the reason, let's talk about why this movie exists and why it sucks so bad.
I'll just toss out a couple of ideas and leave the rest to y'all because you are much better at this whole movie thing than I am.
1) The terrible, terrible music. There is not a "suspenseful" scene that goes by without an overbearing "suspenseful" music cue to indicate how you're supposed to feel. That and the terrible song accompanying the terrible scene with the one douchebag and his girlfriend the "kidnap victim" make this a very bad movie.
2) Pulp Fiction cash in. Clearly this is one of the films inspired, partially in content and completely in narrative structure, by the success of Pulp Fiction. Hardnosed yet likable gangsters driving around talking about inconsequential things, the flashback story telling. It's pulp fiction powered by prep school kids. It's so incredibly blatant and so very poorly done.
3) The lack of likable characters. How is Denis Leary the only really likable guy in the movie? Denis Leary? The one person who seems halfway grounded in morality and reality is Ira and they go and make him a complete spaz.
4) Dialogue written to be performed in Intro to Acting classes. The movie is 75% monologues which can be chopped up and performed in about 2 minutes. I was done with my intro to acting classes by 97 but I absolutely promise you, if this movie was around, every guy that aspired to soap opera work would be working on a piece from this. Avery begging for his life at gun point, Jay Mohr describing how bad Walken really is, Leary talking about his dad and "the gene."
Appropriately, none of the writers of this movie ever went on to write another feature film. The director appears to have one more feature on his CV but after that it's nothing but television.
Still... Walken is fun in this. That alone makes it worth owning in my opinion... especially as I got it packaged with Rounders.
Edit: To fix grammatical ambiguity. I am sure that many of the people that own the film are liked.
Whatever the reason, let's talk about why this movie exists and why it sucks so bad.
I'll just toss out a couple of ideas and leave the rest to y'all because you are much better at this whole movie thing than I am.
1) The terrible, terrible music. There is not a "suspenseful" scene that goes by without an overbearing "suspenseful" music cue to indicate how you're supposed to feel. That and the terrible song accompanying the terrible scene with the one douchebag and his girlfriend the "kidnap victim" make this a very bad movie.
2) Pulp Fiction cash in. Clearly this is one of the films inspired, partially in content and completely in narrative structure, by the success of Pulp Fiction. Hardnosed yet likable gangsters driving around talking about inconsequential things, the flashback story telling. It's pulp fiction powered by prep school kids. It's so incredibly blatant and so very poorly done.
3) The lack of likable characters. How is Denis Leary the only really likable guy in the movie? Denis Leary? The one person who seems halfway grounded in morality and reality is Ira and they go and make him a complete spaz.
4) Dialogue written to be performed in Intro to Acting classes. The movie is 75% monologues which can be chopped up and performed in about 2 minutes. I was done with my intro to acting classes by 97 but I absolutely promise you, if this movie was around, every guy that aspired to soap opera work would be working on a piece from this. Avery begging for his life at gun point, Jay Mohr describing how bad Walken really is, Leary talking about his dad and "the gene."
Appropriately, none of the writers of this movie ever went on to write another feature film. The director appears to have one more feature on his CV but after that it's nothing but television.
Still... Walken is fun in this. That alone makes it worth owning in my opinion... especially as I got it packaged with Rounders.
Edit: To fix grammatical ambiguity. I am sure that many of the people that own the film are liked.
