U Turn
**1/2
Cinema
Releases - April 24,
1998
Rated on a 4-star
scale. USA. Directed by Oliver Stone. Written by John Ridley; based on his
novel "Stray Dogs". Starring Sean Penn, Billy Bob Thornton, Powers Boothe,
Jennifer Lopez, Nick Nolte, Julie Hagerty, Joaquin Phoenix, Jon Voight, Claire
Danes.
However it opened is easily forgotten. It drifts
into existence unimportantly and unsurely. It has many different approaches
which don't quite mix. People ask the same questions again and again. People
change the tone of their voice and the reality of their words as their sentences
develop. Terrible things are set up and realised. It does not seem
real.
I am describing a bad dream, and at the same time
I am describing Oliver Stone's "U-Turn". Normally when we use
the term "a dream-like quality" in fiction we refer to an odd and unreal
quality we cannot place, and although this film could fit that description,
there are long stretches in it which really do feel like an actual dream.
Last year David Lynch managed to write a screenplay for "Lost Highway" which
contained the plot of a dream, but he didn't shoot it like one. Stone's new
film is as disorientated, unsure and literally hazy as a
dream.
The main character, to whom these dream-like events
are happening, is a young man called Bobby Cooper (Sean Penn). He seems cocky
and relaxed at first, but we soon learn he has gangsters looking to cut his
fingers and head off for thirteen thousand bucks. He pulls into a little
garage in a crummy Arizona town because his car radiator has blown, foolishly
leaving it with an obviously insane hick called Darrell (Billy Bob
Thornton).
Plodding around the dusty village, he converses
with a strange blind man (Jon Voight), who is surrounded by dogs, one dead,
one alive, before an eventually unlucky meeting with the flirtatious Grace
(Jennifer Lopez). Eventually the two kiss, and are caught by her husband
and father (yes) played by Nick Nolte, who is looking more like Kris
Kristofferson than ever. After he returns to plodding, he loses money in
a bizarre robbery, makes an enemy with a moronic cretin called TNT and messes
up his other hand trying to pull the top off a beer bottle.
After the forty-minute mark, "U-Turn" goes in
and out of this dream mode, occassionally switching to actual basic cinema,
successfully portraying Penn's nightmarish stress as his life becomes endangered
along with his freedom and possessions.
The above is how "U-Turn" plays out, that is until
a disastrous final fifteen or twenty minutes in which plot and character
twists are deemed to be important, at a point where the characters are wretched
and the plot has been confirmed as secondary to style. This embarassing ending
aside, the film works very well. It is strange and silly, but very interesting
and certainly watchable. Stone's editing often imitates the brilliant job
he did on "Natural Born Killers". The cinematography appropriately conveys
the unbearably hot sun and the misty atmosphere, literally and metaphorically.
The pop music and strange score are both used well.
"U-Turn" is not really worth seeing, because of
its ending's flaws, and is an oddly uncharacteristic film for Oliver Stone,
who describes it as a comedy-thriller. If it doesn't completely work as it
stands, it doesn't even make sense as a comedy-thriller, but I feel confident
that Stone will move on and return to form. All great artists have misguided
moments.
COPYRIGHT© 1998 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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