Movie Review: Switchback (1997)

A serial murderer action mystery, Switchback dips its toes in a multitude of genres and ultimately fails to find a firm foundation.

At a typical suburban home, a babysitter is murdered and a child abducted. Separately, in Texas, Sheriff Buck Olmstead (R. Lee Ermey) is dealing with a nasty double murder at a motel room, plus an impending election challenge from his rival Jack McGinnis (William Fichtner). Meanwhile, on lonely rural backroads, Bob Goodall (Danny Glover) picks up mysterious hitchhiker Lane Dixon (Jared Leto), and then saves him from a beating at a redneck bar. FBI agent Frank Lacrosse (Dennis Quaid) shows up to investigate the motel murders, believing them to be the work of an elusive knife-wielding serial murderer that Frank has been chasing for a long time.

After initially clashing, Buck gradually believes Frank's hunch that the serial killer is nearby, and the connection to the babysitter murder and child abduction is revealed. Bob and Lane strike up a friendship, with Lane demonstrating his sharp abilities with a knife to save the life of a choking restaurant patron, and Bob seemingly on friendly terms with every bar owner, motel keeper and train engineer in the Texas backwaters. With Buck heading for a defeat in his reelection campaign, Frank revealing his true agenda, and more FBI agents descending on the scene, the killer strikes again as a showdown on board a train looms large.

Written and directed by Jeb Stuart (best known for writing Die Hard and The Fugitive), Switchback is character rich and has no shortage of ambition and ideas, but is never able to pull together a cohesive, compelling narrative. Combining slasher-horror scenes, a serial killer mystery, rural small-town politics, agents following their personal agenda plus an action-packed (but mindless) climax on-board a speeding train, Switchback bounces around looking for a theme or structure, and instead finds fragments of ideas which don't quite fit together.

It does not help that there are plenty of critical plot holes. This is a script that demands plenty of coincidences to work, with the final, supposedly carefully planned showdown between killer and pursuer only taking place after frantic and unlikely stumbling through the snow by all parties, with several spectacularly overturned cars thrown into the bargain.

Worse is the absence of any meaningful backstory for the serial killer. Switchback is to be commended for spending plenty of time with the perpetrator of all the murders, both before and after his identity is revealed, but it is time mostly wasted. Why this man kills is never explained.

With no shortage of intriguing characters populating rough and ready Texas locations, the performances oscillate between miscast and intriguing. Dennis Quaid appears rather uninterested as the sombre agent Frank Lacrosse, tortured by dark secrets of his own. Danny Glover is almost too jovial but certainly memorable as Bob, the traveler who knows everyone by name. Jared Leto is intensely magnetic as the young hitchhiker Lane with a disproportionately dark past. R. Lee Ermey and William Fichtner add plenty of colour as sheriffs dueling in both law enforcement and politics. For whatever reason, Stuart does not come up with any major roles for women in his sprawling script.

Switchback is not bad; just unfortunately clumsy, a case of too many ideas backing into each other.

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Movie Review: Bad Boys (1983)

A juvenile penitentiary drama, Bad Boys is an uncompromising look at youth gone bad. A young Sean Penn supported by a dedicated cast ensures a compelling experience.

In Chicago, teenager Mick O'Brien (Penn) already has a long record of increasingly violent crimes. His girlfriend J.C. (Ally Sheedy) is sure that he will soon cross the line and end up incarcerated. Paco (Esai Morales) is another teenager getting involved in the drug trade, and his young Hispanic gang runs afoul of another local group of black thugs. A wild three-way street shoot-out at midnight ends with several dead bodies, and Paco's young brother is killed by Mick's out-of-control car as he tries to flee the police. Mick is arrested and sentenced to Rainford Juvenile Correctional Facility. Paco vows revenge.

At Rainford, counsellor Ramon Herrera (Reni Santoni) tries to help Mick change his ways. But Mick is preoccupied with survival within the jungle laws of the facility. He establishes a friendship of sorts with his cellmate Horowitz (Eric Gurry), an impish smartaleck who thrives by outsmarting the goons. The cellblock is run by a hierarchy of prisoners, and at their head are the brutal duo of Viking (Clancy Brown) and Tweety (Robert Lee Rush). As bad as things are for Mick, they are about to get a lot worse, with an enraged Paco targeting J.C. as part of his plan to avenge his brother's death.

Directed with notable fluidity by Rick Rosenthal, Bad Boys embraces many of the clichés expected in prison dramas, but then polishes them to a new shine. Helped enormously by the charismatic Penn and a supporting young cast fully immersed into their roles, Rosenthal does not glamourize the male-dominated violence that rules the detention centre. Rather, Bad Boys presents a jungle behind fences that serves to worsen the lives of kids already caught up in the jungle of the streets. Incarceration simply confirms that violence and cruelty are what is needed to survive.

This is not an easy film to watch. There are no intervals of humour or any form of relief, and the uncut version offers up 123 minutes of ever increasing agony. In the opening 30 minutes Rosenthal effectively sketches in the sorry lives of Mick and Paco, setting up the rest of the drama to unfold mainly within the grim walls of the juvenile detention centre. As Mick struggles to adapt to the new power dynamics now governing his life, the brief interludes back on the outside are just as disturbing: the decline of Paco's revenge-driven life accelerates, with J.C. on the receiving end of his rage.

Bad Boys is true to its title and set in the world of boys who may never have a chance to become men. There are a few adults in the film, but they are almost irrelevant. The mothers of Mick and Paco have already made all the key mistakes and are now ineffective or uninterested in their sons' lives. The men who run the detention centre talk tough but are next to useless. The animals run this zoo, and ironically it is often the zookeepers who are hiding in cages.

Rosenthal succeeds in giving many of the prisoners distinct personalities, with Horowitz emerging as a memorable nerd with a mean streak, while Viking is the sort of brute who will go only as far as his outsized muscles will take him, given the scarcity of any smarts. The detention centre is also filled with the expected assortment of rapists, black market traders, and victims.

Sean Penn, at around 22 years old when Bad Boys was filmed, gives the film its heart and soul. Mick is standing on the crossroads of where life can take him, and at its core this is the story of a young man getting a close-up view of the hell that awaits him down the path that he has so far chosen. Penn gives Mick a sorrowful humanity that strongly hints at the salvation that may lie within. Mick's one advantage is that he has a person who believes in him. J.C. (Ally Sheedy's impressive debut) plays the dual role of the girl who should know better than to hang out with the likes of Mick, while also being his only guiding light to a potentially better future.

Bad Boys aches for the youth left behind in society's sewers, and offers only the slightest hope that one out of many can crawl out of the filth.

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The Movies Of Val Kilmer

All movies starring Val Kilmer and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Top Gun (1986)

True Romance (1993)

Tombstone (1993)

Batman Forever (1995)

Heat (1995)

Wonderland (2003)

The Missing (2003)

Alexander (2004)

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

The Snowman (2017)

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Killing Season (2013)

A personal revenge story set in the aftermath of the Bosnian war, Killing Season updates an old concept into a new setting but otherwise dissolves into tiresome and gory territory.

Benjamin Ford (Robert De Niro) was a member of the NATO ground forces that intervened to end the war in Bosnia. Ford's unit liberated a prison death camp and captured Serbian soldiers belonging to the feared Scorpions militia. The NATO soldiers summarily and extrajudicially execute the Scorpions with bullets to the back of the head, but Emil Kovač (John Travolta), the man shot by Ford, survived.

Years later Ford is living in the seclusion of a remote cabin in Tennessee's Appalachian Mountains. In Belgrade, Kovač buys information that reveals Ford's identity, and sets off to find and seek revenge on the man who shot him. Pretending to be a big game hunter Kovač contrives a chance meeting with Ford and initially pretends to befriend the American, inviting him to join his hunt. But Ford soon realizes that he is the prey, and the two men are embroiled in a deadly game of torture, interrogation and survival far away from civilization.

Simplifying a global conflict down to a man-on-man duel is an old cinematic premise and there is limited new material to work with in the sparse Evan Daugherty script, so Killing Season goes looking for fresh angles in the blood-drenched corners of the forest. Director Mark Steven Johnson unfortunately steers the film into a horror ride of inhumanity, the two men taking turns to inflict extremes of pain and suffering.

Ford and Kovač have no qualms about resorting to the worst abuses and most barbarous methods, from arrows in the mouth (surprisingly survivable) to upside down hangings (worse than it sounds) and lemonade-and-salt (rather than water) boarding (weirder than it sounds). The film becomes an ordeal to be survived rather than a cerebral experience to be enjoyed. The meaningful interaction between the men about war, its impact on the men and how they are much more alike than different is decent, but has been seen before in many other and better films. The substantive dialogue occupies a grand total of perhaps seven out of the 91 minutes of running time.

A subplot about Ford's estrangement from his son's family is undercooked to the point of irrelevance. With therefore nothing else going on except two men conducting a private war, Travolta and De Niro have to be good, and the two veterans deliver committed performances. Travolta carries a thick Serbian accent throughout, and it sounds authentic if quite difficult to penetrate. De Niro, around 69 at the time of filming is surprisingly physical and agile.

Killing Season goes looking for big game, but only finds a couple of reliable warhorses.

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Movie Review: Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing (1955)

A Hong Kong-set post-war romantic drama, Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing has a few good ideas about multi-racial relationships, but also gets bogged down in a generally unimaginative script.

In Hong Kong of 1949, Dr. Han Suyin (Jennifer Jones) is a prominent Eurasian doctor working at a busy hospital. A widow, Suyin has decided not to get involved in any further romantic relationships. But then she meets American foreign correspondent Mark Elliott (William Holden), who openly admits to being married but estranged from his Singapore-based wife. Mark is persistent in his pursuit of Suyin, and gradually she grows attached to him.

After several dates they become a couple, despite the wagging tongues of Hong Kong's social elites. Suyin questions whether a Eurasian woman can ever be accepted as the partner of an American man, and after an argument abruptly travels to China to reconnect with her family elders. Mark does not give up and proposes marriage, but complications await in the form of securing a divorce from his wife, while the eruption of the Korean War adds another obstacle to happiness.

Directed by Henry King as an adaptation of the autobiographical novel by Han Suyin, Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing is traditional romance with all the expected impediments. Suyin and Mark have different ethnicities and backgrounds, he is married, she is widowed and happy to remain unattached, and her traditional family is uncomfortable with a modern, cosmopolitan union.

The more original aspects of the film revolve around Suyin forging ahead with establishing a strong identity unencumbered by her mixed heritage, and resolutely ignoring those who wish to believe that a Eurasian woman cannot be a respected doctor or the lover of an American man. The Hong Kong backdrop, with many scenes filmed on location, and the rumblings of the communist revolution in nearby China, also add some interest.

But otherwise, the film trundles along fairly slowly, the romance taking its time to ignite and then simmering quietly. The script singularly focuses on Suyin and Mark, and they are front and centre and almost alone in every scene, creating a rather claustrophobic environment with no relief from the travails of two people. There are very few supporting characters, with Isobel Elsom as the insufferable local society gossip Adeline Palmer-Jones the most prominent.

William Holden and Jennifer Jones apparently could not stand each other while filming, but on the screen they generate sufficient chemistry to make for believable lovers. With so little else going on the two stars had to be good to make the movie tolerable, and they do make the best of their characters.

Less helpful is a suffocatingly overcooked music score that explodes into unnecessary flourishes at every opportunity, and deploys the strings of the title song seemingly every 90 seconds. Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing is passionate enough but also suffers from the creative clumsiness evident in its title.

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Movie Review: Fantastic Voyage (1966)

A unique science fiction adventure about a group of miniaturized scientists traveling through a human body, Fantastic Voyage is full of bright ideas brought to life with energetic execution and admirable special effects.

The US is embroiled in a secret race with the Soviet Union to master miniaturization technology for military purposes. Scientist Jan Benes defects to the US, but suffers a brain injury in the process and slips into a coma. Benes has key knowledge that could help in overcoming the 60 minute limit currently hampering miniaturization efforts. At the secret Combined Miniaturized Deterrent Forces facility, General Carter (Edmond O'Brien) recruits agent Grant (Stephen Boyd) to provide security on-board the experimental submarine Proteus, which is about to be miniaturized and injected into Benes' bloodstream to find and remove the damage affecting his brain. The rest of the submarine team consists of Captain Owens (William Redfield), human physiology expert Dr. Michaels (Donald Pleasence), laser surgeon Dr. Duval (Arthur Kennedy) and his assistant Cora (Raquel Welch).

Carter and Grant suspect that there is a traitor within the group, and once the journey starts inside Benes' body, little goes according to plan. Michaels suffers from claustrophobia, the submarine is buffeted by turbulence and knocked off course. The laser surgery tool is sabotaged, and the sub suffers an air supply leak. A re-route requires a dangerous trip through the heart, forcing Carter to order that Benes' heart be temporarily stopped. With time running out, the crew decide to take a hazardous short-cut through the inner ear to the brain, but again there are problems, as the mission is jeapordized by the unknown traitor and Benes' own body working to defend itself against the foreign objects floating within it.

Combining a 1950s sci-fi mentality with 1960s special effects, Fantastic Voyage is visionary kitsch. With the space race in full swing and the cold war at high heat, there is no denying the inventiveness of turning the exploration theme inwards, and transforming the concept of flying through endless space into navigating the smallest capillaries of the human body. The Harry Kleiner screenplay (with four others sharing story and adaptation credits) efficiently introduces the set-up, and cleverly integrates the not-yet-perfect miniaturization science into the cold war tension, with secret military labs and threats from saboteurs thrown in to create numerous opportunities for drama.

Director Richard Fleischer and cinematographer Ernest Laszlo then weave together the visuals, and create a creditable environment with a succession of stunning backdrops mostly inspired by ocean depths. For the most part, the special effects have held up remarkably well.

The adventures of Proteus within the human body are never dull, the incredible obstacles and dangers of traveling through the human body becoming a thrill ride heightened by the subversive attempts to sabotage the mission. Fleischer constructs the film in the form of an obstacle course with a surprise around every corner. The scientists are forced to rely on their ingenuity to problem solve on the fly, including frequent excursions out of the submarine to circumvent, fix, or innovate their way through the latest crisis.

Slightly less successful are the goings-on back in the secret lab as anxious military and medical types monitor the mission's progress. Some of the buffoonish attempts at tension and humour in the control room do not work, and fully deserve the parodies that they inspired in films like Airplane!.

The performances are generally bland, and this is a good thing, since there is enough stimulation in the premise, backdrops and special effects not to require flashy acting. Stephen Boyd, Donald Pleasence, Arthur Kennedy, Raquel Welch and William Redfield maintain an even keel. For the most part Welch remains subdued and is surprisingly convincing as a scientist's assistant. She stays under the wraps of her mundane submariner outfit, although late in the film she starts forgetting to fully zip up her top. Kennedy's Dr. Duval attempts some clunky philosophizing inspired by the journey through the human body, at regular intervals spouting weighty but meaningless musings about humanity, life and the order of things.

Innovative, audacious and sometimes campy, Fantastic Voyage lives up to its name.

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Movie Review: Terms Of Endearment (1983)

A family life drama-comedy with spectacular acting performances by a dream cast, Terms Of Endearment is a masterpiece of authentic emotions.

In Texas, Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine) has always been slightly paranoid and definitely overprotective of her only daughter Emma. Aurora was widowed at a young age, leaving her relationship with Emma as the one true connection in her life. When Emma (Debra Winger) grows into a young woman and decides to marry school teacher Flap Horton (Jeff Daniels), Aurora certainly does not approve, believing Flap to be unworthy. Around the same time, retired astronaut Garrett Breedlove (Jack Nicholson) moves into the house next door. A party-loving, womanizing and free-spirited bachelor, Garrett is a man denying his age.

Emma and Flap push ahead and get married anyway, and eventually start a family and move to Des Moines. As the years pass Aurora remains in close touch with her daughter, the two sharing their lives over frequent phone calls, and despite plenty of arguments and no shortage of agitation, their love and commitment to each other never wavers. Seeking physical closeness, Aurora finally works up the courage to start a relationship with Garrett, about 15 years after he became her neighbour. With three kids to raise and Flap's limited earning power causing a financial burden, Emma's marriage starts to seriously fray, and both she and Flap are subjected to extramarital temptations. The threat of another relocation and a serious illness are yet to come.

Directed and written by James L. Brooks in his directorial debut, and based on the Larry McMurtry book, Terms Of Endearment is a perfectly polished gem. For the full 131 minutes, not a scene is wasted, Brooks trusting his audience to keep up as the film gallops through the years using short, often funny and frequently poignant scenes. Chronicling the bond between Aurora and Emma from birth and through about 40 years of life, Brooks nails the ups and downs that define the unique cycles of frustration and happiness between mother and daughter, with undying love providing the sturdy foundation upon which two lives are lived.

Brooks' singular achievement is in creating uniquely memorable characters and then treating them with utmost realism. Aurora, Emma and Garrett are a simply unforgettable trio, three people living life on their own stubborn terms but yet behaving fully within the normal rules where selfishness, sacrifice and life's surprises require a steady stream of critical decisions. There are no heroics in Terms Of Endearment; just happiness and heartache generated by the life's little successes and failures.

And because laughs and tears punctuate life's milestones, Brooks includes plenty of both. The emotions are always there, but even at the darkest moments they rarely veer towards exaggerated agitation. In a peak moment of frustration Aurora does let loose at a hospital nurse station, but it's a scene that is equally funny and heartbreaking, capturing a devoted mother willing to move mountains for her daughter.

Terms Of Endearment features astounding acting from the three principals. Shirley MacLaine and Jack Nicholson deliver some of their best work in their long and celebrated careers. MacLaine won the Best Actress Academy Award for what may have been her last great performance, bringing to life Aurora as a proud woman of the South dealing with the changing times and her own evolving needs. Nicholson took a step back from the madness and murderous urges that had began to define him after The Shining and The Postman Always Rings Twice, and nabbed the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award as Garrett the astronaut, a man determined to turn his past celebrity into a life of irresponsible pleasure.

And Emma was undoubtedly Debra Winger's finest on-screen moment. Winger celebrates Emma as a feisty woman full of love, laughter and a singular determination to meet life on her own terms while forging friendships, sharing every moment with Aurora and adoring and tolerating Flap in equal measures. It's a performance for the ages, and Winger was also nominated as Best Actress but lost out to MacLaine.

In addition to Daniels, Danny DeVito as Aurora's long-time admirer and John Lithgow as Emma's amorous banker round out the cast.

Towards the end of Terms Of Endearment, Emma and Aurora share a moment. It's a brief locking of the eyes, without a word being spoken, Winger and MacLaine pouring their characters into a few seconds representing a lifelong bond, a breathtaking ending, a sorrowful beginning, a heartfelt thank you, and the meaning of love itself. It's an unforgettable instant in an enduring treasure of a movie.

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Movie Review: Wolf (1994)

The story of an American werewolf in corporate New York, Wolf shows promise as a metaphor for adults, but then loses its edge by insisting on following the childish werewolves-on-the-loose path.

Respected book editor-in-chief Will Randall (Jack Nicholson) is bitten by a wolf after a car accident in the snowy Vermont mountains. Back in New York, Will finds himself a victim of a corporate shuffle. Tycoon Raymond Alden (Christopher Plummer) is the new publishing house owner, and he demotes Will and assigns young and hungry marketing executive Stewart Swinton (James Spader) into his position. Will's life hits rock bottom when he discovers his wife Charlotte (Kate Nelligan) having an affair with Stewart.

But Will also starts to feel the after-effects of the wolf bite: his senses are amplified, he feels younger, more vigorous, and more aggressive. He meets Alden's daughter Laura (Michelle Pfeiffer), an aloof heiress, and starts to plot his revenge to reclaim his job and make Stewart and Charlotte suffer. But then Will starts to lose control of what is happening to him at night, when the werewolf within him emerges and goes hunting for blood and adventure. A brutal murder is then committed, and Will emerges as a suspect.

Directed by Mike Nichols, Wolf tries to appeal to two distinct audiences and by doing so fails them both. The first half displays promise as an analogy of the need for an emotional rebirth to survive middle age trauma, as Nichols explores the symbolism of Will discovering and then adopting wolf-like tactics to fight for his patch of the corporate and relationship jungle.

But once the film transitions in its second half to actual werewolf adventures, howlings in the night, wolves hunting deer and eventually murder and mayhem in Central Park, it veers sharply away from its intellectual premise. With this heavyweight cast there is nothing to be gained chasing special effects, blood, gore and werewolves battling each other, complete with incompetent detectives attempting to solve murder-by-wolf.

Mayhem caused by werewolves has of course been done before many times, and with much better horror and special effects, including in 1981's An American Werewolf In London. By insisting on chasing the thrill-seeking audience Wolf loses its purpose and surrenders the cerebral advantage.

Casting Jack Nicholson as a wolf is almost too easy, but he does a fine job adopting a more-is-less philosophy. Nicholson keeps Will sharp but low-key, and remains remarkably calm even when the werewolf transformations start. Laura Alden is an interesting but underwritten role, and Pfeiffer can't do much with it. More effective is Spader as the power-hungry Stewart Swinton, a shrewd natural wolf in man's clothing.

Wolf ends up being not scary enough, not gory enough, and not smart enough, as it howls at the moon of confused objectives.

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Movie Review: G.I. Jane (1997)

A military training action drama, G.I. Jane tackles the issue of gender equality in the armed forces but more often than not heads straight towards the most obvious clichés.

Veteran Texas Senator Lillian DeHaven (Anne Bancroft) strikes a sleazy deal with Department of Defence officials. The Navy will allow women to prove their combat capabilities by participating in a training program, in exchange for DeHaven facilitating the confirmation hearings for the incoming Secretary of the Navy. Navy analyst Lieutenant Jordan O'Neil (Demi Moore) is selected to be the first woman trainee, and she is thrust into the Navy SEAL-like Combined Reconnaissance Team program, considered the most arduous training regime offered by the military.

Command Master Chief Urgayle (Viggo Mortensen) runs the brutal training program, and with Jordan the only woman in a class full of male recruits, she is not expected to survive even the first week. Initially Jordan is provided with special treatment to help her compete, but she rejects the privileges and insists on being treated exactly like the men. With a determined Jordan making surprising progress through the physically punishing and mentally draining program, her success starts to make waves in Washington DC, where DeHaven is facing another crisis that will require more deal making.

Whenever G.I. Jane tries to expand its horizons beyond the training course, it stumbles awkwardly. The scenes in Washington featuring Senator DeHaven and a large group of faceless defence department suits never move beyond the most obvious theatre. Jordan's home life and romantic relationship is hard boiled in scenes so brief that next to nothing is known about her as a person. And the film ends with the ever so tiresome bromide of a class full of trainees suddenly thrust into a poorly defined actual combat mission. Hello undefined bad guys running around in the Libyan desert.

The film therefore lives and dies in the training program that Jordan and her fellow recruits are subjected to, and here director Ridley Scott does shine. The exercises designed to harden the trainees into well-honed fighting machines capable of withstanding whatever nature and enemies throw at them are long, detailed and almost physically exhausting to watch. Scott deploys his usual expertise in shadows and back-lighting, and along with cinematographer Hugh Johnson the film is bathed in spectral blue-green representing the nighttime home of special forces.

G.I. Jane is at its best when there is little dialogue and plenty of physical effort on display. Whenever the film moves towards humanizing the tension between Jordan, Urgayle and the many interchangeable men surrounding her it becomes obvious that the script (by David Twohy and Danielle Alexandra) is firmly stuck in first gear, and none of the characters can say anything or display any emotions beyond basic "women don't belong here / yes they do" clipped exchanges.

Demi Moore deserves a lot of credit for undergoing an intense physical training program to get in shape for the role of Jordan O'Neil. She shaves her head on-screen, performs all her own stunts and enjoys plenty of scenes showing off her buff body being put through the exhaustive training grind. Her acting is admirably intense, but that is all. G.I. Jane never succeeds in revealing much about Jordan except that she starts out resolute and gets ever more tenacious, in proportion to the number of people who want her to fail, and Moore is stuck in that box. Viggo Mortensen provides an interesting angle on the traditional ruthless training instructor persona, but the script cannot deliver an evolution to his poetry-loving ferocity.

G.I. Jane succeeds as an inside look at what it takes to be an elite soldier, but otherwise misfires when it comes to creating people and a story worth caring about.

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Movie Review: You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger (2010)

A routine Woody Allen slice-of-life comedy, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger offers typical vignettes on love, loss and transition, but little that is genuinely fresh.

In London, elderly couple Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) and Helena (Gemma Jones) have divorced after a long marriage. Helena is crushed, and turns to fortune teller Cristal (Pauline Collins) for advice. The easily impressed Helena is soon obsessed by Cristal, believing everything the fake clairvoyant tells her. Alfie, going through a full-fledged late-onset middle-age crisis and desperate to have a son, hooks up with voluptuous and trashy escort girl Charmain (Lucy Punch).

Sally (Naomi Watts) is Alfie and Helena's daughter, and she is stuck in a stagnant marriage with writer Roy (Josh Brolin), who has one bestseller and a string of subsequent failures to his name. Sally is eager to start a family but she and Roy are struggling financially and dependent on Helena's charity to survive. Roy's wandering eye soon turns to sexy neighbour Dia (Freida Pinto), an aspiring musician who is engaged to be married. Sally also finds herself growing increasingly attracted to her boss, suave art gallery owner Greg (Antonio Banderas).

Although the London setting provides a relatively original context for a Woody Allen movie, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger rarely ventures into any other new territory. Allen himself has frequently explored the themes of relationships in trouble, disintegrating marriages, winter-spring romances, and crushes among adults. The one new idea here may be Helena easily falling under the spell of Cristal and treating all her predictions as certainties, Allen probing the tendency of the elderly to more easily want to place unfounded faith in the improbable.

The film is delivered with some annoying and utterly unnecessary narration, but otherwise the style is comfortably familiar. The stories meld, the characters are connected, the behaviour is for the most part restrained and courteous. The agitations and annoyances that creep into mature relationships happily pump through the veins of all the couples, just beneath the surface and often unspoken until the rupture happens and its too late to repair the damage. Despite the various story lines and seven principal characters, the film wraps up in an efficient 100 minutes.

Allen and his cast create characters that are intriguing because of their utter normalcy. The performances are uniformly steady, with Gemma Jones and Naomi Watts the most prominent. Sideways drift driven by restlessness and causing unintended damage is the common thread, as is the desperate need for offspring as a destabilizing force. Sally and Roy initiate flirtations with Greg and Dia respectively, and both dalliances become serious fixations more due to the neglect of their marriage than any ill intent. Alfie still wants to father a son and runs away from the idea of growing old with Helena and into the arms of a gold digging slut, and it will take him some time to realize that he has turned a bad situation into something much worse.

You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger is one possible outcome for adults at the crossroads of a distressed romance. Left unsaid is that the stranger may also carry a ton of trouble.

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The Movies Of Tim Robbins

All movies starring Tim Robbins and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Top Gun (1986)

Howard The Duck (1986)

Bull Durham (1988)

The Player (1992)

The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

High Fidelity (2000)

Mystic River (2003)

Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy (2004, uncredited)

War Of The Worlds (2005)

Dark Waters (2019)

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.
The Movie Star Index is here.