Movie Review: Crash (1996)

A weird drama about sexuality fuelled by a fascination with car accidents, Crash pretends to have something important to say but fails to articulate. 

In Toronto, film producer James Ballard (James Spader) has an open marriage with Catherine (Deborah Kara Unger), and they both enjoy kinky sex with each other and with strangers. James is hurt in a head-on car collision and forced to recuperate at a hospital. He is strangely aroused by the idea and reality of vehicular carnage, and is soon having car sex with Dr. Helen Remington (Holly Hunter), who was in the other car involved in the crash. 

James, Catherine, and Helen are drawn into the strange orbit of Vaughan (Elias Koteas), a man obsessed with scars and death. In front of a live audience, Vaughan theatrically recreates famous car crashes that claimed celebrity lives. His entourage also includes Gabrielle (Rosanna Arquette), who needs braces to support severely damaged legs. A pernicious mix of arousal, sexual coupling, dangerous driving, and road crashes irresistibly draws the group together.

In adapting the J.G. Ballard book, director and writer David Cronenberg deserves some credit for going out there and looking for something new within the dark recesses of the adult human psyche, and his cast join him for a raw journey into a bizarre world. Filmed with an aloof, cold core dominated by mechanical eroticism, highways scarring cities, and traffic dominating the landscape, Crash invents a sexual fetish and runs with it.

The problem is that beyond the shock of the premise, the story has nowhere to go. The circle forming around the whacko Vaughan is too far gone to ever pause and generate sympathy. The characters are undefined and stuck in an emotional void only satisfied by pushing deeper into the invented space where crashes, scars, and sex come together. Not surprisingly the audience is left behind, somewhere between bewildered and exasperated by the incessant coupling and the concept of crunched automobiles as aphrodisiacs.

In the absence of a traditional narrative, the large blanks can be filled with any explanation. Pick from humanity subsumed by machines, crashes as metaphors for the human imperative to come together, a symbiotic cycle of machine damage causing human scars both physical and mental, and the uncomfortably close distance between flirting with death and creating life. It's all up for grabs, but all profound attempts at psycho analysis are, at best, bent out of shape.

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The Movies Of Deborah Kara Unger

All movies starring Deborah Kara Unger and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Crash (1996)

The Game (1997)

Payback (1999)

The Hurricane (1999)

Silent Hill (2006)

88 Minutes (2007)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Silent Hill (2006)

A horror ghost story, Silent Hill toys with a few decent ideas but cannot escape it's video game roots.

Sharon Da Silva (Jodelle Ferland) is the young adopted daughter of married couple Rose (Radha Mitchell) and Christopher (Sean Bean). Sharon sleepwalks, has nightmares about a place called Silent Hill, and draws frightening sketches while in a trance-like state. Rose's research identifies Silent Hill as an abandoned coal mining town in West Virginia, suffering from a long-burning underground fire and now considered a ghost town.

Against Christopher's wishes Rose drives Sharon towards Silent Hill. Along the way she tangles with police officer Cybil Bennett (Laurie Holden), then a car crash separates mother from daughter and Sharon disappears into the abandoned town. As she desperately tries to find her daughter Rose starts to encounter monstrous beings and horrifying imagery of violence and death in alternative dimensions, while Christopher teams up with police detective Thomas Gucci (Kim Coates) to try and find his family.

An adaptation of a 1999 survival horror game, Silent Hill is too repetitive and CGI dependent. Long stretches are consumed by Rose exploring spooky hallways and rooms within intimidating buildings, only to be attacked by a succession of pixel-created monsters. Given that Rose's death or incapacitation would mean the early end of the film, the lack of any real threat defangs the film's horror elements.

Director Christophe Gans compensates to some extent with reasonably impressive visuals and set designs, and if Silent Hill fails to deliver meaningful scares, it is at least good to look at. The abandoned town with fire burning underneath and ashes falling continuously from the sky is a spooky achievement.

Elsewhere distraught dad Christopher's parallel quest to try and find his wife and daughter is utterly useless, and it was an afterthought awkwardly added to the script to bolster the male content. Back in town, Rose gradually uncovers a mystery involving a bullied child, witch hunters, religious fanatics and a demon, with Deborah Kara Unger and Alice Krige joining the fun to try and explain a muddled narrative.

If there is a theme, it relates to fundamentalists creating their own hell as a happy place to justify their own existence. Radha Mitchell does the best she can within the confines of the material, and finally breaks out into kick-ass motherhood mode to end the nonsense.

Silent Hill is not entirely without merit, but this town needed more plots and fewer wandering corpses.

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Movie Review: The Hurricane (1999)

A boxing, prison and court room drama, The Hurricane is based on the real-life of champion boxer Ruben Carter. Thanks to a potent story, a committed central performance by Denzel Washington and agile directing by Normal Jewison, the film is a dominant viewing experience.

It's the mid 1960s, and Ruben "The Hurricane" Carter is a top ranked middleweight boxer, having risen from a poor childhood including long stints in juvenile detention. With Hurricane at the peak of his abilities and fame, a triple murder is committed in a Paterson, New Jersey bar, with three patrons shot dead. Ruben and a friend happen to be in the area; they are arrested, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Ruben insists that he is innocent and from his cell writes an autobiography.

With Ruben incarcerated a parallel story features Lesra Martin (Vicellous Reon Shannon), a young black man from Brooklyn being raised by a foster family in Toronto. Lesra takes an interest in Ruben after reading his book, and communicates with the boxer first through letters then visits. Eventually Lesra's guardians decide to investigate Ruben's case, and relocate to New Jersey to agitate for a legal review of his conviction.

Many other key characters from Hurricane's story also come to life. Featured prominently are Lesra's foster family Lisa Peters (Deborah Kara Unger), Sam Chaiton (Liev Schreiber) and Terry Swinton (John Hannah); Ruben's lifelong pursuer Detective Sargent Della Pesca (Dan Hedaya), Ruben's wife Mae Thelma (Debbi Morgan) and compassionate prison guard Jimmy Williams (Clancy Brown). Late in the film, David Paymer and Harris Yulin make important contributions as Ruben's long-term lawyers, while Rod Steiger has a short but memorable turn as a judge.

Directed by Norman Jewison as an adaptation of Carter's autobiography and the book by Chaiton and Swinton, The Hurricane is a powerful story about the search for justice. Set partially in the world of boxing and mostly behind prison walls, the film is a carefully crafted experience, covering close to 20 years of Carter's life and charting his unwavering dignity in the face of larger forces of racism, conspiracy and discrimination.

As with many biographical but non-documentary features, The Hurricane does portray Carter in the most favourable light, and his opponents come across as seething villains. The film rises above any such simplifications thanks to the intensity of its central performance. The Hurricane is quite possibly Denzel Washington's finest on-screen moment. He embodies the role and disappears into it, the actor leaving no trace as Ruben Carter comes to life, driven by rage, personal determination and quiet resistance. Whether in the ring or in prison, Washington is superb at finding the man smirking at a system that can defeat his body but never his soul, and expressing his emotions with a combination of lyricism and cutting critique.

The film runs for 145 minutes, but does not feel long. Especially in the first half Jewison keeps the energy level high and jumps across time to capture various episodes from Carter's life. Snippets from childhood through to life in prison are presented out of sequence but nevertheless logically, to establish the full scope of Ruben's life experience. The second half settles down and is more focused on attempts to secure Hurricane's release, and the film finds a new but still compelling groove as an amateur detective story seeking to lift the lid off decades of deception.

The Hurricane encapsulates rage in all its colours: a child's rage to survive, a boxer's rage to win, and a prisoner's rage to secure freedom. And it's the battles fought without weapons and boxing gloves that are ultimately most effective.

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Movie Review: Payback (1999)

A tongue-in-cheek neo-noir film with a throwback 1970s edge, Payback is a rollicking fun time, filled with sharp dialogue, a smooth anti-hero and jarring violence.

A career criminal known only as Porter (Mel Gibson) has been double crossed, shot and left for dead. With his wife Lynn (Deborah Kara Unger) and partner in crime Val Resnick (Gregg Henry), Porter had just stolen $140,000 from a Chinese gang. But Lynn and Val conspire to relieve Porter of his $70,000 share, with Lynn shooting Porter in the back for good measure, upset that he was having an affair with call girl Rosie (Maria Bello). Val uses most of the money to buy his way back into a powerful criminal organization known as The Outfit, run by Carter (William Devane) and Fairfax (an uncredited James Coburn).

Porter recovers and sets about plotting his revenge with violent methods, demanding the return of his $70,000. Lynn overdoses on heroin, and Porter tracks down Val through drug dealer Stegman (David Paymer). But his exploits attract a crowd, and soon the Chinese gang, including S+M dominatrix Pearl (Lucy Liu) are on his tail, as well as two crooked cops. The closer Porter gets to Val, the more he tangles with the leadership of The Outfit, all the way up to kingpin Bronson (Kris Kristofferson).

Porter, narrating: Crooked cops. Do they come in any other way? If I'd been just a little dumber, I could have joined the force myself.

Directed and co-written by Brian Helgeland, Payback is a gritty, aggressive thriller. With a bad-guy hero carrying a kick-ass, dead-already attitude and Mel Gibson at his absolute cool peak, the film oozes danger with extreme prejudice. The story understandably stretches Porter's capabilities beyond rationality, but otherwise the mix of sardonic humour, punchy action and unconstrained ballsiness among bad guys and worse guys is triumphant.

Carter: There's an old expression that's served me well: "Do not shit where you eat."

A big part of the film's appeal is the investment made in Porter as a character. He is humanized both in his sense of honour among thieves, and through his relationship with Rosie, two flawed sinners drifting sideways until they meet each other. The oily Val Resnick is also provided with plenty of latitude to come to life as the antithesis of Porter, a criminal without scruples just looking for his version of the good life.

Carter, to Resnick: Do you understand your value to the organization, Resnick?...You're a sadist. You lack compunction. That comes in handy.

The everything-including-the-kitchen-sink elements work surprisingly well. Lucy Liu has a blast as the dominatrix turned on by violence; her depraved arousal in bed next to Resnick as he is being threatened by Porter summarizes the film's unconstrained wickedness, culminating in Porter's classic let her work quip. The gun-toting Chinese gang, the crooked cops, and the ever mounting layers of sleaze up the ladder of The Outfit all add to Payback's enjoyable insanity. Veterans William Devane, James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson glide in with mounting levels of evil smarminess.

Pearl, seductively: I've got a few minutes.
Porter: So go boil an egg.

The film's colour palette is a mixture of bleached greys, blacks and browns, appropriate for an underworld rife with backstabbing. Payback goes into the sordid corners of criminality, and lands on a pile of misanthropic revelry.

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Movie Review: The Game (1997)

On his 48th birthday, investment banker Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) has fabulous wealth, complete control over his surroundings, but little else. His marriage has fallen apart and he is haunted by the memory of having witnessed the suicide of his father, who threw himself off the roof of the family estate -- on his 48th birthday.

His brother Conrad (Sean Penn), very much the black sheep of the family, gives Nicholas a strange birthday gift: enrollment in a "game" offered by the mysterious Consumer Recreational Services. Nicholas reluctantly subjects himself to a battery of physical tests and psychological questionnaires at CRS's offices. And soon, the game starts.

The TV in Nicholas' house starts to talk to him; he suffers unexplained and unexpected business set-backs; and he is soon on the run with a careless waitress (Deborah Kara Unger), escaping from machine-gun toting men-in-black. What is real what is part of the game is totally blurred, and in a panic, Conrad re-appears to warn Nicholas that CRS are out of control. Nicholas is hurtled by a cascading series of ever more dangerous events, out of control, to a date with his destiny.

The Game is a flimsy excuse to dump a straight character into the middle of a long action adventure, much like the more comically oriented Into The Night and After Hours (both 1985). But The Game is also a clever commentary on how little a seemingly successful man actually has. The "game" as stage-managed by CRS fills Nicholas' life with everything that he does not have, and takes away from him everything that he thinks that he has control over, up to and including his life, -- in a matter of hours. It's a well-designed representation of "is the grass really greener on the other side of the fence"?, albeit in a most artificially manufactured premise.

Douglas is excellent as he reprises his Wall Street persona, with Nicholas Van Orten only slightly less abrasive than Gordon Gekko. Sean Penn's role is little more than a cameo, but he injects the few scenes that he is in with his unique brand of shifty energy. Deborah Kara Unger proves herself more than capable of matching Douglas through their night of many misadventures.

The Game is a struggle between the thoughtful and the contrived. We'll call the result a stalemate.

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