Movie Review: To Die For (1995)

Genre: Satirical Crime Dramedy  

Director: Gus Van Sant  

Starring: Nicole Kidman, Matt Dillon, Joaquin Phoenix, Casey Affleck  

Running Time: 106 minutes  

Synopsis: The small town of Little Hope, New Hampshire is scandalized by the arrest of local television weather girl Suzanne Stone (Nicole Kidman) for plotting her husband's murder. In flashbacks and witness interviews, Suzanne is revealed as ambitious, vain, and obsessed with being on television. She marries Larry (Matt Dillon) but is always more interested in her career. After securing a job at a local cable station, she starts work on a documentary featuring underachieving high schoolers Jimmy, Russell, and Lydia (Joaquin Phoenix, Casey Affleck, and Alison Folland). When Larry attempts to constrain Suzanne's ambitions, she initiates a marriage escape plan through a nefarious seduction of the particularly dim Jimmy.  

What Works Well: Inspired by the Pamela Smart story, writer Buck Henry adapts Joyce Maynard's book into a sly mockumentary packed with astute celebrity culture observations. Director Gus Van Sant wades through the toxic combination of ambition, narcissism, and obsession with fame, and adds femme fatale sex-as-a-weapon noir shadings. Suzanne, Jimmy, Lydia, and Larry's sister Janice (Illeana Douglas) expand on their side of the story straight to the camera, stirring manipulation and victimization into a frothy mix. Nicole Kidman achieves a career highlight conveying the complex contradiction of limited smarts and sexual allure colliding with over-confidence and self-delusion.

What Does Not Work As Well: Given the comprehensive character investments, the resolutions are abrupt, including a barely-there investigation and a frigid mop-up. Suzanne's lack of forethought after she wriggles free of marital shackles is inconsistent with the preceding level of connivance.

Key Quote:

Suzanne: You're not anybody in America unless you're on TV. On TV is where we learn about who we really are. Because what's the point of doing anything worthwhile if nobody's watching? And if people are watching, it makes you a better person.

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Movie Review: Little Darlings (1980)

A teen sex comedy, Little Darlings adopts a girls' perspective on the hazards of adolescence and steers towards nuanced treatment of a tricky subject.

In the Atlanta area, teen girls from different backgrounds attend Camp Little Wolf for the summer. The tough-spoken Angel Bright (Kristy McNichol) is from the wrong side of the tracks, and immediately clashes with the wealthy Ferris Whitney (Tatum O'Neal). Both are 15 years old, and shamed as virgins by the conceited Cinder (Krista Errickson). Before long, all the girls at the camp are betting on whether Angel or Ferris will lose her virginity first.

The romantic Ferris sets her eyes on camp instructor Gary Callahan (Armand Assante), but he is cautious with her flirting. The more pragmatic Angel spots seemingly willing teenager Randy (Matt Dillon) from the adjacent boys' camp. As both girls get closer to their first sexual experience, unexpected doubts and uncertainties surface.

Featuring two bright young talents in Kristy McNichol and Tatum O'Neal, Little Darlings threatens to fall into routine teen summer camp movie shenanigans, girl style, but then recovers into a more serious exploration of peer pressure, young women's dilemmas with sex, and the nature of friendships. Writers Kimi Peck and Dalene Young are not short on cringey dialogue and cannot resist throwing in catfights and foodfights, but the second half is more concerned with confronting genuine emotions and discards the search for cheap laughs.

Angel not only embarks on a quest to lose her virginity, she is also the camp misfit, a tough and troubled kid alone in a middle class crowd. She initiates all her interactions with Randy (a more-than-meets-the-eye Matt Dillon), but she is also unsure if she wants to pursue what she is initiating. McNichol emerges as a compelling actress, director Ronald F. Maxwell recognizing her ability to command the screen in several compelling scenes. 

In contrast Tatum O'Neal as Ferris defaults to princess mannerisms and fairytale romance ambitions, her juvenile flirtations with Gary (a disheveled Armand Assante) easy to rebuff. Little Darlings unfortunately turns down the opportunity to harness the power of friendship between Angel and Ferris: they spend most of the movie hissing at each other, time that could have been better invested exploring commonalities.

Maxwell does surround the two leads with a gaggle of well-defined supporting characters, including Cynthia Nixon in her debut as Sunshine (all peace and love until it's time for war), Alexa Kenin as the grounded Dana, and Krista Errickson as the perfectly irritating snob Cinder. An impressive soundtrack features music by Blondie, Supertramp, The Cars, the Bellamy Brothers, and John Lennon.

Little Darlings stretches into the deceptions that weave individuals into groups, the truth blurred to best fit in and get along. The real rite of passage, it turns out, is defining what really matters on the arduous trip to adulthood.



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Movie Review: You, Me and Dupree (2006)

A comedy about love, friendship and finding a purpose in life, You, Me and Dupree carries enough laughs and originality to overcome the more mundane moments.

After an idyllic wedding in Hawaii, Molly and Carl (Kate Hudson and Matt Dillon) start their married life together, with Carl employed at the large housing development corporation of Molly's tycoon father Bob Thompson (Michael Douglas). Their lives are quickly disrupted when Carl invites Dupree (Owen Wilson), his friend from high school, to crash on their couch.

Dupree is kind and free-spirited, but his life has still not amounted to much. His sloppy presence creates tension between Molly and Carl, made worse by Bob giving Carl an unexpected promotion but also pressuring him into working long hours. Bob also makes it clear he believes Carl unworthy of marrying Molly and extending his legacy. With the marriage already in trouble, Dupree has to decide how he fits in.

Randy Dupree is a gentle soul, a loyal friend, a poet, aspiring cyclist, and a good cook. He is also hopeless at holding a job or finding any direction to steer his life, and an absolute expert at clogging up the toilet plumbing. Owen Wilson co-produced the film and gives life to an oddball combination of best friend and major irritant, and Dupree is the soul of the movie.

The first half is all about Dupree as a disruptor, but the second part veers towards left field as the guest cleans up and forms a bond of friendship with the emotionally abandoned Molly. The warped relationship triangle extends the film's reach, without ever threatening to break into stellar territory.

Michael LeSieur wrote the script, and with no more than about half the jokes finding a target, You, Me and Dupree bounces along a meandering path looking for detours to provide an edge. While imposing on Molly and Carl's hospitality, Dupree minimizes his job-seeking efforts and instead makes friends with the neighbourhood kids. Meanwhile Carl's stress level at work is cranked to eleven, Michael Douglas giving plenty of venom to too few ideas all related to demeaning his new son-in-law.

Brothers and co-directors Anthony and Joe Russo are perfunctory, generally standing back and allowing the stars to wrangle the material into the usual conflicts about trust, overcoming adversity and rising to the moment. Kate Hudson and Matt Dillon hold the middle ground and provide a platform for Dupree to perform his erratic orbit, themes of blooming late and discovering a calling emerging as warm-enough payoffs.

Seth Rogen appears in a small role as Neil, one of Carl's friends, socially suffocating in his own marriage. In an example of the film's underhanded slyness, Neil's wife and Dupree's crush are influential but never seen.

In You, Me and Dupree three's a crowd, but also reasonably good company.

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Movie Review: There's Something About Mary (1998)

A raunchy comedy, There's Something About Mary aims for wild over-the-top laughs and remarkably hits the target more often than not.

It's 1985 in Rhode Island, and awkward high school student Ted (Ben Stiller) secures a prom date with the seemingly unattainable dream classmate Mary (Cameron Diaz). But the big night is scuttled by an embarrassing zipper mishap. Thirteen years later, Ted decides to try and find Mary, and  encouraged by his friend Dom (Chris Elliott) hires sleazy insurance investigator Pat (Matt Dillon) who promptly locates her in Miami.

Mary is now a successful orthopedic surgeon, a sports lover and still single. Pat falls in love with his surveillance target and pursues her romantically, pretending to be a free-spirited architect. Mary's friend Tucker (Lee Evans) also harbours a crush and senses Pat's lies. Eventually Ted and Dom also make their way to Miami where Mary will find herself surrounded by numerous men professing their love.

Two epic scenes of abject raunchiness ensure the lasting notoriety of There's Something About Mary. The first is the prom night zipper fiasco at Mary's home, a scene as funny as it is physically uncomfortable for half the world's population. The second occurs when Ted and Mary finally have their reunion, and involves bodily fluids showing up in all the wrong places. Both sequences burst through any notional limits of decency, but land with hilarity intact and in the process define new limits of bawdiness.

Co-written and directed by brothers Peter and Bobby Farrelly, the film takes big swings at the conventions of both the high school teenage comedy and romantic comedies. The first act features Stiller and Diaz made up to look like teenaged versions of themselves, and lays the groundwork for a lifetime of infatuation. Young Ted is a living example of a painfully uncoordinated high school persona, and the luminous young Mary is the too-good-to-be-true new school arrivee who is believed to be elusive but is actually surprisingly empathetic.

The rest of the movie occurs in the present day and thrives on shredding the misunderstandings, pets, neighbors, best friends and rivals that collectively create the foundational elements of any rom-com. The Farrellys' motto is to push bad taste as far as it goes and then a bit more, and they intentionally veer off-course in many scenes, including actively seeking laughs at the expense of Tucker's physical challenge in using crutches.

For anything about There's Something About Mary to function, the ultimate fantasy woman as imagined by juvenile males has to be created, and the Farrellys hit the jackpot with Cameron Diaz. She brings to life a dream combination of the sexy, approachable, sports-and-beer loving gal who happens to be professionally successful, single, charitable, and dedicated to helping her mentally challenged brother. She is more than a bit naive to fall for creeps and not be aware of the impact she has on men, but Cameron thrives in radiating the character's energy at the epicenter of the film.

Stiller as the adult Ted is a relatively reserved presence, and it is Matt Dillon as the sleazoid Pat who bursts through with a memorably off-center performance, combining stalker behaviour with carefully constructed manipulation.

A milestone in coarse humour, There's Something About Mary is supremely good when it's very bad.

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Movie Review: Singles (1992)

A romantic comedy set at the peak of Seattle's grunge scene, Singles captures a unique moment in time and music, but is an otherwise unremarkable story of typical relationships among young adults.

The film focuses on the love lives of twentysomething friends living in and around a Seattle apartment rental block. Linda (Kyra Sedgwick) is an environmental activist. After getting burned by an affair with a duplicitous foreign student, she meets Steve (Campbell Scott), an engineer with the department of transportation also smarting from a recent breakup. They start a relationship that will have its fair share of unexpected ups and downs.

Meanwhile Steve's neighbour Janet (Bridget Fonda) is obsessed with musician Cliff (Matt Dillon), a member of the grunge band Citizen Dick. She wants to be dedicated to him, but Cliff is unsure he wants to commit to anyone, as his mediocre band struggles for a breakthrough. Also looking for a mate is Debbie (Sheila Kelley), who is friends with Steve and Janet. She decides to go the video dating route, and creates a video to try and find the perfect match.

Written and directed by Cameron Crowe, Singles is more about mood, feel and music and less about plot and characters. The film is a celebration of a Seattle's unexpected moment in the spotlight of the music world, when grunge erupted as the sound of the day and bands went from underground to global stardom within months. The film features the music of Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Mother Love Bone and Mudhoney among others, and band members, mostly before their fame, appear in supporting roles.

As for the relationship stories, they are simple and routine. Crowe's writing is not sharp enough to highlight any of the personalities, and the characters do not move beyond pleasant, generally inoffensive and only vaguely interesting. There is nothing wrong with the romance, comedy and frequent fourth wall breaks; there just isn't anything too compelling on offer, either. Crowe does earn points for keeping his characters deglamorized and refreshingly real, in keeping with grunge's no-frills blue collar aesthetic.

The ensemble cast does what is required, both Kyra Sedgwick and Bridget Fonda playing up the cutesy angle, while Campbell Scott downs in blandness. Matt Dillon as the generally clueless band leader of a mediocre band could have emerged with most distinction, but is given relatively little to do. His band Citizen Dick is a reminder that even in Seattle of 1992, that there were some grunge bands too crap to break out. Bill Pullman (a plastic surgeon), Tom Skerritt (Seattle's Mayor), Jeremy Piven (a store check-out clerk), Eric Stoltz (a random street mime), Victor Garber and Paul Giamatti all appear in small roles.

In addition to the music, Singles is most famous for possibly being the inspiration for the television series Friends. Regardless, the film is like a familiar friend: fun to hang out with, but not necessarily a sizzling experience.

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The Movies Of Matt Dillon

All movies starring Matt Dillon and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Little Darlings (1980)

The Outsiders (1983)

Rumble Fish (1983)

Singles (1992)

To Die For (1995)

Beautiful Girls (1996)

Wild Things (1998)

There's Something About Mary (1998)

Crash (2004)

You, Me, And Dupree (2006)

Going In Style (2017)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Wild Things (1998)

A neo-noir with an abundance of style and seduction, Wild Things saturates the screen with back-stabbing characters up to absolutely no good, although the fun goes somewhat off the rails in the final third.

In the posh Miami community of Blue Bay, hunky high school counsellor Sam Lombardo (Matt Dillon) is fending off the advances of cheerleader Kelly Van Ryan (Denise Richards). Sam used to be the lover of Kelly's mother Sandra (Theresa Russell), one of Blue Bay's richest women. Meanwhile, Suzie Toller (Neve Campbell) is a white trash teenager from the wrong side of the tracks, holding a deep grudge against Sergeant Ray Duquette (Kevin Bacon) of the local police force. Suzie holds Ray responsible for the shooting death of a friend. Whenever he can, Sam tries to help Suzie, who is held in contempt by Kelly.

Blue Bay is rocked when Kelly accuses Sam of rape. Sandra hires high-priced attorney Tom Baxter (Robert Wagner) to seek justice for her daughter, while a shocked Sam can only afford cut-rate lawyer Ken Bowden (Bill Murray) to represent him. The case makes headlines, and takes a sensational turn when Suzie comes forward to claim that she too was raped by Sam. With his prospects looking grim, Sam's fate is in the uncertain hands of the less than trustworthy Ken.

The synopsis covers barely half the film. Once Ken starts to interrogate Suzie, the revelations cause outright pandemonium, and the courtroom twist is only the first of many to come. Wild Things has plenty of secrets waiting to bust out, as the characters carry many hidden motivations and brutal scores to settle. This is a small film with a big agenda, drawing on the rich noir legacy to bring forward a convoluted story of seduction, big money, betrayal, revenge and class warfare in the Miami heat.

Wild Things is filmed in vivid colours, accompanied by a siren call of a George S. Clinton music score, dripping with the dangerous sensuality of the Florida swamps. And for the most part, director John McNaughton steers the film with silky smoothness, introducing the many characters and focusing on the pervasive lust in a community with too much money and too much time dedicated to rapacious pursuits.

Wild Things' appeal is in updating most of the noir elements into a hyper-driven modern context. The schemers are younger, the money bigger, the scandal more sensational, and the sex more intense, particularly a legendary threesome that provides an exclamation mark next to the film's crowning revelation. But the film also forges ahead with a plot that while comprehensible, just pushes for too many convolutions. Once the twists start coming, they never stop, and with a new reveal every few minutes as the film enters its final half an hour, the surprises lose their edge.

The cast is outstanding in depth and execution. The roles are almost all played straight, with Richards and Russell providing gallons of fervor, Campbell contributing dark broodiness, while Dillon and Bacon (who also served as executive producer) play the men who don't quite know how little control they have. Murray is a riot as a crooked lawyer in unkempt suits, with the twinkle in his eye suggesting that the ruffled persona may just be a camouflage for a sharper than expected mind. Where the wild things roam, nothing is as it seems.

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Movie Review: Beautiful Girls (1996)

A character-rich study with a focus on growing up and finding the right relationship, Beautiful Girls is a winsome slice of small-town life.

Sensitive piano player Willie (Timothy Hutton), now based in New York City, return to his snowy small hometown of Knights Ridge, Massachusetts, for a high school reunion. Willie reconnects with his old school buddies who never left town, and are now all in their late twenties: Tommy (Matt Dillon), Mo (Noah Emmerich), Paul (Michael Rapaport), Kev (Max Perlich), and Stanley (Pruitt Taylor Vince).

Tommy ("Birdman") was the school football star, and he never grew up. Now running a small snowplow company, Tommy is seeing Sharon (Mira Sorvino), but carrying on an affair with his married high school sweetheart Derian (Lauren Holly). Mo is happily married to Sarah (Anne Bobby), and is the most settled of the group. Paul is also a snowplower and has not moved beyond the supermodel pin-up phase nor learned to deal with real women. He is having trouble letting go of former girlfriend Jan (Martha Plimpton), who is now dating someone else. Kev is Tommy's sidekick, while hardworking Stanley ("Stinky") is operating his own restaurant.

As Willie catches up with the lives and loves of his buddies, he meets and befriends his neighbours' daughter, precocious 13 year old Marty (Natalie Portman), and contemplates his future with long-term New York girlfriend Tracy (Annabeth Gish). The town's wisemouth hairdresser Gina (Rosie O'Donnell) dishes out advice to anyone who listens, while Stinky's stunningly beautiful cousin Andera (Uma Thurman) arrives in town, and causes a stir among the guys.

A film with no heroes, villains, central romance, irony or glib humour, Beautiful Girls is simply about people trying to assemble the puzzle of adulthood. With echoes of Mystic Pizza (1988), Beautiful Girls excels at creating rounded, flawed characters worth caring about. Director Ted Demme, working from a fine script by Scott Rosenberg, quickly establishes the guys, the girls and the complex dynamics between them, bringing the tapestry of life to the quiet streets of Knights Ridge.

The film glides easily between the no less than 16 friends and relatives who make up Willie's ecosystem, and just as Willie drops into the lives-in-progress of his friends, the film catches all the relevant stories mid-stream. Paul is struggling to cope with Jan leaving him behind, Tommy is caught between the devoted Sharon and the lusty Derian, while Mo and Stinky are just getting on with lives that have traded glamour for maturity.

The catalysts are the outsiders and newcomers. Young Marty brings an inquisitive mind and an open heart into Willie's life, their chats developing into a credible crush that is intellectually impossible but emotionally real. Andera, with her big-city outlook and no nostalgic attachments to Knights Ridge, sees things for what they are, piercing through Paul's amateur attempts at making Jan jealous, immediately reading Tommy's immaturity, and finding in Willie the one man worth nudging towards the right side of the commitment fence.

To drive the narrative forward, Rosenberg does allow the members of Willie's circle to quickly open up and talk through their issues. Guys like Tommy and Paul may be stuck in teenage mode and unable to grapple with what it means to be men, but they are nevertheless not shy about talking through their thoughts, emotions and viewpoints. This ability to share is at odds with the often emotionally stilted reality of relatively immature guys.

The performances from the ensemble cast strike a perfect tone, the characters all translated into real people navigating the choppy waters of small town living and mismanaged expectations. Hutton, Dillon, and Rapaport form the strongest bond at the heart of the many friendships, but Natalie Portman, all of 14 during filming, steals the movie with a stunning performance, finding the thin edge between child and adult, smart but not sassy, sensitive but not sentimental. Her relationship with Willie becomes a trigger for a better future: he sees himself through her eyes as a man worth living up to the name. The most beautiful girl, as it turns out, is also the youngest, and her beauty radiates through her belief in tomorrow's possibilities.

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Movie Review: Rumble Fish (1983)

A stylistic exploration of lost youth, Rumble Fish searches for a reason to exist but finds none. The central characters are only mildly interesting, and there is hardly anything going on to create a narrative hook.

Rusty James (Matt Dillon) is a tough kid and the leader of his pack, consisting of Steve (Vincent Spano) and Smokey (Nicolas Cage), among others. Rusty harkens back to mythical old days when gangs ruled the streets, and idolizes his absentee brother Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke), a former gang leader. With Rusty trying to hang on to Patty (Diane Lane) as a girlfriend of sorts despite her disapproval of his rough life, Motorcycle Boy suddenly returns to town after a trip to California.

In a rumble with an opposing gang, Rusty is injured, while police officer Patterson (William Smith) keeps a suspicious eye on Motorcycle Boy, disapproving of his return and believing him to be nothing but trouble. Both Rusty and Motorcycle Boy have to put up with a drunk of a father (Dennis Hopper), who wastes his life downing bottles of alcohol. After a few more violent skirmishes, the two brothers meet at a pet store selling colourful fish, and decide to cause some mischief in the name of freedom.

Francis Ford Coppola collaborated with author S.E. Hinton to create a screenplay out of Hinton's book, and Coppola filmed Rumble Fish immediately after the moderately more successful The Outsiders. Filmed by Coppola in crisp black and white with plenty of smoke, theatrical sets and flashy camera angles, Rumble Fish tries to be about something meaningful, but the artistry of presentation fails to mask the lack of substance.

Rusty James, Motorcycle Boy, and the rest of their cohorts have nothing new to offer. They are supposed to elicit sympathy just because they are who they are, their father is a drunk and their mother has fled. But the film stalls within a few minutes, trying too hard to make heroes out of outcasts, never giving the characters the chance to earn their place as people worth caring about. They rumble, they argue, they chase girls, and they lament their miserable parents. It's all too trite, territory that has been covered too many time in too many films dating back 30 years and more.

Coppola's directing calls attention to itself at every turn, a reasonably welcome distraction from the non-event of the plot, but creating an all too obvious case of all packaging and no package. A few small fish in an aquarium contribute the only splash of colour, and the freedom of the fish is supposed to represent Something Important. By the time Rusty James and Motorcycle Boy decide to heroically Free the Fish, any climactic cause is acceptable just to bring proceedings to a close.

The young ensemble cast of Dillon, Lane, Cage and Spano are pure intensity but no real humanity. Rourke smirks through the movie in one of his exceedingly annoying I'm-bored-so-I'll-pretend-to-smile-as-if-I'm-hiding-something-but-really-I'm-not performances. Hopper hides behind a bottle and Williams hides behind his shades, two veteran performers sticking closely to stereotypes.

Rumble Fish may look tasty, but it emits the unmistakable odour of a spoilt catch.

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Movie Review: The Outsiders (1983)

The adaptation of S.E. Hinton's youth-in-peril novel, The Outsiders is a sombre affair. Francis Ford Coppola finds the drama amongst the scrappy youth caught between childhood and adulthood, but cannot locate the soul of their anguish.

It's 1965 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the Greasers are a gang of tough kids from broken homes on the wrong side of the tracks. Ponyboy (C. Thomas Howell) is quiet and sensitive but still a Greaser, while his eldest brother Darrel (Patrick Swayze) is violent and struggling to cope with head-of-the-family responsibilities now that their parents are dead. Middle brother Sodapop (Rob Lowe) is often caught between Ponyboy and Darrel. Ponyboy's best friend is the knife-wielding, baby-faced Johnny (Ralph Macchio), and the other Greasers include Two Bit (Emilio Estevez), Steve (Tom Cruise) and Tim (Glenn Withrow). The unofficial leader of the Greasers is Dallas (Matt Dillon), who has only recently been released from jail.

While walking home, Ponyboy is attacked by members of the Socs, a rival gang of wealthier kids. Later, after Ponyboy and Johnny spend some time with middle-class girls Cherry (Diane Lane) and Marcia (Michelle Meyrink), the Socs show up to settle scores. With Ponyboy outnumbered and almost being drowned by the Socs, Johnny springs into action and uses his knife to kill one Soc and scare away the others. Dallas helps Ponyboy and Johnny to escape and hide-out in an abandoned church. But the Socs want revenge in the form of an all-out brawl between the gangs, while Ponyboy, Dallas and Johnny encounter an unexpected opportunity for heroism that takes a tragic turn.

Coppola assembled what proved to be quite the spectacular cast of young talent for The Outsiders. Rarely has a film brought together so many young actors who would go on to have long and successful careers. Ironically, Howell and Macchio, the two most prominent Greasers, would eventually have relatively lower profile adult success compared to Cruise, Swayze, Dillon, Lowe, Estevez and Lane. The talent on display enhances The Outsiders, as even small roles like Two Bit, Sodapop and Cherry are well worth watching.

In terms of the drama, The Outsiders recounts a sad story but without finding a spark to elevate it onto any sort of emotional plain. The Greasers are deserving of empathy, kids cast adrift with not a capable parent in sight, but not enough is ever revealed about them to make them anything other than kids who are likely to get into trouble. There are some touching and quiet moments as Ponyboy and Johnny hide out in an isolated church for several days, reading Gone With The Wind and sharing their innermost thoughts, but the serenity is delivered at some cost in plausibility: street-tough 14 year old kids suddenly behaving like rational adults requires quite the mental leap.

And the film cannot do much to overcome the weaknesses and derivatives in the original narrative. There are some strong whiffs of Romeo And Juliet without the romance and West Side Story without the music, while the brawl appears to mostly serve as an artificial kinetic jolt to enliven an otherwise downbeat final 60 minutes.

The 2005 "Complete Novel" re-release, a director's cut by another name, reinserts deleted scenes and adds 22 minutes to the running time. Most of the additions occur at the front end to better establish Ponyboy, the Greasers, and the context of the gang rivalry, creating a more cohesive experience. However, the complete abandonment of Carmine Coppola's evocative orchestral score, replaced by contemporary high-tempo mid-1960s hits, is a change with debatable merits.

The Outsiders has talent behind and in front of the camera that surpasses the material. The Greasers are worth a look, but the experience is not all that slick.

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