*** (out of ****)
Starring Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Jennifer Lopez, Powers Boothe, Claire Danes, Joaquin Phoenix, Billy Bob Thornton, Julie Hagerty, Laurie Metcalf, and Jon Voight.
Directed by Oliver Stone
1997 R
People who go to the movies too much—like me—will notice that the plot of Oliver Stone’s “U-Turn” bares a resemblance to “Red Rock West” from 1992. Both are film noirs set in dusty towns in the American Southwest, both involve drifters who drive classic cars being lured into murder by squabbling couples, both involve inescapable towns, both involve safes under the office floor, and both feature the music of a certain Man in Black. These similarities aren’t necessarily a bad thing (try telling the contrary to John Wayne after making “Rio Bravo” and “El Dorado”). But a few differences are worth mentioning: “Red Rock West” is a starkly-told morality tale about an essentially honest man caught in a labyrinth of deceit, while “U-Turn” is about a guy who’s a dirtbag caught up in a simpler plot, driven by greed and necessity, told in the frenetic, highly-stylized, and often gruesome world of Oliver Stone. “Red Rock West” is more for the mind and the heart, while “U-Turn” is more for the eyes, the churned-belly, and the grin.
Sean Penn plays the quintessential man with a past; missing two or three fingers he drives his 1964½ Chevy Camaro into Superior, Arizona with a pistol on his belt and a duffle bag full of cash. Penn’s entire being can be summed up in the three words “I owe money.” The cash isn’t his and doesn’t last long. In the course of “U-Turn” the selfishness and short-sightedness with which he has lived his life will catch up with him; over and over again he will insult profanely and then whimper apologies in the same breath; and old girlfriends will hang up or refuse his collect calls. His Chevy breaks down in Superior, a town of about two hundred people, not counting all the dirt roads and rust. There’s a scheme waiting for him to stumble upon, involving a deeply troubled married couple (Nick Nolte and Jennifer Lopez), each willing to pay him to kill the other. Warning lights should be flashing in his head, no no run away, and maybe they are, but he needs the money, and the wife is really good looking. So into the quagmire he stumbles, while the money that’s supposed to be in his trunk is drawing all manner of unwanted attention from its rightful owners.
“U-Turn” is not about the tight construction of films like “Blood Simple” or “Red Rock West,” but about Penn’s attempts to escape Superior and the various, often awful ways in which it keeps him, as if this is the hell for the sins he has committed. He is greedy enough to strike bargains and counter-bargains with Nolte and Lopez, but botches his own double-crosses because he’s too much of a coward to carry them out (and, as my wife adds, too horny, the wife being Jennifer Lopez). He tries to get his Camaro repaired by a local mechanic (a positively demonic Billy Bob Thornton, with dirty glasses, green teeth, and a perpetually exposed navel), but the longer he leaves his car with the mechanic the more engine difficulties are revealed. A local bimbo (Claire Danes) throws herself at him out of boredom, bouncing around in high-heels and a short skirt while babbling inanely. But Penn wants nothing to do with her, and even less to do with her hotheaded boyfriend (Joaquin Phoenix). The local sheriff (Powers Boothe) isn’t much help either, prowling around with secrets of his own. Round and around Penn goes, bounced through these twisted weirdos by his lust for Lopez, his greed for Nolte’s money, and his ultimate desire to just get out of this town.
Lips smacking over fake teeth, Nolte’s is the most memorable performance in the movie. He is powerfully obscene and suggestive, and the dirty talk he uses on his wife is both hilarious and frightening. He claims to know Penn’s type from a mile away, but he himself is just as greedy and cowardly, one minute gleeful at the thought of his wife’s demise, the next terrified that she may actually be dead. Lopez, as the femme fatale, walks the delicate line of dropping hints to Penn and the audience that she’s hiding something, and that her delicate flower-in-a-pot-of-manure act is just that: an act. For all his sins we find ourselves rooting for Penn, just because he’s the least of all the degenerates.
All this makes a peculiar story for director Oliver Stone, who typically deals with more weighty subjects in films like “Platoon,” “J.F.K.,” “Natural Born Killers,” “The Doors,” “Salvador,” and “Heaven and Earth.” Here he finds an ironic, almost playful tone with which to show the bodies piling up, using all manner of twisted camera angles, shutter speeds, and black-and-white sometimes thrown in with the color. For some directors and films, most notably those of the Jerry Bruckheimer strain, overactive editing and music is distracting and irritating, as if the movie machine were being manned by monkeys. But in the case of Stone the editing is intriguing; “U-Turn” moves faster than “J.F.K.” but not as breathlessly as “Natural Born Killers.” Penn’s situation is constantly being compared to the desolation of the Arizona wilderness, to scorpions and unforgiving mountains and the hot hiss of cicadas.
With its murders, betrayals, incest, drunkenness, and mutilation, “U-Turn” is not a movie for everyone. But, in addition to its many fine performances, it has a sense of humor and a sense of irony to keep it afloat, and becomes like the guilty pleasure of watching a car crash.
Finished May 21, 2002
Copyright © 2002 Friday & Saturday Night