It's good to see Robert Altman make a relatively straightforward, though not simple, story rather than a conglomeration of overlapping improvisations. And John Grisham may have been the right writer for him. Grisham is no artist. He doesn't lay waste the kitchen midden of the mind. He never digs much deeper than he finds necessary to uncover a little guilt or a bit too much confidence in one's self.
Kenneth Branagh is a Southern lawyer (what else?) separated from his wife (Famke Jenssen), seduced by the abused daughter (Embeth Davidz) of a lunatic (Robert Duvall). She's also the abused ex-wife of the meanly murderous Tom Berenger. Branagh is attended by his PI assistant (Robert Downey, Jr.) and his concerned partner (Daryll Hannah).
What a cast, eh? Take the girls alone. All three of them -- Davidz, Jenssen, and Hannah -- are tall and sinewy and sexy. If Altman could have made room in the cast for Uma Thurman he'd have had the core of a perfect girls' basketball team right there.
I can't imagine how I could spell out very much of the plot without winding up with something a French philosophical treatise. It's too long and complicated, and there are twists and turns that would require explanation before comprehension. Let's just say that, if he were as smart as he thinks he is, Branagh would have learned to trust only his secretary, as everyone should. Granted, it's a little hard to ignore Embeth Davidz in distress, all dripping wet, wearing fishnet stocking, and slowly fanning her knees open and closed as if in anticipation of an embrace. That's aside from the temptation nobly to rescue a beautiful woman who happens to have a butterfly tattooed just above her pipick.
The story's pretty good, too, and Altman handles it nicely. Imagine a scene in which Branagh and the local Savannah cops raid a tumble-down shack in the dense forest at the end of a five-mile dirt road, looking for Duvall, who has been described as a guy who is a little crazy, dresses oddly, and wears no shoes. And what they find is an entire house full of raggedly dressed, shoeless oldsters, scurrying like silent cockroaches from room to room, passing each other on the run, trading hats like Laurel and Hardy. It's confusing as hell and for a moment we might be tempted to think that Altman's head has finally exploded but when we realize what's going on it's quietly funny.
The script has these characters wrong though. Downey describes Duvall as being "one beer short of a six-pack." And later on in the narrative they seem to have become evil and organized a kidnapping of Branagh's children. Like hell. Schizophrenics aren't evil or organized. They aren't anything. They don't do anything more evil than collect tatters of cloth or old newspapers. And they couldn't organize a trip to the toilet. In the late 1960s rebellion and new identities were all the rage. Everybody discovered there was a Cherokee, a Jew, a woman, or some other minority in his family tree. And they organized into collectivities designed around identity assertion and self defense. Except schizophrenics. A psychiatrist named Sugarman investigated this complete lack of interest in the formation of social borders or self promotion and uncovered "the schizophrenic No Society." They ended the rebellious decade as they began it, as flat as road kill.
I'm afraid I didn't get the photography. The location shooting is thick with atmosphere and very effective. But why is it so dark? It's dark all the way through, inside and out. And it's not chiaroscuro. We don't see Branagh contemplating the bust of Oliver Wendell Holmes or anything. It's just dark. And this is Georgia in the summer. A logical progression would be from steaming sunlight to turbulent night, but no. It's just dark.
Well, dark or not, and sometimes confusing or not, this is a pretty interesting film. A generally good job by all concerned.
Kenneth Branagh is a Southern lawyer (what else?) separated from his wife (Famke Jenssen), seduced by the abused daughter (Embeth Davidz) of a lunatic (Robert Duvall). She's also the abused ex-wife of the meanly murderous Tom Berenger. Branagh is attended by his PI assistant (Robert Downey, Jr.) and his concerned partner (Daryll Hannah).
What a cast, eh? Take the girls alone. All three of them -- Davidz, Jenssen, and Hannah -- are tall and sinewy and sexy. If Altman could have made room in the cast for Uma Thurman he'd have had the core of a perfect girls' basketball team right there.
I can't imagine how I could spell out very much of the plot without winding up with something a French philosophical treatise. It's too long and complicated, and there are twists and turns that would require explanation before comprehension. Let's just say that, if he were as smart as he thinks he is, Branagh would have learned to trust only his secretary, as everyone should. Granted, it's a little hard to ignore Embeth Davidz in distress, all dripping wet, wearing fishnet stocking, and slowly fanning her knees open and closed as if in anticipation of an embrace. That's aside from the temptation nobly to rescue a beautiful woman who happens to have a butterfly tattooed just above her pipick.
The story's pretty good, too, and Altman handles it nicely. Imagine a scene in which Branagh and the local Savannah cops raid a tumble-down shack in the dense forest at the end of a five-mile dirt road, looking for Duvall, who has been described as a guy who is a little crazy, dresses oddly, and wears no shoes. And what they find is an entire house full of raggedly dressed, shoeless oldsters, scurrying like silent cockroaches from room to room, passing each other on the run, trading hats like Laurel and Hardy. It's confusing as hell and for a moment we might be tempted to think that Altman's head has finally exploded but when we realize what's going on it's quietly funny.
The script has these characters wrong though. Downey describes Duvall as being "one beer short of a six-pack." And later on in the narrative they seem to have become evil and organized a kidnapping of Branagh's children. Like hell. Schizophrenics aren't evil or organized. They aren't anything. They don't do anything more evil than collect tatters of cloth or old newspapers. And they couldn't organize a trip to the toilet. In the late 1960s rebellion and new identities were all the rage. Everybody discovered there was a Cherokee, a Jew, a woman, or some other minority in his family tree. And they organized into collectivities designed around identity assertion and self defense. Except schizophrenics. A psychiatrist named Sugarman investigated this complete lack of interest in the formation of social borders or self promotion and uncovered "the schizophrenic No Society." They ended the rebellious decade as they began it, as flat as road kill.
I'm afraid I didn't get the photography. The location shooting is thick with atmosphere and very effective. But why is it so dark? It's dark all the way through, inside and out. And it's not chiaroscuro. We don't see Branagh contemplating the bust of Oliver Wendell Holmes or anything. It's just dark. And this is Georgia in the summer. A logical progression would be from steaming sunlight to turbulent night, but no. It's just dark.
Well, dark or not, and sometimes confusing or not, this is a pretty interesting film. A generally good job by all concerned.