# Fargo (1996)

### reviewed by
Berge Garabedian

    U-TURN (1997)
    A Film Review by Ted Prigge
    Copyright 1998 Ted Prigge

Director: Oliver Stone Writer: John Ridley (based on his novel "Stray Dogs") Starring: Sean Penn, Jennifer Lopez, Nick Nolte, Powers Boothe, Claire Danes, Joaquin Phoenix, Billy Bob Thornton, Jon Voigt, Julie Haggerty, Abraham Benrudi, Laurie Metcalf, Liv Tyler

If "U-Turn" is what Oliver Stone does to take a "vacation" from being all politically cynical, then I wonder what he must do for real vacations. Stone has done so much awesome work lately in the arena of political criticism, as well as media, some of it being barely-well received by critics and audiences (remember "Nixon?"), and so it's about time he tried to not be such a political cynic and open his doors to being just a regular cynic like the rest of us. The result is this.

"U-Turn" is basically a black comedy a la "After Hours," except that it's basically a redo of all those old crap film cliches, like a town where everyone's crooked, there's no industry but a couple convenience stores and diners, and, well, everyone's just plain weird. It's also one of those nightmarish kafkaesque films where everything where Murphy's Law takes into effect, and everything that could go wrong goes wrong.

But unlike "After Hours," which featured an innocent man plagued by some kind of weird Job-like bad luck, we are given a detestable creature, a person who's on the lowest possible rung of the criminal ladder: the slimy rat who owes money but is constantly running from those who want to collect it. He's Bobby Cooper (Sean Penn, making the 97 rounds nicely), and we meet him as he's driving down the road in the middle of a desert when his convertible gets a blown radiator hose, and he is forced to stop at the nearest Arizona town in an effort to get his car fixed.

There, he runs into all kinds of trouble as he meets odd people he probably shouldn't, and ends up in situations in which he does not belong. For instance, he loses all his money when he goes to a convenience store and some robbers come in and a little gun fight ensues, blowing all his cash up. And a bit later, he meets a teenage girl named Jenny (Claire Danes), who's remarks to him that he wants him to father their "love child" get him in trouble with her hot-headed and dim-witted boyfriend, Tobey N. Tucker (Joaquin Phoenix), who says people call him "T.N.T" because when he goes off, people get hurt.

A couple other people we meet: the inbred hick garage mechanic, Darrell (Billy Bob Thornton, unrecognizable under about an inch of grease), who's probably the most evil person in the film; a blind man (Jon Voigt) who says a couple of meaningful and not-so-meaningful afforisms; the sheriff (Powers Boothe), who has his paranoid eye on Bobby; and even a diner waitress named Flo (Julie Haggerty).

But the most notable people he meets are a married couple named Grace and Jake McKenna (Jennifer Lopez and Nick Nolte, respectively), who hate eachother so much that each ends up hiring Bobby to kill the other without the other knowing (a blatant rip-off of "Red Rock West"), causing Bobby to do some character weighing to see which one he should off if either of them.

The plot pretty much goes in circles, as we see Bobby being beaten up like crazy in every other scene, get up, and get beaten up again. The guy is already missing two fingers from a scene before the movie (which we are shown in flashbacks throughout the flick), and we see that this is basically God's revenge on Bobby for being such a bastard. The story becomes a nightmarish revenge story, all the more nightmarish because Penn makes Bobby such a likable person and we soon sympathize with his plight and just want him to get the hell out of Dodge.

This is all done with the kind of overdirecting that Oliver Stone is famous/infamous for. We get all kinds of wacky camera movements and angles, cataclysmic editing, some screwing around with the sound track, and gorgeous cinematography which make this technically amazing, but still a lot like the headache that "Natural Born Killers" was. I almost wonder if Stone can make a technically simple movie anymore, like some of his earlier work.

Nevertheless, Stone has a personal staple he puts on the film, and all his technical stuff works this time in creating sheer paranoia, and giving the film a nightmarish edge that it needs. Too bad he doesn't really take it over the edge and give the film a deeper tone, which is what Scorsese did with "After Hours," turning what could have simply been a "shit happens" film into an almost brilliant black comedy. The film needs more of a plot, which it runs out of about forty-five minutes along, leaving some subplots (Jenny/Tobey, the guys who he owes the money to, as well as a couple others) dangling with very little closure.

Oh, and then there's the "attempt" to add a message about, oh I dunno, manifest destiny and the way we hurt the Native Americans (Lopez's character is a Native American corrupted by an American). Just to make sure we didn't miss his "message," he adds photos of Indian chiefs over the end credits. This approach is so underdeveloped that the photos at the end are a big laugh, and the entire need to add a political subtext to the film just should have been dropped all together if he couldn't have fit it in in the film nicely.

But Stone still exhibits a great sarcastic cynical take on life, turning it into a bit of a pessimistic allegory for life: we're beaten around a lot, have to deal with people as if not more selfish than we are, and then we're eventually given the big screw-over by someone we didn't even suspect was scewing with us in the first place. He's expanded his pessimism a little further, but hardly promises the same relief that his political or media satires promise: that learning from our mistakes can prevent similar things from happening. This is more like: life sucks and there's nothing we can do about it.

Still, for fans of Stone's wild stylistic approach to filmmaking, and anyone who is into wacky surrealism, as well as a film where every actor goes deliciously over the top with their performances (yes, even Claire Danes), this will be pretty pleasing. It's not a great film, but the result is a rather fun film which steals from many films (the ending is a sorta rip-off of "Duel in the Sun"), but still comes off as being at least marginally entertaining.

    MY RATING (out of 4): ***

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