Volume 2 , Number 10
Nov , 1997
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Oliver Stone makes a... (I just can't. It's too easy) |
by Molly Degnan |
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Only Oliver Stone knows what he was trying to accomplish
by making "U-Turn", and it is a secret he
doesn't share with the audience. This is a repetitive,
pointless exercise in genre filmmaking - the nutrition
facts on my box of Junior Mints held far more surprises.
I certainly hope Oliver Stone made this movie as a lark,
after the exhausting but remarkable "Nixon",
"NBK", "Heaven and Earth" and
"JFK". Well, he certainly deserves a break, but
this one? Stone is a gifted filmmaker, not afraid to take
chances, to express ideas in his films and make political
statements; however, watching "U-Turn", I was
reminded of a concert pianist banging out "Chopsticks".
It is done well, but one is disappointed to find it done
at all.
The film is based on John Ridley's Stray Dogs,
quite a good novel. According to Tristar studio execs,
Ridley, who also wrote the original version of the
"U-Turn" screenplay, was engaged in an ego war
with Stone regarding the direction of the film and was
consequently barred from the set. He then requested to
have his name taken off the film, to no avail. Sounds to
me like he realized he had written a recipe for disaster,
and attempted to jump ship before a $20 million box office
flop. "U-Turn" stars Sean Penn in a convincing
performance, all the more admirable for being pointless.
Basic plot: Penn plays Bobby, a star-crossed loner who is
doomed to find even more bad luck in the backwater hell of
Superior, AZ, where his car breaks down. Over the course of
the film, he is seduced, shot at, beaten to bits, almost
chomped by a tarantula (come on, Oliver!), and set up for
murder. One gets a sinking feeling about 15 minutes into
the film that the characters are puppets, not personalities;
this is not an Atom Eroyan film, either, so why Stone chooses
to make his actors battle to be real is beyond me. This film
had a great deal of potential, with the excellent cinematography
of Robert Richardson and the strength of the cast. How
frustrating that Stone chose to sprint in the opposite
direction of the film's natural strengths. "U-Turn"
simply has no point; it goes round and round until we figure
out that the view is always changing but it will never be new.