Word: hoppers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...only is the plot hackneyed, so are most of the characters, ranging from the affable old lady (that smiles benevolently throughout the whole movie like a catatonic overgrown Cabbage Patch doll) to the good natured town drunk/basketball maven, played by Dennis Hopper. While certainly a change from his role of homicidal maniac in Blue Velvet, Hopper's performance--though often rather forced--has easily the most depth of any in the movie. His controlled energy and powerful screen presence do much to stabilize the film...
...Hopper probably would have been able to do even more had he been given an adequate script with which to work, one not partial to such two-sentence Stallonian profundities as, Man One: "I hope it works out this time." Man Two: "It's gotta work out this time, or that's it for good...
...similar spirit moves in his actors. Hackman is wonderful as an inarticulate man tense with the struggle to curb a flaring, mysterious anger. Barbara Hershey is just as fine as a teacher trying to put a dispassionate face on a passionate nature. And Dennis Hopper brings some fresh, forceful observation and a jittery melancholy to his characterization of a onetime star athlete who has become the town drunk. There is a quirky authenticity about these figures, and the landscape they inhabit, that one does not expect to find in movies whose chief business is to warm the heart...
...Hopper's rebirth came when he entered a drug-rehabilitation program in April 1984. Since then, he says, he has not taken so much as an aspirin and has worked almost nonstop. Besides appearing in Blue Velvet, he will be seen, again playing broken-down characters, in two other upcoming movies, Hoosiers and River's Edge...
...only now seems to be moving? In a word: no. "It's too late to have regrets," he says. "It happened." But he would like to play, before he turns 70, something other than psychopaths and advanced neurotics. Perhaps even a born-again actor. Anyone interested in The Dennis Hopper Story...