Word: scripting
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Turn she's due to star as an abused wife in the upcoming The Rainmaker and will appear as Cosette in Les Miserables this spring. Though it is understandable that someone as young as Danes might mistake originality for quality, her performance, sadly, can't possibly rise above a script as dismal as that of I Love You, I Love...
...sketchy romance--because of the weak screenplay. In the opening sequence Figgis has Snipes directly addressing the camera as he walks through the streets of Manhattan on his way to see Charlie. This narrative device pops up sporadically in an effort to connect the sloppy narrative strands. The script was originally written by Joe Esterzhas (purveyor of such cinematic fool's gold as Basic Instinct and the infamous Showgirls), and it shows in some places (an especially acrobatic sex scene, for instance...
What saves the sketchy script just enough to make the particularly weak parts bearable is Figgis' direction. As in Leaving Las Vegas, there is often no separation between his bluesy score and his direction. Like the best of jazz, Figgis articulates as much passion in the silences (scenes punctuated by lulls and darkness) as in the straightforward action. A party scene late in the film, with the camera roaming through a drunk crowd under soft amber light, and an earlier incident in which Snipes wanders through a wild Manhattan parade, take on the rhythm and expressionistic flair that made Vegas...
...channel surfing, looking for something sufficiently mindless, when I came across a Charles Bronson film festival. "Chow Down With Chuck!" ordered the WABU 68 announcer, so I did. Ah, the campy violence! The atrocious special effects! The liberal use of the bluescreen! The painfully illogical plot! The script wrought with Dadaist precision! In a fit of foolish idealism, I blurted to my roommate, "You know, we sure have come a long way, at least in terms of action films...
...special place in its heart for IRA terrorists. Such comprehensive forgiveness normally isn't extended to others who live on the moral margins, such as Islamic terrorists or Louise Woodward; but it allows Gere's Mulqueen, a convicted killer, to roam around unmanacled and largely unsupervised. The script strains to pardon Mulqueen's crimes by contrasting his noble, ideological struggle with the Jackal's vicious, gun-for-hire mentality, but both characters are so poorly developed that it's hard to care. What little friction there is between the two terrorists comes to nought...