About the project
THE QUICK AND THE DEAD (Sam Raimi, USA/Japan)
Screened out of competition
The revisionist Western wouldn't exist without star and co-producer Sharon Stone, who hand-picked the director and two of her three co-leads; but it barely survives her (and that "barely" is me being more generous than the movie deserves). Her shallow, anachronistic performance is grating enough that even a rarely-worse Russell Crowe seems good in comparison. It's not right to lay all the blame on Stone, though: Simon Moore's screenplay is a nightmare of clattering dialogue and a tediously repetitive structure with no dramatic momentum. Raimi does what he can to spike things with his usual cartoon flair, and the opening quarter-hour is a marvel of camerawork, weird characters, and comic energy. He even manages to make the endless series of gunfights all feel meaningfully different. But he mangles the tone as the film goes on, turning a playful satire into a leaden, straightforward slog. At least cinematographer Dante Spinotti and production designer Patrizia von Brandenstein make sure that things stay pretty, and three years after Unforgiven, Gene Hackman makes a terrifically hissable Old West villain. 6/10
No comments:
Post a Comment
Just a few rules so that everybody can have fun: ad hominem attacks on the blogger are fair; ad hominem attacks on other commenters will be deleted. And I will absolutely not stand for anything that is, in my judgment, demeaning, insulting or hateful to any gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion. And though I won't insist on keeping politics out, let's think long and hard before we say anything particularly inflammatory.
Also, sorry about the whole "must be a registered user" thing, but I do deeply hate to get spam, and I refuse to take on the totalitarian mantle of moderating comments, and I am much too lazy to try to migrate over to a better comments system than the one that comes pre-loaded with Blogger.