Reviews

This film is pretty dismissible because of its inane plotting and its dazed direction. Leads Adrian Pasdar and Chris Penn are pleasing to the eye, but there's not just not much to do with their characters, who lack any motivation for their puzzling criminal behavior. The movie's two draws are its striking locations and Lori Singer. Probably intended to be illustrative of the conservationist theme barely recognizable in the final cut, MADE IN USA treks through a number of shots of human civilization in decay, including a town poisoned by dioxide in Illinios and an old mining city in Pennsylvania. Taken in this respect, the film could possibly be enjoyed as a moody travelogue. Lori Singer brings life to her misfit vixen, an even greater enigma than her two brutish companions. MADE IN USA, complete with its insipid title, is like many a forgotten movie - strangely intriguing, but a complete mess in retrospect.

"Straight Time," hoisted high by a brilliant and dexterous performance by Dustin Hoffman, pulls off a very unusual trick: It's one of the only movies in memory where a character we fully identify with turns out to not be such a good guy - and stays that way. "Straight Time" begins on Max's (Hoffman) side and shows us what appears to be a handsome, wounded soul suffering at the hands of an injustice legal system. But Max turns out to be no angel, and yet through the very end, we care about his fortunes and want things to work out for him. It's a brave and gritty role, and Hoffman, on screen the entire film, embodies it. Compare "Straight Time" to "Monster," and see that Lee Wuornos and Max Deblor are cousins. Both characters are labyrinthine in their depth, and both actors find the perfect pitch.

"The Boondock Saints" possesses one of the most despicable and putrid hearts of any movie I have ever seen. The film exalts the MacManus brothers as a couple of death angels, exempt from the laws of God they so mercilessly impose on others. Far from the truth, the brothers are sadistic and frightening, less human than the criminals and drug dealers they kill with staggering enjoyment. I find it truly horrific that people could actually believe these boys are doing the right thing, as if fulfilling some holy edict. In their quest to rid the world of evil, they reveal their own relentless bloodthirst and show themselves to be true avatars of evil - those that kill under the guise of goodness (like the Nazis). A film condemning these two would be fine but this film seems to wholeheartedly believe in their deluded divine right. Worse yet, the film is very poorly made. Except for Willem Dafoe's oddly fascinating turn in drag, the acting is uniformly one-note, the plot deficient, the dialogue leaden, the action scenes preposterous, the climax ineffectual and the directing stilted. The coup de grace of this immoral mess comes at the very end, where, after what seems like hours of die-hard nihilistic conviction, the director throws in a few interview scenes to muddle the message. He probably thought this was the perfect coda to elevate the story into a realm of public thought. Instead, these final scenes betray his disguise, and the entire film, as amateurish moral posturing.