U-Turn USA, R, 125 m, 1997
Way back when, after reading Quentin Tarantino’s original
screenplay for Natural Born Killers, director Oliver Stone thought he had
discovered the perfect vehicle in which to “lighten up.” He needed a respite
from the high-handed sermonizing of his Vietnam trilogy, the paranoid muckraking
of JFK, and the heady pretentiousness of The Doors. So, he set
out, and I quote, “to make something Arnold Schwarzenegger would be proud
of.” Truth be told, I have no idea what the hell Stone was talking about;
Tarantino’s unrefined draft possessed a comparably infernal subtext to that of
the final recorded version. However, the body of the script was completely
reshaped (apart from the opening diner massacre that was shot virtually word for
word), much to the dismay of Tarantino who then opted for a simple story credit.
As production moved forward and the gist of the material became even more grim
and esoteric, it looked as if NBK would not crystallize into Stone’s
promised light-hearted diversion. What was ultimately delivered was a genuinely
disturbing, surprisingly profound meditation on brutality and the media’s
glorification of its participants. But if NBK was the apex of Stone’s
career, his next project, the downright embarrassing Nixon, was the
nadir. Using recycled editing tricks and varying film stocks left over from NBK,
Stone served up a movie biography that was as insulting as it was inaccurate.
Even Richard Nixon’s detractors credit the former president for his commanding
presence and uncannily lucid orations, but Stone’s treatment reduced this
significant American figure to a sweaty, ungainly man-child. The public, sensing
that something was rotten in Denmark, stayed away, though, and the movie became
little more than a curious footnote in the director’s oeuvre. Desperate to
recoup the fickle moviegoers’ favor (and make a few bucks), Stone finally made
good on his promise to lighten up with U-Turn. We know we’re not
supposed to take this pap seriously because the opening titles proclaim it as an
Oliver Stone “movie,” not “film.” Well, if fingers being chopped off,
heads being blown apart, and little girls being sodomized by their daddies is
your idea of fun, have at it. Those with a particle of taste, however, should
steer clear because U-Turn is trash—a pointlessly souped-up, thoroughly
distasteful hybrid of Doc Hollywood and Red Rock West. Sean Penn plays Bobby Cooper, an amoral sleaze ball who’s
motoring across the deserts of Arizona in his Mustang convertible to deliver a
hefty booty to an enigmatic creditor. He blows a radiator hose and begrudgingly
coasts into the sleepy town of Superior (once you see the town and meet its
inhabitants, you’ll grasp the irony) where he enlists the services of a grease
monkey named Darrell (Billy Bob Thornton) to get him back on the road. (With his
Coke-bottle spectacles, horribly rotting teeth and dopey disposition, Darrell
recalls one of those inbred loons from the hills in Deliverance.) He lets
Bobby know that it’ll take some time to complete the repairs (and figure out
how to best fuck the city slicker), so Bobby takes his cache and strolls into
town. At the corner of the market square, he meets a blind Indian (an
unrecognizable Jon Voight) who, after spouting some gibberish about the Vietnam
War, shames Bobby into buying him a soda. Further down the dusty street, Bobby hooks up with Grace
(Jennifer Lopez), a pouty little tease who invites him back to her estate to
help hang curtains. (Never mind.) When her hubby, Jake (Nick Nolte), returns
home, he finds Bobby and his dearly beloved engaged in flagrante delicto.
Like any honorable husband, he busts Bobby in the chops and sends him packing.
But later Jake catches up to Bobby down the road and
offers him a small fortune to bump off his promiscuous better-half. Sensing that
Bobby is the perfect flunky for the job, he rubs his calloused paw through
Bobby’s greasy locks and takes a deep whiff. “Yeah,” he rumbles,
“that’s the sweat of a man who doesn’t have an honest bone in his body.”
It’s at about this point that the film runs completely out of gas and treads
along the usual string of double-crossings and shoot-outs. Stone struggles to enliven “redneck noir” with his own
defiled sense of jocularity, but John Dahl he ain’t. Not only is U-Turn
bereft of originality, there isn’t one sympathetic character to be had in
Stone’s desiccated cesspool of depravity. The film needs the brooding, but
kind-hearted drifter Nicolas Cage played in Red Rock West for the
grotesques to play off of. Instead, we’re saddled with a loathsome weasel like
Bobby who doesn’t give two hoots for anybody but himself. (This is probably
keeping in step with Stone’s worldview; the director has always seemed to
despise everybody and everything—particularly small town folk.) Fortunately,
the hyper kinetic style Stone had been cultivating from The Doors on has
been toned down here. The film, derivative as it is, begins promisingly enough,
but after all the principal players are introduced, it bogs down in a quagmire
of clichés we grew tired of moons ago. Nolte, Thornton, et al have a grand time
hamming it up, but their queer posturing feels like an irrelevant goof without
an arresting yarn for them to participate in. It may seem small potatoes next to the cavalcade of foul-ups in U-Turn, but one thing that’s never explained is the movie’s curious contempt for all things feline. One whiskered critter is flattened under the wheels of Bobby’s Mustang; another Bobby kicks in the ribs when he strokes up against him in a diner. Were that somebody had the good sense to do that to Stone when he mused of “lightening up.” October 10, 1997 © Copyright 2007 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.
|