BEFORE: Elias Koteas carries over from "The Greatest Game Ever Played". This is another film that's been on the books for so long that I've lost track - along with a few old Mummy movies, "Picnic", "Born Yesterday" and that movie with Andy Griffith, it just feels like it's ALWAYS been on my list, though I know that can't be possible. Good film or bad film, I'm just happy to be done with it after today.
Here's the line-up for tomorrow, Day 4 of TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", Sunday April 4 - so if you like something you see here, you'll have time to set your DVR:
6:00 am "Citizen Kane" (1941) - SEEN IT
8:00 am "The Corn Is Green" (1945)
10:00 am "Dark Victory" (1939) - SEEN IT
12:00 pm "Days of Wine and Roses" (1962) - SEEN IT
2:15 pm "The Defiant Ones" (1959) - SEEN IT
4:00 pm "Destination Moon" (1950)
5:45 pm "East of Eden" (1955) - SEEN IT
8:00 pm "Easter Parade" (1948) - SEEN IT
10:00 pm "The Egg and I" (1947)
12:00 am "The Enchanted Cottage" (1945)
2:00 am "The End of the Affair" (1999) - SEEN IT
4:00 am "The Entertainer" (1960)
Ah, finally I see a glimpse of some rational thought behind the alphabetical listing - "Easter Parade" ended up on Easter Sunday, that can't be just a coincidence, then following with "The Egg and I", somebody's having some chuckles over there at TCM programming. "East of Eden" is also a very biblical-based film, sort of. And two films in a row with Bette Davis is probably just a coincidence - but I noticed. Somebody's still trying to link these films by actor, I can feel it. Anyway, another 7 films seen out of these 12 brings me up to 28 seen out of 46, or 60.8%.
THE PLOT: A West Texas deputy sheriff is slowly unmasked as a psychotic killer.
AFTER: This film's a tough sell, for sure. I'll admit I've been curious about it for years, or else it wouldn't be on my list in the first place, but the payoff here's just not worth all the wait. Maybe I waited too long and built up the expectations too high, and no film could possibly live up to that.
BUT, on the other hand, the main character is a sheriff who is also a killer. Very hard to feel sympathetic toward that character. Then when other people start investigating him, instead of the people he frames for his killings, then he has to kill again. And AGAIN. Where does it stop? Is this how serial killers become, you know, serial? Do they keep having to cover up their past mistakes, or knock off anyone who gets too close to finding out the truth? Or is it more like what I saw portrayed in "The Hunted", once someone gets a taste for killing, they find it hard to stop - aka the "Potato Chip" theory?
This film is based on a 1952 crime novel by Jim Thompson, but that was back before crime novels were fun, like Elmore Leonard books that came along later. This was back in the age of "In Cold Blood" and "The Postman Always Rings Twice", when men were men and women were sex objects and future corpses, and people killed to get ahead, like for the insurance money. It was a different time, for sure. But that's part of the problem, we don't live in that world any more. People still kill each other, sure, in fact we've got whole TV channels and many podcasts devoted to "true crime" story, so the genre is alive and well, but do we want to see all this graphic violence in a narrative fiction story?
Quentin Tarantino was attached to direct this film in the mid-1990's, but the project got scrapped after the Sept. 11 attacks, because the script was deemed too violent. I guess timing is everything, because if anybody could have made something out of this story, it could have been Tarantino, he might have elevated it just by casting the right actors - I had a big problem with Casey Affleck here because I couldn't understand most of what he was saying, it was as if his jaw had been wired shut. Is that the only way he could attempt a Texas accent, by never opening his mouth? It's an odd choice, for sure. Now, if this film had been available today on cable or streaming, I could have watched it with subtitles, which is always a help to me. Sure, I have a hearing aid now, but subtitles help even more. But since I couldn't find the film streaming, I had to watch my personal DVD, burned from VHS tape recorded off cable. But no subtitles.
So I had to read the plot summary on Wikipedia to learn WHY Sheriff Lou killed the first person - I sort of half figured it out, but the lack of basic information provided, combined with Affleck being unable or unwilling to open his mouth made it difficult - it all goes back to when the sheriff was a teenager, and he raped a girl. But his older brother pleaded guilty for the crime to protect him, and went to jail. Once the older brother got out of jail, he was hired by Chester Conway, and then died in a construction accident, and someone tells Lou that perhaps it was not really an accident.
Meanwhile, Sheriff Lou is asked repeatedly to get Joyce, a local prostitute, to move out of the county, but in doing so he fights with her, and finds out that she kind of likes getting slapped around (well, duh, what woman in the 1950's didn't? Actually, it was probably all of them...) and this dovetails nicely with Lou's love of hitting people, so they start a relationship based on this. But before long Lou uses this prostitute to cover his murder of Elmer Conway, Chester's son. Lou forgets, but apparently doesn't forgive. First they run an extortion scheme to get $10,000 out of the Conways, and then after beating up the prostitute very badly (aww, just when things were going so well with her...) Lou shoots Elmer dead and puts the gun in her hand. Thinking he's neatly solved two problems at once, while covering his tracks, Lou fakes a flat tire so it appears he was never there at the scene that night.
The problem is, Joyce isn't really dead, she's only mostly head. But they move her to a hospital so she can heal, then stand trial for murder and get executed. I know, that doesn't make much sense if you think about it too long, so don't. But she dies on the operating table in Fort Worth, so that becomes a moot point (or...does it?). Another problem comes when a gas station attendant becomes a suspect in Elmer's murder, because he's got some of the marked extortion money that Lou took. Lou evidently bought gas from this guy, and passed a marked $20 bill. So now Lou has to go visit this guy in jail, with the cover story of getting him to confess, only he "convinces" him to hang himself instead. It's exhausting how one murder leads to more...
And so it continues, with Sheriff Lou constantly having to find new ways to cover his tracks, hinder the investigations and keep killing more people. And then there's an attempt through a flashback to shift the blame for this whole mess over to a woman who seduced him when he was a child, apparently a housekeeper who also liked being spanked and slapped around (because again, what woman in the 1950's didn't?) but do we really want to trace this all back to a woman who molested an underage boy? What about the part where Lou raped a girl when he was a teenager? Can't we just go back to that incident and make this all HIS fault?
There were reportedly many viewers who walked out of the premiere screening of this at the 2010 Sundance Festival - I can see why, it's disturbing to see graphic violence with a man beating women. Sure, we do have to admit that it happens, but it's still off-putting. This may be one reason why this film with a $13 million budget only grossed $217,000 in the U.S. It made more money overseas, but then what does THAT say about foreign audiences, that they're OK with this?
Also starring Casey Affleck (last seen in "The Old Man & the Gun"), Jessica Alba (last seen in "Sin City: A Dame to Kill For"), Kate Hudson (last seen in "Fool's Gold"), Ned Beatty (last seen in "Cookie's Fortune"), Tom Bower (last seen in "River's Edge"), Simon Baker (last seen in "I Give It a Year"), Bill Pullman (last seen in "The Equalizer 2"), Brent Briscoe (last seen in "Mulholland Drive"), Matthew Maher (last seen in "Marriage Story"), Liam Aiken (last heard in "The Emoji Movie"), Jay R. Ferguson (last seen in "Higher Learning"), Caitlin Turner, Ali Nazary, Zach Josse, Noah Crawford, Blake Brigham
RATING: 3 out of 10 marked bills
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