BEFORE: Christopher Lloyd carries over from "Going in Style" into this other crime-based film that's also a remake. I've been waiting years for some channel to show this film, and finally one did - of course I covered Nicholson movies years ago, so it's nearly an afterthought now. And getting it so late nearly consigned this one to the unlinkables file, but I can rescue it thanks to yesterday's lead-in, and watching a film on Netflix tomorrow.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1946) (Movie #1,706)
THE PLOT: The sensuous wife of a rural diner proprietor and a drifter begin a sordidly steamy affair and conspire to murder her Greek husband.
AFTER: It's a classic story based on the novel by James M. Cain - and now I can say I've watched "The Postman Always Rings Twice" twice. But did they really change anything here, beyond using more modern actors and including more explicit sex scenes? Ah, the ending - reviewing the two mostly similar plots on Wikipedia reveals that the 1946 film took the story one step further at the end, with one of the main characters facing punishment and using a metaphor that looming death was like waiting for a letter from the postman, and it doesn't matter if you don't hear the postman when he first rings, because he'll ring a second time - meaning you can maybe cheat death once, but it will keep on trying.
But without that full ending here, the entire meaning of the title of the film is lost. People probably wondered why there wasn't a postman anywhere in this movie, and delivering a letter after ringing the doorbell twice wasn't an important plot point.
Nicholson already looked old back in 1981, I can't wait for tomorrow's film, released in 2010, when I'm guessing he'll look like the Cryptkeeper from "Tales From the Crypt". He was 44 when this film came out, and I guess he's 80 now. Jessica Lange was only 32 in 1981, there's a disparity here between their ages and their looks, but I guess Nicholson's character Frank was a drifter who'd led a hard life, and if Lange's Cora is that much more youthful and attractive, it helps explain why he falls for her so quickly.
As with "Going in Style", I think if a woman falls for a drifter and this makes her realize she's not truly in love with her husband, there are several more viable alternatives to improving her situation before she'd land on, "Hey, let's kill my husband and run the diner together." Cora and Frank could probably have run off together and found another diner to run, and just because Frank likes to shoot craps in the bus station, that shouldn't mean that they're not good travel companions. Really, was that the only thing preventing them from leaving town at the same time?
They wouldn't even have to leave together, Frank could quit and move on down the line, and Cora could slip out a few months later - there's just no reason to get mixed up in murder and face such a large rap - unless, of course, they just wanted to take the shortcut to diner ownership and felt that they were talented enough to make the murder look like an accident. Ah, the American dream....
Unlike "Going in Style", however, I wasn't inclined to root for the criminal main characters here. Why, Frank couldn't even spend a few days without Cora before he shut down the diner and drove out to San Francisco to hook up with a lady lion tamer. (The "cat" imagery for women is strong throughout the film, and is very un-subtle.) Cora also owned a cat, which does nothing to explain why she falls for a dog like Frank. But hey, this is set back in a different age, one where you could smoke in a restaurant, California was still underdeveloped, and men didn't let the fact that women were resisting stop them from having sex with them.
Also starring Jack Nicholson (last seen in "Reds"), John Colicos, Michael Lerner (last seen in "X-Men: Days of Future Past"), John P. Ryan, Anjelica Huston (last seen in "Ever After: A Cinderella Story"), William Traylor, Jon Van Ness (last seen in "Sunset"), Don Calfa, Albert Henderson, with cameos from Brion James and future MMA star Chuck Liddell (last seen in "Kick-Ass 2")
RATING: 5 out of 10 Boy Scouts
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