A perfectly serviceable John Sturges (The Magnificent Seven) action/espionage thriller from 1968, currently on Tubi. The Soviets took photographs from space of all of our missile installations, but in attempting to retrieve the film, things went awry. The canister of film landed near a British scientific weather station in the Arctic. The race is on for retrieval, led by nuclear submarine skipper Rock Hudson, MI6 spook Patrick McGoohan, friendly Soviet Ernest Borgnine, and Marine squad leader Jim Brown.
I watched the flick when I was a little kid on TV. It was absolutely thrilling.
It still holds up somewhat. It’s really worth catching for three particularities.
First, clearly of its time, a significant portion of this rather long film (it has both an overture and an intermission) is devoted to the inner workings of a nuclear submarine, sometimes, pedantically so. But you have to remind yourself that in 1968, film audiences would have been thrilled with a long dissertation on the inner workings of a nuclear submarine.
Second, I never understood why McGoohan was not a massive star. He is a great villain, but he also has a certain charming smile and twinkle.
I read up on him. He was swallowed up by television, which probably suppressed a budding film career. He was also extremely Catholic, and would not take any role in which he was required to kiss a woman other than his wife, thereby taking him off the James Bond list (and apparently, he was on it). Modern audiences would know McGoohan as the villainous king who steals scenes and chews scenery in Mel Gibson’s Braveheart.
Lastly, Jim Brown is still cool, even in a winter parka.
In one of the first moments of the film, we meet Bruce Springsteen (Jeremy Allen White) as a little boy, hearing his father (Stephen Graham) coming up the stairs, drunk, to spar with him. In the process, Bruce catches a slap. We know it’s gonna’ be these two guys the whole picture, as the shy, depressed superstar makes his most personal, least commercial opus, Nebraska, while grappling with his troubled upbringing.
I read Bruce’s autobiography and was mightily impressed with its honesty, charity, and equanimity. There was little, however, about the ghost of his abusive father. Maybe Bruce wasn’t ready to share. But the point is relevant because while his father seems to be a handful, he is not portrayed as such a monster so as to justify the depths of Bruce’s torment. In fact, when Bruce is writing Nebraska, he seems more influenced by Terence Malick’s Badlands than Daddy issues.
In the midst of his struggle, Bruce has a relationship with a single mother (Odessa Young). It is supposed to be a simple, earthy union, a local rocker and a “heart of gold” fan who sees through The Boss’ facade, a ludicrous conceit. This is post The River. He’s massive. He’s been on the cover of Newsweek and Time. But the picture persists in the silliness of Bruce the regular guy. When Bruce drops his waitress gal off, because of course she’s a waitress, in a diner, it is in a blue collar neighborhood, oil storage tanks in the background. Her father comes out and says, in a hackneyed, suspicious New Jersey small townie way, “is that the … uh … guitar player fella’?” Dad then sneeringly harkens to Uncle Dave, who “played guitar” and presumably, was not much of a success.
Oof.
Worse, the relationship doesn’t add much if anything to the story. Given the woman didn’t exist, one would expect writer/director Scott Cooper (Hostiles) to do more with the character. But she is there solely to be dumped by the angsty Bruce and to utter pap like, “if you can’t be honest with yourself, I don’t know how I can expect you to be honest with me.”
Oof.
The second half of the film is where we go straight into the ditch. Bruce is struggling to present Nebraska in his stripped down vision while fending off pressure to release Born in the USA. In the doing, he engages some more with his father both then and now while struggling with depression. It’s a long slog, with Bruce upset that his cassette tape cannot be replicated in the studio. This principal struggle is treated as if we were watching Oppenheimer and his team of scientists discussing the moral conundrum of unleashing nuclear power onto the world. In these moments, the film has absolutely no sense of proportion and lapses into the ridiculous. The Boss’ head is in his hands. A lot.
Another negative. Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong) is laughably written. As Springsteen’s manager, he is supposed to provide some obvious tension between the Boss’ failure to follow up The River with something more commercial as opposed to his sparse, acoustic passion project. But there really is none because Landau is all therapist, uber reverential. With no concerted pushback, only soothing support, we near ennui. If Bruce said he wanted to follow up The River with hand puppetry, from this Landau, we’d get:
“Hey [deep soulful look into Bruce’s eyes, hand on shoulder]. I Iove you. You do you.”
When Landau and his wife discuss the Nebraska demo, their conversation is the most elemental thing you’ll hear in film, as if Cooper fears the audience is so stupid it must be painstakingly explained just what a departure this record is and just how “dark” it seems. The couple have two such conversations. She contributes to the first one, but during the second, Landau is so smitten and high falutin’ about his plagued client, she just kind of looks at him.
And when Bruce plays the hit Born in the USA, Landau says, “I think a Muse came down and kissed you on the mouth.”
Oof.
Ultimately, Cooper cannot land on any one thing for very long, and it is just not very cinematically interesting to watch a film about a guy writing a singularly personal solo record. It’s all in Bruce’s head. And the memories of his Dad, the ghost, are drab and not all that shocking.
The resolutions at the end are brutally maudlin. Like, shield your eyes syrupy. “You need therapy man” bad. Like sitting on his father‘s lap as an adult and saying, “you did the best you could. You had your own battles to fight” bad.
A positive. Jeremy Allen White is really quite good as Springsteen. One has to be really careful with such a mythic figure, and White does a very understated job while still capturing the persona. The script calls for him to be perpetually tortured but he pushes back with a refreshing natural humanity. This is no small thing given how humorless and dour the script portrays him.
It’s not grotesquely terrible. But it’s pretty bad, hopelessly muddled and much duller and pedestrian than it had to be.
No doubt, Danny Boyle movies are easy on the eyes. This one is no different. But as good-looking as the film may be, tonally, it’s a mess.
Boyle updates us on the world 28 years after the release of the rage virus, and we find ourselves in the Scottish Highlands, where an isolated community is celebrating a 12 year old boy, Spike (Alfie Williams), and his passage into manhood. No, they don’t put Spike outside the gates of the town to fend for himself, like the Spartans. But he does accompany his father (Aaron Taylor Johnson) to the mainland, which has been quarantined for 28 years, to get Spike his first kill. There are a few fraught moments, and Spike does … okay. But he shows very natural terror during the terrifying chore, and when they return to their small burg to tell tales of his bravery, he is a bit ashamed.
He shouldn’t be. During his trip, we see that the infected have either regressed, stayed the same, or progressed. So, they are either crawling sloth-like behemoths who move at a glacial pace and eat worms (unless they can get near a human) and standard rage lunatics who speed attack in packs and have learned to eat. There is also an Alpha, a rage survivor so big and powerful that when he grabs your head, he can pull it off your body and your entire spinal column will follow. Spike also sees a fire, suggesting the presence of an un-infected.
Things go awry shortly after Spike’s return. He learns of a mysterious doctor (Ralph Fiennes) who may or may not be a lunatic, but is still on the mainland and may be the keeper of the fire. Spike’s mother )Jodie Comer) is bedridden, afflicted by crippling headaches and memory issues. After Spike sees his father with another woman, the revelation pushes him into a decision so monumentally stupid, all allowances you might give other failures in the film are immediately expended.
Looking to find the doctor who can help his mother, Spike enters the dangerous world of the mainland, but this time, not with his adroit and capable father, who got them out of several close calls the first trip, but with his infirm mother. On their first night, Spike almost buys it from one of the sloths, who was moving 30 yards over at least an hour, such is his capability.
Regardless, after some time on the mainland, which is beautifully rendered by Boyle, they find a pregnant infected. Spike’s mom and the woman hold hands to get her through delivery, a laughable conceit. Then, Mom and Spike tote the baby around (unlike the baby in Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, this baby “appears” healthy, though the immediate acceptance of that reality is in keeping with Spike’s guileless approach to the dangerous mainland) and find the doctor. They also defeat the Alpha, who, lo’ and behold, is the baby’s father.
Before and after that victory, a bunch of pseudo philosophical mumbo-jumbo about love and death is bandied about.
And then Spike meets up with some locals who have been roving and fighting the infected.
They all look like members of A-ha. Or a grubbier Duran Duran.
I was hoping this touching film would be properly rewarded at Oscar time, but it was ignored. The omission is even more galling given the Academy’s decision to nominate 10 films this year, including the dreck of F1 and Frankenstein. Getting an Oscar nomination is never a confirmation of merit. But with 10 nominees? Please. Noah Baumbach’s story of mega Hollywood star Jay Kelly (George Clooney) in midlife crisis is clever, entertaining, and tender, and Clooney gives his best performance since The Descendants. The picture deserved better.
After the death of a mentor, the man who “discovered” him, Clooney is approached by an old friend from acting school (Billy Crudup). In the hope of establishing more of a real connection with both his past and normality, Kelly invites Crudup for drinks to reminisce about the old times. Unfortunately, Clooney is a massive, unknowing target, and he becomes the repository for Crudup’s bitter regret, as well as a TikTok sensation when the two get into a fist fight in the parking lot. Clooney, however, is not deterred, and takes his retinue, led by longtime manager Adam Sandler and publicist Laura Dern, to chase his younger daughter through France on his way to a tribute ceremony in Italy. To be unencumbered is a freeing experience for Clooney, albeit one that is laughably abnormal. He is recognized, fawned over, and catered to by a staff of five, and soon, even he sees the absurdity in his efforts.
The trek is infused with real heart and pathos, and throughout, Clooney flashes back to his ascent to stardom. While he seeks to reconcile himself to failures with family and friends, including his father (an irascible Stacy Keach) and an older adult daughter, who is estranged and embittered and attributes all of her mental torments to her wanting father, ultimately, they are not there for his moment. Clooney is left to the expected support from his longtime manager and assistants, but Sandler himself is going through his own crisis, realizing the limits of friendship in his uneven relationship as the fixer of all things for megastars. Dern has had it, and bolts with a “save yourself, this man does not love us” warning for Sandler. Eventually, Clooney is alone.
There are wonderful exchanges, poignant moments but, thankfully, no real resolution. Baumbach studiously avoids the pat. This type of film would normally result in some kind of oath, or commitment, or suggest a rapprochement, a teachable moment. Here, it ends with Clooney at the festival given in his honor to credit him for his life‘s work on the screen, and his lesson is not quite clear. Yes, like all men and women, Clooney has made mistakes, but when you get to see the joy in the faces of the people who love his work, work that has accompanied and maybe even inspired many of the moments in their own lives, there is at least a rebuttal to the regret.
For some, this, I suspect, may be too much sentimental log rolling for Hollywood. I ate it up with a spoon and wanted more.
A lovely film, one of the best of the year, replete with fantastic, unheralded performances. Sandler is particularly good, vulnerable and piercing. Though he has impressed enough, however sporadically (Punch Drunk Love, The Meyerowitz Stories, Uncut Gems, Hustle) that I can no longer register surprise.
I signed up for Tubi because it has a lot of older movies that don’t get run on some of the other streaming services. This very competent Peter Yates (Bullitt) flick from 1977 beguiled me as a young teen for a couple of reasons. First, it was a Peter Benchley, post Jaws vehicle, with Robert Shaw as yet another boat captain, though this time his quarry is treasure, not a shark.
Second, well … I was 13 years old, Jacqueline Bisset, enough said.
My prurient childhood fascination aside, this is a pretty solid picture. Two tourists (Nick Nolte and Bisset) happen upon two collided shipwrecks while snorkeling. They cross a local drug lord (Louis Gossett) who also has an interest in what they’ve found (tens of thousands of vials of morphine from an old WWII medical ship) and must enlist a wily old diver and antiquity collector (Robert Shaw) to help them find treasure from the other vessel, deliver the drugs, and otherwise negotiate their way out of the mess.
Nolte exudes charisma as the thrill seeker captivated by the jewels of the sea. Shaw is Shaw, commanding and interesting even when he is probably phoning it in. Gossett is oozily charming as a lethal Haitian trafficker interested not in treasure, but in the drugs, until he learns of the treasure and gets greedy.
Bisset is every bit as alluring as she was when I was 13, and it turns out, now that I can focus, she can act. She is menaced throughout the picture and her terror is palpable.
The film gets balky when Gossett inexplicably harasses the trio even though they are working on his behalf, and the ending is the cheesiest finale in movie history. But otherwise, sexy and solid.
If AI did not write this film, then we need more AI in film.
I feel confident, however, AI had a hand in this empty, soulless picture, which feels like a Marvel flick but doesn’t even meet that low bar. The movie looks good, moves relatively well, and the actors are for the most part fine. But the script is predictable slop and the presentation so dumbed down, all things equal, it must have come from an algorithm. Writer/director James Vanderbilt has a few Screams and Spidermans under his belt, but, inexplicably, co-wrote Zodiac. So color me perplexed.
The picture also offers a glimpse as to what the future holds for historical films. Not a single bit of this recitation of the Nuremberg trial rings true. Sure, it technically comports with some of the facts, but the feel is all “now.” Viewers can glean just enough information to get a sense as to historical stakes (Nazis bad, Herman Göring bad but sneakily charming), but the picture never nears informative or elucidating.
The Nazis have lost the war, and in an over-long lead-up, we learn it is critical they be placed on trial through Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson (Michael Shannon), who spars over the wisdom and efficacy of such a trial with his wife via witty banter. When the trial becomes threatened, Jackson goes to the Vatican to enlist the Pope’s blessing, which he receives by blackmailing the Church as an arguable co-conspirator with Hitler, a complete fabrication. But a lie that serves an exchange in keeping with this simplistic rendition.
Pope cowed. Full steam ahead.
Russell Crowe plays Göring, the biggest fish in the dock. He must go to toe-to-toe with army psychologist Rami Malek, a cynical practitioner so full of himself his eyes bug out.
Okay. Cheap shot.
The men bond in verbal exchanges that are dull and unilluminating. One gets the sense Crowe got the role because he’s heavy and imposing, but he competently delivers the muck given him. As for Malek, his casting is a mystery. He should not receive any further film roles unless in Bohemian Rhapsody II or movies where he plays offbeat or weirdo. When Malek engages with Göring’s young daughter, as he passes letters between father and family, he almost takes on the mien of a molester. Peter Lorre as William Holden.
Malek gets deeper into Göring’s psyche while acting as Jackson’s mole and stoolie, which is incongruent, given all of Jackson’s testaments to fairness. Malek also intercedes on behalf of Göring‘s family when they are arrested. Depressed, he takes refuge in the arms of a buxom reporter and spills his guts. She prints a front page article betraying him and leading to his ouster from the Army.
Most of these plot points are either false or distorted. In reality, the Malek character was not cashiered; he was promoted and back in the U.S. by the time Göring took the witness stand.
In the film, Malek attends the trial and before so, he rushes in to see Jackson to offer his book of notes entitled, How to Get Herman Göring.
The big day arrives.
The Nazis and lawyers don their outfits for legal battle.
Göring does pushups in full regalia and walks out amongst cheers from other caged Nazis. Like in Gladiator.
Cue AI dialogue.
“In seven hours, the whole world will be focused on this room. This is it. This is everything.”
“Let’s finish this war.”
“This is your day. You’re ready.”
“Bury him.”
“He’s got him.”
While watching this drivel with my family, we started a game. A character would say something. We would pause the movie and take a stab at what would be said in response. Our success rate was shockingly and depressingly high.
Example. The interpreter who works with Malek offers him a cigarette. When Malek notes the interpreter does not smoke, he explains he carries cigarettes to curry favor with officers. The interpreter then states wistfully that perhaps, at the end of the war, he will have a cigarette. Malek responds, “the war has ended.” There is a silence.
The movie was paused. Bets were placed on whether the interpreter would have his cigarette at the moment of conviction of the Nazis.
EXT. PALACE OF JUSTICE – NIGHT
Howie stands outside. Silence save for the crickets. He pulls out the pack of cigarettes. Takes one out. Puts it in his mouth. Goes to light it. Hands shaking…From inside, we hear the gallows drop again. Another man down. Howie stands there. Pulls the cigarette from his mouth unlit and tosses it away.
There is a great deal of this hackneyed bullshit throughout the flick.
Thankfully, the dreck eventually ends. Malek, who writes a book about the experience, is portrayed as a haunted soul, desperately trying to warn the world that the good German is in all of us. And then, he kills himself, just like Göring.
Did you know Eddie Murphy was funny? That he always knew he would be a star? That he inspired many a black comic? That he was angry at SNL when David Spade took a dig at him?
If so, you’re good to go.
If you insist on watching this tepid Netflix documentary, prepare for what seems to be a retrospective about a funny man that inexplicably does not show him being all that funny.
There is no delving into his craft, no in-depth discussion of how he matured in stand-up or established himself in films.
There are no great stories of Hollywood.
There is, really, very little insight at all.
Rather, Murphy is presented as a pleasant, sensible fellow, a bit of a homebody, guarded but practiced in the art of bland recollection.
It is all very boring, and made more so by the likes of Arsenio Hall, Michael Che’, Dave Chappelle, Kevin Hart, Jerry Seinfeld, Pete Davidson, Jamie Foxx, Chris Rock, and others basically blowing so much elegiac smoke up Murphy’s ass that he seems more demigod than man. Which is weird when you see his oeuvre laid out, and his sermon on the mount is playing so many characters in The Nutty Professor who can fart.
Look, I love Eddie Murphy. When I saw 48 Hours, I was blown away by his presence and the interplay with Nick Nolte, a buddy cop flick with real comedic teeth in the articulation of racial tension. I also thought Murphy was overlooked in Dreamgirls, though I was pleased to see his Best Supporting Actor nomination and was dying to hear him explain how he evoked a true falling star, and one with substance abuse issues, given his own clean living. As for his unheralded classic, Bowfinger, all we get is how it was nice for him to walk to lunch with Steve Martin.
The endeavor is generic, Commissar-approved dreck through and through. Though I give it 1 star for a few clips of Eddie’s hilarious, now deceased brother, Charlie.
Tediously directed by the same person who helmed The Longest Day, once dubbed “The Longest Movie,” Ken Anankin’s resume’ does not inspire confidence. The picture takes forever to start, and when it gets going, it is permeated with flat ahistorical battle sequences and clunky dialogue. All the actors seem to be taking their cue from Henry Fonda, who plays the lone officer who foresaw the Nazi surprise attack through the Ardennes. Fonda sports a ho hum bemusement that screams, “Did the check cash?” The usual suspects for WWII flicks – Telly Savalas, Robert Ryan, Charles Bronson – make their bank as well, and similarly phone in their personas.
A bore through and through, it looks cheap and inauthentic, particularly when they put the leads in tanks with the actual film footage on a screen behind them.
Very Batman and Robin TV show driving.
Though it maintains a soft spot in this old heart for reasons having nothing to do with artistic merit.
When I was in high school, due to economic strain, my mother was forced to take in boarders. One, Klaus Kristmas (name changed because if my Googling is correct, he’s a rather accomplished German government official) was a smart, ramrod straight, punctilious young man whose father was in the Bundestag. Klaus was great fun, and my mother immediately made him part of the family. He even came to the beach with us, where we recoiled in horror as he pulled down his shorts to reveal a European look, the mini-Speedo.
At home, I would hang out with Klaus and watch TV. One night, sure enough, we watched this flick, which is all Germans kicking ass for the majority of the picture. When Robert Shaw, as the lead Panzer commander, nears the oil depot that will allow his continued advance, however, things have shifted. Shaw burns to death when a fuel drum hits his tank.
One scene encapsulates the silliness of this film and perhaps of writer-director Guillermo del Toro. The enraged monster crashes a fancy wedding party but before he arrives, we see the dandy of a groom telling the hired hand walking around with a basket of rose petals, essentially, to “keep them coming. No matter what.” The monster busts in and kills two or three people, grabs the bride, and walks out of the party with her draped in his arms, slower-motion.
Amidst a shower of rose petals.
And they say you can’t get good help.
It’s the shot, the look, that consumes del Toro, obliterating pace, story, dialogue or, in the case of the hardest working petal thrower in film history, common sense. As beautiful as his eye may be, The Shape of Water, Crimson Peak, Nightmare Alley, all are gorgeously photographed but empty vessels. No matter how many frames look like paintings, the effect is one of misdirection, not involvement. del Toro keeps larding it on, way past the moment when the Wizard’s curtain is pulled away, and a pudgy bureaucrat with a lot of bells and whistles is revealed.
Yea, the picture is gorgeous. And for the first 45 minutes, it connects, but truth be told, it connects because it is economical and lighter, in a Tim Burtony way.
When Dr. Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) begins his work on the monster and descends into madness, the picture becomes absurdist. When the monster (Jacob Elordi) is loose, we move to an uncomfortable mix of turgid and maudlin. When the chase is on, as Dr. Frankenstein must hunt the monster to the outer reaches of the North Pole, if you are not stifling a laugh or making cracks, bully for you.
By the film’s resolution, the monster has transformed into the Hulk and the film packs all of the emotional wallop of a Marvel film.
The movie is also badly acted. Isaac plays Frankenstein like a dude on a speedball. As his brother and the brother’s intended, Felix Kammerer and Mia Goth are as dull as dishwater. They simply do not resonate other than as clotheshorses for del Toro’s unnecessarily ornate costumery. As the financier of the project with a ham-handed agenda of his own, Christoph Waltz is only missing a mustache to twirl. Elordi is just big.
As bad as this whole endeavor is, it is made worse by del Toro’s cringingly infantile script. His monster is a tortured soul whose transformation from a conglomeration of electrically charged parts to the most erudite Hulk is so ridiculous as to be Mel Brooksian. His Dr. Frankenstein is such a douchebag you can no more invest in him than Bradley Cooper as “Sack” in Wedding Crashers. Indeed, Frankenstein’s primary impetus for his forswearing of his creation is that Goth and the monster got on for a moment and he, coveting his brother’s gal, is now jealous. His secondary factor is that the monster is a lot of work.
Another note. del Toro luxuriates in the gratuitously violent here, yet another brushstroke on his canvas. He can make the monster’s ripping the skin off a wolf’s head super cool looking. But to see such a struggle with mere wolves, followed by Elordi moving an entire ship with a little push at the finale, it just hammers home the director’s ruinous fixation.
A colossal failure that scored an 85% on Rottentomatoes.
Hacks.
On the plus side, if you have Netflix, it is free.
James Foley’s (After Dark, My Sweet) film never really decides what it wants to be, a family drama or a crime picture. Foley eventually throws up his hands and cedes everything to the captivating Christopher Walken.
Not the worst of decisions. Walken plays a minor rural Pennsylvania crime kingpin. He skippers a crew that includes his two brothers and a few other hardened locals. They do heists, car thefts, drugs, and, if necessary, murder, a lethal but merry band of crooks.
Walken’s estranged son, Sean Penn, is a townie still living at home with his mother and grandmother. The women smoke, glare at the TV and otherwise exude the hopelessness of abandonment and near poverty. Penn, seeking something more, falls in at-first-sight love with Mary Stuart Masterson, who looks his way as he cruises at night around the town square. It is for her that he joins up with his father’s crew, to “get out while we’re young … ’cause tramps like us …”
When Penn realizes murder is part of the gig, he splits from Walken, gets arrested working his own “baby” crew (which includes his brother Chris and a very young Crispin Glover and Kiefer Sutherland), and is incarcerated. There, the cops work on him to fink on his father.
Here, the film becomes ridiculous. Walken, paranoid Penn will flip on him, kills nearly every one of the kids working with Penn, even though Foley does not show them to be integral enough to his operation to be much of a threat. He also rapes Stuart Masterson, which makes even less sense if the plan is to bring Penn back into the fold. Penn comes out of jail, tries to make a run for it with his gal, fails, and in a rushed, abrupt ending, testifies against his father (for 30 seconds).
That’s that. Lights up.
None of it makes much sense, but the thematic indecision is worsened by gross character underdevelopment. Walken is a charming sociopath, but how did he get here? No clue. We even have his ex-wife moping about, warily eying the establishment of a relationship between Walken and Penn. Foley, however, suffices to use her as a sad totem, so we don’t get any insight into Walken from her. Similarly, Penn needs a Daddy. Then, on a dime, he doesn’t. As he is near mute for most of the picture, we are left to guess as to what he has missed and the basis for his immediate and strong moral stand. Stuart Masterson is looking for something, but as she and Penn prepare to light out for the territories, leaving her house, she is clearly from money. So why is she hanging with these lowlifes? Unexplored.
The film has its strengths. Foley’s feel for rural Pennsylvania is strong. The fields and woods are spooky and forbidding at night. During the day, the crappy cars and houses, the dead-end bars, they all contribute to Penn’s lust for some way to get out. Foley shows just how big and cold this country can be, the kind of place that swallows you up and tells no tales or grinds you down little by little. The murder spree is indelible.
As noted, Walken is the picture, and in every scene, he is riveting. Penn, however, goes low to Walken’s high, and the effect is somnambulant. He’s in with Daddy, then immediately out, then annoyingly internal until his final nose-to-nose with Daddy, all to the conclusion that he needed a better Daddy.
Another note – at the time of the picture, Penn was married to Madonna. She had a song for the picture which then became extended to the soundtrack. It is synthy, mid-80s fare, better suited to Vision Quest or even Risky Business. It has no business being near this gritty movie. Sure, I joked about Springsteen above, but his music would have been pitch perfect to the film.
filmvetter 