VICE SQUAD (Arnold Laven, 1953, USA)

 

An Undertaker doesn’t want to dig his own grave, so Capt. Barnaby decides to help the mortician bury his own Constitutional Rights! It’s a story about a cop killer on the lam, a witness who may be able to identify the killer, a bank robbery, a deceptive Count, a madame with a bevy of buxom beauties, and a kidnapped ingenue...not necessarily in that order. Arnold Levine directs this police procedural which takes place within 24 hours like a television program, pushing the story forward at a frantic pace. Laven supplies the energy but it’s DP Joseph Biroc that gives the film verve, utilizing deep focus two and three shot compositions, capturing deep looming shadows and interesting mise-en-scene which reveal details without quick cuts or obtrusive inserts. When Biroc resorts to an over-the-shoulder shot, he places the camera high angle so it looks down upon Capt. Barnaby (Edward G. Robinson) in close-up, which would diminish the Captain but instead allows Robinson to dominate the argument and get the last word.

Milquetoast mortician Jack Hartrampf (Porter Hall) has a girl on the side, so when he secrets away from her domicile at 1:30AM he stumbles upon a Grand Theft Auto in progress and a dying policeman. But Hartrampf fails to cooperate with police, not because he fears repercussion from the gangsters but because he doesn’t want his wife to know where he was! He has the nerve to exercise his Constitutional Rights and won’t say a word until he speaks with an attorney. This causes Capt. Barnaby and his Vice Squad much consternation. According to the film, the ends justify the means as the police discard the Rule of Law and become a Totalitarian authority who belittle Hartrampf’s legal representation and portrays him as a roadblock to Justice. To be clear, the police harass this timid man by having a secretary make a false allegation of sexual assault against him, and file drunk and disorderly by planting evidence on his person. Just so they can buy time to discover his paramour and parade her before him, so they can then blackmail him into making a “truthful” statement. When the third act is in high gear, Capt. Barnaby convinces Hartrampf to misidentify the shooter so they can leverage information from one of the gangsters! Even the matronly madame Mona Ross (Paulette Goddard) is arrested and held without probable cause, so she can cooperate with the investigation.  And don’t even ask about warrants! These are Nazi tactics, yet it’s all portrayed casually as routine procedure.

The police are portrayed as the good guys but I’m not so sure after watching them decompose the Fourth Amendment and scatter the remains upon the corpses of our Founding Fathers.

Final Grade: C

IN BRUGES (Martin McDonagh, 2008, UK)

 

IN BRUGES is a Hieronymus Bosch triptych: three characters caught in a static loop unable to escape the Garden of Earthly Delights. After Ray bungles his first contract by accidentally killing a child, he and his mentor Ken are sent to Bruges to await their next assignment. Ken is deeply moved by the city’s peace and tranquility while Ray is impatient and frantic with boredom: Heaven and Hell is a matter of perspective.

Writer/Director Martin McDonagh has created a deeply philosophical film that (I believe) has been mostly misunderstood: this is not just a wise cracking, slick talking PULP FICTION style comedy! McDonagh explores beliefs in Theistic Existentialism and Buddhism because the characters are brought to a turning point in their lives…by their own hands. They also hold the key to their own salvation but keep repeating the same destructive behaviors. And its fate that ultimately brings the three together. Bruges is an allegorical Purgatory, an inescapable dreamlike place that exists between worlds where the three characters are trapped by their own rigid moral codes and ideals.

As the violent drama nears its bloody climax, Ray, Ken, and Harry are each given a chance to redeem themselves but ultimately fail. I imagine this story playing out for all eternity (think GROUNDHOG DAY) until one is able to change and attain enlightenment: Ken almost achieves Nirvana by self-sacrifice, but he also remains embedded in Samsara. The labyrinthine canals are like the city’s veins, the people it’s flesh, and the crumbling ancient structures its bone. The tower provides an omniscient view of the city and points the way towards salvation while the mysterious caverns lurk somewhere below the park as the suffering happens in-between. The film does not spare the brutality and gore and devours the characters like some demented Boschian nightmare.

Final Grade: (A+)

BLOOD SIMPLE (Joel & Ethan Coen, 1984, USA)

 

Ray and Abby just want a simple life together but instead become a house divided by bloodshed, much of it their own. This modern noir reflects shadowy images upon the blank moral canvas of the protagonists, people who see only a blackened version of reality. The Coen brothers subvert some of the tropes of the genre while DP Barry Sonnenfeld (who would become a successful Director) mimics classic noir compositions, as characters are often reduced to silhouettes, utilizing extreme low angle shots to reveal slowly spinning ceiling fans, where rain-drenched roads and blurry headlights paint a thick atmosphere of dread, and a grinning chuckling psychopath seems like a harmless buffoon.

The Coen brothers birth an anti-noir heroine in Abby (Frances McDormand) while investing Ray (John Getz) with the gullible vulnerability of a lover, a man who typically allows himself to be led astray by the femme fatale as subsumed by base desires. The setup seems classic, as Ray and Abby discuss their affair as they flee from her husband and his boss Julian Marty (Dan Hedaya), before fucking in a seedy motel room while being followed by a mysterious figure. This portly shadow becomes Private Dick Loren Visser (M. Emmet Walsh) whose slow Texas drawl, inane humor and flabby girth belie his true sadistic personality. But the couple aren’t planning a murder or other violent scheme to harm Marty, Ray just wants his last paycheck and they’ll be on their way. But Marty can’t live with the B&W images developed indelibly within his psyche’s darkroom, and after failing to kidnap Abby, decides to murder her and her paramour. And it all becomes blood simple from there, a frenzy of violence and death with each character blind to the larger picture, acting out of flawed motives and misinformation. The McGuffin involves a lost lighter that will reveal the true killer to our protagonists, but it’s obscured by rotting fish. As Ray believes Abby killed Marty, and Abby believing Ray killed him (or tried to) by burying him alive, they are both confused when the third party appears like Death personified. What’s refreshing is how the story focuses upon the emotional weight of murder, how its emotional cancer eats away at rational thought, and their actions become hyper-focused and ridiculous.

The final knife-stabbing act and fight for survival pits our slender femme against the Wellsian bulk of the Private Investigator, the vagina penetrates the Dick, so to speak. But the truth is elided from both, as she neither has the implicating Zippo and the dying man isn’t Marty. But Visser will sure be glad to give him a message, if he sees him. Which should be very soon.

Final Grade: (B+)

FARGO (Joel & Ethan Coen, 1996, USA)

 

Jerry Lundegaard’s emasculation and spiral into financial oblivion has already begun, a man who believes his future is contained in a briefcase full of salvation, but the malignant roots of this devotion corrupt the soul. The Coen Brother’s dark humor is prevalent from the opening credits as they proclaim this story “based upon true events”: they even proclaim that the details are as faithful as possible in deference to the dead. This plot device actually works quite well to restrain their snarky humor and capitulate to a formal narrative structure, which drives the film through the tempest of brutality and violence. The Coen Brothers often fall victim to their own burlesque, portraying caricatures instead of people, disguising empathy with a mask of parody. But the fine performance from William H. Macy and Frances McDormand involve the audience in this violent drama and parallels the absurdly inept and sadistic criminals.

The film begins to lean towards slapstick until the first gruesome murder scene that shocks the audience in its casual cruelty: the point-blank murder of a State Trooper. We suddenly realize that the stakes have been raised, and the narrative destination is unknown. Then two innocent teenagers stumble upon the crime scene and we feel the adrenaline rush of panic and hope for their escape as they race down the slick lonely highway, until their taillights betray their fate. The callowness of their breathless murders resonates in our hearts. For once, the Coen brothers have captured true drama that echoes nihilism, the whisper of the void, and there’s nothing funny about it.

DP Roger Deakin’s work is brilliant, often utilizing high angles and vague, ghost-like forms haunting whiteout conditions, and he bookends the film with a duel visual construction. The story begins with headlights cutting through the thick snow until a car appears towing a trailer, which is Jerry Lundegaard setting the plot in motion. The tale ends with Sheriff Marge Gunderson in a similar composition, as emergency vehicles appear behind her Prowler, the defendant detained in the back seat. Carter Burwell’s elegiacal score is a perfect complement to Deakin’s imagery, evoking the sadness of the loss of moral values yet still infuses the story with a motif of hope.

The police procedural is surprisingly realistic which elevates the fiction’s credibility, and the woodchipper ending is both funny and grotesque: which best describes the Coen’s cinematic form. McDormand as the pregnant Brainerd Police Chief is believable, contrasting her personal life with her professional worldview. In the coda, as she snuggles in bed with her husband whose Mallard gets the three-cent stamp, the bodies of both victims and defendants now in repose, Marge hasn’t lost her faith in human nature.  And another life will be introduced to this savage world in two more months.

Final Grade: (A+) 

BLACK TUESDAY (Hugo Fregonese, 1954, USA)

 

Vincent Canelli is a sadistic killer who may not ride the lightening but instead ingests fatal amounts of hot lead, his just desserts. Hugo Fregonese directs this violent B movie melodrama like thin wild mercury, as condemned inmates escape from one death house and into another. DP Stanley Cortez’s exceptional work utilizes deep focus and some compound compositions that allow perfect focus as characters speak and react in frame without cutting to close up. Cortez combines an almost documentary, gritty feel with stylized noir bleakness and shadow to great effect. It’s complimentary to the mundane brutality of the narrative!

Canelli (Edward G. Robinson) is without remorse of conscience, a cruel death row convict without an ounce of kindness. Manning (Peter Graves) is another man awaiting his own fate on this Black Tuesday, condemned to death for killing a cop during $200,00 robbery, money which has never been recovered. When Canelli devises a plan to breakout of the cell block with the help of his moll Hatti (Jean Parker), he's going to bring Manning along for the payout! But there is no honor among thieves. Or killers.

The opening scene is brilliantly composed as Director Hugo Fregonese eschews an immediate credit sequence and instead depicts an ominous wall of iron bars and the lonely, echoing footsteps of the prison guard making his rounds. Another inmate takes up the rhythm and his mournful dirge sets the tone for the film. Then, when he cuts to a medium close-up of Canelli, we are introduced to a scouring, pugnacious criminal who paces like a caged beast. Brilliant! Edward G. Robinson plays a man without moral compass, a toxic narcissist who kills anyone who doesn’t serve his purpose. The story never tries to redeem Canelli, in fact it denounces him by displaying his violent actions in detail. Though Manning isn’t a knowing part of the escape plan, once he’s along for the ride he kills cops indiscriminately to save himself. However, his absolution comes with the eventual murder of his criminal compatriot and his suicide by cop. Though the escape seems far-fetched and improbable, the story rockets along toward its gunpowder climax. Good people die. Bad people die. And god sorts them out.

Final Grade: (B)

SHIELD FOR MURDER (Edmond O’Brien, Howard W. Koch, 1954, USA)

 

Detective Barney Nolan is tired of navigating city streets paved with the scum and detritus of the human animal, so he becomes the Rule of Law in his own concrete jungle. The runaway American Dream remains just out of reach but a $25,000 tax-free windfall ($258,000 in 2024 dollars!) is worth the life of one piece of trash conman. Unfortunately for Barney Nolan, the debt is paid with compound interest in blood and lead! 

Edmond O’Brien as Police Lt. Nolan also co-directs this morality tale of police corruption, portraying a 16-year vet at the end of his tether, a cop sick and tired of being sick and tired by a world gone bad. O’Brien fuels his character with self-righteous outrage and explosive anger yet imbues Nolan with a modicum of humanity and kindness, depicting the stolid and dependable man he once was. It’s a great performance that leads one to hope for his redemption even as he makes more fatal mistakes, so when he faces his final justice the sense of loss is profound. Yet so is the sense of his rightly earned poetic justice, a trigger-happy cop showered in a hail of police machine gun fire on the doorstep to his dream home. Sgt. Brewster (John Agar) is a younger version of his mentor, a man not yet tarnished and worn down, who looks to Nolan as a father-figure. The story’s climax doesn’t give us Brewster’s judgment, this act falls to the entire Five-O! Nolan’s paramour Patty (Marla English) ain’t no femme fatale, she’s an honest hard-working American girl caught in this violent nexus. We also get Nolan’s drunken pickup at a local bar in the lovely shape of a blonde and smoking hot Carolyn Jones, and when she’s on screen you can’t take your eyes off of her! Wow. But this is a false lead too, as only Nolan is to blame for his own downfall. 

DP Gordon Avil’s work here is reflective of the classic noir tropes. He begins the film with a wonderful low angle tracking shot as we see Edmond O’Brien walking down a deserted city street. His identity and mission not yet revealed, he sees a payout and stalks the man until he pushes him into a dingy alleyway. The man calls him by name and when O’Brien pulls out a revolver with a silencer, shoots the stranger point blank and takes the bundle. Nolan then raises the gun in the air and yells, “Stop! Police!” before firing two rounds. The cold-blooded murderer is a cop!  It’s a great setup. There’s another frantic shootout at a high school gym and another brutal pistol whipping that Avil composes and frames to perfection, utilizing sweaty closeups and tracking shots. 

I’m left to wonder how Nolan thought he would get away with his plan. He murders the courier in a grimy alley but must have considered the possibility of a witness. Which there is, and he kills this disabled gentleman. How’s that for sympathy? Could he have picked a more isolated spot? And he shoots the guy point blank, but his story is the criminal was running away from him, and a bullet went astray. Into his heart. Wasn’t he concerned about the forensics? And even if the shooting is deemed justified, the bad guys are going to come looking for the cash. Then Nolan plans to buy his dream house for he and his girl, but this seems foolish. How does he explain this to the IRS or even his police cohorts? The answer of course is that he hasn’t thought it through and acted on impulse, and he pays the ultimate price. Lt. Nolan is much like Police Capt. Hank Quinlan who hides behind their badges of evil, and convince themselves that they only hurt bad guys, so what’s the harm? But all good people suffer the consequences of Authoritarian rule. 

Final Grade: (B) 

THE MALTESE FALCON (Roy Del Ruth, 1931)

 

Private Dick Sam Spade would sell his own mother for a few bucks so it’s no surprise he trades his soul for a “golden goose”, which goes over like a lead falcon. Roy Del Ruth’s competent and enjoyable Pre-Code adaptation of Hammett's novel is forever overshadowed by John Huston’s legendary version, and Ricardo Cortez’s portrayal of the amoral Detective tarnished by Bogart’s classic depiction against which all others are now measured. 

I won’t suffer the tumultuous plot mechanics of “who murdered who” and why, I’ll just point out some rather enjoyable Pre-Code details that make this worth your time. To begin with, the film opens with a panorama of San Francisco and cuts to a silhouette of a kissing couple and a pair of female legs, skirt hiked up, adjusting her stockings as a woman leaves Spade’s office. We get a cute-as-a-button Una Merkel as Spade’s secretary Effie who, for some reason, is smitten with her womanizing and amoral employer. Spade is sleeping with his partner’s wife and, when Archer is gunned down in a filthy alley, is happy to have Archer’s name removed from their office door as quickly as possible! Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade is much different than later representations and quite possibly more akin to Hammett’s vision. Cortez plays him as a grinning Grifter, a man who loves money more than mercy, a two-timing cheater whose only concern is himself. And he’s proud of it. His ethical toxicity isn’t shrouded in a world-weary cynicism or latent trauma, he’s just a smirking asshole that manipulates people for profit. Cortez plays him so well that even though you don’t trust or respect him, you still find the character interesting. Thelma Todd as Iva Archer his recently widowed squeeze and Bebe Daniels as his mysterious client Ruth Wonderly are both wonderful in their parts, both selfish and scheming which fits the story’s moral pattern quite well. The only innocent is Effie, yet in this Pre-Code affair it’s insinuated that she’s sleeping with the Boss (out of Wedlock, mind you). We get Ms. Wonderly naked in Spade’s bathtub and later she is forced to strip in his kitchen! So much for integrity. This version depicts the homosexual relationship between Casper Gutman (Dudley Digges) and Wilmer Cook (Dwight Frye) as a little more than subtext, as Gutman is emotionally burdened about turning his cohort in as a Fall Guy. I just wish Dwight Frye had a larger part; he’s one of my favorite supporting actors of the era! Interesting to note that all four murders are elided, and we are only privilege to the cunning consequences. Which leads to the film’s major weakness: the dialogue is slowly paced and enunciated which alters the tempo of the entire film. Sound recording and design in 1931 was still in its infancy (or Terrible Twos, I suppose) and here it becomes nearly insufferable. Each sentence is articulated then seconds pass before a response as if to make sure the microphone recorded the dialogue. This could have been minimized with a subtle score that dramatized these breaks, or with physical acting that could fill these voids. Alas, this is a typical early sound film, and the actors are stuck with rigid blocking. 

Even the coda reveals what a narcissistic sociopath Sam Spade is and will always be. Interestingly, Roy Del Ruth shoots him in medium shot gripping the prison bars like he’s the one incarcerated which could be a visual clue that Spade is as trapped in his psychosis as Ruth Wonderly is by her unanimous verdict. Despite the flaws, this is an enjoyable film that is best considered on its own and not in comparison to later versions. 

Final Grade: (C+)

VOICE WITHOUT A SHADOW (Seijun Suzuki, 1958, Japan)

 

Asako is haunted by an ethereal, disembodied voice of a murderer, a ghostly breath heard through thrumming phone lines and relays. Her wrong number makes her a minor celebrity but she’s unable to identify the voice as the police parade the usual suspects before her ears. Three years pass, the crime mostly forgotten, until she hears the voice once again, the cool dark words as electrical impulses jolting her nightmares. Because she now knows who answered the fatal phone call. 

Seijun Suzuki splits the film in two, much to its detriment. The first half is brilliant, as we experience the story from Asako’s (Yoko Minamida) feminine perspective, a strong-willed woman who isn’t taken seriously because of her gender even though she can delineate over 300 different voices! She’s patronized and diminished and when the narrative jumps forward three years, embedded in a typical patriarchal marriage where she is relegated to servant. Suzuki skirts these social issues and fails to explore them, as Asako assumes her wifely role without much complaint, supporting her husband even as he wiles away the late hours with mahjong with his cohorts. When she hears the voice of her husband’s buddy Hamazaki (Joe Shishido) ciphered through a phone call, she immediately recognizes it. Suzuki relishes in depicting her lurid nightmares as she races down a long hallway, opening doors and always seeing Hamazaki’s leering visage. The first half builds tension as she wants to tell the police but continues to be ridiculed. Only a journalist who covered the original story seems interested. Will she tell her husband? Will Hamazaki find out? Is she the next target? 

Suzuki cuts the film in two, as Asako’s husband stumbles home one rainy night, beaten to a pulp. He has severed ties with Hamazaki and now reveals that he was a courier in a criminal organization, and he has survived a brawl with his employer. However, Hamazaki turns up dead and her husband is arrested for the murder! Suzuki elides the confrontation and now the second half of the film pushes Asako aside and focuses upon the reporter Ishikawa (Hideaki Nitani) and his investigation into her husband’s alibi. He soon suspects that her husband is innocent, and a group of scheming gangsters is responsible, but he must first break their alibis. Suzuki and his DP Kazue Nagatsuka use of rainy streets, low angles, low key lighting, crane and tracking shots is superbly influenced by American film noir tropes. When Suzuki finally depicts the deadly fight elided in the first act, it seems like a violent stage play set amid a sparse set entombed in darkness. His compositions in the coal yards look like a carbonized purgatory. In a neat twist, the denouement relies upon forensic testing, but not of blood or bullets but coal! And he composes a cracked reflection of the terrible triumvirate, forcing Hamazaki to sniff coal dust while they strangle him. Ha! 

Though the second act’s pacing slows the film down and Asako is minimized, the film’s trajectory leads to a happy reunion for the married couple. 

Final Grade: (B)

JOHNNY COOL (William Asher, 1963, USA)

 

Giordano is a child baptized in the bloodshed of the Second World War, but years later as Johnny Cool becomes bewitched by a beautiful femme whose obsession spins like a broken moral compass. Henry Silva as the cool protagonist is mesmerizing with his bravado and charisma, walking through the tempest as a god of war. Like Ares, he is kept in chains by his master, unable (or unwilling) to leave this bondage and assumes a vendetta to kill those who have disrespected his principal. 

The opening scene depicts a young woman being chased by Nazis, and a young boy who witnesses this attempted rape. The precocious lad pulls the pin on the German’s grenade and blows him to smithereens, but the soldier’s cohorts suddenly appear and murder the girl. Gunfire from the mountains reveals the Italian Resistance who save the boy. We soon learn that the woman was his mother. The film’s first act transitions quickly to the present date (1963), where the boy Giordano in now a leader who fights against injustice to support his village. But he is captured by the police and apparently murdered, while in reality he is whisked away to start a new life and identity as hitman Johnny Cool. He must revenge the wrongs done to his mentor, an exiled gangland Godfather Johnny Colini (Marc Lawrence). Death ensues. 

Dare Guinness (Elizabeth Montgomery) falls for Johnny the first moment she sees him pummel a man into unconsciousness. This is love at first punch. She becomes a loyal confidant even as the police throttle her for information as the body count rises and the population of the criminal underworld diminishes. Johnny has no attachment except his mission. He kills by switching suitcases, he guns down his target utilizing a window washing platform, he vaporizes another while his quarry swims with his children nearby. Always suave and in control, Johnny is always one step ahead of his prey. Until Dare dares to sell him out, not out of hatred or profit but out of her own sense of moral obligation. There’s just no future in loving a hitman. 

Even gods are mortal, and Johnny Cool ain’t so chill once he’s sporting a straitjacket, captured by his nemesis in the form of a corporate board of businessmen, the ultimate gangsters. In a nice twist, Elisha Cook, Jr. is one of these suite-wearing overlords who meats out the punishment instead of being consumed by it! Both Johnny’s mission and life are over and incomplete. 

Final Grade: (C+)

UNDERTOW (William Castle, 1949, USA)

 

Tony returns from the Pacific Theatre to fight his own war on American soil. Betrayed by an engagement ring, he’s framed for a murdering his ex-crime boss Big Jim while on his way to make peace with him, the kingpin's niece soon to be Tony’s future femme. This mediocre crime drama relies on trite characterizations and coincidence to complete its final act, and William Castle’s direction is bland and lukewarm. DP Irving Glassberg’s compositions are formulaic, mimicking noir style without deeper expression. 

Tony Reagan (Scott Brady) returns from the Pacific to sign a business contract with his dead buddy’s father, to become business partner in a little fishing lodge outside Reno. Tony was involved with the Chicago Syndicate in the years before the Second World War, but he’s turning over a new leaf. A chance meeting with the ingenue Ann McKnight (Peggy Dow), a Chicago schoolteacher, gives him a friend when he needs one most. Tony is going to marry Sally (Dorothy Hart) but wants Big Jim’s permission before the union. Unfortunately, a fatal conspiracy lands Tony on the lam, and he must rely on both his new friend and his childhood cohort Reckling (Bruce Bennett), a Detective who believes in his innocence. There is little surprise who did the framing, and it doesn’t take a genius to know that the large rock on Sally’s finger is a dead giveaway. It’s frustrating that Tony fails to recognize this sooner! We get a femme fatale, fistfights, shootout, chases, kidnapping and a large black man who takes three slugs point blank before beating his benefactor’s murderer to pulp. This all sounds way more exciting than its execution. 

The acting is mostly dull, as Scott Brady exudes little charisma. The rest of the cast lacks charm or interest, acting as caricatures as opposed to complex people. The exception is Peggy Dow whose naivete and honest beauty is disarming. Even Dorothy Hart as the fatal fiancé isn’t given any juicy scenes or dialogue. The actor’s failure is mostly the fault of a tepid script. 

Of course, it all ends happily ever after for our hero and his new schoolmarm but not so much for Sally and her underhanded beau. 

Final Grade: (C)

THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE (Joel & Ethan Coen, 2001, USA)

 

Ed Crane is a stranger to his wife, an invisible ghost who haunts his own house, a barber destined to an eternity of cutting hair, which always grows back…even after death. Ed sees his routine dreary future laid out before him: a loveless marriage, a mortgage, a mundane but steady job as second chair, and decides to take his destiny into his own hands. Knowing his wife is having an affair with her boss, he anonymously blackmails “Big Dave” into paying him ten thousand dollars. But things just don’t turn out right for Ed; he accepts his punishment with little remorse, taking full responsibility for his actions, and stoically receives his final judgment. Ed tries to make amends by helping his friend's daughter (the beautiful Scarlett Johansson) to become a piano virtuoso, he wants to make something good happen in the world to balance the misery and death he has wrought, and his intentions are honest and true. 

The Coen brothers capture the 1950s in beautiful black and white cinematography, utilizing stark lighting and period detail that imbue the film with a classic noir façade. But the Coen brothers seem to have contempt for their characters, allowing their quirky style of inane dialogue and absurdity to taint the narrative. Every minor actor works too hard to be unique, every situation is just a bit too foolish, and the plot is just a bit too contrived. When Big Dave’s widow begins to speak of alien abductions and conspiracies, this awful tragedy begins to play like some poorly written abstraction, undermining the serious philosophical issues that could have been explored. Billy Bob Thornton remains impassive, his craggy face a landscape of existential alienation, and it’s his great performance that gives substance to this moral ether. 

Final Grade: (B)