The Grifters

“They probably had grifter parents and grifter grandparents and someday they’ll each spawn little grifter kids.” – Miller’s Crossing (1990)

This quote always makes me think of The Grifters (1990), a film that presents a world of confidence artists – people who gain the trust of their targets only to then fleece them of something valuable. Essentially there are two kinds of people in this world: the grifters and the people they con. The film takes it one step further and has the grifters con each other but muddies the waters with notions of family and love. Who can you trust? The answer is simple and yet hard-earned: no one.
 
Roy Dillon (John Cusack) is a small-time operator working the short con, scamming bartenders and hapless patrons out of chump change. His estranged mother Lilly (Anjelica Huston) is a mid-level grifter, working for a powerful mobster (Pat Hingle) at race tracks, betting on certain horses to lower the odds. Roy’s girlfriend Myra (Annette Bening) is a high-end grifter who works the long con – ambitious schemes that swindle wealthy marks. All three have their established methods that work for them except when they don’t as evident when Roy tries to scam a savvy bartender who proceeds to hit him so hard with a club that he suffers serious internal injuries.

When Myra can’t get what she wants from a local jeweler (Steve Tobolowsky) she attempts to use her feminine wiles with no success. When Lilly fails to lower the odds more than she should have, her boss punishes her by stubbing out a lit cigar on her hand in an ugly display of power. Their lives all get complicated when Lilly decides to visit her son while on business in Los Angeles. There’s visible tension between them that goes way back. When Myra finds out that Lilly is a fellow grifter she sets her sights on the elder Dillon unbeknownst to Roy who is unaware that his girlfriend is in the game.
 

For years John Cusack had done a series of successful teen comedies and by 1988 was looking for more mature roles in films made by auteurs like Roland Joffe (Fat Man and Little Boy), John Sayles (Eight Men Out) and with The Grifters, British director Stephen Frears. Back then there was an innate likability to Cusack that audiences identified with but on this film, he dials it back in a much more controlled performance as a grifter that thinks he’s in control and can walk away from the life whenever he wants only to find out it’s not that easy.
 
Annette Bening plays Myra like a vivacious sex kitten who knows how to use her body to get what she wants but under the façade is a ruthless professional con artist. The flashback scene where we see her in action with her ex-partner (a superbly cast J.T. Walsh) as they play their target (Charles Napier) is a wonder to behold as they expertly massage their mark to pull off a sizable payday.
 
It is Anjelica Huston that is the film’s M.V.P. as the veteran grifter that has been in the game long enough to know her limitations. Lilly spots Myra right away and the scenes between Huston and Bening crackle with playful intensity as they trade verbal barbs. Huston also shows why Lilly has survived for this long, whether it’s how she deals with her ruthless boss or a creep hitting on her at a diner. Yet for all her cold logic, she shows a vulnerable side when it comes to Roy as her long-buried maternal instincts surface and she finds herself wanting to reconnect with him. Huston does an excellent job of showing both sides of Lilly and how, ultimately, she’ll do anything to survive.

Director Stephen Frears gives the film a timeless look. Even though it is set in 1990, it could easily be the 1940s as all three main characters do not wear any trendy clothing that would date them instantly. Even the dialogue treads the line between classic grifter lingo and contemporary speak courtesy of legendary crime writer Donald E. Westlake (The Hunter), who does a brilliant job of adapting Jim Thompson’s 1963 novel. He populates the film with snappy dialogue, such as Lilly and Myra’s first meeting when the latter says, “I’m Roy’s friend,” to which the former responds, “Yes, I imagine you’re lots of people’s friends.” He immediately establishes an antagonistic relationship between the two characters that starts off as playful verbal sparring but escalates when Myra finds out that Lilly is also a grifter.
 
The entire film has a low-key classic feel to it with wonderful bits of detail, like the old school switchboard in Ray’s building. This also applies to the minor yet colorful characters that are sprinkled throughout The Grifters, such as the annoying older man (Henry Jones) who works the front desk of Roy’s apartment building. Every time someone comes in we are subjected to his personal philosophy on women, how to properly fold a towel and so on. There’s also the scene where we get Roy’s backstory on how he became a con artist when he meets a veteran grifter (the wonderfully cast Eddie Jones) who teaches him the nuts and bolts of the business: “But to take another pro, even your partner, who knows you and has his eye on you, that’s a score.” This key line of dialogue could be the film’s thesis.
 
Filmmaker Martin Scorsese wanted to know what was the best crime novel that had not been made into a film and was told it was The Grifters by Jim Thompson. He and executive producer Barbara De Fina were given a spec screenplay by Robert A. Harris and another man. Scorsese was too busy and called British filmmaker Stephen Frears in 1987. He asked if he had heard of the novel. Scorsese was a fan of the latter’s My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and felt that Frears was the right person to direct The Grifters as he felt that he had an affinity for unusual characters. Frears read the novel and agreed to direct.
 

The screenplay was initially developed at Disney where Scorsese had a deal and Donald E. Westlake went to work adapting the novel but the studio eventually decided not to back it. Originally, Westlake didn’t want the job but Frears told him the think about it terms of Lilly’s story as opposed to Roy’s and the writer agreed to do it. Cineplex Odeon agreed to finance the film but over the course of the production the budget gradually shrunk as the backers were going bankrupt.
 
Originally, Melanie Griffith was cast as Lilly, Geena Davis as Myra and Cusack as Roy, who had read the novel in 1985 and was so taken with it that he had wanted to make it into a film himself. Frears had also briefly considered Robert Downey Jr. and Tim Robbins for Roy but when Cusack heard that Scorsese and Frears were attached to the project, he active pursued the role and got it. Anjelica Huston was cast towards the end of pre-production, just beating out Sissy Spacek. She had been contacted by Frears in 1989 while making Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) but after reading the script she was unsure about the part, shocked by the scene where Lilly is beaten by her boss. Ricky Jay was hired as a consultant and helped Cusack prepare for his role by arranging for the actor to meet actual con artists. Cusack saw Roy as “a wonderfully twisted role to dive into.”
 
The Grifters received glowing reviews from most mainstream critics. Roger Ebert gave the film four out four stars and wrote, "One of the strengths of The Grifters is how everything adds up, and it all points toward the conclusion of the film, when all secrets will be revealed and all debts collected." In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby praised Anjelica Huston's performance: "Miss Huston is again spectacular. Not since The Dead has she had a role of such eerie complexity, nor given a performance that was so haunting. Though Lily is a sly, unpleasant woman, out always for the main chance, Miss Huston discovers the sadness within that comes close to true tragedy." Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman gave it a "A" rating and wrote, "It’s Anjelica Huston who gives the film its emotional gravity. There’s almost nothing likable about Lilly. She’s callused over; she perseveres, period. But Huston, looking weirdly like a drag queen in her puffy, bleached-blond hair, plays her with such indomitable negative charisma that in the end the character doesn’t win your affection so much as your respect."
 
In his review for the Washington Post, Hal Hinson wrote, "The line Westlake and Frears walk skirts the edge of parody; it's the most puckish of film noirs. Their characters are scoundrels, but they have a hipster's arrogance; they play the sucker for nobody, and the sneaky thrill here comes from watching them work the angles for the upper hand." Finally, Newsweek's David Ansen wrote, "Huston dominates the film, but Bening, an effervescent sex kitten with the soul of a snake, and Cusack, with his brittle self-protectiveness, are spectacular in their own ways. These doomed grifters deserve instant admission into the film noir pantheon."
 

When The Grifters concludes, we are left with a world of con artists that aren’t all that attractive. It can be a brutal and ugly world where people go insane, get killed on a deal gone bad, or go on the run, always looking over their shoulder. There’s a reason why Lilly has survived for this long. Years of experience of making mistakes and learning from them has toughened her up as evident from the final scene where she accidentally (or was it?) causes the demise of another character that ends the film on a decidedly dark note. The Grifters isn’t a cute, we-all-got-away-with-it ending like Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s movies, just people surviving any way they can even if it means killing in order to do it.
 
 
SOURCES
 
“Seduction, Betrayal, Murder: The Making of The Grifters.” The Grifters Blu-Ray. 441 Films and 101 Films. May 21, 2018.
 
Sharkey, Betsy. “Anjelica Huston Seeks the Soul of a Con Artist.” The New York Times. December 2, 1990.
 
“The Making of The Grifters.” The Grifters DVD. Miramax. September 24, 2002.

Van Gelder, Lawrence. “At the Movies.” The New York Times. August 31, 1990.

Con Air

By all rights, Con Air (1997) should have been an awful waste of time – just another tired Jerry Bruckheimer testosterone action movie whose final fate should have been wedged between beer and pick-up truck ads on television. Instead, the movie cleverly sends up and celebrates nearly every action cliché in the genre. No expense is spared as Powers Boothe is enlisted to solemnly intone the virtues of the U.S. Rangers at the beginning of the movie and then has Trisha Yearwood sing a sappy love song (“How Do I Live”) over the protagonist reuniting with his wife.

U.S. Ranger Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage) is due to be paroled after killing a drunk who threatened him and his wife (Julia Roberts wannabe Monica Potter). We are subjected to the typical passage of time montage documenting Poe’s stint in prison as director Simon West and the screenplay by Scott Rosenberg slyly reference a similar sequence with Nicolas Cage in Raising Arizona (1987) and the prison riot scenes in Natural Born Killers (1994). No, really. The prologue clocks in at a speedy five minutes and change, economically setting up the premise. Then, the opening credits play over Poe in prison reading and writing letters to his daughter, employing every cliché in the book all with a thick as molasses Southern drawl.

Of course, Poe’s trip home isn’t going to be that easy as his knack of being in the wrong place at the wrong time continues when the plane he’s on just happens to be transporting the worst criminal scum on the planet. Chief among them, Cyrus “The Virus” Grissom (John Malkovich), a serial rapist (Danny Trejo), a Black Panther-esque militant (Ving Rhames), a Hannibal Lector rip-off (Steve Buscemi), a young Dave Chappelle riffing his way through the movie as a minor criminal that incites the jailbreak, and a whole slew of mass murderers.

Naturally, the convicts get free of their restraints and take control of the plane. To make matters worse, Poe’s buddy (Mykelti Williamson) goes into insulin shock. On the ground, U.S. Marshal Vince Larkin (John Cusack) and DEA Agent Duncan Malloy (Colm Meaney) get into a heated debate about how exactly to deal with the runaway plane – Larkin wants to take it down through peaceful means while Malloy wants to shoot it out of the sky. Naturally, it’s up to Poe to do the right thing and save the day.

Clearly riffing on his psychotic assassin from In the Line of Fire (1993), albeit with a much better sense of humor, John Malkovich gets the lion’s share of the movie’s best dialogue and delivers it with his trademark scathing dry wit. He really seems to be having fun with this role. Along comes Steve Buscemi as a criminal with a revered and feared reputation and yet we never actually see him do anything to support these claims. He and Malkovich get locked into a competition to see who can deliver the best one-liner with the driest of deliveries.

Colm Meaney and John Cusack have a lot of fun bickering back and forth, as the former plays an assholish DEA agent, a typical blowhard authority figure, while the latter plays a cerebral U.S. Marshal – one of his trademark characters dropped into a slam-bang Bruckheimer action movie. Part of the fun of watching Cusack in Con Air is seeing him navigate the kind of movie he doesn’t usually do, butting heads with Bruckheimer stereotypes with often interesting results.

You have to hand it to Nicolas Cage; he certainly knows how to pick action movies that allow him to play ever so slightly left-of-center characters like The Rock (1996), where he played an anti-action hero, and Face/Off (1997), a stylish John Woo movie with an insane role reversal plot twist. In this movie, the actor looks ridiculous with his glorious mullet, taking his cue from Jean-Claude Van Damme’s similar ‘do in Hard Target (1993). With Con Air, Cage wisely plays Poe as if it were a straight-forward action movie, which is in sharp contrast to many of the larger than life characters around him. He’s gracious and smart enough to know that when everyone around him is playing larger than life characters, go the low-key route.

Getting his start in commercials, director Simon West wears his influences on his sleeve, doing his best Michael Bay impersonation as he employs oh-so dramatic slow-mo shots of badass characters walking towards the camera (a ‘90s staple – see Armageddon), our hero outrunning an explosion, and everything is gorgeously shot and edited within an inch of its life.

For a big, loud action movie, the dialogue is quite clever and, more importantly, delivered well by the cast – which, incidentally, is an incredible collection of movie stars and character actors. It is so jam-packed with talented thespians that you wonder how in the hell did the powers that be get them all to be in this movie? Con Air looks and sounds like a Bruckheimer action film but it is Rosenberg’s screenplay that is the wild card. It sets up the standard, implausible action movie premise and introduces the genre archetypes (i.e. the lone wolf protagonist with his pretty, loving wife and the criminal mastermind, etc.) and starts messing around with the formula.

Scott Rosenberg garnered a lot of buzz from his screenplay for Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead (1995). Disney came calling and hired him to write a script. They gave him a Los Angeles Times article about a Federal Marshal program that transported inmates across the country. To research the operation, he went to Oklahoma City and spent three days on a plane with convicts. He observed, “hardened convicts at their worst. It was very unsettling, and a bit terrifying.” Rosenberg settled down to write the script, listening to a lot of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Allman Brothers albums and came up with an idea about a guy sent to prison when his wife was pregnant and had never met his daughter. This freed up Rosenberg to populate the script with “the craziest motherfuckers; the most absurd dialogue and set-pieces.”

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer read Rosenberg’s script and bought it for his production company but felt that it needed to be more character-driven. He worked closely with Rosenberg to “add more dimension” to the characters and make it a story about redemption. Bruckheimer hired Simon West to direct because he had been impressed by his T.V. commercial work.

Upon completing The Rock with Nicolas Cage, Bruckheimer asked the actor to star in Con Air. With this movie, he wanted to return to a “more old-fashioned style of action movie,” and used Gary Cooper in High Noon (1952) as a point of reference, playing a character with good values. To prepare for the role, he visited Folsom State Prison where he had to sign a “no hostage” clause in order to walk among hardened inmates in the Level Four lock-up. Everything was fine until he, Bruckheimer, Rosenberg and West talked to one group of inmates in the yard and not another. All hell broke loose as one inmate tried to stab another.

Cage observed that many inmates had chiseled physiques and decided to take his cue from boxer Ken Norton and “look like I could survive anything, anywhere.” To this end, he adopted a specific diet, ran five miles a day and lifted weights frequently. At one point, the studio was worried that the actor was getting too ripped, which he found amusing: “I thought, ‘Now that’s a new one – too built-up for an action movie.’” In the script, Poe wasn’t too smart, “just a skeleton of a character,” according to Cage, and made him a Southern man that idolizes his wife. He also decided to make Poe an Army Ranger to explain how he could survive on a plane without a gun. Winning an Academy Award hadn’t mellowed out the actor as West remembered, “If we were doing an intense scene, he’d howl like a banshee and he’d leap around like a banshee, too. I’d give him a minute or two and then I’d say, ‘Let’s move on, Nick.”

Con Air received mixed reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the movie three out of four stars and wrote, “The movie is essentially a series of quick setups, brisk dialogue and elaborate action sequences…assembled by first-time director Simon West…it moves smoothly and with visual style and verbal wit.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “Con Air has an important secret weapon: an indie cast. All of the principals normally work in films more interesting and human than this one, which gives Con Air a touch of the subversive and turns it into a big-budget lark.” Entertainment Weekly gave it a “C” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “Con Air may be the closest thing yet to pure action thriller pornography. Ultimately, there’s nothing to it but thrust.” In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan wrote, “But with a noise level so high the dialogue has to be screamed and more silly moments than sane ones, Con Air is an animated comic book put together to pound an audience into submission, not entertain it.”

Con Air works because the filmmakers take a simple set-up and expertly execute it. The movie still plugs in the usual, over-the-top set pieces. For example, a sports car is towed behind a cargo plane only to crash through a control tower and explode. Our hero’s best buddy even gets to utter a stirring soliloquy as he lies gravely injured. True to form, the ending is highly implausible and excessive even by Bruckheimer standards but you have to admire the filmmakers for going for it. There is a fascinating push and pull going on with this movie as it trots out all the usual action movie clichés while often commenting on them ironically in true ‘90s fashion – so much so that at one point, Steve Buscemi’s spooky killer even acknowledges said irony. Ultimately, what redeems Con Air – well-placed sense of irony – is, sadly, what goes missing when its sappy ending rears its ugly head, even if it tries to evoke the ending of Wild at Heart (1990). No, really.

SOURCES

Con Air Production Notes. 1997.

Longsdorf, Amy. “Traditional Values Drew Iconoclastic Nicolas Cage To Do Con Air.” The Morning Call. June 1, 1997.

“Screenwriter Scott Rosenberg Interview.” Kid in the Front Row. March 13, 2010.

High Fidelity

Have you ever spent hours organizing your record collection in chronological order and by genre? Have you ever had heated debates with your friends about the merits of a band who lost one of its founding members? Or argued about your top five favorite B-sides? If so, chances are you will love High Fidelity (2000), a film for and about characters obsessed with their favorite bands and music. What Free Enterprise (1999) did for film geeks; High Fidelity does for music geeks. Based on the British novel of the same name by Nick Hornby, it is a film made by and for the kind of people who collect vintage vinyl and read musician and band biographies in their spare time yet is still accessible to people who like smart, witty romantic comedies.

Rob Gordon (John Cusack) is an obsessed music junkie who owns a record store called Championship Vinyl. He has just broken up with Laura (Iben Hjejle), a long-time girlfriend and the latest in a countless string of failed relationships. Rob addresses the audience directly throughout the film (just like Woody Allen did in his 1977 film, Annie Hall) about this latest break-up and how his top five break-ups of all-time inform his most recent one. It’s a great way for Rob to try and come to terms with his shortcomings and the reasons why his past relationships did not work out. He is talking directly to us and in doing so we relate to him and his dilemma a lot easier. And so, he goes on a quest to find out why, as he puts it, “is doomed to be left, doomed to be rejected,” by revisiting his worst break-ups. The purpose of this trip down memory lane is an attempt to understand his most recent falling out with Laura.

Along the way we meet a colorful assortment of characters, from his past girlfriends (that includes the diverse likes of Lili Taylor and Catherine Zeta-Jones) to his co-workers at Championship Vinyl (Jack Black and Todd Louiso). They really flesh out the film to such a degree that I felt like I was seeing aspects of my friends and myself in these characters. Being a self-confessed obsessive type when it comes to film and music, I could easily relate to these people and their problems. And that’s why High Fidelity works so well for me. The extremely funny and wryly observant script by D.V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink, and John Cusack (the same team behind the excellent Grosse Pointe Blank) not only zeroes in on what it is to love something so passionately but why other things (like relationships) often take a backseat as a result. A girlfriend might not always be there for you, but your favorite album or film will. A song will never judge you or walk out on you and there is a kind of comfort in that.

The screenplay also makes some fantastic observations on how men view love and relationships. Throughout the film Cusack’s character delivers several monologues to us about his thoughts on past love affairs, one of my favorite being the top five things he liked about Laura. It’s a touching, hopelessly romantic speech that reminded me a lot of Woody Allen’s list of things to live for in Manhattan (1979). Usually, this technique almost never works (see Kuffs) because it often comes across as being too cute and self-aware for its own good but in High Fidelity it works because Cusack uses it as a kind of confessional as Rob sorts out his feelings for Laura and sorts through past relationships and how they led him to her.

The screenplay works so well because not only is it well written but it is brought to life by a solid ensemble cast. The role of Rob Gordon is clearly tailor-made for John Cusack. Rob contains all the trademarks of the kinds of characters the actor is known for: the cynical, self-deprecating humor, the love of 1980s music, and the inability to commit to the woman of his dreams. Even though High Fidelity is not directed by Cusack, like Grosse Pointe Blank, it is clearly his film, right down to the casting of friends in front of and behind the camera (i.e. actors Tim Robbins, Lili Taylor, his sister Joan, and screenwriters, D.V. DeVincentis and Steve Pink). Along with Say Anything (1989), this is Cusack’s finest performance. I like that he isn’t afraid to play Rob as a hurtful jerk afraid of commitment despite being surrounded by strong women, like his mother who chastises him for breaking up Laura, and his sister Liz (Joan Cusack) who is supportive at first until she finds out why he and Laura really broke up. Rob had an affair with someone else while Laura was pregnant and as a result she got an abortion. This horrible act runs the risk of alienating Rob from the audience but Cusack’s natural charisma keeps us hanging in there to see if Rob can redeem himself.

All of the scenes that take place in the record store are some of the most entertaining and funniest moments in the film, from Rob listing off his top five side one, track ones, to Barry schooling an Echo and the Bunnymen fan on The Jesus and Mary Chain, to Rob fantasizing about beating the shit out of Laura’s new boyfriend Ian (Tim Robbins) when he shows up one day to clear the air. These scenes showcase the excellent comic timing of Cusack and his co-stars, Jack Black and Todd Louiso. The interplay between their characters instantly conveys that they’ve known each other for years by the way they banter and bicker.

Louiso’s Dick is a shy, introverted guy that you can imagine listening to Belle and Sebastian religiously, while Black’s Barry is a rude, annoying blowhard who says everything you wish you could actually say in public. It’s a flashy, scene-stealing role that Black does to perfection, whether it is discussing the merits of Evil Dead II’s soundtrack with Rob or doing a spot-on cover of Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” for the launch of Rob’s record label. And yet, Barry isn’t overused and only appears at the right moments and for maximum comic effect. His sparing usage in High Fidelity made me want to see more of him, which is why he works so well. However, Louiso, with his quiet, bashful take on Dick, is the film’s secret weapon. The scene where he tells a customer (Sara Gilbert) about Green Day’s two primary influences which is a nice example of the understatement he brings to the role.

The casting of Danish actress Iben Hjejle is an atypical choice but one that works because she brings an emotional strength and an intelligence to a character that is largely absent from a lot of female romantic leads. She’s not traditionally beautiful, like Catherine Zeta-Jones, who plays one of Rob’s ex-girlfriends, Charlie Nicholson. Sure, Charlie is drop-dead gorgeous but her personality is so off-putting that any kind of deep, meaningful relationship would be impossible. Laura is so much more than that. While Rob refuses to change and to think about the future, Laura is more adaptable, changing jobs to one that she actually enjoys doing even if it means she can’t have her hair dyed some exotic color. Laura is easily Rob’s intellectual equal, if not smarter, and the voice of reason as well as having no problem calling him on his shit.

Nick Hornby’s book was optioned by Disney’s Touchstone division in 1995 where it went into development for the next three years. Disney boss Joe Roth had a conversation with recording executive Kathy Nelson who recommended John Cusack (whom she had worked with on Grosse Pointe Blank) and his screenwriting and producing partners D.V. DeVincentis and Steve Pink adapt the book. They wrote a treatment that was immediately green-lit by Roth. In adapting the book into a screenplay, Cusack found that the greatest challenge was pulling off Rob’s frequent breaking of the fourth wall and talking directly to the audience. They did this to convey Rob’s inner confessional thoughts and were influenced by a similar technique in Alfie (1966). However, Cusack initially rejected this approach because he thought, “there’d just be too much of me.” Once director Stephen Frears came on board, he suggested utilizing this approach and Cusack and his writing partners decided to go for it.

The writers decided to change the book’s setting from London to Chicago because they were more familiar with the city and it also had a “great alternative music scene,” said Pink. Not to mention, both he and Cusack were from the city. I like how they shot so much of the film on location, making the city like another character and even including visual references to local record labels like Touch & Go and Wax Trax! Another challenge they faced was figuring out which songs would go where in High Fidelity because Rob, Dick and Barry “are such musical snobs.” Cusack, DeVincentis and Pink listened to 2,000 songs and picked a staggering 70 cues for the film. DeVincentis was the record-collection obsessive among the writers with 1,000 vinyl records in his collection and thousands of CDs and cassettes. They also thought of the idea to have Rob have a conversation with Bruce Springsteen in his head, never thinking they’d actually get him to be in the film but that putting him in the script would get the studio excited about it. They were inspired by a reference in Hornby’s book where the narrator wishes he could handle his past girlfriends as well as Springsteen does in the song, “Bobby Jean” on Born in the USA. Cusack knew the Boss socially, called the musician and pitched the idea. Springsteen asked for a copy of the script and after reading it, agreed to do the film.

Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and wrote, "Watching High Fidelity, I had the feeling I could walk out of the theater and meet the same people on the street — and want to, which is an even higher compliment.” The Washington Post’s Desson Howe praised Jack Black as "a bundle of verbally ferocious energy. Frankly, whenever he's in the scene, he shoplifts this movie from Cusack.” In his review for The New York Times, Stephen Holden praised Cusack's performance, writing that he was "a master at projecting easygoing camaraderie, he navigates the transitions with such an astonishing naturalness and fluency that you're almost unaware of them." Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B-" rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, "In High Fidelity, Rob's music fixation is a signpost of his arrested adolescence; he needs to get past records to find true love. If the movie had had a richer romantic spirit, he might have embraced both in one swooning gesture." Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers wrote, "It hits all the laugh bases, from grins to guffaws. Cusack and his Chicago friends — D.V. DeVincentis and Steve Pink — have rewritten Scott Rosenberg's script to catch Hornby's spirit without losing the sick comic twists they gave 1997's Grosse Pointe Blank." However, the USA Today was not crazy about the film: "Let's be kind and just say High Fidelity ... doesn't quite belong beside Grosse Pointe Blank and The Sure Thing in Cusack's greatest hits collection. It's not that he isn't good. More like miscast." Nick Hornby was impressed by how faithful the film was to his book: “At times it appears to be a film in which John Cusack reads my book.”

High Fidelity is now a historical document thanks to the rise of iTunes and the subsequent demise of brick and mortar record stores. The film is a tribute to these places where one could spend hours sifting through bins of vinyl records and used CDs, looking for that forgotten gem or a rare deal on something you were looking for. I’m not talking about places like Tower Records or Virgin Megastore but those cool, local stores that catered to obsessive collectors. This film is a love letter and a eulogy to these stores. It’s scary to think that it’s only been ten years since High Fidelity came out and indie record stores are almost an extinct breed, except for the ones hanging on in big cities. Even though the world and the characters in High Fidelity are unashamedly of a rarified type: the obsessive music geek or elitist, which some people may have trouble relating to, the film’s conclusion suggests that there is much more to life than one’s all-consuming passion for these things. It also helps to be passionate about someone. And that message is delivered in a refreshingly honest and cliché-free fashion as it provides what is ultimately the humanist core of High Fidelity.

For more on the film, check Chronological Snobbery's excellent retrospective look, here.

SOURCES

Beale, Lewis. "Staying Faithful to High Fidelity." Daily News. April 2, 2000.

Malanowski, Jamie. "Keeping Faith with High Fidelity." The New York Times. April 2, 2000.

Portman, Jamie. "Quirky John Cusack Embraces the Eccentric – Again." Ottawa Citizen. March 27, 2000.

Watson-Smyth, Kate. "A case of low fidelity as Hornby's novel translates awkwardly to film." The Independent. April 1, 2000.

Wloszczyna, Susan. "Boss Cameo a Musical Coup." USA Today. March 31, 2000.

Wloszczyna, Susan. "Cusack, in Tune with His Movies." USA Today. March 31, 2000.

McGuire, Judy. "Romance, Movie Style – Love on Location – High Fidelity." Time. February 28, 2009.

Husband, Stuart. "Tracks of My Frears." The Guardian. April 21, 2000.

DVD of the Week: The Thin Red Line: Criterion Collection

After Terrence Malick made Days of Heaven in the late 1970s, he didn’t make another film for two decades. Because he shunned the press like the cinematic equivalent of Thomas Pynchon, speculation was rampant as to the reasons why. It was rumored that the ordeal of making Days and its subsequent commercial failure soured him on filmmaking but as it turned out he was working on various screenplays over the years. And then, in 1998, he resurfaced with an adaptation of James Jones’ 1962 novel The Thin Red Line about the World War II battle for Guadalcanal. The end result was an unconventional epic that eschewed traditional storytelling for a philosophical meditation on war, nature and death. It also featured a star-studded cast with most of the marquee names (John Travolta and George Clooney) relegated to cameos while relative unknowns (Jim Caviezel and Ben Chaplin) were given significant screen time. Not surprisingly, critics gave it rave reviews while mainstream audiences were put off by its artsy approach, preferring instead Steven Spielberg’s much more visceral and convention WWII epic, Saving Private Ryan (1998). The folks at the Criterion Collection have rewarded fans of Malick’s film by giving it the deluxe treatment.

The first shot of the film is of a crocodile sinking rather ominously into the water, followed by a stunning shot of sunlight streaming through the leaves of a tree as a voiceover narration says, “what’s this war in the heart of nature? Why does nature vie with itself?” These ruminations about the nature of war and the environment play over a montage of absolutely beautiful scenery and we meet Private Witt (Jim Caviezel) living among the natives in an Eden-esque paradise but this is soon shattered when he spots a Navy patrol boat nearby. The AWOL soldier is brought back and made a stretcher bearer in C Company by First Sergeant Welsh (Sean Penn) who sees the war in a very different way than Witt. He is more of a realist to Witt’s philosopher. They’re all shipped off to Guadalcanal where they’re ordered to invade and take the island from the Japanese forces because of its strategic importance.

Malick spends the rest of the film dwelling on the aspirations and fears of a handful of soldiers. There’s Lieutenant Colonel Tall (Nick Nolte), a career officer desperate to take the island so that he can be promoted to general. Private Bell (Ben Chaplin) is dealing with the news that his wife is leaving him and tries to find a reason to still care about this war. However, it is the relationship between Witt and Welsh that lies at the heart of The Thin Red Line as their two opposing ideologies clash – Welsh is the jaded cynic and Witt the idealistic dreamer. The scenes they share are some of the strongest in the film. That being said, the combat scenes are well-choreographed kinetic set pieces where men are arbitrarily killed. We see the fear and confusion on their faces and how some of them mask it with bravado or grim determination. These sequences are noisy and jarring and contrast nicely with the calmer, more contemplative moments.

The Thin Red Line is filled with all kinds of breathtaking imagery that stays with you long after it ends, like a line of soldiers that walk through tall grass and casually pass by a short, old aboriginal man who doesn’t even acknowledge their presence as if he’s out for an afternoon stroll. There’s the numerous shots of the lush rainforest and the animals that inhabit it as if Malick seems to be saying war means nothing to them or to nature – they will be here long after we’re gone. Another sublime moment occurs when C Company is climbing a grassy hill and the light changes before our eyes and the sun goes in behind a cloud and out again.

The film is anchored by strong performances from the likes of Sean Penn, Jim Caviezel, Nick Nolte, Elias Koteas with others like Woody Harrelson and John Cusack in minor but notable roles, and then there’s the blink-and-you’ll-miss-them bit parts by then up-and-comers like Adrien Brody, Nick Stahl and Thomas Jane. One gets the feeling that they are all in the service of one man’s vision and that would be Malick.

He immerses us in this world so that at times it seems like we are right there with these soldiers and at other times he pulls back and reflects on the nature of war and its effect on man and the environment. The Thin Red Line is one of the most beautifully shot, poetic war films ever made. It wrestles with some pretty weighty themes and is unafraid to take the time and ponder them. Malick assumes that his audience is intelligent and not just interested in the visceral kicks of soldiers shooting each other and getting blown up. He is aiming for something more profound and using James Jones’ book as a jumping off point. Whether Malick is successful or not is up to the viewer to decide but it is readily apparent that he has created something special with this film.

Special Features:

The Thin Red Line was previously released twice by 20th Century Fox in fairly bare bones versions that included several of the Melanesian songs featured in the film and an impressive DTS soundtrack. The Criterion Collection has worked with Malick to give his film a very impressive facelift both visually and aurally while also including an impressive collection of supplemental material.

The first disc features an audio commentary with long-time Malick collaborator, production designer Jack Fisk, producer Grant Hill and cinematographer John Toll. They talk about how the opening scenes with the natives were shot very documentary-like with a small crew at the end of principal photography. They also point out the various locations they shot in and how it affected them and the film. Hill touches upon the casting process and how they got some of the marquee names to appear in the film. Naturally, they talk about working with Malick but not as much as I’d like. With these crew members, this is a more technically-oriented track short on anecdotal material.

Also included is the theatrical trailer.

The second disc starts off with a more than 30-minute featurette that showcases cast members Kirk Acevedo, Jim Caviezel, Thomas Jane, Elias Koteas, Dash Mihok, and Sean Penn talking about how they were cast and their experiences making the film. They all give fascinating impressions of what Malick is like and what it was like to work with him. The actors did a lot of research and preparation, living and training like soldiers and, as a result, they really bonded with one another. Penn describes how a typical day of shooting might involve Malick shooting a scene with dialogue for a half day and then spending the second doing it again but without any dialogue. This is fantastic extra loaded with tons of anecdotes.

Dianne Crittenden is interviewed about the casting process and she explains what Malick was looking for in the actors that ultimately appeared in the film. We see audition footage of actors that were cast (Nick Stahl’s is quite impressive) and, more interestingly, glimpses of the ones who didn’t – Josh Hartnett, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Crispin Glover. Malick wanted actors that did not look contemporary and Crittenden saw people from theatrical acting groups all over the United States.

The film’s three editors, Leslie Jones, Saar Klein and Billy Weber are interviewed. Weber says that his favorite part of the film is a section that Jones worked on because it was so representative of Malick and his worldview. Klein says that Malick wasn’t too crazy about directing the battle sequences and just wanted to work with the actors. Weber and Jones talk about the initial five hour cut of the film and how they cut it down and how it changed with the addition of music and narration.

There is an interview with the film’s composer Hans Zimmer. He talks about meeting Malick and how they simply hung out together for a year before filming started. They never talked about the script but instead had more philosophical discussions. The director encouraged Zimmer to experiment and compose music that enhanced John Toll’s cinematography.

For fans of the film that know about all the footage that was shot and the actors that were cut completely out of the film, the addition of outtakes is particularly exciting. Included are eight scenes that run a total of 13 minutes. It’s nice to see more footage of actors like John C. Reilly and Adrien Brody who were marginalized in the final cut. Reilly gets to go off on a rant in a scene with Jim Caviezel. Brody, who just looks scared throughout the film, actually gets to speak here. Best of all, we see footage of Mickey Rourke, an actor cut out of the final version, in a stirring scene as a sniper who shares a scene with Caviezel.

Also included is an interview with Kaylie Jones, the daughter of novelist James Jones. She talks about the novel and her father’s intentions in writing it. Most interestingly, Jones talks about her father’s upbringing and his experiences in World War II and how it fostered his anti-war sentiments as well as informing the novel.

There are five vintage theatrical newsreels that reported the status of the Pacific conflict in Guadalcanal to those at home. These are fascinating examples of war-time propaganda and feature valuable historical footage.

Finally, there are samples of Melanesian chants and music recorded for the film that play over behind-the-scenes stills.


Here is a link to a review of the Blu-ray edition complete with screengrabs.