the salton sea
I have no idea how to describe this one. I don’t even know what they were trying to do. I added it to my queue only because it referenced the odd man-made mistake that is the Salton Sea south of Palm Springs. I think it was brought up in casual conversation, but I don’t remember the specific person to blame. There may have been a point to this, about redemption or loss or retribution. Maybe.
The story starts out with Val Kilmer (kiss kiss bang bang, the doors) sitting in a room ablaze, playing a trumpet. His narration is in a sort of whispy, stalled, meandering sort of voice. He goes on about how things started (yes, another flashback movie) and where to begin. He’s a speed freak spending time with other speed freaks. Later on we find out many things about his character that paint an elaborate picture. There’s so much going on that it doesn’t technically make sense at any point, but is somehow predictable.
The cast is stacked with names you’ve heard of or actors you see on television. Peter Sarsgaard (Garden state, jarhead), Anthony LaPaglia (without a trace, so i married an axe murderer), Doug Hutchison (green mile), luis guzmán (waiting…, punch-drunk love), adam goldberg (dazed and confused), vincent d’onofrio (men in black, thumbsucker), and r. lee ermey (full metal jacket, mail call) all have a piece of the action. Even meatloaf is listed, but I don’t remember his character.
The acting isn’t great and was barely enough to bring me into the story. Val does a decent job in a dichotomous character, but still comes off with a dumb look on his face half the time. For a film with so much B-list talent, no one stands out. It’s just a mass of people, working together, to make a large pile of mediocrity.
The story itself, with all the twists and turns and manufactured suspense, is lacking. There’s too much going on. The narrative is jumbled and uninteresting. It sort of goes along the path of least resistance with injected “twists” that fall short of actually twisting. It’s not that it was hard to watch, though. It was so tweaked out that it became awesome. I don’t have a reason to watch it again, but I (like I almost never do) don’t regret seeing it. I can’t think of a movie that it’s like, but its uniqueness doesn’t make it good.
There are a lot of odd superimposed scenes, flashbacks, and weird asides. The direction is pretty bad. Caruso did Disturbia and I liked that one, so i was expecting more. He used visual cues. A lot of visual cues. To help us follow along. Sort of like David Lynch if Lynch were to reach through the screen and slap you in the eye when you were supposed to be paying attention.
If you were to go through IMDB.com and watch every val kilmer movie, take the time to watch this one. Otherwise, you’ll probably be okay forgetting it exists.
**