Paul Schrader gives us a downbeat story about a nice guy, Willem Dafoe, who is in the employee of the good-hearted but fiercely businesslike Susan Sarandon. He runs drugs for her to high-end clientèle. He's not your typical seedy dealer. Sarandon has a car and driver available to take him to the night clubs and penthouses where the users pay cash for hard drugs. Dafoe even delivers Valium to users pacing around in a hospital waiting room. Sarandon likes him. He likes his job, now that he himself is no longer a user or juice head. It all runs smoothly.
This garden of earthly delights is interrupted by the appearance of his ex wife, Dana Delaney, whom Dafoe still loves deeply. She wants absolutely nothing to do with him because the two of them did little except get high during their marriage. He pursues her nonetheless.
Fate intervenes. Delaney's mother dies. Dafoe always liked her but Delaney goes ballistic when he tries to attend the funeral. She's so distraught that she throws herself out the window of one of Dafoe's rich clients, Victor Garber, who, for the purposes of the role, affects a flawless Swiss/German accent. He's convincing.
I don't think it's a good idea to get into the narrative more deeply. Dafoe gets himself into trouble and there is a shoot out at the end. We'll leave it at that.
All of the principals give unimpeachable performances. No problems there. And Dana Delaney looks eminently squeezable. Schrader's direction is effective in evoking New York's night-time streets during a garbage strike. But all those piles of deep green garbage bags lining the streets are kind of symptomatic. Everything is dirty at its core. In case we missed that, Schrader shoots a scene in which Dafoe tries desperately to convince his ex wife to get together again -- only the camera is so situated that a wide cement pillar blocks the space between them. It's like being hit over the head with a crowbar.
Two other weaknesses, at least in my judgment. Dafoe has an uncanny feeling that he is in mortal danger. He has some reason to feel this way, but not enough to prompt him into buying a pistol and packing it in his belt. I didn't feel the jeopardy gathering around him the way he claims. Let me put it another way. That climactic shoot out looked unjustified.
Worse was Michael Been's lugubrious imitation of Leonard Cohen. I'm not criticizing him as a musician, but only for this score. Good God. The lyrics are enough to make you slit your wrists. They're a mishmash of doom-laden phrases like "wrapped chains around me" and "twist the blade" and "hunger and fear" and "who stole my orgone accumulator?" Well -- not that last one, but you get the picture.
Yet, if you can disregard the musical score, what you wind up with is a decent story of a fundamentally decent guy who suffers for his sins and emerges a better man for it.
Finally,
This garden of earthly delights is interrupted by the appearance of his ex wife, Dana Delaney, whom Dafoe still loves deeply. She wants absolutely nothing to do with him because the two of them did little except get high during their marriage. He pursues her nonetheless.
Fate intervenes. Delaney's mother dies. Dafoe always liked her but Delaney goes ballistic when he tries to attend the funeral. She's so distraught that she throws herself out the window of one of Dafoe's rich clients, Victor Garber, who, for the purposes of the role, affects a flawless Swiss/German accent. He's convincing.
I don't think it's a good idea to get into the narrative more deeply. Dafoe gets himself into trouble and there is a shoot out at the end. We'll leave it at that.
All of the principals give unimpeachable performances. No problems there. And Dana Delaney looks eminently squeezable. Schrader's direction is effective in evoking New York's night-time streets during a garbage strike. But all those piles of deep green garbage bags lining the streets are kind of symptomatic. Everything is dirty at its core. In case we missed that, Schrader shoots a scene in which Dafoe tries desperately to convince his ex wife to get together again -- only the camera is so situated that a wide cement pillar blocks the space between them. It's like being hit over the head with a crowbar.
Two other weaknesses, at least in my judgment. Dafoe has an uncanny feeling that he is in mortal danger. He has some reason to feel this way, but not enough to prompt him into buying a pistol and packing it in his belt. I didn't feel the jeopardy gathering around him the way he claims. Let me put it another way. That climactic shoot out looked unjustified.
Worse was Michael Been's lugubrious imitation of Leonard Cohen. I'm not criticizing him as a musician, but only for this score. Good God. The lyrics are enough to make you slit your wrists. They're a mishmash of doom-laden phrases like "wrapped chains around me" and "twist the blade" and "hunger and fear" and "who stole my orgone accumulator?" Well -- not that last one, but you get the picture.
Yet, if you can disregard the musical score, what you wind up with is a decent story of a fundamentally decent guy who suffers for his sins and emerges a better man for it.
Finally,