Apparently there's a lot of movies with that title, but this is the 1986 PI drama, with Eric Roberts and Beverly D'Angelo and a very young Johnny Depp in one of his earliest roles. In fact, it seems like some Depp collectors have paid up to forty bucks for this tape, just to see him. Which means I"ll end up auctioning this off, one of these days.
What was interesting for me is that this was based on a Arthur Lyons novel. I know a bit about hardboiled fiction: Lyons was a good, neglected PI novelist of the late Seventies and Eighties, well worth seeking out if you like the genre and happen to stumble across his books.
Roberts plays an ex-journalist turned PI who, desperately needing money, agrees to a job a friend of his offers him. Her boss, a famous artist, wants to reconcile with his ex-wife and son: he's heard a report that they may be in Palm Springs, and wants Roberts to check it out. Roberts does find the wife (D'Angelo) and a kid (Depp) who he thinks is the kid. Unfortunately it's not the kid, though. And then a whole bunch of things happen. Like many PI stories, this has the general structure of "my small meaningless investigation relates directly to a serious crime". There's also a real strong Ross Macdonald influence (if you know the writer), from "the rich living lives of quiet desperation" to "incidents in the present are reverberations of what happened in the past". I suspect that comes from the source material, though: this feels like a faithful adaptation.
It suffers partly because the bad guy is a non-established character who only really does anything in the final third of the movie, partly because D'Angelo's motivations become overly murky (I'm still not sure to what degree we're supposed to be sympathetic towards her.) But I did like how things defy expectations: the rich industrialist turns out to really love his kid, the loudmouthed artist turns out to really love his kid, the spoiled rich kid turns out to be having a hard time of it, the sympathetic victim isn't nearly so sympathetic or so much of a victim that you first think.
Not really a good movie, though. There's a lot of voice-over stuff, and it's pretty bad: I suspect it's taken directly from the novel, but it doesn't matter, it's still sounds pretty hokey. Beverly D'Angelo is not my idea of a femme fatale, sorry. I've always liked Eric Roberts, and he's not bad here, but he looks too slick and well-put together to play a down-on-his-luck journalist. The climax is over rushed: not only are D'Angelo's motives murky, so are the bad guy's -- I'm not sure exactly how he expected to get away with it, and why, given what we learn about him, he would even try this plan in the first place.
So a misfire. Better casting and a bit more meat on the bones of this script and it would've been a lot better. With Edward Bunker in a very small role as one of D'Angelo's servants.
What was interesting for me is that this was based on a Arthur Lyons novel. I know a bit about hardboiled fiction: Lyons was a good, neglected PI novelist of the late Seventies and Eighties, well worth seeking out if you like the genre and happen to stumble across his books.
Roberts plays an ex-journalist turned PI who, desperately needing money, agrees to a job a friend of his offers him. Her boss, a famous artist, wants to reconcile with his ex-wife and son: he's heard a report that they may be in Palm Springs, and wants Roberts to check it out. Roberts does find the wife (D'Angelo) and a kid (Depp) who he thinks is the kid. Unfortunately it's not the kid, though. And then a whole bunch of things happen. Like many PI stories, this has the general structure of "my small meaningless investigation relates directly to a serious crime". There's also a real strong Ross Macdonald influence (if you know the writer), from "the rich living lives of quiet desperation" to "incidents in the present are reverberations of what happened in the past". I suspect that comes from the source material, though: this feels like a faithful adaptation.
It suffers partly because the bad guy is a non-established character who only really does anything in the final third of the movie, partly because D'Angelo's motivations become overly murky (I'm still not sure to what degree we're supposed to be sympathetic towards her.) But I did like how things defy expectations: the rich industrialist turns out to really love his kid, the loudmouthed artist turns out to really love his kid, the spoiled rich kid turns out to be having a hard time of it, the sympathetic victim isn't nearly so sympathetic or so much of a victim that you first think.
Not really a good movie, though. There's a lot of voice-over stuff, and it's pretty bad: I suspect it's taken directly from the novel, but it doesn't matter, it's still sounds pretty hokey. Beverly D'Angelo is not my idea of a femme fatale, sorry. I've always liked Eric Roberts, and he's not bad here, but he looks too slick and well-put together to play a down-on-his-luck journalist. The climax is over rushed: not only are D'Angelo's motives murky, so are the bad guy's -- I'm not sure exactly how he expected to get away with it, and why, given what we learn about him, he would even try this plan in the first place.
So a misfire. Better casting and a bit more meat on the bones of this script and it would've been a lot better. With Edward Bunker in a very small role as one of D'Angelo's servants.