After a mainstream hit with Colors, back to impressionism, mood and random saxophone-smashing for Dennis Hopper the auteur. Results: mauling at the editing room for three different versions, at least one inevitably attributed to Alan Smithee. A film maudit, then, though, as usual, the maudit stems not so much from artistic shortcoming as from reviewer myopia, demanding lucidity and instead getting (if not "getting") a wacky rumination on creating, selling-out, and Jodie Foster cheesecake. Foster is an artist whose car one night swerves off the road just in time to witness a gangland rubout, Joe Pesci rehearsing his Tommy DeVito amid an industrial landscape; she escapes from both the wiseguys and the cops, and hit man Hopper gets hired to off her. He tracks her down to Taos, yet by then he's become fascinated by his prey, kidnaps her, then fumblingly expresses her love by groping her hair when not forcing her into Bettie Page getup. Naturally, she falls for him and the two take off for the open wide spaces of New Mexico -- if Hopper and Fonda were the new cowboys in Easy Rider, Hopper and Foster here make a post-modern frontier couple idyllically holed up in a log cabin, chopping wood, rescuing baby lambs, and making love on beds covered with pink Hostess Snowballs, until it's time for the helicopter chase. "Fuckin' artists," an exasperated Hopper mumbles at the wood-murals chainsawed by Bob Dylan (just one of many hipster-bud cameos: John Turturro, Dean Stockwell, Vincent Price, Julie Adams, Charlie Sheen, Helena Kallianiotes), though the movie itself is nothing if not a piece of pop art, or maybe a conscious essay on types of art, barely preoccupied with story. Art conceptual (pensées scrolling on electronic signs, burning totem poles) and natural (a Georgia O'Keefe church photography), captured under Hopper's photographer-eye. If critics are baffled, too bad: Hopper and Foster are already riding into the sunset, in silvery suits to protect them from the oil refinery fireball. With Fred Ward, Tony Sirico, and Sy Richardson.
--- Fernando F. Croce
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