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"Someday your dick is going to lead you into a very big hassle," Red smoke against the night sky states Florida in the grip of a heat wave, the small-time attorney (William Hurt) strolls past an exhausted band playing "That Old Feeling" and stops dead in his tracks at the sight of the dame in white (Kathleen Turner). Virtually a billboard for sin, the vamp recognized as far back as her high-school yearbook, posed with carnal anticipation as the fellow smashes the glass door separating them. Her husband (Richard Crenna) is a business bigwig of easeful, shark-skin meanness, a moneyed obstacle between the inflamed schemers. "That man is going to die for no reason but we want him dead." James M. Cain for yuppies, aestheticized film-school tawdriness, the ideal debut for Lawrence Kasdan. The illicit lovers seeing themselves in their own noir intrigue are not alone, the gangling assistant D.A. (Ted Danson) is Fred Astaire in his own mind under the spotlight of a pier lamp and the soft-voiced arsonist (Mickey Rourke) enters in a lip-synched Bob Seger aria. (The protagonist's true mirror is not Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity but a bozo driving by in full greasepaint.) "That crisis atmosphere" of self-conscious chatter and sweat-drenched skin, the tug between academic literary affectations and the camera's undeniable clamminess. "Maybe you shouldn't dress like that." "This is a blouse and skirt. I don't know what you're talking about." "Then you shouldn't wear that body." Discussion of the murdered man's will finds the characters eagerly reaching for cigarettes, admittedly a joke Wilder might have enjoyed. The patsy and the bombshell, he paces back and forth wondering how things came down to a booby-trapped boathouse and she aches in the void of luxury. "Not too smart, are you? I like that in a man." The Coens have the logical, frigid next step with Blood Simple. With J.A. Preston, Jane Hallaren, Lanna Saunders, and Kim Zimmer.
--- Fernando F. Croce |