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Teorema is the true model, though Wyler's tasteful original provides a useful counterpoint to the stark raving madness on display. The widescreen was made for beauty, the introductory vista of dirt roads and snow-capped mountains yields to Kelly Lynch's leg in silk stocking, the rest follows like Moore's "imaginary gardens with real toads in them." The erudite sociopath (Mickey Rourke) is something of a purring mad hound, "a place to relax" is all he wants after breaking out of jail. The fancy suburban abode fits the bill, he and his accomplices (Elias Koteas, David Morse) invade a dysfunctional drama already in progress. The philandering patriarch (Anthony Hopkins) was in Vietnam, his wife (Mimi Rogers) has trust issues, the fugitive freshens up in an Armani tuxedo to see himself as an exterminating angel: "Mendacity is the great sin that's destroying America. I'm a living reproach to you because I'm an honest man." Airless architecture versus sublime Nature, Michael Cimino thunders back and forth with majestic derangement. Opposite Wyler's balanced frames is nonstop abrasion, jagged angles and amplified camera swoops, cacophonies of shouts and revving engines and flashing sirens. "Do you want to know the truth? I watched too many Westerns." The centerpiece has Morse's loose-cannon meeting death amidst Fordian splendor, materializing from behind wild horses while whistling "Red River Valley" in the iris shot of a sniper's viewfinder, cf. Lang's You Only Live Once. If the outlaw doubles as marital therapist, the testy FBI ballbuster (Lindsay Crouse) suggests a directorial proxy bringing a particularly arduous production to its climax on a lawn dotted with infrared lasers. "We don't violate the rules until they don't work." Scorsese resumes the bullet-riddled domestic façade promptly with Cape Fear. With John Finn, Peter Crombie, Shawnee Smith, Danny Gerard, Dean Morris, and Gerry Bamman.
--- Fernando F. Croce |