|
"Le poète de la nuit que tombe," says Truffaut of Ray, Kathryn Bigelow assumes the mantle with a vision that might be titled They Live by Night. (The supernatural prowlers put it another way: "We keep odd hours.") The vampiress (Jenny Wright) is a jittery pixie, a blonde slip of a girl beneath Oklahoma skies, licking some ice-cream while allowing herself to be picked up by a callow cowpoke (Adrian Pasdar). "Can I have a bite?" "Bite?" "I'm just dyin' for a cone." "Dyin'?" She tenderly massages his jugular before the nip, thus infected he's promptly scooped up by her clan in their Winnebago. The leader (Lance Henriksen) fought for the Confederacy, his mate (Jenette Goldstein) is on the feral side, the zestful bumpkin (Bill Paxton) savors the carnage, the runt (Joshua Miller) is a wizened soul in a child's body—all of them are alive to the grungy comedy of a bitten slacker meeting hick in-laws. "Well, this is a kick, ain't it?" Electric twilight over Southwest expanses, when nomads and addicts and lovers come out to play. The ultimate high is a slaughter in "shit-kicker heaven," the hangover is a motel bungalow surrounded by patrolmen. Parallel families, crossed veins: The human father (Tim Thomerson) is a veterinarian who specializes in transfusions, his bloodsucking counterpart takes a shot to the chest and spits out the bullet. Bigelow pulls it all together into the complicated image of Pasdar feeding off Wright's arm while oil derricks are illuminated by lightning, the freeze-framed return to normality fades but the final smile on the charred visage lingers. "The last sound that you hear on your way to hell is gonna be your guts snappin' like a bullwhip!" The supreme beneficiary is Denis' Trouble Every Day. Cinematography by Adam Greenberg. With Marcie Leeds, Troy Evans, Roger Aaron Brown, Thomas Wagner, Robert Winley, and James Le Gros.
--- Fernando F. Croce |