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Between classical projects, one last hurrah for Clint Eastwood's baroque side. "When I go... I go with a bang." A grain of Vertigo sketches the trauma of the callow police detective (Charlie Sheen), a corporate scion so hapless he gets a "kick me" sign pasted on his back on his first day at the station. The veteran he's partnered with is introduced on a stakeout that swiftly balloons into a chase, with the darkened freeway illuminated by sparks as a car carrier truck unloads its cargo on the tenacious pursuer. (The punchline has him popping a stogie into his bloodied mouth before keeling over.) "Broke, desperate, and very pissed," the chop-shop kingpin (Raul Julia) improvises after a botched casino robbery and takes the older cop hostage, leaving the boy to grow into a fire-breather. "I saw you die!" "Welcome to Hell, asshole." The treatment is a plethora of stunts and gags that bespeaks a close study of Frankenheimer, a satirical sang-froid in the face of pure truculence. The veteran negotiates with a stoolie by banging his Beemer across a junkyard via construction crane, elsewhere the rookie rides to the rescue by crashing through the front door astride a chopper. Even the man with "tachometers for eyes" has limits, a lime paint job on a Lotus provokes his aesthetic ire: "Can you imagine defacing a work of art like this with a color like that? Guy ought to have his ass removed." Pièce de résistance, the hero as unwilling star in a rapacious moll's homemade porn, Eastwood squirming under Sonia Braga in full bloom. The airport climax adduces a note from Kubrick's The Killing, the closing jest posits the whole shebang as a remake of Fargo's The Enforcer. With Lara Flynn Boyle, Tom Skerritt, Pepe Serna, Marco Rodríguez, Xander Berkeley, Tony Plana, and Paul Ben-Victor.
--- Fernando F. Croce |