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The overture gives you the Eighties, an earful of Reagan and Wang Chung and the jihadist whose exploding body becomes just another set of lights in the Angeleno nightscape. The Secret Service agent (William L. Petersen) gazes into the abyss and dives in with bungee cord, the reptilian counterfeiter (Willem Dafoe) applies paint to canvases and bills with equal dexterity—doppelgänger obsessives with matching blonde dolls, a debased system is the only thing classifying one as lawman and the other as criminal. Revenge for the partner in the garbage dumpster, it involves threatening a suspect (John Turturro), exploiting an informant (Darlanne Fluegel), and corrupting a new sidekick (John Pankow). California in winter, an aesthetic matter: "Have you ever tried to work with rubber gloves on?" William Friedkin's distilled pulp is a sleek corrosion of The French Connection, hotshot and ghoul circling each other with the serenity of the soulless. Forged codes and relationships to go with the forged currency, "nothing but motherfucking paper" yet art to the underworld purist contemplating the portrait he's just set ablaze. A noir lineage (Mann's T-Men, Fleischer's Trapped), Robby Müller from The American Friend. Burnt oranges and metallic blues in the sky, in the void Fluegel clings desperately to stars as "the eyes of God." (Her affecting somnambulism posits Lewis' The Big Combo as a key influence.) A full picture of the city prepares the central chase, which tears through diesel trains and concrete riverbeds on its way to the Terminal Island Freeway. Blasted faces like Gutai crimson splashes, Matisse in the avant-garde dance club (Debra Feuer in Nijinsky make-up rather evokes The Exorcist's painted demon). "Yes, your taste is in your ass." A fountain of inspiration for Takeshi Kitano, the Day-Glo splatter and the desert under the pavement. With Dean Stockwell, Robert Downey Sr., Michael Greene, Christopher Allport, and Steve James.
--- Fernando F. Croce |