This magnificent movie and probably the highest on my
list of favourites is made in 1996 and produced by Martin Scorsese. An
outstanding cast, next to Christopher, containing of John Turturro (and
what a magnificent role he plays !), Dennis Hopper, Griffin Dunne, Rosanna
Arquette, Ethan Hawke and Illeana Douglas makes this movie to one of the
best ever made, and one of the lesser known strangely enough and
therefore (again!) underestimated movie.
Nevertheless, it's a great story, a great feeling of
hopeless situations played by those fine actors.
Martin Mirkheim (Griffin) is someone who wants desperately
make a movie of his favorite book "Daniel Strong", but doesn't have any
money to do so. In fact he owes the state a lot of tax, but he tries to
go ahead with his plans, living in his own little dreamworld as he does.
His wife doesn't want to know and later on he meets the wrong kind of people
(guess who?) and things take a dramatic turn somewhere in the movie. Though
hopeless, there is also lots of fun in this movie and I think it shows.
The scene with the butcher scale is hilarious, the scene in the Karaoke
Bar too (go Chris go). Though typecast, this is one which is brilliantly
typecast as it is the kind of role he can play so darn well. Christopher
plays a very wealthy and shrewd businessman (Kim Ulander) who is very childish
at the same time, and looking for adventure. In fact he misses the real
world. Pure boredom of being able to get everything he wants ("All this
and we're still not free") makes him want to hang around with Martin who
still has dreams, and childish ones are the ones he enjoys so much.
His best friend Ron (John) adds to the absurd situation
that no one listens to one another and he is just as weird as Kim (Chris)
is. The best scene John plays is to my humble opinion the scene where he
fits suits and keeps talking (brilliant!) and the part where everyone's
in the car talking no sense at all.
It's hard to get this one, but if you can, you won't be dissapointed. It's known in Australia as "The four rules", coming from the four rules of success which are mentioned at the beginning of the movie.
When you watch the movie, don't forget to see the fun
of it!
The directing is brilliantly done and you have to watch
it many times to see what I mean.
