|
Alphabetic Index
|
Ratings Index
|
Web Resources
|
Alphabetic Index
|
Ratings Index
|
Web Resources
Rhea and Harry's bad behaviour, highlighted and displayed from every angle, is essentially the movie's only item of interest, thanks to an overloaded plot that gives up the ghost midway through its synthetically intriguing doings. If L.A. Confidential sings the best contemporary paean to film noir, Palmetto manages little more than a few false notes on behalf of the venerated genre.
But, steamy it is. Elisabeth Shue as femme fatale Rhea gets the pressure cooker going full-tilt. This gal can make a vacant stare look pornographic. The nefarious, conniving wife of a dying millionaire thirty years her senior, the cheaply sensual vamp brandishes less elan than Kathleen Turner exhibited in Body Heat, but every bit as much sizzle.
Stumbling into the web this sexy spider-woman weaves is Woody Harrelson as the aforementioned Harry Barber, a former newsman who's attempt at journalistic muckraking in small town Palmetto, Florida, landed him a frame job and a jail sentence. Freed after two years in stir, the disgruntled, down-at-heel writer appears to be the perfect candidate for Rhea's big scheme. That is, to fake a kidnapping of Mr. Malroux' only daughter, Odette (Chloe Sevigny), demanding a ransom of $500,000. All Harry need do to earn his ten-percent commission is be the frightening voice on the phone. You see, Odette, a teen-aged temptress in her own right, is in on the scam. So where's the risk? Old man Malroux won't involve the cops, or so assures Rhea.
Adapted by E. Max Frye from James Hadley Chase's novel, Just Another Sucker, which describes the film's marrow more aptly than the innocuous Palmetto, the primary characterisations are curiously askew. Ostensibly the title player, Harrelson's sucker in question disports a thing or two about temptation, but nothing quite as convincing as Lana Turner's evil woo of John Garfield in the noir progenitor, The Postman Always Rings Twice. Sweating and panting like Edmund O'Brien in D.O.A., dumbfounded by his iniquitous slide, Mr. Harrelson's Harry has the adrenaline rushing. But for what purpose?
The same cannot be asked about Miss Shue's participation. Shapely Rhea's raison d'être is clear. Alas, sorrowfully basic. A shameless seductress in the best First Testament fashion, updated to a frightening, high-tech pitch, it is actually Rhea Malroux's sanity that invites question. Digging way down deep to conjure the ultimate film noir enchantress, Shue fashions a wondrously disgraceful monster indeed. But the outrageous performance plays in high relief, refusing to integrate smoothly into the otherwise vapid screenplay.
Palmetto's plot convolutions amass with the dramatic aplomb of a chain-reaction pile up on a dangerous highway. Because the script sorely lacks that one real good idea, a series of bogus twists and turns are loaded on, as if the steady assault of new and confusing divulgences will raise the tale's theatrical worth. It doesn't.
What's worse, the more director Volker Schlondorff pulls artificial plot contortions out of his bottomless hat, the closer his film comes to burlesquing the very genre he hopes to emulate. As if that weren't enough, just for bad measure, the film sends things over the top by adding a little touch of horror. Making like Vincent Price playing a crooked cop turned ghoul, Michael Rapaport is Donnelly, Rhea's silent partner. This fiend is particularly fond of acid baths for disposing of corpus delictis. Terribly effective, and so much cleaner than piranhas.
But the other supporting performances are hardly that arousing. To the contrary, most of the sub-text folks are played as dullards -- neither here nor there entities ready to arouse suspicion with each new upshot. Gina Gershon as Nina the sculptor, Harry's live-in girlfriend, hardly raises more than an eyebrow at a moment when she should be screaming. Surely she's in on the conspiracy. No? Huh?
The same can be surmised of Harry's cop brother-in-law and, in the film's twist de resistance, of the D.A. who gives Harry a police p.r. job when it becomes obvious the big kidnap case will be inundating the department with reporters. By this point, one has long stopped falling for each new shock. Instead, it becomes sport to guess what desperately lunging bushwhack the director will try next. To enjoy Palmetto only for its scenic moods and Miss Shue's obscene sorceress, you can't be a sucker for its patchwork suspense. That's Harry's job.
|
Alphabetic Index
|
Ratings Index
|
Web Resources