"Roll-M"

Movie Reviews, By Susan Sackett

U-Turn (Rated R; violence, nudity, sex, profanity)

Pity the poor town of Superior. If you can. Oliver Stone didn’t when he chose it for the site of his latest flick, U Turn, starring Sean Penn, Nick Nolte and Jennifer Lopez – oh yeah, and that town without pity, Superior. For this dot on the map of Arizona is as much a star of the film as the humans.

Sean Penn plays Bobby Cooper, a two-bit Vegas-bound gambler whose life literally takes a U-turn when his 1964½ Mustang pops a radiator hose. He ends up at the Superior garage where the local grease monkey, played by an unrecognizable Billy Bob Thornton, is the mechanic from Hell – which is probably the next town over from Superior, and an improvement at that.

Nothing is as it appears. "Superior" is anything but – to wit, the denizens of this town. Early on we meet an unrecognizable Jon Voight, playing a blind Indian who dispenses inscrutable wisdom at every given opportunity. When Penn brings him a soda pop, Voight promptly pours some out on the ground, muttering, "You can’t rip off the mother earth. It’s like the crackerjax box – the more you eat, the more you want." Huh?

Then there’s Jennifer Lopez, as the town’s major babe, who takes an immediate shine to Penn, invites him over to hang drapes (yeah, right) and enlists him to kill her husband for his hidden pile of money. Later, Penn meets her hubby, played by an unrecognizable Nick Nolte (do we detect a pattern here?), who makes Penn a counter-offer to do her in. Later still, Claire Danes flirts with Penn, causing Joaquin Phoenix as her boyfriend to get nasty with him, and prompting Penn to muse, "Is everybody in this town on drugs?"

Despite these decidedly quirky characters, this noirish thriller stands on its own merits, overcoming an even grander challenge: its director, Oliver Stone. Stone tries too hard to impress us with his technique, honed in his last several films. The heavy emphasis on style, the extreme close-ups of lips, eyelids, nostrils and such distract from the storytelling; so do the intrusive angles, the wildly swinging hand-held camera work and the over-exposures at the end of several scenes that give it almost a "home movie" quality.

None of this is necessary. There is a compelling story, strongly developed, offbeat but believable characters and marvelous acting. The film is replete with Moebius twists and U-turns, eventually doubling back on itself for its inevitable conclusion.

Movie buffs will note the homage to several predecessors, including the 1993 TV movie, Red Rock West (starring Nicholas Cage and Dennis Hopper), and the David O. Selznick 1946 film, Duel in the Sun, which was the inspiration for U-Turn’s ending.

By the way, if you head out to the real Superior (past Apache Junction), you’ll see that the town appears pretty much the way it looks in the movie. Just don’t expect to find prototypes for the characters in the film. Several of the locals were interviewed on Phoenix TV shortly after the picture’s release, and they were none too pleased at being portrayed as a bunch of rubes and hicks. But they should probably count their blessings – tourism will no doubt bring in a transfusion of dollars, at least for a while.

On second thought, no need to waste your pity on Superior after all.

 3 OWLS (out of a possible 5)