Not too bad. It begins with a situation any experienced movie maven is likely to regard as stock. A representative of the mob, Alex Baldwin, contacts a juror, Demi Moore, in a murder case against mob boss Tony Lo Bianco. Baldwin informs Moore that she has a very fine son. He'll stay healthy as long as Moore sees to it that the jury brings in the verdict of not guilty.
The rest could have been written by the numbers twenty or thirty years ago, but now is not then. The all-powerful mob has been done to death and it must now be portrayed as in decline, slowly being edged out by the Calle cartel and other organizations of that ilk.
A further novelty is the casting of Alex Baldwin as Vince, the smooth-talking enforcer. He doesn't look particularly Italian. He doesn't wear suits of raw silk. He doesn't use double negatives. He ends his gerunds with a pronounced "g" -- "going" instead of "goin'".
Baldwin's part is a complex one. He begins as another tool of the Mafia, although his relationship with them is properly ambivalent. He manipulates Demi Moore into complying with his demands through a fluid set of threats and fake concerns about her and her family. As in, "Please, I beg you, don't make me kill your son." To put an end to any doubt, Baldwin picks up Moore's best friend, Anne Heche, to whom Moore has spilled every bean available. He beds her and then smiles as he forces her at pistol point to swallow a lethal dose of barbiturates.
Then he appears genuinely to fall in love with Moore. Their tense bond has been, as he puts it, like a marriage. Tearfully, but still manfully, he says, "I'm sorry you hate me, Annie, because I really do love you." As I said, the emotions behind his role are always in process, but Baldwin manages to pull it off.
He may be right on both counts. He loves her, true, but she really DOES hate him. After she finagles a not guilty verdict out of the other jurors, she hates him enough to cooperate with the cops and betray him to his Mafia bosses.
The good fellas try to whack him but he's a clever guy and sees to their demise instead. I mean, you know he's clever because he's pronouncing all those "g"s. Probably graduated from Reed College.
But, having discovered Moore's betrayal, he displays a vengeful persona never before shown. Moore is trying to hide her son in a remote Guatamalan village. Baldwin flies to Guatamala to kill the kid, Moore in another airplane right behind him. There is a final shoot out, naturally, that leaves a few loose ends dangling. That climactic character of Baldwin's is strictly by the book. Any subtlety we've seen earlier is all gone. He's just another bloodthirsty villain to be outwitted. Moore has to kill Baldwin, naturally -- but not before he tries to sneak a hidden pistol out of his ankle holster. We can't have the heroine shoot him down in cold blood. Anything but that.
Demi Moore has always been kind of a puzzle to me. She can act, but lots of people her age can act. She's never been in an outstanding movie and she's not staggeringly beautiful, not exotic in any way, yet her career goes on. That's okay. I'm not complaining. I only wish there were more to be seen on the screen. She has a husky voice, a strong splanchnocranium, hard eyes, and a neck of substance. It fits the part. The role hardly calls for an hysterical weeper with spindly limbs.
The film is nicely textured. We see the friendships and the tensions within and between groups. We see uncertainty, ambiguity, a nebulous patchwork of values that we innocents would be hard put to deal with.
The rest could have been written by the numbers twenty or thirty years ago, but now is not then. The all-powerful mob has been done to death and it must now be portrayed as in decline, slowly being edged out by the Calle cartel and other organizations of that ilk.
A further novelty is the casting of Alex Baldwin as Vince, the smooth-talking enforcer. He doesn't look particularly Italian. He doesn't wear suits of raw silk. He doesn't use double negatives. He ends his gerunds with a pronounced "g" -- "going" instead of "goin'".
Baldwin's part is a complex one. He begins as another tool of the Mafia, although his relationship with them is properly ambivalent. He manipulates Demi Moore into complying with his demands through a fluid set of threats and fake concerns about her and her family. As in, "Please, I beg you, don't make me kill your son." To put an end to any doubt, Baldwin picks up Moore's best friend, Anne Heche, to whom Moore has spilled every bean available. He beds her and then smiles as he forces her at pistol point to swallow a lethal dose of barbiturates.
Then he appears genuinely to fall in love with Moore. Their tense bond has been, as he puts it, like a marriage. Tearfully, but still manfully, he says, "I'm sorry you hate me, Annie, because I really do love you." As I said, the emotions behind his role are always in process, but Baldwin manages to pull it off.
He may be right on both counts. He loves her, true, but she really DOES hate him. After she finagles a not guilty verdict out of the other jurors, she hates him enough to cooperate with the cops and betray him to his Mafia bosses.
The good fellas try to whack him but he's a clever guy and sees to their demise instead. I mean, you know he's clever because he's pronouncing all those "g"s. Probably graduated from Reed College.
But, having discovered Moore's betrayal, he displays a vengeful persona never before shown. Moore is trying to hide her son in a remote Guatamalan village. Baldwin flies to Guatamala to kill the kid, Moore in another airplane right behind him. There is a final shoot out, naturally, that leaves a few loose ends dangling. That climactic character of Baldwin's is strictly by the book. Any subtlety we've seen earlier is all gone. He's just another bloodthirsty villain to be outwitted. Moore has to kill Baldwin, naturally -- but not before he tries to sneak a hidden pistol out of his ankle holster. We can't have the heroine shoot him down in cold blood. Anything but that.
Demi Moore has always been kind of a puzzle to me. She can act, but lots of people her age can act. She's never been in an outstanding movie and she's not staggeringly beautiful, not exotic in any way, yet her career goes on. That's okay. I'm not complaining. I only wish there were more to be seen on the screen. She has a husky voice, a strong splanchnocranium, hard eyes, and a neck of substance. It fits the part. The role hardly calls for an hysterical weeper with spindly limbs.
The film is nicely textured. We see the friendships and the tensions within and between groups. We see uncertainty, ambiguity, a nebulous patchwork of values that we innocents would be hard put to deal with.