Photo by Senator Entertainment, Senator Entertainment
Kim Basinger hopes the talk doesn't involve sling blades when she confronts ex-hubby Billy Bob Thornton in the sex-and-drug-and-rock-and-roll milieu of 1980s L.A.
Set in Los Angeles in the Reagan-and-cocaine, Wayfarers-and-Wang Chung era of the early 1980s, "The Informers" is a shallow and pointless film about beautiful boys and girls and glamorous men and women who have everything and yet -- wait for it -- nothing!
Photo by Senator Entertainment
Kim Basinger hopes the talk doesn't involve sling blades when she confronts ex-hubby Billy Bob Thornton in the sex-and-drug-and-rock-and-roll milieu of 1980s L.A.
Focusing on the Los Angeles of the early 1980s, "The Informers" balances a vast array of characters that represent both the top of the heap ...
Rating: R for strong sexual content, nudity, drug use, pervasive language and some disturbing images
Length: 98 minutes
Released: April 24, 2009 Limited
Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Kim Basinger, Winona Ryder, Mickey Rourke, Jon Foster
Director: Gregor Jordan
Writer: Bret Easton Ellis, Nicholas Jarecki
In one scene, a man lifts a drowned rat from the drain of a glittering swimming pool. Everything else in the movie's 98 minutes is redundant.
Like the book of the same name by that successful chronicler of amoral affluent alienated designer ennui, Bret Easton Ellis ("Less Than Zero," "American Psycho"), "The Informers" is constructed as a series of linked vignettes, one of which takes place at a wake at the Beverly Hilton, where people eat sushi and wonder if the deceased's favorite song really was the one played at the service: "Shadows of the Night" by Pat Benatar.
Top-billed Billy Bob Thornton plays a studio executive who says he wants to reunite with his wife (Kim Basinger) but can't relinquish his obsession with a TV reporter (a suddenly mature-looking Winona Ryder). Mel Raido is a drugged-out British rock star named Bryan Metro who punches groupies in the face. Blond knockout Amber Heard spends most of the movie topless. Mickey Rourke shows up as a greasy kidnapper; his reluctant associate is a hotel doorman played by Knoxville-born Brad Renfro.
Renfro died in January 2008, which shows how long this movie has been sitting on the shelf (or in the drain). Maybe that excuses the "surprise" opening scene in which a character is suddenly knocked out of frame by a speeding car -- probably the most clichéd "shock" effect of the digital era.
Released in 1994, Ellis' book becomes increasingly surreal and symbolic as it progresses, with vampires and a character who identifies himself as an extraterrestrial. Director Gregor Jordan jettisons these "unrealistic" elements; as a result, the film builds no momentum and simply peters out -- not out of exhaustion (which would be appropriate) or boredom (ditto) but from an apparent lack of invention. The film is slick and facile, where the original prose was clinical, brittle. It's a shock when the credits name Ellis as one of the movie's executive producers and as its co-screenwriter (along with Nicholas Jarecki).
"The Informers" is playing exclusively at Malco's Studio on the Square.
-- John Beifuss: 529-2394
- |
Comments » 0
Be the first to post a comment!
Share your thoughts
Comments are the sole responsibility of the person posting them. You agree not to post comments that are off topic, defamatory, obscene, abusive, threatening or an invasion of privacy. Violators may be banned. Click here for our full user agreement.