J. Mark Price
Staff Writer
Review
Christopher Walken is one of the finest actors working today, bar none. He sometimes graces a mainstream film with his considerable presence (Batman 2, Excess Baggage), but he seems to spend more and more time lurking about in the darker haunts of interesting indie films.
Even several of his more memorable mainstream roles (Pulp Fiction, True Romance) were edgy films that strayed a bit from the pop recipe.
He plays the central character in Peter O'Fallon's Suicide Kings, ex-mafia kingpin Carlo Bartolucci. He now goes by the more benign moniker of Charlie Barret, and we are never really made aware of whether Bartolucci has truly gone straight. It doesn't matter; Barret spends nearly the entire film tied to a chair.
It is a great relief that Walken can pretty much stare at a camera for two hours and find a way to make it seem interesting. The rest of the film is undercut mortally by savagely average acting in roles that needed to be engaging, if not extraordinary.
The plot revolves around the following device: A girl has allegedly been kidnapped. Her wealthy tyrant of a father refuses to pay the ransom. The girl's snobbish, privileged, 20-something brother and four of his friends of similar ilk and character kidnap Barret, assuming he will either pay the million bucks or enlist help from his underworld cronies to come up with the cash.
The body of the film consists of Barret's psychological manipulation of the boys in individual scenes, gradually pulling the buddies apart. This type of interplay has immense potential, especially with Walken as the soft-spoken manipulator.
The talent is wasted, though. The young men who play the wealthy boys, including Henry Thomas as the brother of the missing girl, are awful. Only Jay Mohr, of Jerry Maguire fame, acquits himself with any dignity. But the pivotal characters here are not talented enough to draw out the necessary tension and emotion as the film goes careening toward its whodunit type ending.
The script is another major villain, taking a juicy situation and forcing Walken to pit himself against tepid screenwriting as well as malevolent youths.
Surprisingly, Denis Leary, who usually gets on my last nerve in a matter of nanoseconds, provides some very funny comic relief in a film that is just begging for it. He deserves a few new looks in whatever projects he chooses next.
MPAA Rating:
R
Running Time:
107 min
Playing At:
Local Theaters