| First of all, I was glad to see that
they gave my doctor some extra work - he's featured
at the beginning of the movie, the first exposition
scene The next cool thing I saw was in the
very next scene, with Porter - we still only know
him as Mel, at this point in the film - crossing the
59th Street bridge (Queensboro Bridge if you want to
find it on a map). In the background you can
plainly see the three spoke stacks which played a
big part in the 1997 classic, Conspiracy Theory.
Porter is a real son of a bitch, and they let you
know that spoonful by spoonful in the first few
scenes. He's got no scruples that we can see,
and his main attribute is tenacity. He's like
an ant working his way back to the nest with some
indistinguishable thing on his back.
The movie starts off with his obsession spelled
out in words. Once he's on his feet, Porter is
in constant steady, forward motion toward his goal:
70 grand!
Along the way we meet a number of great
characters, mostly bad, even the good ones.
One of my favorite, for strictly visual reasons is
his ex-wife, Lynn (Deborah Kara Unger). But we
have the businessman mob-bosses in nice suits and
ties, the strong silent types, the two-bit, trying
to be more than they deserve to be bad-guys, and the
lowlife who knows who he is and where he belongs,
until his fatal mistake of going for the wrong ring.
Oh yeah, two bad cops, too. As well as a
Chinese gang and a Chinese hooker (Lucy Lu).
But no one is a match for Porter, at least he
doesn't think so. Maybe he's aiming too high.
What do you think?
Something else.
On the DVD is one of the most fun trailers.
It's the one with Dean Martin singing Ain't that
a Kick in the Head. And the soundtrack
kicks butt, too. Joe De Matteo |
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