Thief Harvey Keitel comes to Southern California to join his younger brother, Timothy Hutton, and a nice Latino (Wade Dominguez) and a driver (Stephen Dorff), to pull off a diamond heist at one of those high-end stores that line the main drag in Palm Springs. They are successful. As they are about to divvy up the loot, Dorff kills Hutton and Dominguez. He tries to kill Keitel too, but botches it, which is what you might call a bad mistake.
Dorff takes off with all the loot and the rest of the movie has Keitel tracking him down, at the cost of a lot of money and an infinity of pain. At the end, having dispatched Dorff, the wounded and bleeding Keitel sees to it that Dominguez' widow (Famke Janssen) gets most of the money from the job. Keitel disappears, perhaps dying, and Janssen retires with her two kids to Port Arthur, Texas. End of story.
A lot of this is familiar territory by now and has been done better elsewhere -- "Heat", for instance, or "Straight Time." But it's not badly done, despite the rather weak script. It's always interesting to see the underside of L.A. The Chinese sweat shops, the bars where the black guys hang out, everybody in shades, dilapidated single-family homes with their front yards littered with trash and children's toys, Lucy Liu doing a pole dance, San Pedro's cracking plants, dusty and mostly empty motels with propane gas tanks ready to explode at the hint of a stray bullet, careering cars knocking down utility poles and emitting showers of fake sparks, sleazy flowered shirts that scream out "Dollar Store", hotels with dark apartments where you wouldn't want to live unless you like junkies for neighbors.
The director handles his background people with effortless aplomb. After he shoots two of his accomplices, Dorff chases Keitel through a louche trailer park, firing wildly. When he loses his quarry, Dorff looks angrily around. When the bullets started flying, the rednecks and their dogs scramble over fences to get out of the way, only to appear at their doorways seconds later. One fat guy in a cowboy hat cocks his shotgun, and another has a pistol at his side. It's amusing. You feel that these guys have been around such situations before. But the director has kept them in long shot and doesn't make a big to-do out of the point. Nice touch.
In another scene, Keitel is beating the crap out of the bartender in an empty saloon. Two Latinos walk through the door, take a quick look at what's going on, and back out again.
If there's not much new in the revenge plot, the details of life in this particular social world are pretty nicely captured. Well, I must say that the villain of the piece, Dorff, is thoroughly stereotyped. There's nothing "good" about him. He's a young, cocky, ruthless showoff. He plays raunchy music loud in his convertible. He shoots through his own girlfriend's chest in order to plug the guy holding her from behind, and shows not a wit of remorse. The director allows Dorff to commit a fundamental error. As in "Platoon," every time the F word is used, it is shouted emphatically. "And bring the EFFING money!" That's not how the F word is used. If anything is stressed in an utterance, it's the noun, not the adjective. Bonus point: Harvey Keitel has an opportunity to howl with anger and smash some furniture.
Not a memorable movie, but one worth watching for diversion.
Dorff takes off with all the loot and the rest of the movie has Keitel tracking him down, at the cost of a lot of money and an infinity of pain. At the end, having dispatched Dorff, the wounded and bleeding Keitel sees to it that Dominguez' widow (Famke Janssen) gets most of the money from the job. Keitel disappears, perhaps dying, and Janssen retires with her two kids to Port Arthur, Texas. End of story.
A lot of this is familiar territory by now and has been done better elsewhere -- "Heat", for instance, or "Straight Time." But it's not badly done, despite the rather weak script. It's always interesting to see the underside of L.A. The Chinese sweat shops, the bars where the black guys hang out, everybody in shades, dilapidated single-family homes with their front yards littered with trash and children's toys, Lucy Liu doing a pole dance, San Pedro's cracking plants, dusty and mostly empty motels with propane gas tanks ready to explode at the hint of a stray bullet, careering cars knocking down utility poles and emitting showers of fake sparks, sleazy flowered shirts that scream out "Dollar Store", hotels with dark apartments where you wouldn't want to live unless you like junkies for neighbors.
The director handles his background people with effortless aplomb. After he shoots two of his accomplices, Dorff chases Keitel through a louche trailer park, firing wildly. When he loses his quarry, Dorff looks angrily around. When the bullets started flying, the rednecks and their dogs scramble over fences to get out of the way, only to appear at their doorways seconds later. One fat guy in a cowboy hat cocks his shotgun, and another has a pistol at his side. It's amusing. You feel that these guys have been around such situations before. But the director has kept them in long shot and doesn't make a big to-do out of the point. Nice touch.
In another scene, Keitel is beating the crap out of the bartender in an empty saloon. Two Latinos walk through the door, take a quick look at what's going on, and back out again.
If there's not much new in the revenge plot, the details of life in this particular social world are pretty nicely captured. Well, I must say that the villain of the piece, Dorff, is thoroughly stereotyped. There's nothing "good" about him. He's a young, cocky, ruthless showoff. He plays raunchy music loud in his convertible. He shoots through his own girlfriend's chest in order to plug the guy holding her from behind, and shows not a wit of remorse. The director allows Dorff to commit a fundamental error. As in "Platoon," every time the F word is used, it is shouted emphatically. "And bring the EFFING money!" That's not how the F word is used. If anything is stressed in an utterance, it's the noun, not the adjective. Bonus point: Harvey Keitel has an opportunity to howl with anger and smash some furniture.
Not a memorable movie, but one worth watching for diversion.