Screen Scene
SCREEN SCENE
By John Carlos Cantu
RATING KEY
Acting
Cinematography
Direction
Editing
Narrative
Sound
Special Effects
When a symbol appears following a title, it implies that the corresponding category is a strength of the movie.
GET SHORTY
[1995. Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. Cast John Travolta, Gene Hackman, Rene Russo. MetroGddwyn-Mayer. 105 mins.]
Were it not for the star power of John Travolta in GetShorty, the misfit characters rambling around its edges would get lost in the high tension world of fictional Hollywood. But by keeping this film grounded, and by being equally Iikable during the process, Travolta proves his return from the cinematic dead in Pulp Fiction wasn't a stray occurrence.
Movie stars never die, they just temporarily fade away.
It was, however, difficult to determine how much of Travolta was invested in that earlier film. His turn as hitman Vincent Vega was high wattage by any standard, but it was also only one of a series of probable career performances by the cast. By contrast Get Shorty is his show- and his show alone.
Chili Palmer (Travolta) is a good-natured smalltime loan collector whose sense of basic values is in direct contrast to his profession. Vaguely dissatisfied with his lot - and in perpetual conflict with fellow small-time mobster, Ray Barboni (Dennis Farina) - Chili uses the disappearance of a client as a convenient excuse to spirit himself out of Miami to Las Vegas. Once he's out west the trail temporarily turns cold, and to keep himself busy, Chili does a favor for a friend by visitt ing a has-been Hollywood producer who has welched on a casino marker.
This producer, Harry Zimm (Gene Hackman), has been hustling an ex-girlfriend, Karen Flores (Rene Russo), to talk her ex-husband, actor, Martin Weir (Danny DeVrto), into starring in his latest project Simultaneously, Zimm 's desperate maneuvers to find backers for his cinematic magus opus have also led him to minor-league gangster, Bo CatJin (Delroy Lindo), who has decided he, too, wants to become a Hollywood producer. Throw in some Latin American drug dealers in search of an illusive half-million dollars in drug money and things begin to heat up in the movie business.
These four improbable stories converge in the person of Chili Palmer. As portrayed by Travolta, Chili is one well-named gangster. His unflappable cool is so casual, even when he's being mishandled, his clothes never wrinkle and his hair never gets mussed. From the bemused twinkle in his eyes to his ever-ready incandescent grin, Chili sin possession of his chili at all times.
The rest, unfortunately.cannot be said of Get Shorty. The film breezes by so quickly, it - like most caper films - merely ellipses what might under other circumstances have been a fully fleshed movie. Instead, Elmore Leonard's story moves forward with a relentless momentum that occasionally keeps the audience breathless. Director Barry Sonnenfeld spreads the screen time around using Chili to tie the loose ends of his movie together, but a couple of these ends ref use to be tied together.
It's appropriate that Travolta headlines the cast He's lived the full circle of a Hollywood commodity. In a film that celebrates the short shelf-life of Hollywood's commodities he projects a casual wry knowledge of what he speaks. It's inconceivable that he could have played the role 20 years ago and his nonchalance telegraphs the hard-earned maturity he's earned since.
Above all else, Travolta's Chili Palmer is a durably strong, clever-minded, principled guy. Despite his questionable profession, he's got the strength of his convictions. It's only after he's aware that he can make a lot more money in Hollywood's straight-time - and have decided a lot more fun while at it - that he decides upon a shift in occupations. As he tells Harry and Rene after a particularly exhausting round of movieland negotiations, "Rough business, this movie business. I may have to go back to loan sharking just to take a rest."
Rough business, indeed. But how can he go wrong with as honest an attitude as this? Even in a story that flags occasionally, Chili 's Travolta speaks with the bonhomie and wisdom of a past and future winner in the movies.
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THREE COLORS: WHITE
[1993. Directed by Krzystof Kieslowski. Cast Zbigniew Zamachowski, Julie Delpy. Miramax/ Miramax Home Entertainment. French and Polish with English Subtitles. 92 mins.]
By Krzystof Kieslowski's reckoning, there's nothing more exasperating in life than losing while you win. That is, there's nothing more exasperating - unless you can't win for losing.
This is Karol Karol 's (Zbigniew Zamachowski) predicament in Three Colors: White. A Polish expatriate living in Paris, Karol 's world falls apart when his young and beautiful wife, Dominique (Julie Delpy), divorces him for non-consummation of their marriage. His business burns down, she cancels his credit and he decides to beat it home with his tail between his legs to get his act together. Needless to say, the sad sack even manages to get mugged by thieves after trying to sneak back into Warsaw.
But every dog has his day in the sun and Karol hangs tough in post-communist economically depressed Poland. He eventually founds an international trade Corporation, becomes an exceedingly wealthy man, and fakes his own death to entice Dominique to his funeral. Overjoyed to find her ex-husband alive, they spend a night of passion together. But the next morning, she's accused of arranging his death, and she's subsequently imprisoned. Our last sight of these star-crossed lovers has him forlornly looking up in a courtyard as she stands at her second-story cell window. They're reunited once again in their separation.
From beginning to end, there's an odd commensurate equality tying Karol and Dominique together - a sort of exchange of interpersonal power that lists awkwardly from one partner to the other dependent upon their status in the relationship. Karol's been imprisoned by Dominique's rejection of him in France, just as she's been imprisoned by his machinations in Poland. In both instances, the mate who has been manipulated most cleverly has found himself or herself at the mercy of the other's reified intentions.
Kieslowski seems to suggest that love just has this kind of effect on people. It's therefore instructive that he's chosen comedy from which to work in this film. For Karol must go through a range of emotions typically considered white - cowardice and innocence - while Dominique's own style of whiteness- anger and ambivalence - marks her personality. Their passionate vacillations and confusions are more than enough to last a lifetime.
But passion is, in itself, not nearly enough to fulfill a life. Especially when the two personalities in question are evenly matched. And such is the pseudo-tragedy of Three Colors: White.
In a match of wits where every action has an equally decisive counter-reaction, the endgame is a stalemate It's for this reason that Karol loses by winning. Granted Dominique's enslavement of his soul has led to her physical enslavement, but the torture-chambers of the mind are infinitely more searing than the short-lived pain of the sinew.
That final tear crossing Karol's crestfallen cheek - and the sorrow in Dominique's waved gesture good-bye - says with a finality that we cannot turn back the emotional clock. That is, we certainly cannot turn back the emotional clock any more than one person can compel another person towards compassion. Fervor under these circumstances is a self-delusive pathological state.
Kieslowski's simple everyman has gained the equality he has long sought. But it's also only been earned at the expense of destroying the fragile dialectic that sustained him through his darkest night. As Karol Karol learns to his sorrow at the conclusion of Three Colors: White: Being a master, and being a slave, is a mere change of mind.