Putty Up

Let's get this out of the way: I like--not love--Dario Argento.

I understand and appreciate his contribution to genre cinema. Suspiria is something of a masterpiece. His support and connections helped make Dawn of the Dead be all that it could be. I’ll admit that I’ve yet to see some of his more respected early efforts (Deep Red, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, Four Flies On Grey Velvet among them) but regarding his middle-career streak (Tenebre/Phenomena/Opera), I come up in a rather scandalous category of meh.

Maybe I should just wait to reserve any complete judgment until I see his long-awaited Dracula 3D. Word on the street is it’s a hit!

Quick Plot: A young model named Celine is abducted by a yellow tinted mad man with a thing for disfiguring and killing beautiful women. Luckily for his latest soon-to-be victim, Celine's sassy flight attendant sister Linda will stop at nothing to save her. For Linda, that mostly means tracking down Adrien Brody's tortured Inspector Avolfi to crack the case before it's too late.

Giallo is, I guess, a giallo, save for the fact that doesn't really tease you with a mystery to the killer's identity. 

Well, maybe it does?

See, for some sort of creative/silly/yet sort of entertaining reason, Brody does double duty as the earnest hero and mumbling murderer. Now anyone who's ever caught a glimpse of Adrien Brody only to feel as though his one-of-a-kind schnozz has poked them in the eye might be wondering 'How can you possibly disguise a man with a face as singular as Adrien Brody?'

Well...

I'll spoil a question that you might otherwise be distracted asking for Giallo's 90 minute runtime: no,  Putty Brody is not the secret long-lost twin of Non-Putty Brody. Nor is Putty Brody supposed to be Non-Putty Brody in a putty disguise. Nope. He's just playing two parts a la Paul Dano in There Will Be Blood or Frank Morgan in The Wizard of Oz. 

Except with about 85% more putty.

You’re probably now thinking “how can you possibly get back to a semi-serious discussion of this movie when all I can think about no wis putty?” I feel your pain. And answer simply with this:

You can't.

High Points

Dummy violence! It's a giallo and it has dummy violence! THAT'S A GOOD THING!

Low Points

So. That was an note of ambiguous hope to end on eh?

Lessons Learned

Italian policemen were never taught how to take a pulse

The more puttied your face is, the further back your memory goes. This calculation does indeed lead to the conclusion that if your face is made entirely of putty, you can remember your life in your heroin addicted mother's womb

When considering what to be when you grow up, remember a hidden bonus of the occupation 'fashion model': you'll probably be skinny enough to squeeze through a chained door when trying to escape a mad putty-faced serial killer

Perhaps it explains my clumsiness as something blood-related: Italians are not very good at walking, at least if it involves passing another person without crashing into them

Randomly Aggressive Product Placement

Because watching a movie about a man who slaughters pretty young women ALWAYS puts me in the right mood for snappy Diablo Cody dialog

Rent/Bury/Buy

Look, I'm not calling Giallo a good movie. But unlike a lot of other gialli, it didn’t bore me. Many diehard Argento fans will call it a true shame, but as someone who’s never been overly impressed by the filmmaker’s output, I don’t see it as being THAT bad. It’s more that he never quite improved from where his run ended in the mid-80s. Fog up Giallo to make it look like it was made in 1987 and try to tell me it’s that much worse than Opera. 

Or just don’t watch it and save yourself an argument. The choice is ultimately yours.

Kissy kissy.

Zip It

Watching The Jacket means one has to be comfortable staring into the puppy dog eyes of (and occasionally, up the oddly shaped nostrils of) Adrian Brody. Considering this film was recommended to me by one of my favorite people who also happens to be the unofficial president of the Adrian Brody Stalker Society (or ABSS, as Christine Makepeace of Paracinema/my other half of The Feminine Critique ikes to call it), that all makes sense.

Quick Plot: Jack Starks is a young soldier who rather miraculously survives a gunshot wound to head in the Persian Gulf War. Discharged from the military with some form of amnesia, he wanders down a snowy Vermont road one day and comes upon the young Jackie and her alcoholic mother Jean broken down. Your consummate nice guy, Jack fixes their car before rudely being shoved on by Jean only to hitch a ride with a seedy Brad Renfro, who proceeds to shoot a cop and frame the AGAIN head-shot Jack.

After being declared insane from PTSD, Jack ends up in an asylum headed by Kris Kristofferson's experimental doctor. Every institution for the criminally insane seems to have one, and in this case, the fun starts after hours where Kristofferson and his dutiful orderlies tie Jack in the titular straight jacket and shove him into a morgue drawer. This sensory deprivation is apparently some form of sanity cure.

Or a means to time travel.

During his nightly sessions, Jack experiences an odd sort of freedom. There he is on the street, out of the asylum and free to spend Christmas Eve at the sad little home of a now full-grown Keira Knightley version of Jackie, who smokes and drinks through her raccoon eyeliner as she explains her mother's early cigarette infused death. It's not until Jack starts rummaging through Jackie's knickknacks that he discovers his dogtags, the very same ones he gave to a little girl so many holidays before that the pair realizes the rules of time are being rewritten by Jack’s psychosis.

Maybe.

The Jacket is, very intentionally, a DIFFERENT film, one that defies easy classification. Part thriller and part romance, it seems stubbornly set on being as much of its own thing as it can, something that’s a tad tricky when the influence of the superior (yet still underrated) Jacob’s Ladder cautiously haunts each frame. If you can let go of that comparison, the film is something special, if incredibly far from perfect.

Think of Lost if Lost were set during winter in a drab mental institution. Recognizable character actors stop by to play morally ambiguous supporting roles, including Jennifer Jason Lee as an earnest psychologist and Kelly Lynch as Jackie’s wino mom. The time travel is riveting, even if it doesn’t entirely add up. What’s real and what’s fantasy is left somewhat open, though sadly, Hurley never drives a VW bus, Sawyer never takes off his shirt, and nobody ever asks “Why are you telling me this?”

For reasons unknown, this is becoming a very shirtless review

So really, not like Lost at all.

High Points

Director John Maybury (a former production designer) brings an impressively unique look to the very scope of The Jacket, something wonderfully discussed on one of the DVD’s extra featurettes. The color palette is distinctive, and I imagine one watching JUST for the visuals would have quite a ball

Low Points

Brody grew on me throughout the film and ultimately ends up with a very sympathetic performance, but at the risk of awakening the dragon temper of Ms. Paracinema, does the dude have to deliver each line as if he was afraid of being shushed by a strict librarian?

Lessons Learned

Daniel Craig’s eyes are blue. Like, really, really really, really really really, very quite blue

Without flowers, it’s really difficult to get organized for the rapture

Be careful of the icy patch!

Rent/Bury/Buy

The Jacket is a tough film to recommend since it has such an odd, undefinable tone. The film was somewhat misadvertised as horror (probably accounting for its box office failure) but the feel is more eerie than scary. Still, the story is surprisingly involving and by the end, there’s something bittersweet about Jack’s saga. Like a lot of promising but imperfect films, The Jacket made me more excited to see something else directed by Maybury rather than to actually rewatch this particular film any time soon (especially when one rumored project is Macbeth starring Mean Sean Bean and Goddess Tilda Swinton). There’s an eye behind the camera and some interesting heart to Massy Tadjedin’s script. It just doesn’t quite come together in a fully realized way.