The Hot Spot (1990)

The Hot Spot is a very very interesting 1990 neo-noir erotic thriller directed by Dennis Hopper.

It starts like a western. Harry Madox (Don Johnson) is the mysterious stranger who rides into town, except that it’s the 90s so he drives. Landers, Texas is a small town that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a western.

Harry talks himself into a job as a car salesman at George Harshaw’s car yard. We have no idea if he’s a decent guy who’s going to land himself in trouble or a bad dude looking for trouble. He doesn’t give much away. He is rather interested in the local bank.

He’s going to get involved with two women either one of whom could turn out to be a femme fatale. The first is Harshaw’s secretary Gloria Harper (Jennifer Connelly). She’s as cute as a button and seems like she’s as wholesome as freshly baked bread. Then Harry accompanies her on a repo job. The car to be repossessed belongs to Sutton (William Sadler) and he comes across as a violent sleazy alcoholic loser. But Gloria behaves very very strangely indeed. And Gloria has a tendency to be jumpy and secretive.

Gloria has a secret. She’s obviously a Good Girl, but probably a Good Girl in Trouble. If a man has any sense he runs the other way at this point. But since when do men behave sensibly about sweet gorgeous girls? Harry’s reaction is the obvious one. He can save her. He can fix her. And this is Noir World so we know Harry’s a goner.

Then he meets Dolly Harshaw (Virginia Madsen). She’s the boss’s wife. The boss’s much younger wife. Harry isn’t totally stupid. He knows you don’t get mixed up with the boss’s wife. But what Dolly wants Dolly gets and she obviously wants Harry. And when it comes to sexy blondes Harry isn’t all that sensible. I mean, she’s making it obvious that she’s there for the taking and what is he supposed to do? He figures it’s just one roll in the hay and that can’t lead to any trouble. One of Harry’s problems is that he’s a bit too confident of his ability to avoid getting entangled in personal dramas.

We soon learn more about Harry’s interest in banking. 

And Harry discovers that he’s well and truly entangled with both these women. Gloria’s secret gradually comes to light and it’s a huge mess that no sane person would want anything to do with but by this time poor Harry has fallen in love with her. 

And Dolly wants more than bedroom shenanigans. She has a plan. Harry wants no part of it but by now Dolly has a hold over him (connected to his interest in banking). 

Bad girls are dangerous and good girls are just as dangerous when they need rescuing. And we’re in Noir World. Who can tell for sure which are the bad girls and which are the good girls?

You can see the kind of nightmare that is waiting just around the corner for Harry and the nightmare does indeed eventuate. A man who likes to be totally in control finds that everything is now totally out of control. 

We can see various obvious ways this could end but the ending we get has a neat double twist and it’s both unexpected and completely satisfying.

Perversity is something we expect in neo-noir and there is some and it comes as a surprise. There’s a fair bit of nudity and sex - this is both neo-noir and erotic thriller and the plot is largely driven by lust and Hopper is quite rightly in prepared to make sure the movie has the required erotic heat. 

Don Johnson is extraordinarily good. He’s charismatic and he nails the contradictions in Harry’s personality - he’s a scoundrel but then he suddenly does something noble and Johnson makes both sides of Harry’s character believable.

Virginia Madsen is clearly having insane amounts of fun doing the full-on femme fatale thing. She’s a joy to watch.

Jennifer Connelly has the toughest part because Gloria is simply swept along by events and she’s a character offering no opportunities for an Oscar-bait performance. But Connelly does a fine job.

There’s a genuine noir atmosphere, a great plot, excellent performances and it’s a visually impressive movie making good use of the Texas setting. A fine directing effort by Dennis Hopper. A top-tier neo-noir. Very highly recommended.

And it looks great on Blu-Ray.

Internal Affairs (1990)

Internal Affairs is a 1990 neo-noir which had enormous potential but suffers from some flaws and some clumsy writing.

Raymond Avilla (Andy Garcia) is a cop who has just been assigned to IAD (Internal Affairs). He’s going to be partnered with Amy Wallace (Laurie Metcalf). They’re investigating an officer, Van Stretch (William Baldwin), who is clearly an out-of-control coke addict.

The two IAD cops begin to suspect that the cop they should be investigating is Dennis Peck (Richard Gere). He seems to be the spider at the centre of a web of corruption.

Usually a cop under investigation by IAD has the odds stacked against him but Peck is not only crooked he’s also smart and ruthless. And Raymond Avilla is as dumb as a rock.

Avilla and Wallace have plenty of evidence against Stretch but what they want is for him to testify against Peck in return for immunity. Stretch won’t do it.

Their case is going nowhere which seems strange since they have a mountain of evidence against Peck and that’s one of the movie’s implausibilities.

The IAD cops slowly become aware that Peck may be involved in murder as well as corruption. There’s a link to Steven and Tova Arrocas and a hit that he may have organised for them.

There are plot twists which rely heavily on Avilla’s stupidity - his inability to predict that Peck’s actions even when it’s obvious what he is likely to do.

There’s not just a battle of wills but a battle of nerves between Avilla and Peck. Peck has the edge because he’s a whole lot smarter.

The IAD cops hope to get useful information from Stretch’s wife and her refusal to co-operate is another case of the IAD cops missing something very obvious.

Peck is playing mind games with Avilla, trying to convince Avilla that his wife is being unfaithful.

This is one of those cop thrillers in which the cop hero’s family gets caught up in the action.

The problem is come crude ideological messaging. Every male character is either evil or stupid. The straight female characters are all helpless victims of Evil Men. The only good person in the entire story is Amy Wallace and she’s a lesbian. It’s taken for granted that she is therefore virtuous and wise and brave and noble. Unfortunately she is so perfect that she ends up having no personality at all.

Peck’s character is established as cold, calculating, smart and ruthless but then towards the end he starts doing out-of-character stupid things, mainly because that’s the only way to set up the very contrived ending.

There are however some really interesting aspects to the story. Apart from Peck there are three significant male characters, Steven Arrocas, Van Stretch and Raymond Avilla. All three are sexually inadequate. It is clear that they are incapable of satisfying their wives sexually. What’s interesting is that their sexual inadequacy seems to be linked to moral weakness and a general inability to take charge of their lives. And all three are aware that Denis Peck’s claims that he could satisfy their wives sexually are well-founded. Whatever moral failings he may have it’s clear that Peck does not lack sexual potency.

And while the idea that if a wife isn’t sexually satisfied by her husband she will go looking for a man who can satisfy her might be cynical it’s something that has been known to happen.

Peck is able to taunt Raymond Avilla and convince him that his wife Kathleen is playing around behind his back, with Peck. The taunts hit home because Raymond knows they’re plausible. Raymond’s sexual inadequacy makes him vulnerable and that vulnerability makes him a less effective cop.

And the three sexually inadequate men are rather creepy. Peck might be evil but he isn’t creepy and pathetic.

The casting is significant. John Kapelos as Steven Arrocas is a loser trying to be a big man but still living in his father’s shadow. William Baldwin as Van Stretch is a neurotic contemptible mess whose violence comes from weakness. Baldwin makes him slimy and clammy. Andy Garcia plays Raymond Avilla as a man afflicted by doubts and self-pity. These are weak men played by actors who effectively capture the characters’ essential weakness.

By contrast Richard Gere as Peck exudes confidence and charisma and has women lining up to sleep with him. He’s the total alpha male.

Internal Affairs has some real problems but it is perhaps more interesting than it set out to to be. Recommended.

L.A. Confidential (1997)

I saw L.A. Confidential years ago and really disliked it. Rewatching it now has made me change my opinion quite substantially.

It was directed and co-written by Curtis Hanson, based on James Ellroy’s novel.

The first thing to note is one of my quibbles with this movie. It’s the 1950s but the men don’t wear hats. And not a single person smokes. So this is not the 1950s. And apart from those two details overall this movie is just not convincing at all in its attempts to capture the period flavour. A period settings for a movie is always a mistake. It never rings true. This one looks like 90s people on their way to a 50s-themes costume party.

Fortunately this movie does have a lot of other things going for it.

This is the story of three cops. They know each other slightly and they don’t like each other. All three are morally compromised in some way. All three will reach a point where they have to make a choice. A difficult possibly dangerous choice. But still possibly preferable to continuing on their present course.

Bud White (Russell Crowe) is considered a thug even by his fellow cops. Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) is a college grad fast-tracked for promotion and now he’s totally out of his depth as a detective lieutenant. Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) no longer cares about the job. He’s a technical consultant to a TV cop show and he hobnobs with Hollywood types. He’s corrupt, but only in a very trivial way. He’s been doing business with sleazy scandal magazine publisher and part-time blackmailer Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito).

This is a cop movie but it’s also a movie about Hollywood.

The plot starts to kick in with a massacre at the Nite Owl coffee lounge. Six corpses, blown apart by pump-action shotguns. There are three obvious suspects. And a rape victim’s testimony can put the case against them beyond doubt.

The plot is incredibly convoluted but that serves a purpose. What is really going is only very gradually revealed to both the audience and the three cops. Initially it seems like a routine if grisly crime. Then it starts to look like something a bit bigger, as other incidents seem to be tied in. Then it starts to look like something really big as more and more odd things that don’t fit start to fit. The audience doesn’t know just how big this case is going to get. Nor do the three cops.

There’s a very rich guy operating a high-class call girl racket. The gimmick is that the girls get plastic surgery to make them look like Hollywood movie stars. Bud has had a brief puzzling encounter with one of the girls. He thought she’d been beaten up but he was wrong. Then he meets Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger). She’s also one of the whores. She’s the Veronica Lake look-alike. Bud gets involved with her. What is he up to? What is she up to? Is she going to be the femme fatale of the story? She sure looks like a femme fatale, but you can’t take anything in this story at face value.

The focus is on the three cops. Ed Exley is a Boy Scout but he’s ambitious and while he still thinks of himself as a moral paragon his ambition has corrupted him. He’s forgotten why he became a cop. Until something reminds him.

Jack Vincennes has long since lost sight of the reasons he became a cop. Morally he just goes with the flow, collects small payoffs and merely goes through the motions on the job. But ethically he has his limits.

Bud is the most interesting because right from the start he’s a mass of contradictions. He’s a vicious violent cynical thug but where women are concerned he’s a knight in shining armour. And there’s no fakery to it. He remembers why he joined the force. He saw a woman beaten to death. He became a cop to stop stuff like that from happening to women.

Lynn is a less central character but she’s interesting because you can’t predict her. She could turn out to be a Good Girl or a Bad Girl. Maybe she really has fallen in love with Bud.

One really interesting aspect to this film is that the evil comes from the corruption, not from the crimes themselves. The drug bust early on is pointless. They’re just a young guy and a young girl smoking a little weed. The prostitution racket harms no-one. The girls are well paid, they don’t mind the work and the guy who runs the racket treats them extremely well. The problem comes from the fact that making these activities illegal guarantees that the cops and city officials will become corrupted and that organised crime will become involved. It’s the corruption that is the source of all the evil.

It’s also worth noting that while Bud is aways trying to rescue damsels in distress he’s not trying to save Lynn. She doesn’t need saving. Maybe that’s why he falls in love with her.

Guy Pearce is good. Kevin Spacey is very good. Russell Crowe is superb, making Bud’s contradictions believable. Kim Basinger doesn’t have to do much more than make Lynn enigmatic, which she does.

I liked L.A. Confidential very much the second time around. Complex and tightly constructed. Highly recommended.

Paul Verhoeven's Basic Instinct (1992)

Paul Verhoeven's Basic Instinct is the greatest of all neo-noirs and the greatest of all neo-Hitchcockian thrillers. It's a very grown-up movie. It's intelligent, provocative, unsettling, sexy and honest. It was controversial at the time and remains controversial today.

And of course the links with Hitchcock's Vertigo are striking. Sharon Stone is even made to look like Kim Novak.

I've reviewed this movie at Cult Movie Reviews - here's the link to my review.