Primo piano sull'assassino

I enjoyed this movie. The characters were portrayed interestingly and the story moved along nicely. There were not many surprises, and some of the more gruesome scenes were stretched out longer than necessary. The main attraction was the quirkiness of the characters.

Despite its title 1998's "Johnny Skidmarks" is NOT a comedy but a modest noirish thriller in which titular quiet freelance crime-scene photographer Peter Gallagher works for the cops (including John Lithgow), insurance companies AND a crew of blackmailers linked to the mob. That latter crew though start turning up dead one by one, just as Gallagher meets (through his deceased wife's brother Jack Black) sultry seductive dame Frances McDormand. Is a blackmail victim wreaking revenge, and if so is McDormand involved? Co-writer (with William Preston Robertson) / director John Raffo does a passable job - though with THAT title, it SHOULDA been a comedy.

I was scopping out the new releases at the local Blockbuster, and I came upon the movie, Jonny Skidmarks. I read the summary on the back of the movie box, and I thought it would be good. I got home popped it into my VCR, and started watching, the beginning and end were really good, but the middle of the movie....well, it got a little out of wack, and slipped away and never came back. I say thought-provking because it makes you think, this really happens to a lot of people, not like other movies...letting the plot get too out of hand. But this movie did get out of hand, having your arms, legs, and head chopped off and laid where they are supposed to be on your body, but not actually attached, and in the shape of JESUS CHRIST on the cross. I don't think so. This movie was alright , for just one viewing, and will never be played in my home again, Frances Mcdormand needs to look at her Oscar and think to herself, 'I need to get better roles.' Over and out.

"Johnny Skidmarks" does not seem to know exactly what it wants to be - it crosses a number of genres, from black comedy to thriller. As it turns out, none of the genres it dabbles in are particularly well accomplished. It's not funny, not thrilling, or insightful. The main problem with the movie, as my summary line points out, is that it's too soft and low key. This particularly goes for lead actor Peter Gallagher - he is so lacking in emotion (ANY emotion) for most of the movie that it's hard to get a handle on his character. But the movie's story is also weak. It's extremely slow moving and filled with unnecessary fat. There's also fault with the twist about two-thirds into the movie, which is not only predictable to a good degree, it depends on the characters being extremely stupid. The only interesting thing to be found in the movie is seeing a pre-fame Jack Black, though his scenes only add up to a few minutes of the total running time.

This is a really interesting movie that I thoroughly dug and enjoyed. It's part intense character study, part paranoid suspense-thriller, part chase movie. The setup is this: John Scardino is a police crime & accident scene photog who is emotionally numb inside and moonlights as the lens man for an extortion ring, taking dirty snaps of compromised businessmen in their undies with a saucy hooker named Lorraine in sleazy motel rooms. Suddenly, Scardino starts seeing the blackmail crew from his night job turning up as corpses in his day job in seemingly unrelated homicides. Scardino is the only one who notices the connection, but he can't say squat without revealing his involvement in a criminal enterprise! He rediscovers his emotional inner self by getting major league heebie-jeebies trying to figure out who the killer is. He's taken so many snaps over the years, it could be just about anybody. No one can be trusted! Halfway through, the movie explodes open and turns really grisly and intense--be prepared!

The acting--by Peter Gallagher, Frances McDormand, John Lithgow, Jack Black, Geoffrey Lower, John Kapelos, Charlie Spradling and Lee Arenberg--is great and infinitely diggable. The dialogue is really wry and darkly funny, as is the music. And the movie's look has a kind of Edward Hopper-film noir thing going that I also really dug.

Not a lot of people saw this flick when it first came out. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, then went straight to HBO. Which is weird, because it's so good. This one's a real find. Go forth and dig it!

--Richard Terhune, The Movie Digger