O Retorno

This one was OK, more on the lines of a good made for TV movie than anything else. It was great to see Dub Taylor and Claude Akins working together one last time, though I got a kick outta their being father/son, Dub was born in '07 and Sheriff Lobo there 11 years lator.

Wonder what they thought about being directed by a rock singer? Oh well.

The film is okay for what it is, Mellencamp plays himself(gone country), not too terribly but is def. no actor. He hangs around the small town homestead, gets in a bar fight with Sheriff Lobo(dad), shoots of a gun or three, messes around with old flame Kay Lenz and drives wife Mariel Hemingway nuts. He talks about coming back to stay and his cronies say 'go back, you don't belong here, you got out, we don't want you here', more or less.

And there is a stunt involving riding in a cage of sorts in the back of a truck, kicking it off the back and watching Mellencamp go richocheting around the pavement behind said truck, caught in the bashed in cage and brush. He winds up in the hospital.

Some critics loved this-Siskel and Ebert, for example, and Peter Travers of Rolling Stone. Boston Globe thought it was okay too. Lyons, Medved and Maltin all hated it.

I sorta liked it, as a big Mellencamp fan-and will give it ** for Mellencamps decent direction and seeing Akins/Dub one last time. But the rest is only so so. Okay music too.