User reviews

Ambitious in its use of Gay leads (no overtones here, completely in your face), period setting, and crazy goings on. The Movie starts sort of weak with overacting by the three teenagers wildly flailing about and trash talking incessantly. But once our two ferry-land psychos enter, the thing sort of becomes entertaining in a low rent hoodlum kind of way.

Although it goes to some length to be 1950's kitsch some of the props look like modern thrift shop and antique store borrowings as they are worn out and do distract somewhat from believability. But that is a minor quibble because things do perk up and turn into some fun.

The convoluted plot and some of the explanations of some of the behavior develop confusion, it is the violence and the Gay behavior of the characters that bring this home with a different feel and is a near winner despite some of its missteps. This is one of Stephen Baldwin's best performances and Mickey Rourke is, well the always interesting Mickey Rourke.

Released in January '95, "Fall Time" was the first movie from indie filmmaker, Paul Warner and the result is that he didn't directed another movie since, even if it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival. It failed to win and never got domestic distribution in the States, going DTV in several other countries and disappear from public viewing after a while.

The story penned by Steve Alden & Paul Skemp showed some promises at the beginning, but Warner was unable to hand it well to the screen, offering a pedestrian crime / thriller, not that well photographed, and the evident low budget kind of ruined the visual experience of a period piece (the movie is set in the 50's).

The only thing he did a tad better was the casting decisions with Stephen Baldwin & Mickey Rourke, playing the duo of eccentric bank robbers (full of homossexual overtones between the two that wasn't at all needed); David Lynch's muse, Sheryl Lee in a tiny (& exploitative) role and Jason London, Jonah Blechman & David Arquette playing the three unwary teenagers.

Baldwin offers a good performance as the nervous Leon with a great supporting from Rourke with his baroque gusto for extravagant characters and smooth delivering of his lines that deserved to be better written. By '94 when "Fall Time" went into production, Rourke, blackballed from Hollywood A-list films, was enjoying his new sports career in boxing appearing in just 1 or 2 weeks filmed cameos to pay the bills, and his Florence Nightingale's character here was just an extent of the rogue character he played 2 years before in "White Sands" ('92).

David Arquette can play this reckless 50's greaser character in his sleep, he had already played similar roles in the short lived TV Show, "The Outsiders" ('90) and "Roadracers" ('94). Jason London can't act to save his own life, even Jonah Blechman is better.

In short, "Fall Time" is a way average film, only recommended for fans of the actors involved, besides that is an exercise in dull and a near waste of time (the ending sucks and doesn't made any sense at all).

I still give it a 5, just for some of the actors / performances.

My goodness. I thought for a moment there that these five guys were going to take off their clothes and have a orgy. The Plot Summary in the IMDB database said there were some homosexual overtones in this movie. I really don't think they were overtones. They were out loud thrown in your face, and you just had to smile to yourself. The three younger boys, with their grab ass and pulling down underwear and slow dancing and coming within a half an inch from each other mouths putting on each others ties in their little "Fort", which is what David called it. It seemed more to me that this was their little secret hideaway. Now as far as the two ex-cons, the very cute Steve Baldwin and the ever beautiful Mickey Rourke. These guys just made you feel like you were about to spill your beans. It was so obvious that these two had to be lovers. With all of the "You know I love you" and the hand holding and mouths coming only inches away from each other, and the feeling each others bodies, I was just waiting for them to take off their clothes in the middle of the road and do it on the cement. This is how powerful the "Homosexual Overtones" came off.

One thing that really kind of p***ed me off about this movie, is this jerk water town were everything was supposed to take place. These people in this town were just lockjawwed morons. I mean one example was when this guy with a Johnny Suede/Elvis Presley haircut, ran to call the police when he thought something was going to go down at the bank. He runs to the pay phone in this town, I don't remember the exact name, something like Colidine, anyway he calls the operator and ask, "Give me the Colidine Sheriffs Department". I mean duh, this guy lives in Colidine, why in the world did he not just ask for the "Sheriffs Office", or even dialed the number himself. It's not like when he dialed "0" he got the International Operator in Istanbul, I mean come on.

All in all with all of the stupid town people, including the Sheriff himself, it had a pretty good story line. Rent it on a weekend, something to smile and think about.

Man, how I regret wasting my precious time on this film. Fall Time is so awful that I kind of feel ashamed to have it in my DVD collection. Not for long though… Don't be fooled by the Sundance nomination (how this piece of junk achieved it is a mystery) and the promising cast: Fall Time is an annoyingly bad film. Its plot is contrived, the developments of the story border on the ridiculous and to top it off the acting is poor. Even those actors who proved elsewhere that they can do much better (Mickey Rourke, Sheryl Lee) fail to impress.

When you feel that it is a movie that you are watching and not a story that you could immerse yourself in, when you see sweating actors instead of characters or cheap sets instead of real locations you know that the illusion you expect to get from a film will not arrive this time. Try as I might I would be hard pressed to find a single redeeming feature in this film. I only gave it 2 stars to reserve 1 for the absolute black holes of cinema. Avoid it like the plague!

So extraordinarily bad on so many levels. It made no sense at any juncture. Characters never did one thing a normal person would do. The script doesn't explain anything. It actually made me hurt in my stomach. Didn't one single person who had a level of power over this film look at it and say it is incomprehensible? Didn't anyone like the producer think it might be a good idea to let a small group of people see it just to make sure it made sense? I needed extra lines to make this review long enough so I'm sticking them here. This film doesn't deserve any more discussion. It deserves to buried in an active volcano. Is this enough lines for this baby to get published? How about now?

One thing you will learn from this film: Steven Baldwin is actually a functioning mongoloid.

I recently rewatched Fall Time (1995) on Tubi. The storyline follows a group of kids in a small Midwestern town who plan a fake kidnapping as a prank. Unfortunately for them, their timing coincides with a real bank heist, and some of the kids end up as hostages. Can they find a way out of their predicament?

Directed by Paul Warner (Portraits in Dramatic Time), the film stars Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler), David Arquette (Scream), Stephen Baldwin (The Usual Suspects), and Jason London (Dazed and Confused).

This is one of those films where you're glad you're not in the situation but can't help watching to see how it unfolds. The characters and circumstances are well-established and engaging, with a cast that fits the roles perfectly. The hostage situation balances humor and intensity, with one slapping scene that cracked me up. The plot is clever, full of twists and turns, keeping you guessing about how things will resolve. The final shootout is excellent, and the ending is a blindside, though I'm still on the fence about how I feel about it.

Overall, Fall Time is a unique and entertaining bank heist movie that's worth a watch. I'd rate it a 6.5/10.

Mickey Rourke and Stephen Baldwin are about to pull off a small-town bank robbery. Unfortunately for their careful plans, three local youngsters have decided to do a fake robbery of the bank as a prank. Baldwin and Rourke subject them to sadistic and even sexual punishment.

It's an interesting central story, and the performances are good. However, the film makers have decided to set it in the 1950s and excoriate the entire decade. They also include several dozen shots of a woman baking an apple pie, and three children -- presumably the youngsters some years earlier -- playing around a swimming hole. Clearly intended to add depth to whatever the message this film tries to offer -- something like "don't try to rob a bank as a joke, because it probably won't turn out well" -- this movie would have turned out a lot better without that.

Rebellious post-high school buddies Tim (Jason London), Dave (David Arquette), and Joe (Jonah Blechman) are in the middle of their last summer together. Tim is off to college in the fall, and wherever the other two wind up, it will not be in the same place he will be. So the three of them, the bored threesome decide to pull of their most elaborate prank of all time. The plan is simple. Tim, all decked out in a nice suit that makes him slightly more than conspicuous in a small town like Caledonia, Wisconsin, will stand on a street corner near the bank, while the other two pull up fast in their black Buick (stolen from Dave's cruel father) and pretend, with blanks, to gun him down in the street, toss him into the trunk and speed away. After this reports about the Buick will be all over the news, and Dave's father will have a heavy dose of explaining to do. But while they plan the lark, ex-cons Florence (Mickey Rourke), and Leon (Stephen Baldwin) are planning to rob the very same bank. When the boys mistakenly abduct Leon (who is dressed in a suit similar to Tim's), and in effect, foil the crime, the stronger Florence immediately hunts down the suspicious Tim, and strong-arms him into assisting in the heist without Leon. Leon, meanwhile, once out of the trunk, easily detains Dave and Joe, and begins a paranoid investigation of their true motives before forcing Dave to reel off a conspiracy tale about himself and Florence, exactly what the very edgy Leon wants to hear. Leon, who is shown through his homosexual relationship with Florence (which began while the two served time) as being subservient and pliant, explodes when given the opportunity to call the shots for the two young boys, and becomes unhinged to the tune of torturous interrogation scenes that are almost too emotionally painful to watch. What follows is a violent, icy depiction of loss of innocence in the Eisenhower America, which ends the only way it can, with bodies on the floor. Though the film, made in 1995, was denied a theatrical release by co-stars bickering over billing, director Paul Warner spins a tightly wound tale of a adolescent joy-ride that goes awfully wrong. And perhaps the most interesting spin on the script is the parallel between the subservient relationship of Leon to Florence to the hero-worship Joe holds for Dave, and even paralleling Leon's treatment of the boys with the relationship of Dave to his father. This amounts to a perverse little twist of script that Freudians would love, where the two criminals do serve to provide a sort of perverse fathering of the children. The young cast is outstanding, exuding the requisite disbelief and innocence we expect from these boys. A particular standout is Arquette, who I previously did not feel could act his way out of a paper bag. Mickey Rourke is absolutely chilling as Florence, and Baldwin gives perhaps even a better performance than he did in The Usual Suspects, an absolutely brilliant turn as the explosive Leon. In all, Fall Time is a very good movie that snuck through the cracks, and is well worth a look if you can find a copy.

Fall Time is a 1995 crime drama about three young men who decide to pull a prank on the wrong day, at the wrong time.

It's not a blockbuster by no means, but it's got style. The whole cast was great, however Stephen Baldwin and Mickey Rourke really stood out, and were quite captivating with their performance as the two main villains.

The film puts a nice spin on the bank robbery tale that makes the story progress in a creative way, and even though I thought the ending could have been better, it's still a pretty entertaining movie. If you haven't seen this before, I'd recommend checking it out.

This is the kind of movie which makes you wondering all the time how the madness created by coincidences will end, which is also the strength of the movie; it doesn't get bored. Fall time fits in the new type of genre that is introduced in the 90's: 'nouvelle violence'. The character of these movies are formed by the excessive use of hard violence, mostly in the crime circuit. As you'll probably know, the leading man in this genre is Quentin Tarantino, with movies like reservoir dogs and true romance (movies who look a bit like fall time).

The role of Mickey Rourke is almost made for him, and also Baldwin gives honor to his name.

It surprised me a bit that so few people voted for this movie, hence I would suggest that if you don't mind hard violence and you like a surprising end, go rent this movie, it won't let you down.

All right I've read the other comments and feel I'm one of those who had a hard time with this movie. Director, Paul Warner, brings three young boys together with a chance meeting with two not so young men. It's all about a prank gone wrong and the aftermath of the game.

Mickey Rourke, who always seems to get these weird roles of emotionally disturbed people, once again, talks in whispers. He also manipulates others, as he's done in past films. In other words, there doesn't seem to be any change in his style. However, Stephen Baldwin, his victim, gets a chance to show more than his usual tough guy image, with a sensitive performance. Is he gay? It's never made clear, but through Baldwin's performance you would assume he is. This is why he becomes weak in the knees when Rourke commands him.

Of the three young boys, Jason London got more to do with his part. The other two, David Arquette and Jonah Blechman, were somewhat less convincing.

The girl, Sheryl Lee, didn't impress me. Except when she began to undress London. I thought finally something is about to happen. But unfortunately it didn't.

The violence, blood and bruises were abundant throughout this movie. As though this was what audiences would be impressed with. When you have as much as this film presented, after awhile it becomes boring. The mother baking the pie, without words, was all camp. Was she for real? Placing the cherry on top of the pie and tripping as she was carrying a birthday cake, were among my favorite moments. And Baldwin's acting. 6 out of 10 is my vote, in favor of Baldwin, London and Arquette.

Fall Time was such an underrated film. I cannot believe that this film got the critical mauling that it did. Everything about it (save, maybe, for Sheryl Lee, who comes across as a bit hammy) is near perfect. The director, Paul Warner should be commended for pulling off a film with a decent Mickey Rourke performance, and, as an actor myself. If i ever get the chance to work with this director, it would be a dream come true. I'm so glad to see that he's got another film in the pipeline. Roll on it's release.

I didn't know what to think at first because there were so many nutty things going on in this juicy little film. Yea, now that I read some of the other reviews, the homoerotic thing fits. I wondered if I was imagining things, or what. All the touching, close contact,. . . is he going to kiss him?! Mickey Rourke was amazing! And he had the best lines many of which were sheer poetry/philosophy/Rourke. I was sure he wrote the script, but no. Baldwin was also in excellent form. Actually they all were. Sheryl Lee was a riot having fun with the role -almost too much fun, as the clever "girl who got away." See the film!!! Oh, and the Mom who was always baking pies -too funny. Not a word from her, but she stole the scenes from the ranting Dad.

The story in this film is simple but great. Big things happen fast. I had to pay attention and rewind to not miss anything. Who's on who's side? Is there a setup is it all an accident? Poor timing and vicious thugs are hell to mix. The cast is all star. Even the supporting cast doesn't give away anything to what's gonna happen next. I'm thinking a mix of stand by me and reservoir dogs.