Powder Blue

I went to the theater tonight expecting something very similar to "The Air I Breathe" and the composition was similar in deed, "Powder Blue" is the story of four people, struggling with themselves and their fates.

However, i must disappoint all users that bashed this movie in advance. The story is captivating, comprehensible and sensitively told and the acting is perfect, something one can expect by looking at the cast.

"Powder Blue" didn't blow me away like TAIB but it is a descent drama with a top cast and a touching though sometimes a bit kitschy and predictable Story.

No doubt this movie had potential. The cast offers a handful of well-known actors, several of which are more than capable of good acting (Whitaker in particular is usually superb). Unfortunately, most of the well-known stars in this film only had bit parts. Kristofferson, Swayze and Kudrow each maybe have five lines of dialogue in the entire thing. There were several scenes in the movie, one in particular near the end, which simply had no business being in the film at all. Even worse, NONE of the characters' back stories were developed whatsoever, something which may have actually prevented the story from falling completely flat.

This film will obviously be compared to Crash and The Air I Breathe, as I've seen already in several other reviews. Just because a story is "gritty" and emotionally charged does not make it good or even entertaining. This film was plagued by the same issues as The Air I Breathe: mediocre writing, unnatural dialogue and virtually no character development. Crash was successful because it had character development, the story was poignant and somewhat believable, the film itself was artfully edited and the dialogue was well written and very well acted. As the audience, we need to be able to suspend our disbelief in order to accept a "strangers' lives intersecting" type of plot. I had no problem suspending disbelief in Crash. Not the case with Powder Blue.

Putting comparisons aside, was it the worst film I've ever seen? No. In fact, it was still considerably better than The Air I Breathe. The music and cinematography was actually above average. Liotta's character was disappointingly wooden (no surprise there). Whitaker probably did the best he could. Biel definitely offered a brave performance and appeared to really pour herself into her role, although seemed to lose momentum in the end. Bottom line: don't go into Powder Blue with too high expectations.

The comparisons to Crash (a great film) are inevitable. Powder Blue has a stellar cast in a story that is really a collection of stories that sometimes interconnect.

Forest Whitaker, Jessica Biel, Ray Liotta, Lisa Kudrow, Patrick Swayze et al. populate the dark world of Powder Blue. From the first scenes, we realize that this world is filled with crime, violence and poverty. This world becomes a "character" in the sense that it has as much (or more) to do with the motivations and actions of the characters as other characters do.

The first character introduced is a man, played by Forest Whitaker, who is living on the edge of desperation and hope. As the stories develop, we find that most of the characters are similarly dealing with issues of mortality and day-to-day negotiations with an uncaring world. Everyone is hurting.

Most viewers can probably identify with the sense of desperation that pervades the movie, either because they have experienced it or because they were in situations that could have taken them down a dark path. Thus, the film has an inherent honesty. Some viewers may not want to visit the demons that this film will resuscitate. But there are positive moments and acts of kindness in Powder Blue. For some viewers these moments may "redeem" the movie.

Overall, the acting is excellent. Although I thought Jessica Biel embodied her role as a mother who strips for a living, I felt that a few of her scenes were less convincing.

It's the Christmas season in L.A. Rose Johnny (Jessica Biel) is a drug-addicted stripper at Velvet Larry (Patrick Swayze)'s sleazy strip club with a coma kid in the hospital. Her dog escapes from her motel room and gets run over by shy mortician Qwerty Doolittle (Eddie Redmayne). Jack Doheny (Ray Liotta) is just released after 25 years in prison. His former boss Randall (Kris Kristofferson) gives him a suitcase full of money and directions to Rose Johnny. Charlie (Forest Whitaker) is a suicidally depressed ex-priest. He picks up transsexual prostitute Lexus (Alejandro Romero) and offers her his life savings of $50k to kill him with his gun. Doolittle is struggling for money and Charlie shows up offering the same deal. Waitress Sally (Lisa Kudrow) tries to show Charlie some kindness.

These characters are all lost. There is an emptiness in these characters and quite frankly in this movie. The actors try their best but filmmaker Timothy Linh Bui can't really pull it all together. The scattered nature of the narrative diffuses any tension. It just fails to maintain my interest in these people. Somewhere in the first half, it needs to reveal the connections and the backstories.

Allow me to get one thing out of the way right now: if you are a straight male (or gay woman) between the ages of 18-50 you might as well consider this movie required viewing simply because of Jessica Biel's topless scenes. To be honest it's not the greatest thing since sliced bread and it's not really in a sexualized context, but just to say you saw it should be enough. A little juvenile? Sure...but there it is. I'm kidding of course (kind of) but really...not bad.

Basically what you have here feels kind of like a lame rip off of Crash. A lot of stories happening in the same time line that feel like they should intersect a lot more than they do. Without that intersection it feels like a lot of little pieces rather than a whole. I can't help but feel like some of these actors were slumming it, particularly Ray Liotta. Has there been a movie since Field Of Dreams where he didn't play either a dirt bag or a stand up guy with a shady past? Talk about typecasting. There also seems to be a waste of perfectly good Lisa Kudrow in the film. I guess I don't understand casting her in the movie at all for such a small part when I'm sure they could've found someone just as good for a lot less money.

One small technical annoyance...the film has a pronounced grain to it that I assume is supposed to give it a gritty feel. The problem is that the subject matter isn't as gritty as the production values, so it feels a bit over done. Aside from that it's not a bad movie, but not a good movie either. I would have liked it a lot more if the writers had tried to tie the stories together more. As I said before, the way it is feels more like a collection of pieces more than a whole film. I wouldn't pass it by, but I certainly wouldn't tell everyone I know to check it out. It is what it is...pretty mediocre.