s_pike

Where is Johnathan Winters in the cast listing? He threatens to steal the show and is wonderful villain paradigm. More fun than later big budget version. A presage of Brisco County Junior. Era of poking fun at the cultural narrative of westerns and 007. Loved the steam punk one armed bandits. Pace slows but the surreality of the sets and nuclear bombs going off at regular intervals maintains a threat of urgency against the clever spoofs and twisted familiarity of steam punk renditions of the modern world. Joyce Brothers cameo is precious. Steam Punk takes off with Brisco, but its roots stretch back into wild Wild West.

This movie can't quite commit to being noir and so comes off as a pale translation of what a woman might imagine noir to look like if it was focused upon the female characters. All foreplay and no action. What non-sexual action that does take place is anemic. The toughest thing in the movie is the attitude that affects an insouciance while betraying that indifference in the plot. The thing about tough guy noir movies is the action the pace of plot development hits you repeatedly like a drunk boxing champ down on his luck and only doing what the boss paid him to do. The personal and emotional indifference is as hard as the cold cement reaching up to claim your face as you fall. None of that is in this movie. It is, as another reviewer points out, self conscious and pretentious. The emotions in noir hard scrabble movies are always embedded in the context while greed, lust and power play out in the service of hard reality and the rules of the game. That is why the "dames" are treated the way they are and why they betray husbands and lovers for their own advantage. This movie brings the emotionalism to the foreground, (maybe in service to an assumption that the audience they anticipate will want that), and places the action into the context. In doing so they lose the plot of what a noir-ish thriller is about and all we have is the atmosphere without any content. If they wanted to do lesbian porn they should have done so explicitly, as it is, it is neither a good sex film, a good art film nor a good thriller. Like the singing in the movie, it has all the pretense and none of the soul.

This is a light weight movie but really quite entertaining and better than many recent offering at the theater. It could have been better in many ways. A few cast changes and a little more over the top release of the talent and you have a Rustler's Rhapsody level comedy.

The play off of corporate corruption is quite relevant to current issues and provides a nice opportunity to display the use of the military in the service of corruption.

The film is good for popcorn.

Why they restrained such talent as Candy and Lewis is confusing. Why get them if you're not going to let them play. Too much focus on the script and not enough play of the characters.