WHITE SANDS
A film review by Carolyn Ford
Copyright 1992 Carolyn Ford
WHITE SANDS is about an Estancia, New Mexico sheriff (Willem Dafoe) who is trying to discover who killed a man found near the town. Also found with the dead man is a briefcase containing half a million dollars. Along the way, he gets entangled with the FBI, goes undercover, and gets involved with Mickey Rourke and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. I went to see this because I grew up in northern New Mexico, and heard it had a lot of good New Mexico scenery. It does have good scenery, but that's about it. From the commercials, it looks like it's going to be an action-packed adventure, which I think it was supposed to be. I'm having a hard time putting my finger on what didn't work with this movie. It seemed more like an outline or idea for a movie. There was plenty of blood and guts, killings, and nasty people, but somehow it just didn't involve me. Thinking back through the plot, it seems like it should have been exciting, but when it was over, I was surprised, because I was still expecting the climax.
The scenery, as I said, was beautiful, if you like New Mexico, which I do. However, they did play fast and loose with the size of the state. New Mexico is a huge state (even though many people don't even realize it *is* a state), and you just don't bop down to White Sands from Santa Fe for the afternoon. Albuquerque is a long way from Taos, etc., etc., and they seemed to make these trips back and forth with no time delay at all.
Another one of my big complaints is that Hollywood seems to think that New Mexico is beautiful desert and mountain scenery populated by a bunch of Texans. Dafoe's character didn't suffer from this, but incidental characters (Santa Fe locals and such) always seemed to talk with Texas accents. And they had country music playing in the lobby of La Fonda hotel! Give me a break! They play more jazz and new-age type music there, and Santa Fe is not real big on country music. Hollywood seems to think of "Southwest" as "Texas Cowboys." Not that I'm slamming Texas (after all, I live here now) but New Mexico is *completely different*!
Anyway, I can't recommend this movie based on plot, but it's a pretty picture, and Mastrantonio's character has an absolutely gorgeous house.
-- Carolyn Ford ford@titan.tsd.arlut.utexas.edu
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