BUFFALO '66 (Lions Gate) Starring: Vincent Gallo, Christina Ricci, Anjelica Huston, Ben Gazzarra, Kevin Corrigan. Screenplay: Vincent Gallo. Producer: Chris Hanley Director: Vincent Gallo. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, adult themes, violence) Running Time: 110 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
If you've ever seen or read an interview with Vincent Gallo, it's probably obvious why he decided to make his own movie: other people seem to irritate him to distraction. The man who called Leonardo DiCaprio a "good-looking girl" and referred to talent agents as "a bunch of creepy crawlers" isn't exactly playing the mutual glad-handing game that leads to a mainstream film career. So rather than make a film with all the folks he holds in such contempt, Gallo decided to do it all himself. Already a successful painter, musician and actor, Gallo decided to add a few new hyphens with BUFFALO '66: director, screenwriter, film score composer, costume designer. Wearing that many hats should qualify him as some sort of rack.
Fortunately, Gallo has the head and the talent to pull it off for the most part. A visually provocative if occasionally under-developed character study, BUFFALO '66 tells the story of Billy Brown (Gallo), a lifetime loser from Buffalo, NY. Billy has just completed a five-year prison stretch for a crime he didn't commit, forced to take a fall for his bookie (Mickey Rourke) when he can't pay off a losing bet on the 1990 Bills-New York Giants Super Bowl. Upon his return to the outside world, two pieces of business drive Billy. First, he needs to convince his parents that he has been on a secret government assignment all this time, as well as happily married. To the latter end he kidnaps a dancer named Layla (Christina Ricci), and forces her to pose as he bride. His second goal is killing the man he holds responsible for his incarceration: Scott Wood, the Bills placekicker whose missed last-second field goal cost the team the game, and Billy five years of freedom.
The premise sounds like the set-up for farce or black comedy, but BUFFALO '66 is actually a sharply-observed character study. Gallo's Billy is a portrait in emotional immaturity, his child-like name indicative of his inability to act like an adult. The kidnapping of Layla is prompted by his desperate need for the approval of his disinterested parents (well-played by Anjelica Huston and Ben Gazzara); his mocking relationship with is best friend (Kevin Corrigan) is like the friendship of two 8-year-olds. Most significantly, his reactions to Layla betray an 8-year-old's view of girls. His idea of a romantic relationship is bereft of affection; when the pair sit down in an automatic photo booth to take a picture, Billy cringes at Layla's touch as though she has cooties, insisting on a solemn representation of a love "spanning time."
Gallo is superb in front of the camera, but he's just as impressive behind it. Typically, actors-turned-directors point their camera at the actors and let them do their thing. There's nothing typical about Gallo, however. His direction tends towards the showy, but the show always reaches for a specific emotion. A spinning dining room table conversation involving the fragmented family of Billy, Layla and his parents keeps shifting perspective, never showing all four characters in the same shot at the same time. Later, Billy's father jumps into the spotlight (literally) as he shows off his shattered dreams of being a crooner. Gallo's boldest decision depicts a violent scene in a series of still-life tableaux, freeze-framed blood spilling through the air like something in a horrific wax museum. With the instincts of a visual artist, Gallo makes BUFFALO '66 undeniably visual.
It's only as a screenwriter that Gallo comes up wanting. As complex and well-developed as Billy may be, Layla is that sketchy. The talented Ricci tries to invest some real humanity in the character, but too often she's little more than a powder blue baby-doll fantasy. Her character seems to exist for one reason only: because Billy will need the Love of a Good Woman to redeem him. That choice only makes sense if BUFFALO '66 is an elaborate surrealist fable, which would negate much of the compelling pathos in Billy's character. Still, it's hard not to notice how much more Gallo does right with BUFFALO '66. He may have stretched his diverse talents thin, but he proved he could do it his way. Lucky thing for Gallo, since that appears to be the only way he wants to do it.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 overdue Bills: 7.
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