Susan Granger's review of "CLAY PIGEONS" (Gramercy Pictures)
To call this a creepy black comedy is a serious understatement. This debut feature from director/producers Ridley and Tony Scott's new Scott Free production company is about as "noir" as film gets, this side of "Fargo." The story begins on a sweltering summer day as two buddies, Gregory Sporleder and Joaquin Phoenix ("Return to Paradise"), are shooting at empty beer bottles in a canyon near the sleepy town of Mercer, Montana. Suddenly, Gregory turns on Joaquin, accusing him of having an affair with his wife (Georgina Cates). Admitting the truth of the accusation, Joaquin tries to talk him into lowering the gun but, instead, Gregory kills himself, making it look as if Joaquin murdered him. That's just the beginning of this twisted tale. Terrified, Joaquin covers up the killing and discovers the hot-to-trot wife doesn't much care, since she soon takes up with a swaggering cowboy, Vince Vaughn. This lusty, mysterious stranger also befriends Joaquin. Then Janeane Garofalo shows up as an FBI agent tracking a serial killer on the loose in the region. And more people keep turning up dead. "I usually say, 'The more the merrier', but a murder scene is not really crowd appropriate," she mutters sardonically, criticizing the sheriff's penchant for allowing anyone and everyone to mill around, inspecting evidence. Since he's sleeping with one victim, dating another, and found a third, Joaquin becomes the bewildered prime suspect, but writer Matt Healey and director David Dobkin soon convince us that things are not always what they seem. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Clay Pigeons" is a silly, slick, surreal 6. It's more of the madness, mayhem, and murder flooding the screens today.
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