END OF VIOLENCE, THE (director: Wim Wenders; screenwriter: Nicholas Klein; cinematographer: Pascal Rabaud; cast: Bill Pullman (Mike Max), Andie MacDowell (Paige Stockard), Gabriel Byrne (Ray Bering), Loren Dean (Doc Block), Traci Lind (Cat), Sam Fuller (Louis Bering), Pruitt Taylor Vince (Frank Cray), Nicole Parker (Kenya), Marisol Padilla Sanchez (Mathilda), Frederic Forrest (Ranger MacDermot), Udo (Zoltan Kovacs), 1997)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
This film's narrative promises much to say about how violent man is, as it uses contemporary L.A. for its location. But in the end, it fails to deliver the goods; for reasons that are not artistically clear to me, Wenders decides to abruptly check out of this slow developing non-story and end it without resolving it satisfactorily. The film seemed to be oozing completely out of energy and purpose. It made me wonder why Wenders seemed to be so concerned in the first place with the socio-political manifestations of a top-secret government project gone awry and the public being exploited by Hollywood; and then, he concentrated for most of the film on the usual crime stuff of murder and missing persons, basically ignoring what he tried so hard to bring to center stage.
I have always found Wenders to be a bit pretentious; and, at the same time, alluring. He always seems to bait me into thinking there is something more to his films than there are. There are exceptions, like his wonderful film WINGS OF DESIRE, but most of the time I feel that I am being intellectually short-changed by such deceptions.This picture is a perfect example of what I mean.
At first, the story appears to be about Mike Max (Pullman). He plays this bastard Hollywood movie producer who has gotten wealthy making exploitive action films and who it seems can't communicate with his fine looking but empty wife Paige (Andie); he can only communicate bottom-lines, and is hooked on cellular phones and on computers.
His wife is leaving him because he either constantly ignores her or dumps on her. Then, the main event of the film takes place, as we observe on video surveillance, in an observatory with telescopes and computers and video cameras, that Ray Bering (Gabriel Byrne), who is a computer expert, is watching two hitmen trying to kill Mike after kidnapping him. Instead, they end-up dead; and, Mike is found by some Mexican gardeners as he wanders along the road. He will now live with them, that is, after telling them he is the famous producer they see on the news, but is now considered to be a missing person... !
The action turns to following the life of Cat (Traci) who is the stunt woman Mike gave a big break to, giving her a starring role in his next film.The cop, Doc Block (Loren), who is investigating the disappearance of Mike, is suspiciously pulled off the case when he starts asking too many questions around the set, but stays around long enough to fall for Cat and continue the investigation on his own.
The detective's investigation reveals that the video surveillance was a government plan used to spy on people to cut down on the police response times to crime; and Byrne, the computer security expert who is setting this up for the government, is afraid of its inherent dangers, such as the abuse of power this technology has for society. He has picked Mike, after just meeting him once at a computer convention in Las Vegas, to tell him about this classified project. So, it seems that our government boys are now going after Mike, and Mike tells this to Cat, who tells this to Doc Block...The most interesting and diverting scenes in this part of the film concern the poetry performance readings that some of the movie folks attend. One of the readings is more powerful than anything that has to do with the story being told. A black woman poet (Parker) does a poem about being taken sexually by her father.This is Wenders being the arty Wenders, creating interest by being evocative no matter what the film calls for. I am not challenging his use of such scenes, they are wonderful; but, I am put off by his inability to keep the story from going cold.
The last part of this narrative, has all these parts of the tale come together for a violent conclusion. It leaves us with the belief that the violence will not be curtailed, but will go on; therefore, there will be no such a thing as an end to violence.Thereby, the film's title is the opposite of what the film really means to say. Or, is it?
Wenders has succeeded in creating a mishmash of images that are incendiary, but not penetrating enough for us to believe in the characters of the story, or to follow through on what this film is supposed to be about. In fact, you might be angrier and more prone to have a violent reaction to the film, than you would be to believe that Wenders has taken this film in the direction needed for us to see what is meant by an end of violence.
He lost me somewhere down the line. It seems to be a film concerned about government conspiracies and missing persons, but turns out to be more concerned with societal problems, values, and alienation, and does not do any of these topics sufficient justice in covering it. This results in a film that has a few good ideas but goes astray, leaving it with a disjointed look, that is artistically satisfying to watch but empty of meaningful inquiry.
REVIEWED ON 10/7/98 GRADE: C
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews