HEAVEN'S PRISONERS
A film review by Gerald Tan
Copyright 1996 The Flying Inkpot
Directed by: Phil Joanou Written by: Harley Peyton and Scott Frank based on the book by James Lee Burke Cast: Alec Baldwin (Dave Robicheaux), Mary Stuart Masterson (Robin Gaddis), Kelly Lynch (Annie Robicheaux), Teri Hatcher (Claudette Rocque), Eric Roberts (Bubba Rocque) Produced by: New Line CInema and Savoy Pictures Running Time: 132 minutes Rating: * out of *****
FUSSY DETECTIVE DRAMA DRAGS BUTT AROUND LOUISIANA SWAMPS
First and foremost I think this movie comes to grief at the hands of the PG rating it's been given. For those of us who haven't read the James Lee Burke novel that HEAVEN'S PRISONERS is based on, do not rabidly go out and buy tickets to movies featuring the combined talents of Alec Baldwin and Eric Roberts, feel vaguely depressed by the notion of swamps, gangsters with Louisiana accents, plots, sub-plots, more plots, and well, really just want to see Teri Hatcher naked, this is one movie you're going to worry the price of admission over. Hopeful still? Well, let me share my moment of sheer panic, and then the cold enervation of the big let-down when a semi-robed Hatcher purrs to Alec Baldwin, "What do you think of my butterfly?". Butterfly?, I asked myself, What butterfly?! And then it hit me... the scene had been SNIPPED! DAMN YOU, GODLESS PG RATING, SHOW US HER BUTTERFLY!! WE WANT TO SEE THE GODDAMN BUTTERFLY!!! So... no naked Teri Hatcher. Forget about that. Okay? Now...
HEAVEN'S PRISONERS is about ex-alchoholic ex-cop Dave Robicheaux (Alec Baldwin) who's trying to discover life anew running a bait shop and boat hire business with his loving, down-to-earth wife Annie (Kelly Lynch). Everything dull, but hunky dory until a plane carrying illegal immigrants crashes almost ontop of the couple while they're on their boat. The plane nosedives into the water and sinks, but from its wreckage Robicheaux rescues a little pixie-faced Salvadoran girl whom he and his wife immediately decide to adopt. What they don't realise is that the plane's pilot was also a drug dealer, and that the plane had been sabotaged by the latter's erstwhile colleagues. When Robicheaux discovers this, he predictably, against the advice of his wife, a well-meaning DEA agent, and two gangsters who rough him up, begins 'poking his nose where it don't belong', we know that the man deserves all the misery he's going to get.
The question now is whether or not you want to be dragged along for the ride through a tedious, meandering yet utterly suspenseless plot with an unlovable hero as your guide. As Dave Robicheaux, Alec Baldwin is fat... no seriously, this is not the svelte, thinking man's hero of THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, it is an out-of-shape guy who doesn't look too good in a roof-top chasing scene. He's also unconvincing in the movie's dramatic moments, acting with what as far as I can tell is a Steven Segal-like economy of expression. Three-quarters of the way through the show, while you're probably waiting for the next scene in a bar where Robicheaux contemplates succumbing to the temptation of the whiskey bottle, getting drunk and beating up someone or getting beaten up, you'll want to beat on him a little yourself.
On the other hand, Mary Stuart Masterson (SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL, FRIED GREEN TOMATOES, BENNY & JOON) cast as a down-and-out stripper who has her fingers broken is quite a breath of fresh air, with just the right mix of cynicism, warmth, insecurity and humour to be the movie's only endearing character. Eric Roberts as Bubba Rocque, always believable as the woman-abusing bad guy who knows how to box (see FINAL ANALYSIS, coincidentally also directed by Phil Joanou) is believable here as the woman-abusing bad guy who knows how to box. And lest we forget Teri Hatcher's role in all this, this being her rather well-publicised paid vacation from playing Lois Lane on TV's "Adventures of Lois & Clark"... she is totally ridiculous as Rocque's manipulative and seductive Cajun wife, coming across as devious as a mildly disgruntled au pair who's trying to get back at an employer who hasn't been giving her enough days off. It's probably safe to say that her day job beckons. And at the end of our day, none of this is really worth 2 hrs and 12 minutes of our personal misery.
THE FLYING INKPOT's rating system: * Wait for the video. ** A little creaky, but still better than staying at home with Gotcha! *** Pretty good, bring a friend. **** Amazing, potent stuff. ***** Perfection. See it twice.
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