JOHNS
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1997 Scott Renshaw
(First Look) Starring: David Arquette, Lukas Haas, Terrence Dashon Howard, Keith David. Screenplay: Scott Silver. Producers: Beau Flynn and Stefan Simchowitz. Director: Scott Silver. MPAA Rating: R (sexual situations, adult themes, profanity, violence) Running Time: 100 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
There are moments in the course of performing this job that I wish I had the director in front of me so I could just shake him. It isn't the terrible films which get me so worked up, because there is no amount of sense I could shake into directors in those cases. Rather, it is the near miss which frustrates me most, when I see a potentially fine film disappearing into a fog of pretension. Apparently the subject of street hustling is particularly conducive to sending directors into fits of artistic incontinence. Gus Van Sant had MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO soaring until he decided to get iambic on us with an extended riff on HENRY IV, PART I, and Scott Silver tackles a similar premise in JOHNS with similar results. There is an affecting human drama in there, if you can wade through the symbolism to find it.
JOHNS shows us one day (Christmas Eve, to be specific) in the lives of two street hustlers on L. A.'s Santa Monica Boulevard: John (David Arquette), an edgy veteran of the streets, and Donner (Lukas Haas), his inexperienced protege. John has plans to spend his birthday the following day living it up at the Park Plaza Hotel, but those plans hit a snag when someone steals away John's lucky sneakers, along with the $300 he needs for the hotel room. With only a few hours left to scrape together the necessary cash, John takes on clients both old and new -- each one a potential danger -- and also tries to get help from Donner. That might be the easy part of the day, as John and Donner also need to stay one step ahead of Jimmy the Warlock (Terrence Dashon Howard), the drug dealer from whom John stole the original $300.
Anyone who has seen MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO is going to find elements of JOHNS familiar, including the relationship between the two protagonists (one has an unrequited crush on the other), and the upper class background of one of them. There is, however, something pleasantly unfamiliar about the authenticity of JOHNS' setting. Silver creates a world of fringe-dwellers who know each other but are too busy trying to stay alive to care about each other. John's acquaintances, like his girlfriend Nikki (Alanna Urbach) and a twitchy paranoiac named Eli (Christopher Gartin), drift in and out of the narrative, and Silver often shoots them from a distance both to keep us from getting to close to them and to suggest the distance we probably would keep ourselves. These people don't form a protective family, although the more innocent Donner is willing to do so; for the most part, they have more pressing concerns.
The unique dynamics of these characters' lives should have been enough to sustain JOHNS, but Silver isn't satisfied with telling his story in a straightforward manner. It isn't enough that we realize John's birthday is Christmas day; John also gets a chain whipped across his forehead so he looks like he has been wearing a crown of thorns. It isn't enough that an enigmatic homeless man (Keith David) returns one good deed with another; he has to turn into a hymn-crooning, all-seeing wise man. >From the repeated use of clocks and watches as a motif to the repeated use of John as a name for characters (there are three in addition to Arquette's character), Silver keeps giving you pokes in the ribs which are merely unnecessary when they aren't actively distracting. There are plenty of moments when Silver doesn't seem aware that, sometimes, less is more.
It is a particular shame when distractions interfere with a performance as uniquely compelling as David Arquette's. We know he is doomed from the moment he reveals that "nothing bad ever happened to me while I was wearing my lucky sneaks," but Arquette refuses to make him a lost soul/victim of society. John has no sense of a future, so he takes any action assuming that he won't have to deal with the consequences, and he uses people with a similar disregard. There is something almost unlikeable about John, but we come to care about the moment of respect and splendor he wants from his night at the Park Plaza. This dream leads to a surprisingly touching moment involving the hotel's desk clerk (Richard Kind), one of several sparkling scenes Silver gives to his supporting characters; another clever bit finds Jimmy the Warlock becoming a bit less menacing as he struggles with basic subtraction. Silver had great actors working with great characters, so it is disappointing that JOHNS is only a good film instead of a great one. With time, I hope Scott Silver learns what a great chef understands: presentation should complement a fine meal, not overwhelm it. You don't serve up a filet mignon just to smother it with parsley.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 so-long johns: 7.
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