BLOOD AND WINE
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1997 Scott Renshaw
(Fox Searchlight) Starring: Jack Nicholson, Stephen Dorff, Michael Caine, Jennifer Lopez, Judy Davis. Screenplay: Nick Villiers and Alison Cross. Producer: Jeremy Thomas. Director: Bob Rafelson. MPAA Rating: R (violence, profanity) Running Time: 100 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
There is a scene about half way through BLOOD AND WINE which, for the briefest of moments, inspires the giddy sense that you may be seeing something quite different. In that scene, wine merchant Alex Gates (Jack Nicholson) is preparing to take a little trip with some very special cargo. Thousands of dollars in debt, Alex has stolen a diamond necklace from one of his clients with the help of jewel thief Victor Spansky (Michael Caine), and is about to fly to New York with his mistress Gabriela (Jennifer Lopez) to fence the necklace. Unfortunately, Alex's wife Suzanne (Judy Davis) comes home unexpectedly, discovers the airline tickets for two, and confronts Alex about what she believes is a simple case of philandering. The confrontation turns violent, and when Suzanne gives Alex a couple of smacks in the head with a fireplace poker and flees with her son son Jason (Stephen Dorff), you wonder whether you are watching a movie with the guts to kill off Jack Nicholson in the third reel.
Seconds later, you realize you aren't; within a few minutes, you realize you're watching a movie with an inordinate fondness for inflicting punishment on its characters, and Nicholson just happened to be first in line. With all the consternation over violence in the movies, you could easily forget that the kind of violence you tend to see in movies is fairly distant and antiseptic: gunfights in which people fall over like kids on a playground, comic book hand-to-hand combat where the winner walks away with a split lip and a smudged forehead. BLOOD AND WINE may be the most brutal film ever made in which a gun is never fired. In addition to the aforementioned fireplace poker incident, characters in BLOOD AND WINE are injured by golf clubs, tree trunks, spear guns and the strategic application of a fishing boat to the back of someone's legs. Add a slow death after a car accident and a scene of Nicholson suturing his own eyebrow, and you have a thriller strictly for the strong of stomach.
With all the unpleasantness BLOOD AND WINE asks its viewers to tolerate, you'd think it would offer a more satisfying pay-off for all the time spent shifting in their seats. Instead, director Bob Rafelson (who also co-created the story) serves up a fairly conventional set of film noir character relationships: lovers who are using each other, family members who hate each other, partners who are ready to stab each other in the back at the drop of a hat. That certainly creates an appropriately dark tone, but there is scarcely a drop of wit to lighten the relentless gloom. After recent films like BOUND have found a way to make you giggle at the tough talk even as you are engrossed in the story, BLOOD AND WINE comes off as something to be endured rather than enjoyed.
It might have helped a bit if there had been a hero worth rooting for. Stephen Dorff's Jason is ostensibly the protagonist, a simple lad with simple dreams of owning his own fishing boat, but his character is too much like a moody teenager. He sneers defiant insults at stepfather Alex and falls in lust at first sight with Gabriela, all the while acting like a 14-year-old rather than a 24-year-old. His refusal to get a life of his own might have made sense if the script had really followed up on a whisper of Oedipal sub-text between Jason and Suzanne; instead, you just want him to stop pouting and find an apartment. Gabriela's motives are kept secret, but she is a pale shadow of the great noir temptresses, and Davis has too little to do. Alex, meanwhile, is never even given a chance to earn our sympathy, not that Nicholson tries very hard. If he had played FARGO's Jerry Lundegaard, this is what he would have looked like: a selfish jerk who thinks the world owes him something.
The only genuinely interesting think in BLOOD AND WINE -- and it is a very interesting thing -- is Michael Caine's performance as Victor. A wheezing wretch in the final stages of emphysema, Victor is chillingly pathetic in his attempts at playing the slick con man as he repeatedly attempts to stifle his bloody coughs. He is the most desperate of the desperate characters in BLOOD AND WINE, a career criminal counting on this one big, final score to allow him to die in comfort; when Suzanne unwittingly takes the necklace with her after her fight with Alex, Victor is willing to do anything necessary to get it back. Caine gives Victor the weight of a Shakespearean villain, his rotting body a reflection of his rotted morality, but his actions always seem born of fear rather than spite. Only Caine keeps you watching when your better judgment recommends turning away from BLOOD AND WINE, a film where you find yourself ducking to avoid the psychic shrapnel as characters inflict pain on each other as though it were their job.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 film pinot noirs: 5.
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