BLOOD AND WINE
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1997 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: Two crooks plan to steal a million-
dollar diamond necklace, but having the necklace is
one thing, holding on to it is something else.
This is a violent and often bloody but low-key
crime story set in grimy, sweaty, muggy South
Florida. The plot is tangled without being
difficult either to follow or to believe. Jack
Nicholson and Michael Caine nicely outdo each other
as slimeball thieves in the humid and sometimes
sexy crime story. Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4)
These days crime films seem to have spectacular gun-fights, big explosions, crazed madmen, and, of course, tense car chases though metropolitan centers. The films go for the spectacular, roller-coaster experience. And the characters are bigger than life. You cannot get much better a feel for what has happened to the crime film than to compare the original CAPE FEAR with its high-tech remake. Explosive film-making has replaced gritty little crime films. One misses the low-key crime dramas like the original CAPE FEAR. Occasionally there is a throwback like THE GRIFTERS, but they are all too few. BLOOD AND WINE has the feel of a John D. MacDonald novel from the 50s. The characters are smallish and petty, but they are believable and except for perhaps its complexity, the story is believable also.
Alex Gates (played by Jack Nicholson) runs a Southern Florida wine store and in his spare time cheats on his wife Suzanne (Judy Davis). Both Suzanne and his son Jason (Stephen Dorff) have had their fill of him and the marriage is in its last stages. Alex is fooling around with the Gabrielle (Jennifer Lopez) the nanny of a rich customer, but he also has his eye on that same customer's safe where he believes there to be a diamond necklace worth over a million dollars. To get the necklace Alex has to go into partnership with Victor (Michael Caine), a tubercular safecracker who might well just be using Alex. This is not a very tightly-knit little group at the best of times and add to the mixture a necklace with "diamonds the size of chocolates" and the bonds of family and friendship may be totally forgotten.
The film revolves around five characters, but the heart is Nicholson and Caine, of course. In a sense they are playing much the same character, suddenly-violent, constantly-vile. Caine plays the British version of the character, Nicholson the American. Bob Rafelson has directed Nicholson before, in fact he was largely responsible for Nicholson becoming a respected actor with FIVE EASY PIECES (1970) and THE KING OF MARVIN GARDENS (1972). It has been suggested that the three films form a pattern with Nicholson playing a son in the first, a brother in the second, and now playing a father. There does not seem to be a whole lot of connection beyond that. To Nicholson's and Caine's characters the greasy lowlife life-style comes naturally, but Judy Davis seems to be someone who was once decent, but in self-defense has been pushed to become the same sort of violent person her husband is. Significantly even after she has escaped the control of her husband she is attracted to another man with many of the same characteristics. Her performance could easily be overlooked playing against the two scheming greaseballs, but she does a nice job at playing a no longer very nice person. Jennifer Lopez is attractive and reasonably convincing, but her thick Cuban accent obscures some of her lines. Stephen Dorff is nominally the main character. But his performance is the least textured of the five major characters.
As films go today, this was probably a fairly low-budget one. In the realistic crime story style the characters use golf clubs against each other rather than dynamite. If there are explosions they are ones of sudden anger. This was a good role for Nicholson and a better one for Caine. The production values are decent, though I would swear Nicholson's black eye comes and goes from scene to scene. Other continuity errors have been reported also, though I did not catch them. This is a small film and one that works not on photography or pyrotechnics, but in acting and script. As such it may be a sort of nostalgic reminder of the days when that went without saying. This is not a major film but it is watchable and at times tense. I would give it a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
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