2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY
A film review by Andrew Hicks
Copyright 1997 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions
**1/2 (out of four)
Ever since PULP FICTION, there's been a flood of hip crime-story imitators, none of which have managed to be as intelligent or compelling as Quentin Tarantino's original. 2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY is mildly entertaining on its own, though, with a cast that includes Danny Aiello, Jeff Daniels, Teri "Lois" Hatcher and Eric Stoltz. It's got a good Miramax feel to it even though it came from HBO, who must have decided it was good enough to bypass pay cable and go straight to theaters.
The movie seems a mess at the beginning, with three or four subplots that don't seem to be going anywhere. On one hand you've got Aiello and James Spader (who is a dead ringer for kid in the hall Dave Foley here) as two criminals listening in on a sleeping Teri Hatcher. As her ex-husband wakes her up and tries to win her back, Spader and Aiello come inside, shove a hypodermic into Hatcher's panty-clad butt (bet there was quite a fight over which one got to perform the injection) and kill the husband.
Cut to Stoltz, who is getting a massage from a beautiful Asian woman who offers to massage something else. Stoltz decides not to and gets back in Daniels' car, where we find out they're two cops planning to bust the parlor for prostitution. Stoltz changes his mind after realizing the woman is nice enough, and Daniels changes his mind when a bloody Teri Hatcher comes running into the path of his car.
So those two paths have intersected, while we see a suicidal writer / director (played by writer / director Paul Mazursky) whose only goal is to give away his dog before he kills himself. Around the same time, Spader decides to double-cross Aiello. He shoots him and gets in model Charlize Theron's car as his own car blows sky-high. But surprise, surprise, Aiello was wearing a bulletproof vest and got out of the car in time.
He ends up in the nearby mansion of eccentric British art collector Peter Horton and his underappreciated assistant, Glenn Headly. Horton's character is defined by two things -- overall English snootiness and having to pass a kidney stone -- so he's not really essential to the film, although Headly is always fun to watch. Meanwhile, Mazursky is in a cemetery and runs into Marsha Mason, who actually liked one of his movies. She gives him a ride, but first has to visit her brother-in-law, who coincidentally turns out to be Horton.
That's more paths crossed, and all the paths eventually come together, as Spader comes after Aiello and Stoltz tries to solve the case. 2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY has a brain to it, but not nearly as much entertainment value or clever dialogue as Tarantino's masterpiece, the film by which all imitators are measured. It will go down in history for its five-minute catfight between Hatcher and Theron, the stuff 14-year-old boy fantasies are made of.
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