U-TURN By Harvey Karten, Ph.D. TriStar Director: Oliver Stone Writer: John Ridley Cast: Sean Penn, Billy Bob Thornton, Powers Boothe, Jennifer Lopez, Nick Nolte Oliver Stone must have decided he was getting too serious, dealing with assassination conspiracies and other movies filled with gruesome, dead-on violence. He now makes a u- turn in his career without giving up his favorite theme--what characters do in extreme situations--and comes up with a fun movie, one which allows him to relax a bit and send up a few Hollywood gems of the genre. Stone calls "U-Turn" a "scorpion in a bucket" movie, with characters eating each other and trying to crawl up out of the same bucket. If that sounds as though he's filming in the rat-race, urban milieu-- thousands of creatures going through their paces with office politics, gang warfare and the like--Stone reminds us that the smallest towns are no escape from mayhem, conspiracies, intrigues, and a dog-eat-dog mentality. City folks who think they can bail out of the great void of anonymity by disappearing into the friendliness of Small Town America might think again after this movie. "U-Turn" looks low budget, with a minimalist production design, but what's lacking in fashion is compensated for by photographer Robert Richardson's jumpy camera, which scans Arizona's breathtaking scenery and zeroes on one of its seedy towns as though to contrast humankind's majesty with the individual's scuzziest impulses. The figures whom Stone creates, using scripter John Ridley's adaptation of his own novel "Stray Dogs" are not people you'd identify with. They're off-the-wall. But the outlandish depictions are meant to highlight traits with which we all share deep-down under our veneer of polish and sophistication. "U-Turn" is perhaps inspired by John Dahl's 1993 movie "Red Rock West," a thriller about an unemployed, honest Nicolas Cage who finds himself mistaken for a contract killer hired to do in seductive adulterous Lara Flynn Boyle. It illustrates the problems faced by the basically decent Bobby Cooper (Sean Penn), now encumbered by a $13,000 gambling debt, driving across a dry Arizona highway en route to California. Missing two fingers, which have been indelicately removed by a couple of Vegas hoodlums as a down-payment of Bobby's arrears, he continues his bad stroke of luck when his 1964 Ford Mustang breaks down just outside the godforsaken dust bowl known ironically as Superior, Arizona. Leaving the vehicle with a repulsive Darrell (Bill Bob Thornton), whom Bobby eventually calls an "ignorant inbred turtleneck hick," he proceeds to the center of town where he becomes embroiled in a web of treachery. Ignoring the advice of several townspeople who look at his bandaged hand and counsel, "You've got to be more careful," he is invited to the home of the sultry Grace (Jennifer Lopez) to "hang drapes," is discovered and thrown out by Grace's grizzled husband Jake (Nick Nolte), admonished by a blind, fortune-cookie-philosopher Indian (Jon Voight), and beaten up by a young, ignorant stud who is convinced that Bobby is flirting with his bimbo, Jenny (Claire Danes). Desperate to raise the money to pay off the Russian criminal, he accepts an offer of money if he would murder Grace, a promising proposal provided that he can overcome the watchful eye of the town sheriff (Boothe Powers) and his lust for the voluptuous woman. Oliver Stone throws movie cognoscenti in the audience some references to previous films, particularly to King Vidor's 1946 sex-Western "Duel in the Sun," a larger-scale, brawling work with half-breed Jennifer Jones caught between her brother Gregory Peck and Joseph Cotten. Replicating that movie's bizarre finale, Stone tickles our funny bones as we watch an ax-murder, several beatings, a de-digitalization, and other developments which would have Norman Rockwell turning in his grave. He also frustrates us by his dependence on outrageously cheap movie tricks, changing his film stock as often as his characters swap loyalties and bouncing his camera as though it were riding across the state's craggy topography in a 1971 Volkswagen Bug. Crosscutting some portentous imagery--vultures feeding on the carcass of some road-kill, a crow which emits warning signals from time to time, and a couple of snakes--Stone seems to be having the time of his life among a bevy of performers who prove that like the creatures of the desert, we're all animals deep down. New Age folks are convinced that AZ's red rocks have healing properties, but the director of "Natural Born Killers" may have succeeded in convincing them otherwise. Rated R. Running Time: 125 minutes. (C) 1997 Harvey Karten
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