Sean Penn's second effort behind the cameras, after the narrowly released Indian Runner, is an effort indeed. It shows the writer-director at full stretch and on tiptoes, even though in artistic terms he is not yet a mature and well-developed adult. A heavy dependence on slow-motion for extra emotional and dramatic oomph is generally a dead giveaway. The essential situation, meanwhile, is genuinely interesting, an ambivalent revenge quest in the vein of Fred Zinnemann's Act of Violence: the avenger has ample motive (his daughter run down by a drunk driver), but his prey is revealed to be no villain, and the avenger himself is no angel. His flight on foot from a couple of very polite and professional Highway Patrolmen (Penn, the erstwhile hothead, demonstrating the depth and breadth of his charity toward his fellow beings, and the honesty of his belief in letting bygones become bygones), en route to his appointed vengeance, generates some real tension and conflict near the finish: we root for him to escape the cops, but are we rooting for him to do the deed? All this is frittered away, however, in the long-winded foot chase that starts up again after he has reached his destination. Some of the torturous hair-pulling and scab-picking, strewn throughout, comes across as mere histrionic exercises, but nothing in the movie comes across more clearly than Penn's love of acting and of actors. (About David Morse, whom he used also in Indian Runner, Penn has penned the line, "You have such a beautiful face, the way your eyes slope, like a little puppy's.") And Jack Nicholson as the would-be avenger is resolutely in his under-the-top mode. Only rarely does his resolve waver. Robin Wright, Anjelica Huston. (1995) — Duncan Shepherd
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