Fact-based tale, despite the name changes from Oscar Bonavena, Sally Burgess, Joe Conforte, and the Mustang Ranch, of a lethal love triangle comprising an Argentinian heavyweight contender and the married partners in a legal brothel outside of Reno. It seems a subject made to order for the screen, though you couldn’t prove it by the humdrum outcome. There’s no problem with the desolate locale and tacky trappings (all the way up to the plush carpet atop Joe Pesci’s head) other than that they remain an unexplored background. The notion, the working theory, that the connection between the “Wild Bull of the Pampas” and a woman twenty-odd years his senior was something deep and true and precious is simply spoken rather than enacted, raising grave doubts that this embroidery of the facts was the proper path to pursue. And while Helen Mirren lends a definite touch of class, it is perhaps too strong a touch, as if, let’s say, the D.C. Madam had been confused with Katharine Graham. With Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Gina Gershon, Taryn Manning, and Bai Ling; directed by Taylor Hackford. (2010) — Duncan Shepherd
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