Oliver Stone makes a stomach-lurching return to his worst Natural Born Killers style. Provided, that is, "style" can describe an indiscriminate hodgepodge of manic mannerisms from music videos, half-minute commercial spots (soft drinks, jeans), and "reality"-based TV shows (NYPD Blue, ER, et al.). Nowhere in his repertoire of cinematic hiccups, burps, tics, spasms, shudders, and convulsions is there evidence of such fundamentals as a sense of tempo, a sense of elapsed time, a sense of spatial relationships, a sense of geography. The plot elements, heaven knows, are fundamental enough: a gambler on the run from the mob, stranded in a wide spot in the road in the Southwest desert, and recruited in turn by both halves of a married couple to bump off the other half. The overall effect, however, when the visual elements are added to the plot ones, is not of an old-style thriller peppered with new-style quirks. The effect is pure pepper. The heavy overlay of Stone-work does not transform the material, does not revitalize it, does not postmodernize it; it masks it, smothers it, buries it. With Sean Penn, Jennifer Lopez, Nick Nolte, Billy Bob Thornton, Joaquin Phoenix, Claire Danes, Powers Boothe, Jon Voight. (1997) — Duncan Shepherd
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