,Dog Eat Dog (18.)
Directed by Paul Schrader.
Starring Nicolas Cage, Willem Dafoe, Christopher Matthew Cook, Magi Avila and Paul Schrader. 91 mins.
Diesel (Cook) is a big, bald lug with a fierce temper. In any normal gang, in any normal film, he'd be the psycho, the wild card, the element that is going to mess up the scheme. In a gang with Nicolas Cage and Willem Dafoe, he's the voice of reason. Dog Eat Dog: those two are more Kings of The Wild Frontier.
The three are back together after various extended spells in prison and have been trying to get themselves back in the game, with little success. Finally they commit themselves to a surely ill-starred babynapping scheme - didn't Cage learn his lesson in Raising Arizona? Taken from a novel by Edward Bunker (Mr Blue in Reservoir Dogs), there's a mean, lean tale of low life hoods incapable of making it on the outside lurking in the background, obscured by the wacky antics up front, but Schrader is far too messed up and unfocused these days to be able to successfully make it all the way through a credible plot.
Schrader was the scriptwriter of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, the director of Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters and even with such landmark films on his IMDB credits I still can't decide if he was a real talent or just someone who had enough of a way with words to blag his way through a career he had little or no aptitude for. In DED he wants to make a statement about the barbarity of American society, and its gun laws in particular, but is too enraged to stick to the point so instead he just throws lots of energetic and frenzied set pieces at the screen. If anything is being exposed, it is Schrader's demented nature. In one scene he has Dafoe's Mad Dog stab to death a very obese ex-lover. It's a mindless and barbaric act, but also time consuming and exhausting: you kind of admire the dedication needed to go through with it. Maybe its a decent summation of Schrader's career.
Directed by Paul Schrader.
Starring Nicolas Cage, Willem Dafoe, Christopher Matthew Cook, Magi Avila and Paul Schrader. 91 mins.
Diesel (Cook) is a big, bald lug with a fierce temper. In any normal gang, in any normal film, he'd be the psycho, the wild card, the element that is going to mess up the scheme. In a gang with Nicolas Cage and Willem Dafoe, he's the voice of reason. Dog Eat Dog: those two are more Kings of The Wild Frontier.
The three are back together after various extended spells in prison and have been trying to get themselves back in the game, with little success. Finally they commit themselves to a surely ill-starred babynapping scheme - didn't Cage learn his lesson in Raising Arizona? Taken from a novel by Edward Bunker (Mr Blue in Reservoir Dogs), there's a mean, lean tale of low life hoods incapable of making it on the outside lurking in the background, obscured by the wacky antics up front, but Schrader is far too messed up and unfocused these days to be able to successfully make it all the way through a credible plot.
Schrader was the scriptwriter of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, the director of Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters and even with such landmark films on his IMDB credits I still can't decide if he was a real talent or just someone who had enough of a way with words to blag his way through a career he had little or no aptitude for. In DED he wants to make a statement about the barbarity of American society, and its gun laws in particular, but is too enraged to stick to the point so instead he just throws lots of energetic and frenzied set pieces at the screen. If anything is being exposed, it is Schrader's demented nature. In one scene he has Dafoe's Mad Dog stab to death a very obese ex-lover. It's a mindless and barbaric act, but also time consuming and exhausting: you kind of admire the dedication needed to go through with it. Maybe its a decent summation of Schrader's career.
