Everyone’s a fraud in writer/producer/director (megalomaniac?) Drew Goddard’s fever dream about ‘doings’ at the El Royale Motor Lodge. And that would include Drew Goddard, so self-aware of his own fraudulent cleverness the film feels positively onanistic. With a wing of fancy suites, the Royale, which straddles the Nevada/California stateline*, actually functions as a honey-trap for the rich & horny, with camera-ready inner core to facilitate filming illicit intimacies for future blackmail. Enter Jeff Bridges: fraudulent priest hunting up a long-buried bag of stolen loot; Jon Hamm: fraudulent vacuum salesman & secret FBI agent (note cornpone Southern accent); non-fraudulent Cynthia Erivo: backup R&B singer with minor Reno booking; fraudulent all-purpose hotel deskman Lewis Pullman: post-Vietnam PTSD sniper; Dakota Johnson: fraudulent Cali-counter-culture princess with violence issues & a mentally-challenged sexpot sister; and the lux Motor Lodge itself, most fraudulent of all. Goddard plays linear time games with theatrical staging techniques, stop-and-start narrative backstories & reveals, and the cast has good fun constantly reversing expectations. If only Goddard knew when to stop twisting; the film runs an absurd 2'20". By the time Chris Hemsworth shows up as a fraudulent sicko cult-leader/prophet, the film is begging to be put down. (Hemsworth may be buried by the acting talent surrounding him, but does look like a God . . . or Brad Pitt in TROY.) Happily, there’s lots of good mid-60s Motown to carry us along. (Any film with a vintage Wurlitzer jukebox playing the Four Tops/'Bernadette' has its charms.) But the fun keeps drifting off course, whether it’s Bridges who just happens to have knock-out drops in his pocket, Erivo knowing how to plug in a carburetor, a conveniently hidden shotgun under a bed . . . shaggy dog story stuff. And that’s okay, but then using a dead serious Vietnam military massacre to tie up loose ends is tacky. No follow up feature for Goddard, but the guy is nothing if not resilient.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Little doubt Goddard made a close study of Tarantino’s THE HATEFUL EIGHT/’15. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-hateful-eight-2015.html
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Oddly, the physical stateline that runs thru the middle of the lobby doesn’t figure into the plot at all. You’ll find it featured in the wildly popular divorce dramedy: LIGHTNIN’, a huge stage success in 1917; a silent hit for John Ford in 1925; and an Early Talkie for Henry King with Will Rodgers 1930. Both films slow as molasses in winter. Hence the title character’s nickname, LIGHTNIN’!
No comments:
Post a Comment