The story of two brothers in a crack-infested Brooklyn neighborhood, this convoluted Spike Lee film suffers from a lame plot. Lee has always written his own films, but he collaborated on this script with self-consciously street-hard Richard Price, based on the latter's 1992 novel.
Impressive newcomer Phifer, 20, is a "clocker" (slang for a round-the-clock pusher) working for Lindo, a big-time dealer who runs his operation out of a barber shop. When Lindo wants a rival killed, his demand sets off a confusing series of events that culminate with Washington, Phifer's respectable older brother, confessing to the murder. But is he covering for Phifer?
Phifer, trying to impress his boss while withstanding frequent roustings by Keitel and Turturro, the cops on the case, turns in an effective performance. Lindo masterfully handles his complex role: he's both a father figure to Phifer and a vile man who exploits his protege. Keitel overplays his character's gruffness. And Lee, who seems to be one of his own favorite actors, appears twice, amateurishly, as a casual bystander. (R)
Scott Bakula, Kevin O'Connor, Famke Janssen
This freakfest from writer-director Clive Barker is an entertaining blend of horror and paranormal mumbo jumbo. Bakula plays a New York City private eye who chases a small-time crook into the middle of a California cult. Its leader is O'Connor, a Vegas-style illusionist who is supposed to have learned "real" magic, including levitation, from a demonic guru.
O'Connor's apparent fatal accident onstage introduces Bakula to the regally gorgeous Janssen, who plays the illusionist's terrified wife. Bakula isn't very convincing as a tough guy, but the film's style, more suited to a '40s crime tale, is intriguing. (R)
Kevin Spacey, Gabriel Byrne, Stephen Baldwin, Kevin Pollack, Benicio Del Toro
The above actors are cast as mostly small-time crooks thrown together during a police lineup. This, in the underworld, passes for "meeting cute." They are all quickly cleared of the crime (the theft of a truckload of gun parts). Then Baldwin, who wears his hair in bangs and seems to think that he's starring in a Rat Pack vehicle, floats the idea that they team up to rip off a gang of emerald smugglers. From that heist The Usual Suspects expands, with admirable surefootedness, into an ever-widening, tangly web of stings, threats and conspiracies. It climaxes with the guys being handed a very big job by a mysterious, unseen drug lord named Keyser Soze.
The buildup of suspense and dread pending the arrival of this satanic figure is impressive. But Suspects' surprises and twists all seem dizzyingly arbitrary because director Bryan Singer and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie resort to subtle tricks in narrative and point of view. A little red herring is one thing. But don't smack me in the face with it, all right? (R)
Tim Daly, Sean Young
It is more difficult with every passing film that she appears in to remember just how fresh, sexy and fascinating Young seemed eight years ago when, in No Way Out, she demonstrated spontaneous combustion with Kevin Costner in a limo. In subsequent appearances, she has had the charm and vulnerability of a porcupine with its quills at full mast. That's never more true than in this smutty, brainless comedy, an updated version of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic. The twist here is that when a brilliant scientist (Daly, of TV's Wings, in a thankless part in which he is required to show his trim behind and prance about in women's scanties) gulps his transforming potion, he doesn't just become evil, he becomes a woman (Young). As Daly and Young switch identities back and forth, the movie plods from one lame joke (an elderly woman is aghast at catching sight of Daly's privates) to the next (Young plays simultaneous footsie with two male executives at a business meeting). Perhaps only Jim Carrey—playing both roles—could have saved this dumb-and-dumber romp. (PG-13)
>DRAGSTER
MARLENE STEWART WORKED AS Madonna's costume designer for five years and almost 20 videos, so she knows all about fashion statements. But imagine the prospect of transforming actors Patrick Swayze, Wesley Snipes and John Leguizamo into three Hollywood-bound drag queens stuck in Nebraska with car troubles in the new comedy To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar. Anyone consider computer morphing? Nope, says Stewart: "My attitude was, I'm not doing this as if these characters were drag queens, but as if they were leading actresses—my job is to make them beautiful.' Every actress needs padding or pushing up somewhere."
As an overly ambitious drag novice named Chi Chi, Leguizamo, the only one of the three who had ever performed in drag before, was the easiest to dress. "He's smaller," says Stewart. "There were gowns we could purchase right off the rack."
Swayze, on the other hand, plays a ladylike pro named Vida. "We decided that his character would be a woman with fashion sense. We outfitted him in Balenciaga, Dior and Chanel. We focused on silhouettes, puffed sleeves." For Snipes—aka Noxeema—"we decided to show his muscles. We aimed for a trendy New York person. We told him, 'Think Naomi Campbell!' Long, tight, short-sleeved dresses."
Beauty has its price. None of the actors relished the 3 hours spent daily being fitted and made up. "And it was hot hot," Stewart says of filming last summer in Loma, Neb. "Most drag queens don't go out in daytime." But some do: When the crew needed to quickly reshoot a segment set in a New York City club, an ad recruiting drag queens was placed in a local paper. "To our amazement," says Stewart, "40 or 50 showed up. You're never far from a drag queen, I guess."
- Contributors:
- Ralph Novak,
- Tom Gliatto,
- Leah Rozen.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
