Grace suddenly realizes that Bobby has the car keys. As they dump the bodies, Grace pushes Bobby over the cliff, severely injuring him. As they make their way out of Superior, the Sheriff, with whom Grace has been having an affair, stops them. With Grace's help, Bobby kills Jake, and they leave together with $200,000. He becomes attracted to Grace and agrees to kill Jake, then he and Grace can be together and use Jake's money for a new start somewhere else. They separately approach Bobby to kill the other for money.ĭesperate and in fear, Bobby approaches Jake about killing Grace. Stranded and broke, he meets Jake and Grace McKenna, a father and daughter who are also a married couple. That's the last thing we'd expect in a film by Oliver Stone.U Turn is a neo-noir crime thriller film directed by Oliver Stone and starring Sean peen, Billy Bob Thornton, Jennifer Lopez, Jon Voight, Powers Boothe, Joaquin Phoenix, Claire Danes and Nick Nolte.īobby Cooper is a drifter in debt to a violent gangster when his car breaks down in Superior, Arizona.
At that point they become puppets, not people. There comes a sinking feeling, half an hour into the film, when we realize that the characters are not driven by their personalities and needs, but by the plot. But it goes around and around until, like a merry-go-round rider, we figure out that the view is always changing but it's never going to be new. The film is well made on the level of craft of course it is, with this strong cast, and Stone directing, and Robert Richardson as cinematographer. Bobby comes across almost like a character in a computer game you wipe him out, he falls down, stars spin around his head, and then he jumps up again, ready for action. During the course of his brief stay there, Bobby will be kicked in the ribs several dozen times, almost be bitten by a tarantula, shot at, and have his car all but destroyed-and that's all before the final scenes with the vultures circling overhead. Superior, Ariz., is the original town without pity. Soon Grace will want Bobby to kill her husband (the "Red Rock West'' bit), and the film leads to one of those situations where Bobby's life depends on which one he believes. Soon her enraged husband, Jake ( Nick Nolte), comes charging in, red-eyed and bewhiskered, to threaten Bobby with his life, but after the obligatory fight, they meet down the road and Jake asks Bobby to kill his wife.
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There are never any industries in these towns (except for garages, saloons and law enforcement) because everyone is too preoccupied by sex, lying, scheming, embezzling and hiring strangers to kill each other.īobby quickly finds a sultry young woman named Grace ( Jennifer Lopez), and is invited home to help her install her drapes and whatever else comes to mind. Superior is one of those backwater hells much beloved in the movies, where everyone is malevolent, oversexed, narrow-eyed and hateful. He wheels into town in his beloved Mustang convertible, which needs a new radiator hose, and encounters the loathsome Darrell ( Billy Bob Thornton), a garage mechanic he will eventually be inspired to call an "ignorant inbred turtleneck hick.'' While Darrell works on the car, Bobby walks into town.
He plays Bobby, a man who has had bad luck up the road (his bandaged hand is missing two fingers), and will have a lot more bad luck in the desert town of Superior, Ariz. The film stars Sean Penn in a convincing performance all the more admirable for being pointless. Watching "U-Turn,'' I was reminded of a concert pianist playing "Chopsticks'': It is done well, but one is disappointed to find it done at all.
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"U-Turn'' and "Cherry'' both end, indeed, with a debt to "Duel in the Sun.'' I imagine Stone made this movie as sort of a lark, after the exhausting but remarkable accomplishments of "Nixon," "Natural Born Killers," "Heaven and Earth" and "JFK." Well, he deserves a break-but this one? Stone is a gifted filmmaker not afraid to take chances, to express ideas in his films and make political statements.
And the images and milieu are out of Russ Meyer country his "Cherry, Harry and Raquel'' and "SuperVixens'' contain the same redneck sheriffs, the same lustful wives, the same isolated shacks and ignorant mechanics and car culture. Much of the story comes from " Red Rock West," John Dahl's 1994 film about a man and a wife who both try to persuade a drifter to kill the other. This is a repetitive, pointless exercise in genre filmmaking-the kind of movie where you distract yourself by making a list of the sources. Only Oliver Stone knows what he was trying to accomplish by making "U-Turn,'' and it is a secret he doesn't share with the audience.