Flawless

viewed August 25, 2000 on VHS   Full Details

First, the good:  1999 was Phillip Seymour Hoffman's year, and his performance in this movie is but further evidence of his tremendous talent.  Not so much because he does a great job playing a transvestite -- he often resorts to tried-and-true sassy fag shtick to get easy laughs -- but because he has tremendous charisma emanating through the caked-on makeup and layers of drag dress.  Given that even in The Talented Mr. Ripley his unapologetic seediness was buffeted by a campy charm, it's impossible not to like the guy here.

More surprisingly likable is Robert DeNiro playing a bigoted stroke victim.  For the first time in a long while, he isn't psychotic or playing it over the top.  I haven't enjoyed a DeNiro character since the bus driver father he played in A Bronx Tale; this time it's the right mix of rage and pathos. 

Now the not-so-good.  I was actually rooting for Joel Schumacher (for whom we have the recent Batman movies to blame) to pull this one off (he hasn't made a good movie since The Lost Boys, which was 15 years ago), and he almost did.  I think he relied heavily on Hoffman and DeNiro to pull him through, but he has no one to lay the lame-ass thriller ending on except himself.  I don't know whether it was originally part of the script or if Schumacher was pressured to add more oomph to the ending, but either way it stinks.   It doesn't help that the supposed thread of tension in the film (gangsters searching for missing loot) obtrudes the developing bond between the two leads.  The two would have been better off in a road picture (well, not quite).

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