Title: BEAUTIFUL ACTING
IN AN UGLY MOVIE.(LIVING)
Date: 3/14/1997; Publication: The
Byline: Sara Voorhees Scripps Howard News Service
The world we live in is made up of people who are, in varying degrees, both good and bad. It's one of the things that makes getting up every morning interesting.
But the world according to director Bob Rafelson (who has made some brilliant movies, such as ''Five Easy Pieces,'' and some real dogs, such as ''Man Trouble'') is populated mostly by bad people - greedy, self-absorbed, elitist, bitter or generally unpleasant, without even a shred of kindness or compassion.
''Blood and Wine'' is another of Rafelson's movies about bad people, and it lies somewhere between brilliance and real doghood.
Jack Nicholson, working with Rafelson for the eighth time, is a greedy, self-absorbed wine merchant who has squandered his bitter wife's inheritance. He joins forces with a nasty and consumptive chain-smoker (Michael Caine) who breaks into a mansion where Nicholson's girlfriend (Jennifer Lopez) is a maid and steals a diamond necklace worth $1.3 million.
Soon everyone, including Nicholson's stepson (Stephen Dorff), is fighting over the necklace like a flock of vultures pecking at a carcass.
As if the characters weren't ugly enough, the movie is full of ugly scenes - groin-kicking, face-slashing, a blood-soaked car wreck, a boat ramming a villain against a dock, a close-up of Nicholson sewing up his own eyebrow.
What makes it confusing is that, while the characters are one-dimensional bad people, all the performances are quite exceptionally good.
Nicholson does some of his best shark grins and homicidal growling here. He knows his way around a consummately self-absorbed character, and he brings this one to reprehensible life.
Caine's performance is equally disturbing. His watery-eyed safecracker, on the verge of dying from what appears to be consumptive heart failure, is willing to mow down anything that gets in the way of his chance at living his final few days in luxury.
And then there's Judy Davis, playing Nicholson's wife as hollow-eyed and hysterical at his betrayal, not to mention crippled, drug-dependent and recovering from alcoholism, which looks like a good idea compared to facing the reality of her life with her husband.
Stephen Dorff is the closest thing to a human being that the movie has to offer. He loathes his stepfather for ruining his mother's life, but his plotted revenge turns him into a full-fledged bad person.
Rafelson's direction of this misanthropic morass is beautifully accomplished. It's just that he sees the very worst in his characters. All the vultures circling around the diamonds are so grim and self-serving, you imagine that, even if they get the money they're so desperate for, they'll be just as miserable as when they were poor.
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