He starts out chastising Darrell: ``That’s the difference between you and me. Penn’s Bobby undergoes a remarkable transformation, from cockiness embodied to broken antihero. An unsettling, memorable soundtrack by Ennio Morricone chronicles the ride. Stone also delves more deeply into themes he touched upon in ``The Doors″ and ``Natural Born Killers″ _ the American outback, once frontier, now desiccated and desolate but crawling with the dormant malevolence of dead-end lives _ a malevolence that Penn’s character exacerbates. Stop _ it’s Jean-Luc Godard and ``Alphaville.″ Matter of fact, the French New Wave legacy that produced Godard contributes a great deal to ``U-Turn″ it virtually originated the technique known as ``intertextuality,″ or citing other filmmakers’ styles within a film. Wait _ it’s Sam Peckinpah, then Wim Wenders, then Quentin Tarantino. But under Stone’s adept ministrations _ and a self-restraint he rarely exhibits _ ``U-Turn″ truly works.Īs is Stone’s style, he draws from a melange of cinematic traditions, from the topsy-turvy photography of Russ Meyer’s 1960s soft-porn exploitation films to the quick cuts, off-dialogue stylism, narrative jumps and oblique diagonals of MTV’s ``Real World.″Īnd ``U-Turn″ is schizophrenic, a veritable Sybil of scenes and semiotics. This kind of approach could come off quite cliche, sort of a ``Mayberry RFD″ meets ``Blue Velvet″ in which Opie gets his ear cut off and Barney Fife ends up sleeping with Aunt Bee. Along the way he gets sucked into a vortex of conspiracy, lurid sex and death. Tucker (``They call me TNT″) or the brooding Sheriff Potter (Powers Boothe). At every turn he is thwarted, whether it be by delicious, dangerous siren Grace McKenna (Jennifer Lopez), bottom-feeding mechanic Darrell (Thornton), psychotic dandy hick Toby N. The plot, in brief: Bobby, no matter what he does, can’t get out of Superior. The nearest town, Superior, is three miles away, so he makes a U-turn and heads on in.Īnd the nightmare begins _ a twisted ride during which we see Billy Bob Thornton play Twister with himself, Joaquin Phoenix eat a bus ticket and Nick Nolte do his very best Lee Marvin impression.
He is adept, as always, at making America his collective therapist, and millions will absorb his angst as he chronicles a few days in the life of a hapless visitor to the washed-out desert town of Superior, Ariz.īobby Cooper (Sean Penn), armed with a duffel bag full of cash, just wants to get to Vegas to pay off a debt when his red ``1964 1/2″ Mustang breaks down on a blistering, cracked Arizona highway.
Stone has been quoted as saying he wanted to make a movie that wouldn’t be reviewed in the editorial pages as ``JFK,″ ``Nixon″ and ``Natural Born Killers″ were, and ``U-Turn″ will probably succeed. That said, the best art of any age typically comes from the dysfunctional artist, and ``U-Turn″ is just that _ Stone’s oddball glimpse into a shadow America that no one wants to believe exists but that undoubtedly does. Let’s make one thing clear from the outset_ something much of movie-viewing America undoubtedly already knows: Oliver Stone, it’s evident, needs a therapist.