"Grosse Pointe Blank" (15) Screen at D'Olier Street, Virgin, Omniplex, UCIs, Dublin
The contrived title of George Armitage's black comedy, Grosse Pointe Blank, is both a pun on the title of John Boorman's riveting 1967 thriller, Point Blank, and a reference to the names of the new movie's principal setting - the affluent Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe - and of its central character, Martin Q. Blank, a professional assassin played by a perfectly deadpan John Cusack.
Blank's cool-as-ice, wholly dispassionate approach to his work is demonstrated in the opening sequence - which is played for laughs - as he talks on the phone to his assistant while using his free hand to fire at his latest target. His assistant tells him that his next assignment is in his home town of Grosse Pointe and that it will coincide with his high school reunion. Blank balks at the latter suggestion, wondering if what he should tell his former schoomates that "I killed the president of Paraguay with a fork". He eventually decides to attend on the advice of his therapist (Alan Arkin), who is secretly terrified of him and tries to avoid his calls. Back home, Blank encounters his high school sweetheart (Minnie Driver), now a DJ with a local station where she has drawn up the playlist for an "all-Eighties, all-vinyl weekend" to coincide with the school reunion.
This soundtrack yields such aptly titled material as Echo and the Bunnymen's The Killing Moon, the Guns N' Roses version of Live And Let Die, and A-Ha's Take On Me. More ironically, it plays Nena's pacifist plea, 99 Luftballoons, as Blank kills a man in the college locker room. George Armitage - whose previous film as a director was the equally black and entertaining Miami Blues seven years ago - fails to maintain the vigorous pacing of Grosse Pointe Blank through his sagging central stages, but he revives the rhythm as the movie coasts towards its finale. In addition to playing the leading role with aplomb, John Cusack served as one of the movie's seven producers and one of its four writers, and his sister, Joan Cusack, turns up as his assistant while his siblings, Ann and Bill, feature briefly. The supporting cast also includes Dan Aykroyd more bearable than usual, as a rival hitman who wants to unionise professional assassins, and Hank Azaria looking unrecognisable in a suit after his role as the flamboyant houseboy in The Birdcage.
"Palookaville" (members and guests only) IFC, Dublin
Director Alan Taylor's first feature film, Palookaville, takes its title from a line in Marlon Brando's "I could have been a contender" speech in On The Waterfront: "I could have taken Wilson that night. So what happens? He gets the title shot outdoors in the ballpark, and what do I get? A one-way ticket to Palookaville."
The no-hope Palookaville of Taylor's movie is a bleak, run-down New Jersey town. Inspired by three Italo Calvino stories which were set in post-war Italy, the movie deals with three male friends whose basic slacker ineptitude undermines their attempts at crime. All three characters are firmly established through the performances of Vincent Gallo, Adam Trese and William Forsythe in this diverting and good-natured tale. The intense Gallo, who was so impressive in Arizona Dream and The Fu- neral, plays Russ, who lives with his mother, sister and police officer brotherin-law, and has a secret affair with the young woman next door. Forsythe, from The Waterdance, is the depressed and recently divorced Sid living with his beloved dogs, and Trese, who starred in Laws Of Gravity, plays Jerry, who lives with his wife and child and is the movie's moral centre.
Their first venture into crime goes ridiculously wrong when, planning a heist on a jewellery store, they mistakenly hit the bakery next door instead. When they set their sights on robbing an armoured car, they research the heist by watching Richard Fleischer's quickie 1950 thriller, The Armored Car Robbery, on television. A certain uncertainty of tone undermines Palookaville up to a point, and there is an element of deja vu about yet another US indie dealing with quirky slacker criminals. Yet there is enough sharpness in the writing and enough humanity in the central performances to elevate the low-key Palookaville above so many other low-budget American movies of its genre, and it ultimately remains as likeable as the losers at its centre.
"Trigger Happy" (members and guests only) IFC, Dublin
The deliriously over-the-top Trigger Happy was released in the US under the title, Mad Dog Time. It marks the directing debut of actor Larry Bishop, who shaped it as an homage to the Rat Pack pictures of the late 1950s and early 1960s in which his father, Joey Bishop, teamed up with his mates, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis Jr for forgettable frolics. To emphasise that connection, the soundtrack of Trigger Happy consists almost exclusively of songs performed by Sinatra, Martin and Davis Jr, while Joey Bishop turns up in a fleeting cameo. The pivotal character in the movie is Vic (played by Richard Dreyfuss, who co-produced it), whose release from a mental institution sets off a wave of revenge killings. On his release, he turns up stubbly, dressed in pyjamas and a bathrobe, at his nightclub, Vic's Rough House, and receives a standing ovation.
As ever, there is dishonour among thieves and as the body count quickly escalates, the double-dealing gangsters talk a lot of nonsense to each other before killing each other. Larry Bishop, who also wrote the bizarre screenplay and plays one of the key thugs, assembled a large cast that includes Jeff Goldblum, Ellen Barkin, Gabriel Byrne, Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan, Gregory Hines, Burt Reynolds, Henry Silva, Billy Idol, a blink-and-you'll-miss-him Richard Pryor, and - making a comeback 28 years following his retirement after Ryan's Daughter - Christopher Jones.
However, only Gabriel Byrne gets the tone right in this truly ludicrous movie: if only the rest of the cast had taken their cues from him and played their roles at the same heightened pitch. He mugs shamelessly as "Brass Balls" Ben London, an outsized caricature of his Miller's Crossing character. Byrne chews up the scenery and spits it out with the arch dialogue of Bishop's script: "I'm a Ben Buddhist," he declares. "How's the vagina?" he asks a man with angina. And he performs an inane rhyming routine about the movie's characters named Vic, Mick and Nick.
In the loopiest scene of a movie that's as daft as a brush - and so bad it's actually funny at times - Paul Anka comes on stage to sing his most celebrated composition, My Way, and Byrne, slicing the ham in thick chunks, interrupts him all the way before croakily joining in the chorus. He is now ready to take his place in the next Jim Carrey comedy.
