Emma Thompson plays a cool-in-the-face-of-danger F.B.I. agent who teams up with an alcoholic police detective played by Alan Rickman (head terrorist/robber in Die Hard). Based in New Orleans, every character has quirky attributes that have been done before, but in this film, they are more believable.
Even Gil Bellows’ character excudes an intellectual sort of menace as he leads a group of 20-something kidnappers. You’ll remember Gil as an attorney from Ally McBeal. Here he wears glasses, practices meditation, and is an all-around smart guy. Like a computer nerd gone bad. Chilling. You don’t want to mess with this guy.
There’s a couple sex scenes between two of the kidnappers, one takes place in a meat locker. El Hombre isn’t into food sex, but this was pretty good. And just like every other movie or television crime show, there’s sexual tension between the F.B.I. agent and police detective. Here it works. Lots of times it doesn’t.
And El Hombre can’t forget Hal Holbrook’s character, a Louisiana senator, who turns out to be one of the main characters in the film. Who would have thought? Not El Hombre.
Yes, this is a good one. Not too long either. 98 minutes. It could have been longer and El Hombre would still have liked it. Rent this one now.
Johnny Depp’s From Hell and Blow
El Hombre had great expectations for the film From Hell. What more could you ask for? An opium-addicted investigator who has paranormal abilities. He has dreams about the crimes he investigates. Add a Jack-the-Ripper type of criminal and ladies of the evening, and El Hombre is ready for a good movie-viewing time. Despite the huge potential for a gripping film, it slowly fizzled and El Hombre wondered, “do I really want to watch the whole movie?”
By the time the end came around, El Hombre didn’t really care, the ending was already apparent in a dream the investigator had, and the viewer could figure it out with a yawn. El Hombre says rent it if, out of the hundreds of movies available, this is the only one you haven’t seen.
Otherwise, watch Blow a second or third time. This biographical tale of Georgie, a small-time pot dealer who became a big-time cocaine dealer, seemed a genuinely honest, decent guy. Really, the ending was too much, even for El Hombre. From the beginning, when Georgie, as a kid, wanted to go to work with his dad, to the end when his father is dying and Georgie sends a tape-recorded message to his him, saying the things a son would say to his dad when he knows they’ll never meet again, the whole movie was too good for El Hombre’s words. See Blow.