Reviewed by Ivan Brandon
March 14, 2003
Get to the theater and we're ushered in with uncharacteristic ease. The room is packed. We end up having to sit three rows back from the screen off to the far right, armed with an enormous tub of popcorn and some weird lemonade concoction.
The movie opens strong; right off the bat, you can see its selling point is casting. Whoever cast this movie deserves a rubdown on credit for a year. They deserve every bit of surprise and joy I heard emanate from hundreds of people watching for someone new. I notice the costume designs and the sets as well, great work across the board at building people and where they live. In the first scene they sit on a couch I can smell, I've been there- this is the reality of chemical retailing. The backgrounds scratch at you whenever you pay attention. Everything is just so.
|
And then you're coasting on the detail and the ambiance, and right away you realize that's all there is. And suddenly you're buried in cliché and bad storytelling, and you're just hoping the next cameo happens soon. Jonas Akerlund watches great movies. You can tell. He bleeds out heavy the influences of the directors he looks up to. Everything you see is reprocessed whole, some of it lifted shamelessly without even a fresh coat of wax. When a character takes in meth we zoom in close and watch their pupils dilate. We follow the manic paranoid movements of their head, each hi-speed head-turn accompanied by loud jarring noise. This is a lo-fi faux-comedic version of every director ever's take on drugs... with all of the sound and none of the bite. Akerlund emulates the surface without any of the substance- the work comes off xeroxed and unfeeling. Everything you see is likeable in that you've seen it and liked it before. Here it is again, every drug movie you've ever seen redone in a karaoke montage sequence.
|
The entire thing is sprinkled with all of these gratuitous shock images that just grate without the revulsion- you're annoyed at the intent more than the execution and never shocked, never is anything new or jarring. You follow Mena Suvari's shit out of her ass and watch her wipe on a single toilet paper square. This is what you're here to see.
And by the end you're back to the saving graces- that the premise works fine, boy loses girl and looks to crystal meth for a pep talk, ends up neck-deep in a spinning world. That the dialogue's more often than not got a good ring. That the movie is superbly cast and well acted. Magical characters abound - crystal meth creates it's own supporting cast. Everyone in this world is fun to watch; Brittany Murphy is lovable even with her brain on high flame. This is one of Mickey Rourke's career roles and he makes the best of it, terrific moves by Rourke all around and hopefully this will lead to additional appearances by him onscreen. Rourke subtly owns every scene he's in and some he's absent from, and the level of craft and intensity he brings to this role should serve as an example to his peers who are coasting on a handful of 20-year-old mannerisms.
Picture this: you get to see Mickey Rourke in Cowboy boots talking to Eric Roberts lying in bed with 2 men in Speedos (or Mickey Rourke buying she-male porn from Rob Halford, take your pick). You go into this movie, and if you're me- on paper you can see the perfect ingredients for the next right thing. But on film, SPUN's a total waste of paper.
SPUN opens in New York City today, March 14. For more information, visit SpuntheMovie.com
Gotham-based comic book writer Ivan Brandon’s new GENE FUSION, from Beckett’s Publishing, shipped to stores this week. His TERMINATOR comics, based on the upcoming sequel, will be available soon.
E-MAIL AUTHOR
