29 Palms

It's fascinating to see this cast on such a weird, bleached-out product-of-its-time Tarantino ripoff. I think it's worth a look for its dizzying camerawork and strange mood and aesthetic...low rent artsy that oddly, inexplicably works at times. I suppose those were just lucky moments as this didn't turn out to be the rough early work of a director finding his voice, instead being the out-there hack work of...just a small time hack.

It has some great Californian desert locations, nice photography and a Repo Man sensibility, but there is no disguising the fact that this is an absolute stinker. Some great character actors - Pullman, Lerner, Polito - are absolutely wasted in slapstick supporting roles. And the editing is dreadful: about 25% of the movie is shown AGAIN in flashback. I guess this was an attempt to show the characters' motivation, which certainly wasn't explained by the script. A waste of talent.

Very amateur editing. But a good story, I think, I could really tell with the poor editing. It was though quiet fun in several places.