A tremendous round of applause is due to blackbiped for alerting me to this film in his On-Topic Review thread (there will be others coming up here in the near future). I'd seen it listed in the Netflix inventory a month or two ago, and it looked interesting but not something I'd immediately stick on the top of my queue. BB's review changed that. For one thing, putting it in the On-Topic thread made it much more interesting. So I took a chance, and found one of the most clever, genre-bending films of recent years. This will end up very high on my Top Ten List for 2011.
From the DVD cover, The Big Bang looks like just another shoot 'em up neo-noir detective/crime thriller starring a former A-list actor with a sagging career (Antonio Banderas). And indeed, the initial story direction is a direct steal from Raymond Chandler's Farewell My Lovely, which has already been put on film twice (with Dick Powell in 1944, entitled Murder My Sweet; and with a terrific performance by Robert Mitchum in 1975). The film opens with private eye Nick Cruz (Banderas) being interrogated by three detectives (great jobs by William Fichtner, Thomas Kretschmann, and the criminally underused Delroy Lindo). His responses form most of the film, as told in flashback -- how he is hired by ex-con Anton "The Pro" Protopov (another fine appearance by 7' former wrestler Robert Maillet) to find girlfriend Lexie Persimmon, who wrote loveletters to him while he was in prison for (poor) fight fixing. As Nick's investigation proceeds, the storyline mutates into a different genre, when quantum mechanics and string theory get involved with the possibility of the End of the World. That's all I'm gonna say about the storyline. The screenplay by Erik Jendresen (known to a very few of us on this board for Otis and Sublime) is as witty as it is honorable to both genres. Pay close attention to names of people, places, and... um... porno films in this production. There is nothing in the storyline that goes to waste.
Two other things. Sam Elliot give one of his most interesting and iconoclastic performances. And there is a sex scene that is both terrifically sensual and terrifically funny at the same time. I will be watching for anything Autumn Reeser appears in from now on.
Highly recommended, especially to those few people on the board who seek out fine new DtV genre films rather than argue endlessly about the effectiveness of CGI, how many arms a monster has, or what color Thor's hair is.
... Reed
From the DVD cover, The Big Bang looks like just another shoot 'em up neo-noir detective/crime thriller starring a former A-list actor with a sagging career (Antonio Banderas). And indeed, the initial story direction is a direct steal from Raymond Chandler's Farewell My Lovely, which has already been put on film twice (with Dick Powell in 1944, entitled Murder My Sweet; and with a terrific performance by Robert Mitchum in 1975). The film opens with private eye Nick Cruz (Banderas) being interrogated by three detectives (great jobs by William Fichtner, Thomas Kretschmann, and the criminally underused Delroy Lindo). His responses form most of the film, as told in flashback -- how he is hired by ex-con Anton "The Pro" Protopov (another fine appearance by 7' former wrestler Robert Maillet) to find girlfriend Lexie Persimmon, who wrote loveletters to him while he was in prison for (poor) fight fixing. As Nick's investigation proceeds, the storyline mutates into a different genre, when quantum mechanics and string theory get involved with the possibility of the End of the World. That's all I'm gonna say about the storyline. The screenplay by Erik Jendresen (known to a very few of us on this board for Otis and Sublime) is as witty as it is honorable to both genres. Pay close attention to names of people, places, and... um... porno films in this production. There is nothing in the storyline that goes to waste.
Two other things. Sam Elliot give one of his most interesting and iconoclastic performances. And there is a sex scene that is both terrifically sensual and terrifically funny at the same time. I will be watching for anything Autumn Reeser appears in from now on.
Highly recommended, especially to those few people on the board who seek out fine new DtV genre films rather than argue endlessly about the effectiveness of CGI, how many arms a monster has, or what color Thor's hair is.
... Reed
