Another Rutger Hauer. Also due to being curious about what else Nicolas Roeg (Walkabout (1971), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)) directed. He worked off a script Paul Mayersberg (The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983)) derived from Marshall Houts's book. In three sittings as it lacks continuity.
This is a rumination on what happens when a bloke (Gene Hackman) gets what he wants but has too many decades of life left to fill. In his case he marries Jane Lapotaire whose alcoholism is presumably due to her husband's vacuity. Notionally they are invested in daughter Theresa Russell (all-in, too much so) who is in turn infatuated with husband Hauer. Joe Pesci has designs on Hackman's Caribbean island, the proceeds of his gold strike in the Yukon (Alaska).
The excellent cast is too often left to spin its wheels. Hackman puts in his generic performance, absently. Pesci is very stagy, as if uncertain how to play the impatient mobster he later seemed so natural as. Similarly notionally French Hauer does not do beta male very well, especially not when styled as a Thin White Duke. Mickey Rourke, smooth, vacant and mysterious. Russell's efforts in a concluding courtroom scene (very reminiscent of The Stranger (2025)) were just too much. The occult stuff (some along the same lines as Perdita Durango (1997) but tamer, others involving witchy Helena Kallianiotes in a frontier whorehouse) felt like a waste of time.
Overall impressionistic and wears its influences heavily. In some ways presages There Will Be Blood (2007) and echoes McCabe & Mrs Miller (1971).
Roger Ebert: three stars. Walter Goodman at the New York Times.
