After I reviewed the movie BULLET TRAIN recently and mentioned that I like complicated, interlocking plots, a friend asked me if I’d seen 2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY. I looked it up and realized that I hadn’t, so I figured it might be worth a try. As you can tell from the title, it takes place in Southern California and has a large cast including a couple of hitmen (James Spader and Danny Aiello), an Olympic skier (Teri Hatcher), a burned-out writer/director (Paul Mazursky), a nurse (Marsha Mason), assorted cops (Jeff Daniels, Eric Stoltz, Keith Carradine), and a beautiful blonde (Charlize Theron in her film debut, and I’d be falling down in my job as a thoughtful critic of the cinema if I failed to point out that she gets nekkid in this movie). Writer/director John Herzfeld’s script jumps around a lot starting out as it establishes all these characters and more, but then things begin to come together and we see how everything is related, although some of those connections are just pure coincidence.
Double-crosses abound, along with bloody shootouts. Characters you think will
probably survive maybe don’t. Some of them do survive to find redemption. If a
dark, nihilistic movie like this can be heart-warming, 2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY
kind of is. I enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s not as good as ONCE UPON A TIME IN
HOLLYWOOD or BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE, both of which it reminded me of, but I
think it’s well worth watching.
3 comments:
This one used to sit on the shelves at Blockbuster, along with other Tarantino-inspired films like 8 HEADS IN A DUFFLE BAG, KILLING ZOE, THINGS TO DO IN DENVER WHEN YOU'RE DEAD, THE WAY OF THE GUN, THE BIG HIT, REINDEER GAMES (also with a Charlize Theron topless scene), LOVE AND A .45, etc. Was that really three decades ago?
Yeah, it's hard to believe that much time has passed. And Charlize has aged, what, maybe five years in that time?
Same year Charlize was in That Thing You Do and did a 180 degree turn in that role. She's a great actress.
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