U-Turn Review
by Walter Frith (WFrith1680 AT aol DOT com)October 9th, 1997
'U-Turn'
A movie review by Walter Frith
When director Oliver Stone made his 1994 statement 'Natural Born Killers', it was to illustrate a point. Violent criminals were made out to be celebrities and heroes by not only the tabloid but mainstream media. That film was misunderstood by most who felt it nothing more than a free for all of violence, coarse language and sexually demeaning innuendo when its real intention was in fact to bring an anti-violence message. Make no mistake, there is no misunderstanding Stone's latest film 'U-Turn' as it is simply a low key re-hash of 'Natural Born Killers' given a soap opera twist, wretched characters whom we care nothing about and the film is blatantly pointless.
A hustling drifter (Sean Penn) on his way to California is caught up in the Arizona desert after the radiator hose on his car bursts and he must take it to the only garage in the area which is in the real life small town of Superior, about 50 miles east of Phoenix. He encounters a frightfully shifty garage mechanic (Billy Bob Thornton) who is the only memorable character in the film. Upon leaving his car to be repaired he journeys into an odyssey of hell where almost every character is evil. He encounters a sultry young woman on a street corner (Jennifer Lopez) and helps her with her parcels all the way home and upon getting close to each other her husband (Nick Nolte) walks in the assaults Penn who promptly leaves. Later Nolte encounters him again and apologizes and asks Penn if he might be interested in killing his wife and he'll split the insurance money with him. Penn at first says no but finds himself in a position where he needs the money and upon seeing Lopez again she asks him to kill Nolte ! And more money is involved ! ! If this sounds like 'Double Indemnity' in the wild west, it just might be.
The town's sheriff (Powers Boothe) isn't what he appears to be and the film reaches a certain point and just goes on and on way to long for the audience to care anymore about anybody involved. There are a couple of pointless scenes which involve Penn encountering
a blind Vietnam veteran who begs for change on the street (Jon Voight) and his character is insultingly stereotyped. There is also a goofy spat between Penn and a jealous redneck (Joaquin Phoenix) who thinks Penn is trying to move in on his girl.
Oliver Stone has made some of the most shocking, important, socially aware and truthful films in recent memory and has three Oscars for his filmmakng efforts in directing and writing. Since Stone has nothing left to prove and can choose to make any film he wants to, is it necessary to be so pointless? At least Steven Spielberg can make a pointless film like 'Jurassic Park' which at least contains state of the art special effects but entertains an audience to the point where they want to come back. Stone hasn't had a top notch film since 1991's 'JFK' and six years is a long enough wait.
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